Dana Levin: Some Notes on Poetry: Divination, Reverie, Dream (July 2020)

The OED tells us that the act of reading is synonymous with acts of discernment and decision: to guess, to consider, to discover, foretell, reckon and advise. To divine is to “make out or interpret by supernatural or magical insight (what is hidden, obscure, or unintelligible to ordinary faculties).” Encouraging poets to “revise toward strangeness,” Levin examines works by Jean Valentine, Michael Palmer, Shane McCrae, and others to determine what we can learn from divination, reverie, and dream.