Rarity and the Poetic

"Rarity is a quality by which things-flowers, leaves, light, sound-fleetingly appear and disappear, leaving in their wake a resonance of something we just thought we had glimpsed. In this book, the author examines the imaginary or poetic dimensions of rarity. It comes about in the hushed spaces between stanzas, in the pauses between words and lines, in speechlessness. A flower, a silence in a room, a mournfully muttered 'oh,' thorns and dark seeds, even rugs and tables, a hummingbird, the papery gown of a brother dying, all have rarity. Rilke's phrase 'the gesture of small flowers when they open in the morning' serves as an exemplary image of material and mental rarity. "--