Style Poem by gershon hepner

Style is a quality of vision, soul
to body of the work we undertake;
without it, life becomes a rigmarole,
as we sleepwalk, though awake.
Style is a state where you’re delighted
by magic of the rapture you induce,
providing means to keep the world excited
by fire you create, Prometheus.

Inspired by a statement by Adam Thirwell, author of The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set On Four Continents, & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & A Variety Of Helpful Indexes, cited by Robert Alter in a review (“Only Words to Play With”) in TNR, June 25,2008:

Style is not just a prose style. Style is a quality of vision; a soul.

Alter concludes the article:

Great literature, any sensitive reader will grant, is in some way a magical thing, and this magic is not only a way of inducing rapture but also of enabling thought, inviting the perception of complex associative links, seeing one frame of meaning in connection with another, or with several others. Attending to style is intensely pleasurable and, in the best cases, illuminating. It is an activity that deserves to be revived.

6/12/08