The present can definitely “deform” the past in the sense of blurring it, making it formless, but also the present can warp the past, I think, by objectifying and decontextualizing it. Poetry’s artifice objectifies, too—things like rhyme and meter do—by introducing tidy patterns of organization. Paul Fussell says the first way meter means, for example, is by reminding us that someone is out there, wrestling chaos into music.
- Allison Adair, in interview with the The LaHave Review, which profiles one poem/poet each season. You can read the whole thing here.
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