Dolphin
Dolphin - meaning Summary
Art, Confession, and Responsibility
'My Dolphin' presents a poet addressing an elusive guiding presence that leads him by surprise and reveals his responsibility for choices made in art and life. He confesses entanglement with craft and collaborators, acknowledging that his writing and actions have caused harm. The poem treats a forthcoming book as both confession and contrivance, a half fiction
that forces a reckoning with the consequences of artistic will.
My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, a captive as Racine, the man of craft, drawn through his maze of iron composition by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines, the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . . I have sat and listened to too many words of the collaborating muse, and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, not avoiding injury to others, not avoiding injury to myself-- to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting my eyes have seen what my hand did.
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