{"id":4402,"date":"2023-10-04T03:27:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T07:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/maxine-kumins-stunning-poem-about-eros-as-a-portal-to-unselfing-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-10-04T03:27:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T07:27:37","slug":"maxine-kumins-stunning-poem-about-eros-as-a-portal-to-unselfing-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/maxine-kumins-stunning-poem-about-eros-as-a-portal-to-unselfing-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Maxine Kumin\u2019s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

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\"After<\/a><\/p>\n

It is one of the hardest things in life \u2014 discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins<\/a>, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish nature and art, those supreme instruments of unselfing<\/a>, in Iris Murdoch\u2019s lovely phrase; that is why happiness, as Willa Cather so perfectly defined it<\/a>, is so often the feeling of being \u201cdissolved into something complete and great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because our sense of self is rooted in the body<\/a>, it is through the body that we most readily and rapturously break the boundary in the ecstatic dissolution we call eros. <\/p>\n

That is what former U.S. Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin<\/strong> (June 6, 1925\u2013February 6, 2014) explores in her subtle and stunning 1970 poem \u201cAfter Love,\u201d found in her indispensable Selected Poems<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n