Writing with lacunae

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In the visual arts it’s the negative space. Masters know. It’s more than composition. The viewer’s mind gains access in those gaps. One enters the other worldly reality of the image by way of the lacunae.

With writing it’s a pattern of absent articulations and they can come in a variety of forms.

The writer can come up to a certain formulation and then toss the composition over to the reader with a question. Do you think that works?

The writer can approach a certain image or idea and then turn back. But we don’t want to go there.

The most interesting lacunae are those where the writer probes along a limits of her own understanding, like walking along the edge of a cliff. What emerges is a sense of courage and splendor that converge to formulate a notion that is not quite present in the words themselves, but in the mystery they journey along next to…

Writing, like animal tracks, follows the action of the mind. Readers enjoy a trial that records a spirited engagement with the world. We are all drawn to where the action is.

(But I’m not talking plot. Have you noticed how action films appear as child’s play next to a single line of Emily Dickinson?)