Acorn

Part of Carla Hartsfield's poem "In the Garden" is quoted as an epigraph to David Livingstone Clink's "Knots and Hollows" collected in his Shapeshifter (2004).

Spent the afternoon crouched in the belly
of an ancient tree. Climbed up there on a ladder
and bent myself into the shape of an acorn to meditate.

It may be the relation between the small acorn and the mighty oak that has led me to meditate on the relative size of epigraph to poem. In this edition of Shapeshifter the epigraphs appear in a smaller point size than the body of the poems.

There are other possibilities. The epigraph and poem can appear in the same size (I have seen this often) or the epigraph can be larger (I must admit to imagining this possibility and having yet to encounter an example in the wild). I am intrigued by the meaning effects that can be engendered by relative size. Is the one a footnote to the other; is the one a gloss?

And so for day 761
12.01.2009