The suffering in these poems remains intact; it is neither resolved nor negated. What happens for the most part is, the poems dissolve, finally, into the cream of the physical world. If negative capability works at all, it works in reverse, a kind of negative negative capability—which would make it positive—where very real anxiety and irritability over mystery and doubt enable the poet—no, propel him—into the world of the eye, the pure perceptual habit that checks all cognitive drives, not before they’ve begun but after they’ve begun, and done their damage.

The artist uses sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing first and foremost.

Even before emotion, well before feeling.

Perceiving reality ought to precede any automatic response, cognition, ordering or meaning-making.

Uncertainty, mystery, doubt propels the person to depend on the power of perception -- much as a drowning man will grasp at anything that floats.

Perhaps the poet is distinguished from the non-poet in the cultivation of this perception long before the storm swells.