BEg2 chapter 10 a reconvergence of what the day scattered

[Michael Bailey]

Somebody on a blog has cherished this Sappho fragment 104 with a bunch of
different translations and intertextual references from Byron to Eliot.

http://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2014/03/poem-of-week-201413-part-1.html?m=1

http://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2014/03/poem-of-week-201413-part-2.html?m=1

http://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2014/03/poem-of-week-201413-part-3.html?m=1


None of them used “reconvergence” - I think it’s really apropos - Maxine
has a flair for poetry if and when she ever moves on from fraud-busting.

The fragment adresses Hesperus, Venus, in its capacity as evening star.

Repurposing it to describe the effects of rain is kosher, imho, because
it’s the affectionate/relationship aspect of rain she’s creatively quoting
about that relates to the traditional Venusian cluster of associations.

——-No, wait, she’s using it as intended but moving on from it -

“What might only be a simple point on the workday cycle, a reconvergence of
what the day scattered as Sappho said someplace back in some college
course, Maxine forgets,

“becomes

“a million pedestrian dramas, each one charged with mystery, more intense
than high-barometer daylight can ever allow. Everything changes.”

Something about lower barometric pressure changing everyone’s mood and
appearance?


“There’s that clean, rained-on smell.”

Everybody’s probably tired of the word, but I just learned it a few years
ago: petrichor! Is there anything more delicious?


“The traffic noise gets liquefied.”

Oh gosh, the sound of tires on a wet road! Sluices away anxiety.


“Reflections from the street into the windows of city buses fill the bus
interiors with unreadable 3-D images, as surface unaccountably transforms
to volume.”

This is lyrical enough that I’ve got to ask some more urbanite person to
explain, or go stand at a bus stop in the rain till I get it. Or both.