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  • Essay / Freeing the moment in the fog of Clampitt's poem - 698

    The photographer aims, clicks, stops; the moment is captured; the vision takes hold. The poet looks, clicks, begins; the moment is freed; the vision begins. Tess Gallagher says: “the poem is always the enemy of the photograph.” The art of poetry requires more than external vision; a poem takes the reader outside and inside to see, hear, touch and feel every detail. In the poem “Fog” by Amy Clampitt, she immerses the reader's senses in the entirety of the moment's outward grace and its secret inner core. Clampitt seeks what is hidden from the eye. She wants what the camera can't record. His subject matter allows him to show the distinct function and force of poetry. The fog obscures, envelops, limits, dissolves; it goes against the view. “Fog” reveals, illuminates, expands and intensifies; it gives the view. There is a pleasing poetic irony in Clampitt's ability to make so present to the mind's eye precisely what the eyes themselves cannot see at all. “A blur takes possession of everything, / as if to prove color and outline / equally superfluous” (Clampitt 610). As things disappear, "the lighthouse...