a story about the rest

I just finished reading Nicholson Baker’s novel The Anthologist. It’s the story of a contemporary poet who is in love with rhyme and metre. At times it reads like an essay packaged as a novel; an informed discussion of modern poetry wrapped up in the bow of a story.

But at its core, it’s a story about the rest. In music, in poetry, in the creative process. A rest is an absence that punctuates the presence, the presentness; that gives form to the flow. A rest sustains the art; gives it breath.