Corinna Cook

Don McKay writes about “the sudden angle of perception” and “phenomenal surprise” when one thing or another suddenly eludes our grasp of it. In such defamiliarizations “the coat hanger asks a question,” or “the armchair is suddenly crouched”—evidence that, for McKay, all things retain a vestige of wilderness. By which he means, all things have the capacity to circumvent the mind’s understanding. By which he means at any time, and in any thing, one may glimpse autonomy. Rawness. Duende. (Italics are McKay’s.) 

Writing toward a perception of autonomy means two things to me. First, it means working to replicate via language my own perception of something’s—which is always someone’s—autonomy, rawness, duende. Second, writing toward a perception of autonomy means lingering. I’m an essayist because I’m invested in slow ways to use language (ways to use language slowly?). And the essay is a form that works not unlike a wedge: degree by degree, it cranks open McKay’s “sudden angle of perception” so that a glimpse widens into a more spacious zone. That is where ideas unfold. Addressing plant, animal, mineral, &c., this kind of writing engenders dialogue with the world’s elusive elements, meeting the not-quite-graspable with a fundamentally social response.