Peter Epps

I map the world with words. From the smallest question of paragraph structure to the profoundest meditation on “this quintessence of dust” who dwells “on this isthmus of a middle state,” I teach English in order to guide, guard, and goad my willing students into habits that make for virtue. I have travelled farther than I ever could have imagined, and am happier to have come home than I ever would have believed. Now, I am enchanted by a universe where the manic diversity of things can be apprehended, not by reduction, but by analogy. We do not yet apprehend the unknown with clarity and distinctness, but as those who begin gradually to observe the lightening of the sky and the revelation of outlines in the shadows, in those eternal-seeming hours between the fading of the stars and dawn. And I will read by any light I can find.