Each line begins with the letter of its section. The poem moves from an innocent, Edenic catalog of fruits and animals (apricots, blackbirds, cicadas) toward the terrifying specter of nuclear annihilation.
Easily searching for recurring motifs like "light," "oxygen," or "dust." inger christensen alphabet pdf
Christensen starts with a simple affirmation: "apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist" . It sounds like a prayer or a child’s song. But as the Fibonacci spiral expands, so does the reality of what "exists." By the time we reach the letter "H," the beauty of hydrogen and harvest is haunted by the existence of the hydrogen bomb . Each line begins with the letter of its section
While the poem begins as a rapturous litany of things that "exist," it shifts tonally as it expands. It sounds like a prayer or a child’s song
For those interested in reading "alphabet" in PDF format, here are a few online resources:
The poem's architecture is built on two intersecting systems: The Fibonacci Sequence