On liminality

Tim Kinsella

This is from American Poetry Review, parts of an essay by poet Jane Hirschfield talking about a writer's experience in the world. I am broadly swiping parts from this essay, so what is here travels from what her points are, but I think it's interesting. So if it refers to a writer, or some other role, consider it in light of what *we* do.

She brings up, as part of the essay, a concept that she in turn has borrowed from anthropologist Victor Turner's book The Ritual Process, that looks in part I guess at rites of passage. I think it's interesting for those entering into communion with others of a different culture, or somehow placed between two cultures. She refers to this concept as the "realm of the liminal, a word derived from the Latin *limen*, or threshold."

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