Despite what Archie Bunker said, Edith was never a dingbat. Dingbat is a printer’s term for a device that divides text, recognizing some pause deeper than the space between paragraphs, but less profound than the full stop at the end of a chapter. Dingbats dance in the gap. Dingbats come out in the indecisive twilight. I made the dingbats used on the following pages with a monster Magic Marker on blank postcards bought at the Tru-Valu Hardware in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They are greatly reduced from the postcards, and some of them have migrated to the margins of Book IV to relieve the monumental daunt of a long poem. I don’t guess they’re technically dingbats there. Swimmers.
Dingbats are helpful when you’re not making sustained, connected sense. Just put in a dingbat, and there’s oneiric coherence. Dingbats let possibly awkward transitions move in graceful ellipsis. They should become part of a freshman composition, and children could make them new as they learn penmanship.
Coleman Barks, from the Preface to The Soul of Rumi
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