The rawness was hers, not theirs. She could not begin, when
she first met them, to cope with their sophisticated manoeuvering
between understood truths and spoken lies.
                                           -Leon Katz, "Introduction" to Gertrude Stein's Q.E.D.

Assuming writers               and their work
live separate                      lives to be judged,
independent                      of each other,
like the haft                       of a glint-edged blade,

explain why the result is not
that of a bulb without tungsten;
why does apodictic light glance
then plunge like bright knives in the mind?