## Metadata - Author: [[poetryfoundation.org]] - Full Title: On Fear by Mary Ruefle | Poetry Magazine - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69815/on-fear ## Highlights - Dread. I like it better than the word fear because fear, like the unconscious emotion which is one of its forms, has only the word ear inside of it, telling an animal to listen, while dread has the word read inside of it, telling us to read carefully and find the dead, who are also there. But I have not used the word dread in what follows. I have used the word fear. And fear is an older word—it can be found in Old English, while dread enters the language in Middle English. - Note: I like the connection between fear and listening. Reminds me of Karla McLaren's exercise of attuning to the smallest sound in the room in order to bring out the feeling of fear. - As desire is wanting and fear is not-wanting, they become inexorably linked; just as desire can be destructive (the desire for power), fear can be constructive (fear of hurting another); fear of poverty becomes desire for wealth. - The British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott believed artists were people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide. - Paul Klee: “Genius is ‘an error in the system.’” - “But now,” says Kierkegaard, to strive to become what one already is: who would take the pains to waste his time on such a task, involving the greatest imaginable degree of resignation?...But for this very reason alone it is a very difficult task...precisely because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different.