A Correspondence

Paul Klee (from a teaching notebook):

In abstract terms, what we have here is the irritated point as latent energy. At the slightest impetus, the point is about to emerge from a state in which its mobility was concealed, to move onwards, to take on one or more directions. It is about to become linear. In concrete pictorial terms: the seed strikes root, initially the line is directed earthwards, though not to dwell there, only to draw energy thence for reaching up into the air. The next effect of contact with the soil is that the seed rises, and this effect is often followed by a split (dicotyledons). This division becomes the beginning of further upward motion. The spirit of this form-creation is linear.

And George Oppen (from "Return"):

And we saw the seed,
The minuscule Sequoia seed
In the museum by the tremendous slab
Of the tree. And imagined the seed
In soil and the growth quickened
So that we saw the seed reach out, forcing
Earth thru itself into bark, wood, the green
Needles of a redwood until the tree
Stood in the room without soil—
How much of the earth's
Crust has lived
The seed's violence!
The shock is metaphysical.