Ethics

Besides being a memoir and a reflection on art, this poem is the story of its title, "Ethics," in the life of one woman. It not only tells a story about the passage from youth to old age, but also about a maturing morality that perceives the unity among all things and takes responsibility for the "real." To put it in the language of the poem, it is about making the passage from "half-hearted" and "half imagined" to an ethical landscape that has features that are "almost one."

At the beginning of the poem, the poet-speaker and her classmates are equipped with partial knowledge, producing their "half-hearted" response. The typical strategy of a philosophy teacher is to introduce students to a variety of moral theories and posit situations that test their implications. An ethics class might examine the conduct of an individual or group in light of Jean-Jacques...