'This essay is haunted by a poem. Reflecting on my experiences of reading and writing as a student and academic, Sylvia Plath's 'Lady Lazarus' makes its presence felt in that 'metaphysical meeting space'. At the heart of the poem is the monosyllable 'charge' and Plath's risky choice to repeat it four times in five lean lines. The repetition insists on the pursuit of generating charge, in all the complex connotations of that word, within the 'geometry of connections' generated by reading. (Author's introduction, 307)