 The beautiful and the grotesque, belief in the existence of God and doubting the existence of God, bigotry, or tolerance, a wilderness, or your backyard vegetable garden, dark light, despair, hope. These are examples of contrasts, examples of contradictions, divergences, opposites even. In literature, one way that writers and readers find pleasure is when those things are juxtaposed. Now juxtaposition doesn't mean exactly that this thing and that thing are opposites. The etymology of juxtaposition from Middle English, from Latin and French, essentially means to position object X near object Y. Juxta, that's Latin for next to and pose as in to place, to place next to, to juxtapose. The thing is the connection has to do with proximity and immediacy. It's not opposed, but juxtaposed, not opposite, but near to, next to. In other words, to notice when things are in juxtaposition is to notice things side by side with the outcome being that specific qualities are contrasted. Look at this painting by Mark Rothko. Check out the juxtaposition between the blue and the orange, but also the light blue and the dark blue, the orange and the tint of red under the blue, or the hint of yellow under the orange. Or look at this next one by Rene Magritte. The giant leaf in the small sphere, what looks to be a little planet, aren't in opposition, they're in juxtaposition. And are those little people at the bottom? The scale of everything is off and those pieces are in juxtaposition as well. The effect of juxtaposition is that we notice comparisons. We notice them in scale or in value, in concept or situation or in literary form. Which is to say, juxtaposition, because it dramatizes one experience, the leaf tree in the Magritte painting, by placing it side by side with another experience, like the white sphere, is a special kind of metaphor. In literature, juxtapositions can be as simple as a turn of phrase, like all's fair in love and war, or you're making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm sure you remember hearing some of that famous opening of Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. So let's try another level. What about something more complex? In Natasha Trethewey's poem, Myth, a poem about the loss of her mother, she writes a 12-line poem in three stanzas, and then she juxtaposes all that by flipping the lines around upside down. Line 12 becomes line one, line 11 becomes line two, and so on. Check this out. I was asleep while you were dying. It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow I make between my slumber and my waking. The arabes I keep you in, still trying not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow, but in dreams you live. So I try taking you back into mourning, sleep heavy, turning my eyes open. I find you do not follow. Again and again this constant forsaking. Again and again this constant forsaking my eyes open, I find you do not follow. You back into mourning, sleep heavy, turning. But in dreams you live, so I try taking you not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow. The arabes I keep you in, still trying I make between my slumber and my waking. It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow I was asleep while you were dying. Something about the formal juxtaposition of the two sections brings our attention to the recurrence of the poet's grief. Just look at the last line of the first section on the left, at the bottom, and the first line of the second section on the right at the top. Again and again this constant forsaking. Again and again this constant forsaking. It's so painful that repetition, the energy of abandonment and renunciation and relinquishment. But the cool thing in the first instance is the mother is forsaking the daughter and in the second instance it's the daughter feeling that she's forsaking the mother. The two difficult emotions are placed in juxtaposition even using the same words. That's juxtaposition. Just look at one thing that's been placed or posed or juxtaposed side by side next to another thing and then you experience how they become allies of meaning.