Without

Brain without kindness is a curse.
Heart without reason is worse.

Poetry

For most, poetry is just another way to socialize.

Not as mystical as it sounds

You can only see through your I.

Even when (Mandelstam)

In my chest one tear is boiling.
I'm not frightened to know that the storm will go on and on.
Some ghoul tries to hurry me, make me forget,
but even when I can't breathe I want to live till I die.

Osip Mandelstam, from "229"

The song (Mandelstam)

And if the song is sung truly,
from the whole heart, everything
at last vanishes: nothing is left
but space, the stars, the singer.

Osip Mandelstam, from "54"

Peculiarly combined (Ozick)

In every dossier he saw stupidity; in their faces stupidity was peculiarly combined with vivacity. What they were in reality was a species of low theater folk, vaudevillians, and in addition to this strain of the histrionic they harbored an inclination to dominate and to crush.

Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy

Hope

Apparently, Robert Frost had exactly five poems accepted in the first seventeen years he was submitting.

Consumer society (Burdett)

No one escapes their own culture. It's hardwired in us, from birth onward. A consumer society is a consumer society. It may start with washing machines and air-conditioning, but sooner or later we consume each other.

John Burdett, Bangkok 8

The case against intellect (Hofstadter)

The case against intellect is founded upon a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice, and the "purely" theoretical mind is so much disesteemed. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism. Once the validity of these antagonisms is accepted, then the case for intellect, and by extension for the intellectual, is lost.

Richard Hofstadter

Empty (Armantrout)

The present
must be kept empty
so that anything
can happen

Rae Armantrout, from "Empty"

6th Annual Independence Day Poem

                    Jefferson, Author

Yes, wonder at the wit and wisdom of his words.
But study well what he didn't say,
for he understood the power of omission,

mastering a history of fragments,
honing religion by gapping the Bible,
scripting a legible liberty in a universe of dark matter.

What other objects will you worship
if you'll pledge allegiance to a flag?

What other symbols will you raise
above the natural precedence of the real?

What understanding will you reject when you refuse
to acknowledge the essential contribution of context?

Shame on anyone who would reduce the man to a mirror:
you are not worthy of his voids.

The crowd (Armantrout)

The crowd is made of
little gods

and there is still
no heaven

Rae Armantrout, from "Close"

Consciousness (Armantrout)

Consciousness entrenches itself by hijacking the orienting-response, forcing it to work overtime to produce a continuous present.

Rae Armantrout, from "As (2)"