Interest

Never react in terror when anger will serve;
never resort to anger where humor is possible;
never rely on humor if you can manage interest.

Fecundity (Dillard)

For the notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance. But all this leaves something vital out of the picture. It is not one pine I see, but a thousand. I myself am not one, but legion. And we are all going to die.

In this repetition of individuals is a mindless stutter, an imbecilic fixedness that must be taken into account. The driving force behind all this fecundity is a terrible pressure I also must consider, the pressure of birth and growth, the pressure that splits the bark of trees and shoots out seeds, that squeezes out the egg and bursts the pupa, that hungers and lusts and drives the creature relentlessly toward its own death.

Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

On poetry

Poetry is profound sound, steeped in intent.

The courage

It is important to have the courage of your convictions.

It is vital to have the courage to question your convictions.

Clutching at the Concrete

Earlier this month, I composed and posted a reply to Amiri Baraka's poem, "The Terrorism of Abstraction," on Rattle.

Chance

There is a certain inevitability to chance,
intuited from the parameters.

On belief

Belief pulls too hard past the scenery of evidence.

Penumbra Magazine - Fall/Winter 2012

The inaugural issue of Penumbra Magazine, based in Madrid, Spain, is up, with two of my poems, "Confabulatory Hypermnesia" and "Invisible Things." I can't wait to read the rest of it!

Philosophies of living

Any philosophy of living which is impossible to execute in the reality of this world is false and should be acknowledged as such and abandoned.

New poems

+8

The reward of life

To relish the rewards of life is the reward of life.

Four and Twenty - 12/12

The December 2012 issue of Four and Twenty has been posted online, containing my unusual haiku, "Haiku."

Sterility of mind (Grutter)

When one delegates one's soul; when one becomes a midget who hires himself out for some narrow function in a society's digestive tract, isn't one soon menaced by repetitive thinking that quickly can make a mind sterile?

Theo Grutter, from Dancing With Mosquitoes

Not the end

Renunciation is a means, not an end.

Shall not long endure

Liberty without learning will not last long.

Borrowing

The blatant failings of the various religions disqualify them for adoption by the serious thinker, though he may choose to borrow and adapt desirable portions of each piecemeal (as the religions themselves probably took them from earlier philosophies).

Chicken Andouille gumbo

From this recipe (originally from The Gumbo Shop in New Orleans).

Recognition

Approval is a kind of recognition; disapproval, a rejection.

New poems

+8

Korean flank steak

From this recipe.

I (Carruth)

True, I happen. So
put "I" in. But randomly,
I am not the song.

Hayden Carruth

One's own task (Bhagavad-Gita)

Finally, this is better, that one do
His own task as he may, even though he fail,
Than take tasks not his own, though they seem good.

Bhagavad-Gita

Elevation

The practice of devotion invents divinity.

On lyric poetry (Biespiel)

Lyric poetry is intrinsically autobiographical because it’s the imprint of the poet’s mind. It’s what the self evaluates.

David Biespiel

Imagination

Imagination is the only transcendence.

New poems

+7

The supernatural (Fry)

I’m far too spiritual and emotional and passionate to believe in the supernatural.

Stephen Fry

Sincerity

I have meant everything I have ever said, though I may have meant it in unusual context, humorously, sarcastically, or as an exercise in silliness or reverse psychology. This doesn't mean that I would repeat it all now. My perspective has often changed, but never my commitment to sincerity.

A statistical fact (Sawyer)

You have theory of mind; you ascribe to others the feelings you yourself have, and for "others," read just about anything at all: "nature abhors a vacuum," "temperatures seek an equilibrium," "selfish genes." There's no drive to survive in biology. Yes, things that survive will be more plentiful than those that don't. But that's just a statistical fact, not an indicator of desire.

Robert J. Sawyer, from WWW: Wonder

A discursive category (Chasar)

I have a private theory—a feeling, rather—that the term “poetry” has become, in the age of capitalism, a discursive category into which all things that in one way or another resist or escape complete regulation, rationalization, instrumentalizaton, description, or measure by the logic of the commodity are projected: emotion, magic, uselessness, intimacy, hopes, dreams, love, utopian urges of all sort, beauties, elegances, difficulties, nonsense, mysteries, etc. Thus, the category of poetry is not a continuum from bad to good or amateur to pro like baseball is (where players move from little league to college to the majors) but profoundly heteroglossic—something of a Lower East Side, perhaps, where the value of sentimental worthlessness (cast as “it’s only poetry”) and the value of what you call “the glamour and power of the exception, the unique instance” (cast as “it’s sheer poetry”) both reside. “Poetry” has, as you indicate in your example of Michael Jordan, become a sort of floating signifier in the process—a term to describe those aspects of experience that we don’t have much language for and that capitalist ideology doesn’t want us to have a language for, because it would then call those things into being and make them real and more powerful.

Mike Chasar

Early love

Early love will inoculate you
or initiate unbreakable habit.

Haiku

Four and Twenty is going to publish my rather unusual haiku, "Haiku," on December 18.

Before (Carter)

Flowers die...before they have anything to forget.

Anne Babson Carter, from "Three Russias in One April"

A good dinner

Grilled flank steak

+ British cauliflower cheese

=

New poems

+7

Questions (De Robertis)

Gathered up inside, questions keep their intensity, circulating through you, gusts of their own.

Carolina de Robertis, The Invisible Mountain

Taxing

When you tax what is useful, you inhibit it, reducing its potential. Better to tax the dangerous, the destructive, the excess, the superfluous.