The distance

All that separates humans from the world
is the distance required to describe it.

What kind

What kind of person chooses a poet's life?
What kind of person is chosen by it?

Threats

You're deceived by the threats you perceive far more often than you'd believe.

No real claim (Pater)

The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us.

Walter Pater

On didactic poetry

Didactic poetry is not Moses, but Buddha.

Detail

One detail may seem small,
but it has the entire universe behind it.

Expectations

Those who exceed their expectations
didn't expect to.

Change

If everything is adaptation to change,
what is change?

What your language makes of you (Ponsot)

Writing poems is a luxury, a triumph! While doing it one is exultant and grateful and cheerful and pleased. You don’t wait for someone to approve. If you go on doing it and enjoying it, well, what have you done? You have spent time enjoying what your language makes of you.

Marie Ponsot

New poems

+8

On the beach

Complicity

Never be complicit in debasing yourself.
The world will tear at your integrity—
why assist it?

The ratio

The ratio of rejection to acceptance is the most telling human metric.

Adequate niches

The most important responsibility for any culture is to provide—more accurately, to leave—adequate niches for as wide a range of cognitive variants as can possibly be accommodated.

Infection (Young)

The culture recognizes a poet and responds like white blood cells fighting an infection.

Glynn Young

Visiting Huay Mongkol Temple

Counterproductive

There is no more divisive concept than heaven, no more pathetic terror than hell.

What you get

If people only get out what they put in,
where do they get what they input?

More on preference

The basis of preference
is the foundation of debate.

And preference matters

Everything is permissible, but some things are preferred.

New poems

+5

Dead?

Is poetry dead?
Or does poetry live, unnoticed,
among the dead?

The cost of things

Once you start wondering about the cost of things,
how can you quit?
Once you start wondering about wondering about the cost of things,
how can you quit?

Part

Everyone should spend part of their life alone, watching couples.
No one should spend too much of their life this way.

Always room

The good news
is that perfection is impossible,
so there's always room for improvement.

Ho Chi Minh City

Guess he didn't like having his picture taken.

Creating a poem

A poem is what I say it is,
if I can get you to believe me.
It's not a matter of fooling or misleading you,
it's about creating a poem.