Attention

How hard it is now to divert my attention from my necessities, to give even a moment to what other people see as theirs. Would that I were better at this! Is the turn inward the final turn?

Aaaaaaaaand...

I'm back!

Hospital hiatus

To be continued...

New poems

+15

Hurrying

We hurry for reward
toward madness.

Observation

Love ideas,
live disappointed.

How extreme

How extreme I seem
next to the me others gently dream.

On obscurantism

Obscurantism has a long vestibule into a tiny room.

Everything

Everything you see
is the result of excessive desire
and limited capacity.

To live dimly (Bronk)

The art of life, he felt, was not having anything to do, to do something. He felt that a man's employment should be of his own choosing. This was directly opposed to the practice and belief, or at least profession, of his neighbors, most of whom would have claimed that their inclination was to walk too, if they had the time. They neither shared nor understood his freedom, his feeling of nothing to do in the world. His neighbors were like the visitor at Walden who told Thoreau, one of the poorest men in Concord, that that was the way he would live "if he could afford to".... They were aware without being told so that much of their lives was trivial and apparently meaningless, but they saw no freedom from it and they liked better to be told of some remote or some future meaning it might somewhere or some day have. They were willing to live dimly in the present, if need be, and hope for reward in old age or in heaven.

William Bronk, from "Silence and Henry Thoreau"

New poems

+16

Maybe

Maybe the truth isn't true,
but the false still won't do.

What is

What is the rationality game
without the irrationality game?

Interesting

What it is to be human is interesting.
What it is to be is even more interesting.

The warmth (Corman)

Like a child again
holding a round stone
in my hand until

the warmth of my hand
warms the stone and I
feel comprehended.

Cid Corman

No longer

To no longer do is a sacrifice.
To no longer know is a tragedy.

We have gold (Thoreau)

None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.

Henry David Thoreau

On tourism

There's a lot of criticism of tourism—much of it warranted. But you know what's worse than being a tourist? Staying at home.

New poems

+11

Artificial

The most artificial thing is a hierarchy.

On names

A name is both smaller and larger (and smaller again) than what we attach it to, so little wonder if there are problems with the fit.

On memories

Memories have no time in them:
give them sufficient attention
and each is now.

The human situation (Bronk)

The human situation seems less a come-as-you-are party than a party to which we are bidden to come as our favorite character and, though we are sometimes cheap or shy, we do fairly well. We put on the costurme and badges, the mental attitudes, the facial and vocal expressions of something, of someone. Such an action gives shape and clarity to our desires, gives them poles and simplicity; it sets us up as some sort of marked-off existent. It is of course evasive. It is hard to face how insanely evasive until we have watched the fatal despair with which we fight off the loss of an assumed identity. An assumed identity is made from appearances and lets us be nothing and yet appear to be something. We don't so much want to be something as we want to be allowed to look like something, to be granted general recognition--even acclaim--as what we pretend to be, to win the prize for Best Costume.

William Bronk, from "Copan: Unwillingness, The Unwilled"

On sadness

Sadness is too important to be lost
in something as trivial as fear.

Big enough

Poetry is big enough to contain even bad poetry.

Poetry

Poetry about ideas is poetry about people.

On Exhaustion

You will exhaust yourself long before you will exhaust life.

New poems

+8

Accidental

Are we to be content with the accidental poems of unconscious reality?

Something which is (Bronk)

The world or what we term the world, that medium in which we find ourselves, and indeed whatever of it we set apart and term selves, is not related to what we make of it and not dependent on what we make of the world or make of ourselves. It is not in the least altered, nor is our basic nature altered, by any cosmology or culture or individual character we may devise, or by the failure or destruction of any of these, as all of them fail. If they seem for a time to suceed, they blind us as though they were real; and it is by our most drastic failures that we may perhaps catch glimpses of something real, of something which is.

William Bronk, from "Copan: Historicity Gone"

New programs

A computer is programmed to perform a specific task. A human brain is programmed to learn new programs.

Mythic identity (Bronk)

It is true that we have...invented times and histories for ourselves and, by an act of will, imposed them as long as strength lasted. We invented these the way we invented speech and buildings and costumes and the changes of modes in these; but, whatever we are, we are without them and apart from the changes in them. These things in themselves can be said to have times and histories; but they have little or nothing to do with us. We lean on inventions, though, to give us standing. We dress ourselves in inventions and house ourselves there. We give ourselves mythic identity, find something we ought to do and project rewards. We are never what our pretensions claim though at times we seem to be when our pretensions succeed for awhile, when will and self-denial and force mold us into some image we impose upon ourselves and on those around us, so that common consent gives us the role we claim for ourselves.

William Bronk, from "Copan: Historicity Gone"

Artifice

The purpose of artifice is not to shame nature,
but to enhance her.

A window

The last thing you want
at the end of time
is a window looking back.

True (Fearing)

True, or exaggerated, or true;
As it is true that the people laugh and the sparrows fly;
As it is exaggerated that the people change, and the sea stays;
As it is that the people go;
As the lights go on and it is night and it is serious, and just
       the same;
As some one dies and it is serious, and the same;

Kenneth Fearing, from "Green Light"

All the things

We need to make all the things that should be
but aren't.

The conversations

When you overhear the conversations
that some people have with themselves
you wonder how they bear it.

On change (Bronk)

Change is so important a part of experience as to be almost all of it.

William Bronk, from "At Tikal"

On rules

Any rule must be established
before being enforced.

Express it (Balzac)

It's not the mission of art to copy nature, but to express it! Remember, artists aren't mere imitators, they're poets!

Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

Too many

Too many people position themselves
to be hurt by people who are right.

New poems

+10

The feeling (Balzac)

Among such fragile sentiments, none so resembles love as the youthful passion of an artist first suffering that delicious torture which will be his destiny of glory and of woe, a passion brimming with boldness and fear, vague hopes and inevitable frustrations.

Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece

Investigation

All investigations are to determine whether we are lucid or deluded.