Grilled filet mignon

Disconnected responsibility (Dobyns)

How nice to have a system of disconnected responsibility, to blame one otherworldly power for being the cause of a problem and to ask another otherworldly power to fix it.

Stephen Dobyns, from "Nickel"

New poems

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Celebration

On some level even a condemnation is a celebration.

On the luminous

The luminous is a human experience; as such, it does not require the hypothesis of a supernatural origin or trigger.

We are

We are as much what we forget as what we remember.

Hair-splittings (Williams)

I began to feel that a great deal of human interaction, a large portion of real moral sensibility and concern, had somehow been usurped from the poets by the novel and drama...It felt to me as though anything that was on a large emotional scale, anything truly passionate, absorbing, or crucial, had been forsaken by poetry.  What the poets of our time seemed to be left with were subtleties, hair-splittings, minute recordings of a delicate atmosphere.

C. K. Williams

Supple confusions (Eliot)

                                             Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving.  Gives too late
What's not believed in, or is still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion.  Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with...

T.S. Eliot, from "Gerontion"

Be aware

There is no vantage that reveals the entire battle.

The fear

It is not novelty we fear, but displacement.

The Bicycle Review

So apparently The Bicycle Review published two of my poems, "Critic" and "Critic 2", last October (Issue 30). There was a snafu and I was never notified, and I only recently found them via a Google search. Still, it's good news and I'm glad to have work in their publication!

Change

If repetition is the enemy of joy,
we must change everything always.

New poems

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What to do

We won't know what to do
until we see what we are.

Matters

Which matters more, truth, or access to truth?

What is wasted

What is wasted in one place, position, or time may be revered in another.

The fact has not (Crane)

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Stephen Crane

Just don't

Don't pretend inevitability
where chance will do.

Sleep (Sandburg)

Sleep is a belonging of all; even if all songs are old songs and the
     singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman’s lantern with the oil
     gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret
     of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and
     best of all.

Carl Sandburg, from "Work Gangs"

Impossible distances (Crane)

There was set before me a mighty hill,
And long days I climbed
Through regions of snow.
When I had before me the summit-view,
It seemed that my labor
Had been to see gardens
Lying at impossible distances.

Stephen Crane

Shrimp Creole

Slow cooker Shrimp Creole with brussel sprouts sauteed in green chile olive oil.

On opinions

Opinions should be examined, questioned, debated, and sometimes revised, but it is an absurdity to apologize for them.

Culture

Appropriated culture becomes culture.

New poems

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