Life

Life makes us a promise
it doesn't keep.

Tendency (Powers)

Ecosystems tend toward diversity, and markets do the opposite.

Richard Powers, The Overstory

All

All that now seems inevitable was once improbable.

New poems

+15

The greatest flaw (Powers)

The greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Life

Life is existence warning you of its end.

Never know

There are many things we will never know.
But there is only one thing we can never know.

My enemies

All of my enemies, it seems, are regressives or primitives.

On modernity

Modernity is not the least bit the enemy of society that those who fail to embrace it sufficiently are.

How? (Zhicheng)

How can you give a phoenix a mere foot of land?
How can you give the North Star only one night?

Luo Zhicheng, from "On Encountering Sorrow"

The misfortune (Zhicheng)

But how could I have foreseen
The misfortune of possessing a mind of clarity?

Luo Zhicheng, from "On Encountering Sorrow"

Important things

The two most important things are to be sincere and to be kind. Too often these seem to exist in opposition. One must never choose between them, but must struggle to align them.

The first time

The first time we fall in love, it is with the world, and those who miss this experience can never be fully human.

Tactics

We all hypothesize which might be the most effective tactics in the spiritual struggle against the world.

To wander

Better to wander lost than to choose a false map.

Life

Life is a doomed expedition into terra incognita.

Some want

Some of us want most to ask,
and some most want to be answered.

Endurable (Proust)

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

New poems

+15

The lack

The lack defines the limit.

On cognition

Cognition is aggregate.

Nature poet

Of course I am a nature poet.  A human nature poet.

To win

To win, we must be willing to lose.

Soul

A soul equips one for suffering.

A mistake to conflate

It's a mistake to conflate the spontaneous with the ephemeral.

Best parts (Proust)

The great works of art are also less of a disappointment than life, in that their best parts do not come first.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

BBQ ribs

Using the Instant Pot and the broiler, a rub, and a sauce.

The wise & the foolish

Wise people create what they need.  They don't try to create for eternity.  Fools take what wise people have created and declare it sacrosanct and threaten anyone with the temerity to try to change it.

No devotion

There is no devotion without deception.

An Afterward

The existence of an Afterward would be worth anything but the believing in a lie of the existence of an Afterward.

New poems

+15

On art

Art is amoral because life is amoral.

Call to action

Let us seek the best within us and deny the worst among us.

The mistakes

The mistakes that shall be held against you most are the ones others pay for.

On poetry

I like poetry because I prefer the attempt to say a true thing to the impulse to instruct or the obsession with the impossible.

Aspiration

Whether you choose to aspire to be generally content or sometimes happy will determine much of the course of your life.

New poems

+15

The heart

The heart is a quisling: it wants to want more than it wants anything else.

An interval

An interval in an infinity is an infinity.

Naming

Naming severs one thing from another.

Reason

Better to not have a reason than to have no reason.

Lie & truth

Every lie is part of a truth;
every truth, part of a lie.

To eat

To eat indiscriminately is to excrete democratically.

The worst

My life is the worst poem I have written.

What I am

I am a prism attached to a funnel.

On imagery & poetry

Imagery doesn't need poetry,
so poetry doesn't need imagery.

Quick 2020 Summation

Books Read:  108
Poems Written:  536

Whew, what do you say about this year-which-will-long-live-in-infamy? A nice jump in both stats, putting both in 3rd place among the years I've kept records (beginning in 1986 for books read and 1979 for poems written). The quality of books was better-than-average, and I finally read War and Peace (after abandoning it on my first try at age 12)! I had a poetry book published, but another terrible year for single-poem acceptances. At this rate, I'm not sure I will continue to submit for much longer.