How much (Wei)

How much can hurt the heart
in one life's span

Wang Wei, from "Lamenting white hairs"

Attention

Attention is the best investment.

Almost all the evil (Montgomery)

Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.

L. M. Montgomery

Hope & regret

Hope is the seed of regret,
and regret, the fruit of hope.

Advice

My advice to you is to eschew the taking of advice.

New poems

+15

Hungry (Roethke)

I am a poet:  I am always hungry.

Theodore Roethke, On Poetry and Craft

To find out

To find out who you are,
observe what you do.

On wealth (Fink & Cranor)

Wealth is either a blight upon the soul or a balm.

Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home

Feel it blow

We are the candle;
the world is the wind.

Precious

What you throw away may
become more precious than what you keep.

Preference

To prefer is human.

On poetry

Poetry is whatever anyone says poetry is,
and whatever anyone says poetry isn't.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the secular Satan,
tempting the naive to error.

Data

Data without context isn't data.

Cause for concern

A cause for concern is not a cause for concern
until it triggers action.

New poems

+15

Progress (Franklin)

The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.  It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter.  We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport.  Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce.  All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard.  O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.—

Benjamin Franklin

Useful

The temple may be prettier,
but the outhouse is more useful.

Pedestal

Never raise people so high that you can't see what they're doing.

On money

Money is success for stupid people.

Walking backwards

So long as you believe when you should think,
you are walking backwards.

Thoughts

Are thoughts the key to understanding reality,
or complex ciphers that obscure it?

New poems

+15

Is there ever?

Is there ever a reason
to relinquish reason?

On the self

The self is a tyrant toward the selves that comprise the self.

Warning

The ludicrous is a warning
unheeded by the rash.

We are

We are that which chases
that which rises and falls.

To question

To interrogate the world is to question oneself.

New poems

+15

Self

Self is a filter of other.

On poetry

Poetry is the breath in speech,
or the speech in breath.

Quick 2021 Summation

Books Read:  34
Poems Written:  359

Getting sick and ending up in the ICU toward the beginning of the year seemed to really throw me out of my routines and left a negative impact on the year's numbers, especially reading, which had the lowest annual total since 2002. My plan of focusing on bigger books in 2021 didn't survive past January. For the first time since I started submitting poetry seriously, I didn't submit a single poem all year, though I did publish a book in May.