Words (Orr)

I always supposed
It was words
I was after—
Those
Shining fish
The poem's net gets.
But who knows?
Maybe it was
The sea
Itself
I was trying
To haul on deck.

Gregory Orr, from "Ode to Words"

Improbable

The improbable is rarely inconspicuous.

The heart (Orr)

The heart, altering, alters all.

Gregory Orr, from "Dark Song"

What if

What if my element is not being in my element?

Better

What you are given is always better than what you take.

New poems

+15

One ending (Egan)

In the real world, there's only one ending, and it isn't happy.

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

No obligation

There is no obligation to take the nonserious seriously.

Only death

Only death is forever.

Hell

Hell is not hell without hope.

Of gain & loss

There is no gain without loss
and there is no loss without gain
(though these gains and losses
may be neither significant nor desirable).

Mysteries (Egan)

Mysteries that are destroyed by measurement were never truly mysterious; only our ignorance made them seem so.

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Opinion on poetry

Anecdotal poetry is (often) the reality tv of poetry.

Three quotes (Least Heat-Moon)

If nature undoes immediately what we work years to do, then we're not doing it right.

Were human memory total and perfect, perhaps I'd be only one person from start to finish, but forgetfulness cuts me off from who I've been so that hourly I am reborn.

"Wouldn't it be easier on you to treat this voyage as a lark or a mere outing?" Yes, I said, if I can first teach myself to treat my life as a lark.

William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse

Hell

Attention minus choice is hell.

Humans

Humans are illusion selection engines.

New poems

+15

Anybody's wish (Shapiro)

To make the world perfect and full of splendor.
Was this indeed anybody's wish?

Harvey Shapiro, from "World"

The beginning

The beginning is the beginning of the end.
And the moment we accept that
is the end of the beginning.

What must be

When what must be isn't, reassess.

Complexity

Complexity is sexy, but too many people lust for complication.

For what? (Shapiro)

It's my younger self,
confused, desperate, wanting
another chance.  For what? I ask,
for what?

Harvey Shapiro, from "The Old Man Has One Thought And Then Another"

Life

Life is anxiety embodied.

Doesn't matter

If nothing matters, then the fact that nothing matters doesn't matter.

Deadening (Bernhard)

...Because a man who no longer thinks his own thoughts but instead finds himself dominated by the thoughts of another man whom he admires or even if he doesn't admire him but is only dominated by his thoughts, compulsively, such a man is in constant danger of doing himself in by his continual thinking of the other man's thoughts, in danger of deadening himself out of existence.

Thomas Bernhard, Correction

Paradox

Paradox is a marker of imperfect understanding.

Hacker

A thinker is a hacker of the code of ubiquity.

So easy

Why is it so easy to confuse "It has never been" with "It can never be"?

The sorrow of thought (Matthews)

The sorrow of thought is that it replaces
the world that stunned us into thought,
and leads us not to awe but to new
morose connections between language
and desire.

William Matthews, from "Thinking About Thinking"

The ones I despise

The ones I despise are those who'd impose their mental monoculture upon all.