A Poet Reflects

“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life...

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:20:00 -0500

“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we’re alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamily self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. He said this more than once … in more than one way. His life happened, he said, when he sat staring at a blank wall, thinking about dinner …

He said we do this all the time, all of us, we become ourselves beneath the running thoughts and dim images, wondering idly when we’ll die. This is how we live and think whether we know it or not. These are the unsorted thoughts we have looking out the train window, small dull smears of meditative panic.”

—Don DeLillo, from Point Omega (Scribner, 2010)

“Life’s passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.” —Richard...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:37:00 -0500

“Life’s passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.”

—Richard Ford, from Canada (Ecco, 2012)

“If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:39:00 -0500

“If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read—if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.”

—Harry Crews

“The real artist with no tear in his [or her] eye and no sadness in his [or her] heart, puts the...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:32:00 -0500

“The real artist with no tear in his [or her] eye and no sadness in his [or her] heart, puts the pages in the fire and does it again!”

—Harry Crews

Painting: Homer Winslow, The Whittling Boy, 1873

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:04:26 -0500

Painting: Homer Winslow, The Whittling Boy, 1873

askinnyhippie: “How do I integrate spirituality into my everyday life? Throw out the concept of...

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:14:00 -0500

askinnyhippie:

“How do I integrate spirituality into my everyday life? Throw out the concept of ‘spiritual life’ and ‘everyday life.’ There is only life, undivided and whole.”

—Adyashanti

christinasanantonio: “So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:58:00 -0500

christinasanantonio:

“So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepting my being. And does not smite me down.”

—Sylvia Plath, from “Cambridge Notes,” in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008)

The dream, the lure, is the prayer’s answer, which can’t be plotted on any chart— ...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:31:57 -0500

The dream, the lure, is the prayer’s answer,
which can’t be plotted on any chart—
as we know the world that’s coming together
without our knowing is falling apart.

—Peter Cole, closing lines to “Song of the Shattering Vessels,” from Poetry (v. CCII, no. 2, May 2013)

dreaminginthedeepsouth: “Our bodies are something more than the cage for our minds. Our bodies are...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:26:00 -0500

dreaminginthedeepsouth:

“Our bodies are something more than the cage for our minds. Our bodies are the vehicles for self expression.”

—Julia Cameron, from The Right to Write (Tarcher, 1998)

lushlight: “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:15:00 -0500

lushlight:

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

—Aristotle

montanablackart: “Everyone’s creative acts, whatever they may be, make constructive form out...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:11:29 -0500

montanablackart:

“Everyone’s creative acts, whatever they may be, make constructive form out of the apparent formlessness of our lives.”

—Rollo May

hsaptus: “And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:04:00 -0500

hsaptus:

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”

—Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (San Val, 2000)

Pure Prairie League “Jazzman” Bustin’ Out LP

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:37:36 -0500

Pure Prairie League

“Jazzman”

Bustin’ Out LP

Photograph: Strolling Along the Tracks, 1912 (photographer not...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:18:36 -0500

Photograph: Strolling Along the Tracks, 1912 (photographer not given)

qu-unjour: “As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past, letting my memory rush over...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:06:51 -0500

qu-unjour:

“As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past, letting my memory rush over them like water rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream. I was even thinking a little about the future, that place where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine, a dance whose name we can only guess.”

—Billy Collins, from “Nostalgia” in Questions about Angels (University of Pittsburg Press, 1991)

oldmanflower: “What you remember saves you.” ― W. S. Merwin

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:20:53 -0500

oldmanflower:

“What you remember saves you.”

― W. S. Merwin

fivepointsjournal: The Writer She has fallen, in the blueish glow of the nightlight,Asleep, her...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:28:00 -0500

fivepointsjournal:

The Writer

She has fallen, in the blueish glow of the nightlight,
Asleep, her face pressed in the carpet, her hand
Still curled around the fat yellow pencil
She has used to write my name on the blank page
Of her spiral notebook. Not Mom, but Kate,
The K twirling, vinelike, umbilical, funicular,
Down to a nest of scribbles within which
She must have sought the outlines of the four
Different letters that compose her name—the name
That is hers alone—for which she alone
Must take responsibility—but which she cannot
Yet discern within the clamor of her text

—Kate Daniels, featured in Five Points (Vol. 12.2)

metaphorformetaphor: I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for...

Wed, 22 May 2013 03:30:06 -0500

metaphorformetaphor:

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

—T. S. Eliot, from section III of “East Coker” in the Four Quartets (Harcourt, 1943)

journalofanobody: “If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my...

Wed, 22 May 2013 03:13:00 -0500

journalofanobody:

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”

―Charles Simic

“God made man because He loves stories.” —Elie Wiesel, from The Gates of the...

Wed, 22 May 2013 03:09:18 -0500

“God made man because He loves stories.”

—Elie Wiesel, from The Gates of the Forest (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966)