February 2012
5 posts
3 tags
After Lyonel Feininger’s “The Spell”
as with city
a dull madness downward points to this hidden fulcrum of grey that building’s black square is you you’ve turned the light off to see how blunted the artist’s eyes elide an alarm to look upwards and ignore your window ignore heaven’s motive for motif away from tipping buildings only a tear in the...
“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in...”
– Václav Havel, Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. Former President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic, (1936-2011), Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala (English translation by Paul Wilson), 1990, Ch. 1 : Growing Up...
January 2012
18 posts
At the bottom of each word/ I’m a spectator at my birth —Alain Bosquet
For poetry entries on this site, it seems that the formatting does not apply in “Dashboard” view. So, if you dare follow me and wish to read poems in their proper format, please visit ouroborosandbackagain.tumblr.com (And on your mobile have a read with “Standard View.”)
3 tags
Westoe Pit
of the ornament black/white pressing-curve -ature
cau(gh)terized fingers, tracing this towel’s design: fabric genome dead signs
that small ticklesense shivers the pattern,
a first step into his winter of thens
sprinkled as black specks fluff depths permission
per-DNA of story until his face appears Holbein’s Dead Christ sure—
“but have you tried mining, have...
http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2012/01/roberto-bo... →
4 tags
untitled
Through the door
there’s a tired bounce
to a mired weave
of senior them
iterating
their nasty promises
their reshaped hearts.
Asymptote: We were sure our faces would live on in... →
asymptotejournal:
We were sure our faces would live on in your silver light, your tyrant frames Deposit box— with you, we fought against all we lost: our youthful balance, valor, our vigor, saved for those aged days soon to come —Amal al-Jubouri “Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the…
3 tags
subalternus
this rolling to the prehensile
lip-story of other families,
my half-brother limp diving
with canes of curb-walkers;
no dates calendarific that
bell a mindful arithmetic
far superior to any addings
of heart and heart and heart.
that was that family and that
was that incubating greenhouse
that shelled out for then’s now
and then and any pen la-dee-da.
(oh! look at...
An inner process stands in need of outward criteria. ~ Wittgenstein
“All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we...”
– Carl Jung (via fuckyeahcarljung)
Fish-y
“To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities...
seedy: Jacques Derrida Essay Collection →
c-d:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 Jacques Derrida Essay Collection 1
Derrida - A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event
Derrida - A Letter to Peter Eisenman Derrida - Adieu (CI) Derrida - Adieu (PT) Derrida - All Ears - Nietzsche’s Otobiography Derrida - An Idea…
biblioasis: The Fine Art of Where to Start: Darin Strauss on Douglas Glover. http://t.co/4KYTmu4z via @WSJ
“The pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right....”
– John Berger, “Ways of Seeing” (pg 148)
World Literature Today: “To my mind Josef Škvorecký is one of the finest living writers. His two short novels ‘The Bass Saxophone’ and ‘The Legend of Emoke’ I put in the same rank as James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and the very best of Henry James’s shorter novels.”—Graham Green
Original Facebook Status:...
3 tags
At the Pool
You
supplicate
your body
in
full
prayer, an
invocation
through
graceful pike,
and, as with all movements toward the gods,
loose the palms of your bend
and
dive
the
deeps
**
I
plead
that you
come
back
up to
walk the plank again.
3 tags
A Poet To Dig. →
December 2011
8 posts
asymptotejournal:
The first PETRA conference took place this December, bringing together literary translators from the whole of Europe. Read notes from the conference here.
EJ
“Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we...”
– Milan Kundera
“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with...”
– Carl Jung
“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives...”
– C. Jung
“When in 1917, Duchamp bought a coat rack on a whim, and, noticing people were tripping over it as it lay on the floor, nailed it there; he trapped the ironies and negations that have thrown such huge shadows on the production of art over the next century. What did he do? He took a prefabricate, manufactured object and removed it from its very purpose; he destroyed its utility. Art became a...
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”
– Carl Jung
November 2011
11 posts
3 tags
The Only CBC Reporter I Loved
The roads bulged in the Yukon again.
People had seen this before, long
from the past. Here’s just one account:
“…it had nothing to do with light. I mean,
there was light but only for her.
I walked on that terrible November night only
to see great rolls appear, pushing the asphalt
up like hardened waves, all locked in hard but
pushing at the same...
“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still,...”
– Carl G. Jung (via morganlilly)
Ugh.
“Please don’t let me stop thinking and start blindly frightenedly accepting! I...”
– Sylvia Plath, Journals of
Wow.
When we characterize another’s weaknesses as the authentic self, we grant ourselves safety through distance; we all become far away objects that shadow our own keen insights. At first we weight ourselves with our own gravitas and then, eventually, tire our own orbits until we float off as distant planets— Philip Marley
3 tags
Answering Salamun on the Question of the Moon
shadows flog
this dead
riddle,
flit eternal
replayings,
pay
back & forth
indentured play
until, enchanted,
we drop,
kneebound transcendentals
stretch & shattered
clues
all on tall
logical as oscillations,
back on our wobbly knees,
pair of Docs on our feet;
earth-wet prayered hands
now fists
up at heaven
— blood...
2 tags
Stein Does Opera →
4 tags
Tomaz Salamun →
3 tags
On Reading Pinsky on Memorizing Yeats
Returning me to Yeats’ words,
I feel my age with these lines
now a poster child
for the long ago post-
collegiate rhymes hidden
in youth,
giving what he is more than what he has…
maybe both
2011 National Book Award Finalists →
asymptotejournal:
The finalists for the American National Book Awards have now been announced, and the winners will be revealed on November 16. The Awards include prizes for Fiction, Non-fiction and Poetry, and the shortlisted books can be seen if you click on the link above.
EJ
October 2011
19 posts
If we were to acknowledge the emanation of the individual spirit, wherein our light should not be held under a bushel, then— even with the grand universalism of such a biblical maxim— in this country many would not wonder the quality of light; but instead, ask what sort of bushel is hindering the glow. That’s what (where?) I write from.— Philip Marley
“Even when I’m stretched out in my coffin they may find me tinkering with some...”
– Charles Simic
As we head into Hajj (pilgrimage) season, take a...
promotingpeace:
“The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is...”
– Jean Cocteau
“It is indeed no small matter to know of one’s own guilt and one’s own evil, and...”
– Carl Jung
3 tags
Teufelsdröckh’s Closet
a universe hung
skin or skein of
immaculate instantiation,
once bright jacketed
stars once
a firmament fit
now
left shut loose among others,
as though the dim and silence
between
all verses
need be worn
out
until new,
hanging
maybe on this line: It is better to prevent misery, than to release from misery
better to press dear
necessity than
hang by a...