Reading continues in the essays by Wallace Stevens. I just finished an essay on resemblance, how things resemble one another thus establishing a relationship, and how this is so in poetry. Stevens asserts that the job of poetry is to tell the truth about reality. That is a lofty estimation of poetry, much higher…
Narcissus did not expect, when he looked into the stream, to find in his hair a serpent coiled to strike, nor, when he looked in his own eyes there, to be met with a look of hate, nor, in general, to discover in himself the center of inexplicable ugliness from which he would be…
The baby was somewhat larger than a kitten. But there was nothing “kitten-like” about it’s dark eyes, and the rows sharp teeth lining it’s mouth. I’ve seen raccoons at some distance, sometimes as close as the garbage containers which attracted their attention. A few months ago, with difficulty I dislodged one that had peeled…
A friend said to me, “when you get into politics, you lose half your audience.” He is right of course and that is expected. My aim in writing is to find the words to speak with integrity, to discover my voice, to be my own reader first and foremost. What control do I have…
After rush hour, late yesterday, I returned from our new place in Batavia. We have yet to move in, — my visit was to assess the dimensions of the rooms, to get a sense of what is possible. The space of habitation determines, almost absolutely, the form and texture of the life that is…
This morning as always I switched on the car radio. It was tuned to NPR. The host was in the midst of an interview with someone opining on the antics of the President. I reached for the dashboard and turned it off. I felt my psyche bend under the additional weight of hearing more…
This post is a stream of consciousness discourse, the contents of my mind today. I have memories of my day at the race track, wonderful memories, with some left-over photos to share. This is prefaced and framed by the unhinged comments made by the President. Life is nothing but a mixture of good and…
We live our lives as the unique, “one-off” human being that we are. There has never been, and there will never be another you. You and I are the summation of a long intersection of confluences, lost in the recesses of historical time of your ancestors. We are also the result of coincidences, that…
It is the world of the imagination in which the imaginative man/woman delights and not the gaunt world of reason. The pleasure is the pleasure of powers that create a truth that cannot be arrived at by the reason alone, a truth that the poet recognizes by sensation. The morality of the poet’s radiant…
There is life apart from politics. It is this life that the youth as virile poet lives, in a kind of radiant and productive atmosphere. It is the life of that atmosphere. There the philosopher is an alien. The pleasure that the poet has there is a pleasure of agreement with the radiant and…
