Lectionary
November 20, 2011
It would be foolish of me to claim to be an expert on Edson's work. Writing it does not make the work any more open to me, perhaps less so than anyone else. I approach my work as a reader, rather than as a writer writing it. Each of my pieces is written without premeditation or expectation. For one thing, if I have an idea what I shall be writing about, such as this little article, I am bored and blocked from the secret message; I want to follow the writing as a reader; which is to say, I am as surprised as anyone might be as the writing begins to come out of the typewriter; they mysterious other life begins to send its message. It is also necessary not to have a literary expectation, but to the enjoy the special reality on its own terms.
~ Russell Edson, "On Counting Sheep"
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In art, one must never claim that what one is doing is possible.
Nobel Prize winner in chemistry was ridiculed for years for chasing quasicrystals, which possess a pattern that is not a pattern, thus against nature.
Dr. Shechtman himself is said to have cried "Eyn chaya kazo", which translates from the Hebrew as "there can be no such creature".
Ordered but not Periodic. They are, as things unreal go, beautiful to a fault.
I like this one, too, from JG:
A car promises you there is a road.
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Lectionary
October 13, 2011
He resented their coming up and guzzling his liquor, heavy as he was with financial responsibilities--hardly two nickels he could clink in his pocket; college expenses of his son and daughter, the heavy debts and expenses of his wife in Providence--and he resented even more his visitors' invasion of the narrow space his life's errors had left him, though it was true, he would admit, that he took some comfort from their proof that, contrary to what he'd always thought, misery was universal.
- John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts
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A Blurb By Any Other Name
October 12, 2011
It is well not to dwell too long on the word blurb; it has an unusually low threshold of unconscious acceptability before it starts sounding ridiculous and one begins to wonder if it's at all a good thing to possess. The well-known origin of the word bears out this suspicion. Yet, a good blurb is a joy forever--one whose praise is just this side of fulsome--and until I get a proper whole page made for Kingdom Come I'll just post this here, the blurb written for the forthcoming Eighth Day Books catalog. I shall study deserving.
'This gospel of loneliness says / Two pleasures endure: / those of the flesh / and those of the writing desk.' With these opening lines, we are ushered into the alternating rhythms of John Estes's poetry, its delicious balance between the playful and the profound, between ordinary life--that profusion of conjugal love, sleepless toddlers, and broken plumbing that inspired Virginia Woolf's plea for 'a room of one's own'--and the kind of insight that can only spring, Athena-like, from the writer's solitary mind. Gifted with an irreverent humor, Estes revels in the absurdities of domestic life ('I contest the equation...that a nursery / is where babies sleep / not where babies get made') and conjures up Dickinson and Plath to get himself through birthing classes. Before we're done laughing, however, he's pried up the melancholy edge of that same life with its misunderstandings ('we practice our perfection / the way a buzzard, / when it believe no one listens / will crash through the branches / and attack, attack, attack'), miscarriages ('our lost baby, our would-be who would-not-be / who will miss the seventh moon's expected swell / but asks for no condolences'), and the inevitable 'breaking of all that is breakable.' Within the taut lines of Kingdom Come, life's disparate possibilities crumble and reunite again to form a tenuous harmony, an ironic, unexpected joy.
∞
Lectionary
October 11, 2011
Although we say faith is a thing of the will, perhaps it would be better to say that faith is another psychic potency, different from intelligence, will, and sentiment. Faith is the creative power of the human being. But as it has a more intimate relationship to will than to any other of the three potencies, we present it in volitive form. Let it be noted, however, that to want to believe--that is, to want to create--is not precisely believing or creating, although certainly the initiation of it.
***
And I replied, "Theologians kill faith." Especially in medicine the science of my physician can heal me, although I may not know the whereabouts of my liver; but in religion, the faith of my confessor cannot save me. In the life of the spirit, only my truth saves me, and my truth is not the truth that I ignore, although this may be the truth of everybody else. As long as I do not know what it means that the Holy Ghost comes from the Father and the Son, and not the Father alone, what difference does it make for the life of the spirit that it may be one thing or another or neither of the two, of what use is it for me to hear them sing at Mass, with the music of Palestrina in Latin, that business of qui ex Patre et Flioque procedit? What hinders harms, and in the soul every herb that yields nothing, every infertile weed, every idea, or rather, every phrase that does not respond to any sentiment at all, every word that evokes no warm, luminous concept constitutes a hindrance.
~ Miguel de Unamuno, Treatise on the Love of God
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Lectionary
September 19, 2011
But in general, we relate to the world as more disembodied being than our ancestors; that is, the centre of gravity of the person each one of is, as we interact with others, has moved out of the body. It stands outside, in the agent of disengaged discipline, capable of dispassionate control. This is the persona we project towards others, and they toward us, and in this mutual projection we help each other to see ourselves as having attained this rational distance, and hence help each other to live up to this exalted ideal.
- Charles Taylor A Secular Age
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Lectionary
July 27, 2011
And this is the progress of every earnest mind; from the works of man and the activity of the hands to a delight in the faculties which rule them; from a respect to the works to a wise wonder at this mystic element of time in which he is conditioned; from local skills and the economy which reckons the amount of production per hour to the finer economy which respects the quality of what is done, and the right we have to the work, or the fidelity with which it flows from ourselves; then to the depth of thought it betrays, looking to its universality, or that its roots are in eternity, not in time. Then it flows from character, that sublime health which values one moment as another, and makes us great in all conditions, and as the only definition we have of freedom and power.
- Emerson, "Works and Days"
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Lectionary
July 21, 2011
Every real question is fruitful, as the history of human thought so clearly demonstrates. And "fruitful" is by no means a synonym for "soluble." What is man? One answer on offer is, An organism whose haunting questions perhaps ought not to be meaningful to the organ that generates them, lacking as it is in any means of "solving" them. Another answer might be, It is still too soon to tell.
- Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind
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Lectionary
July 19, 2011
That religious consciousness is deadened and reactionary which does not have the courage of creative effort, of the daring act of creating knowledge or beauty, because it considers this heroic action only in proportion of the saints; it takes from man the burden of free initiative, the burden of responsibility for revealing the secrets of creativeness. On this soil there grows up a powerless and unconscious envy of saintliness, a hesitant and cowardly inactivity in any kind of creative action. The new consciousness of the creative epoch must recognize in the psychological sphere the equal value of genius and saintliness.
- Nicolas Berdyaev, "Creativity and Asceticism: The Genius and the Saint"
Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half century. If something doesn't give you a shot at comprehension in the first couple of readings, then my motto is "Fuck it," but I never swore once [at Tony Hoagland's What Narcissism Means to Me]. They can use that as a blurb, if they want. Who wouldn't want to buy a poetry book that said "I never swore once" on the cover?
- Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree
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The End of Bordeom
Scott Adams (Dilbert, yes) on the decline of creativity as a function of the decline of boredom.It's worth keeping an eye on the link between our vanishing boredom and innovation. It's the sort of thing that could literally destroy the world without anyone realizing what the hell is going wrong. If it reaches critical proportions, we probably won't recognize the root cause of the problem. A lack of creativity always looks like some other problem.
(Via Shawn Blanc)
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Lectionary
July 18, 2011
But it came to pass at last that the end of bliss was at hand, and the noontide of Valinor was drawing to its twilight. For as has been told and is as known to all, being written in lore and sung in many songs, Melkor slew the Trees of the Valar with the aid of Ungoliant, and escaped, and came back to Middle-earth.
- The Silmarillion
The writer must define his audience by its abilities, by its perfections, so far as he is gifted to conceive them. He does well, if he cannot see his right audience within immediate reach of his voice, to direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie. The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.
- Lionel Trilling, "The Function of the Little Magazine"
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Lectionary
July 17, 2011
Disillusionment/is what happens when men/dabble in magic.
- Maggie Smith, "Doubting Thomas"
Easy to cross the river if you are part river.
- James Shea, "Dream Trial"
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Poetry Bombs
Terrorist goes around sewing lines of poetry into clothes at resale shops.
"Sewing poems in clothes is a way of bringing poetry to everyday life just by displacing it, by removing it from a paper to integrate it and fuse it with our lives. Sometimes little details are stronger when they are separated from where they are expected to be," [Augustina Woodgate] said.
(Via Iain Broome.)
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Lectionary
July 16, 2011
So you see, the sinking of the Pequod was only a metaphysical tragedy, after all. The world goes on just the same. The ship of the soul is sunk. But the machine-manipulating body works just the same: digests, chews gum, admires Botticelli, and aches with amorous love.
- D.H. Lawrence
The role of the artist is to create anti-environments as a means of perception and adjustment.
- Marshall McCluhan
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iABC
Oliver Reichenstein, developer of the aggressively minimalist ia Writer, goes Kabbala on his favorite font for each letter of the alphabet. Quirky in the twisted and uncanny sense.
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Lectionary
July 14, 2011
There is a nameless mood abroad in the world today, a feeling in the blood of more than a few people, an expectation of worse things to come, a readiness to riot, a mistrust of everything one reveres. There are those who deplore the lack of idealism in the young but who, the moment they must act themselves, automatically behave no differently from someone with a healthy mistrust of ideas who backs up his gentle persuasiveness with the effect of some kind of blackjack.
- Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
There is a point in the slow progress to maturity when thinking about oneself becomes no longer a major pleasure...
- Theodore Roethke, Notebooks
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Make it Harder
So by now everyone who cares knows Netflix is splitting their services into two distinct plans and adjusting prices in a way that only goes upward, by as much as 60%, for all subscribers. Those announcing their horror and reflexively quitting their accounts (see here and here) probably fall within Netflix's statistical modeling of expected, low-rent cancellations (suckas!); stock-holders rejoice. Oh wait, not anymore.
The pause this news gives me is to ask whether the presence of so much video on demand--much of it rarely the thing you want to see--doesn't give me more trouble than pleasure. The omnipresence of screens, small and large, portable and not, makes what is at hand a desirable commodity. What else was an iPad made for but Netflix? Remember that joy the first time you streamed a movie on your iPhone? Ah, the future. But maybe I would have less watcher's remorse if, as it did in the old days a couple years ago, choosing a film required more deliberation. Maybe a little less convenience would demand I make better choices. Or maybe, which is more likely, the problem is with me, and not with Netflix, and such discipline, while economical, isn't going to solve anything.
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Lectionary
July 13, 2011
Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you what you need to know.
- Abba Moses
The new resolutions: I will take walks, start a new notebook, work with my hands. What am I worrying about?
- Theodore Roethke, Notebooks
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Lectionary
July 11, 2011
I go, we go. On the way we keep a log-book, the book of the abyss and its shores. Everyone does. My books are thus like life and history, heterogeneous chapters in a single vast book whose ending I will never know.
- Helene Cixous
Carpentry is the soul of masque.
- Ben Jonson
Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?
- Wicked Witch of the West
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Lectionary
July 09, 2011
I think there should be a complete separation between literature and dishwashing.
- Flannery O'Connor
Sometimes I say to myself: "Your destiny is unique; call the others fortunate--no one has been so tormented as you." Then I read an ancient poet, and it seems to me as though I look into my own heart. I have so much to endure! Oh, were there other men before me as miserable as I?
- Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
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History (and soon Dream) of the Space Shuttle
I was sorely wanting to drive to Florida this week for a last chance to see Atlantis'--and the shuttle program's--final launch. Looking at these pictures, I'm struck by how ever-present, almost natural, and self-defining images of space flight have been for me (and I suspect most of us), and stricken with sadness that my kids will likely never be accompanied with the everyday reality of Americans launching into space. As I write this, Jonah is flying a modified Bakugan around as a space ship, but this is fantasy, founded on cartoon-watching. What kind of world, what kind of life is it when kids want their fathers to turn them into robots but don't possess the image of an astronaut as a choiceworthy ambition? Whatever the answer is, these photographs at The Atlantic are terrific.
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Lectionary
July 08, 2011
The ability to speak exactly is intimately tied to the ability to know exactly. You can't lay out a fence line or shape a plowland or fell a tree or break a colt merely by observing general principles. You can't deal with things merely according to category; you are continually required to consider the distinct individuality of the animal, or a tree, or the uniqueness of a place or a situation...All this calls for particular language.
- Wendell Berry, "Imagination in Place"
If there is an audience for poetry, it is an audience of poetry. Who isn't appalled to find someone else standing in the poetry section of a bookstore? Poetry's greatest task is not to solidify groups or get the right people elected or moralize or broadcast; it is to foster a necessary privacy in which the imagination can flourish. Then we have something to say to each other.
- Dean Young, The Art of Recklessness
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The Fate of the (Free) Literary Reading
I made a couple jokes while reading recently about this trend of bookstores charging for literary readings (I'm no Joan Didion, I like to say). Aliza Salario at The Millions contemplates the role of the author readings in a commoditized and social-media-centric world. I liked this bit, if only because I say something similar all the time: "I’m not quite sure what happens to writers--and readings--when social media self-promotion becomes not just a distraction, but part of the job description. What I do know is that being perpetually plugged in runs counter to the very nature of writing."
As for feeling pressure to be somewhat engaging and/or entertaining, I'm not sure how one would get around that. What drives the formation of culture--and what a reading does, even beyond promoting and selling books, is reinforce and build literary culture--is pleasure, or at least the hope for it. Yet she's right in that the pleasures that bring us together in the first place, what binds us, are the private pleasures of reading and writing.
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Lectionary
July 07, 2011
Bodily existence which runs through me, yet does so independently of me, is only the barest raw material of a genuine presence in the world. Yet at least it provides the possibility of such presence, and establishes our first consonance with the world. I may very well take myself away from the human world and set aside personal existence, but only to rediscover in my body the same power, this time unnamed, by which I am condemned to being.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology
In early accounts, the inland wilderness seemed bountiful but appalling, and in recent accounts the triumph of human will has come to seem equally appalling. Where then shall we live? What many of us long for is a middle state, an inhabited wilderness. It is what the native peoples had, as nearly as we can tell. The deepest American dream is not...the hunger for money or fame; it is the dream of settling down, in peace and freedom and cooperation, in the promised land.
- Scott Russell Sanders, "Imagining the Midwest"
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