From RM Vaughan’s interview with Paul Vermeersch about Self Defence for the Brave and Happy. RM Vaughan: The book moves effortlessly between prophetic pronouncements and intimate, personal observations. Is it a goal of the book to conflate the two in order to make the reader more keenly aware that we live in prophetic times? Paul […]
Tag Archives: poetry
FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE
Robert Hass, via Pome. We asked the captain what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast so large, terrifying, and unpredictable. He hesitated to answer, and then said judiciously: “I think I shall praise it.”
FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO
From David Whyte (audio here). “We tend to think of vulnerability as a kind of weakness, something to be walked around. But it’s interesting to look at the origin of the word, from the Latin word “vulneras,” meaning “wound.” It’s really the place where you’re open to the world, whether you want to be or […]
FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT
From If They Should Come for Us, by Fatimah Asghar. my people I follow you like constellations we hear the glass smashing the street & the nights opening their dark our names this country’s wood for the fire my people my people the long years we’ve survived the long years yet to come I see […]
FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR
From ruby onyinyechi amanze via Wayétu Moore in the Paris Review. She also has a beautiful artist’s statement.
FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY
By Billy-Ray Belcourt (2017), via Matthew Ogle’s Pome. Towards a Theory of Decolonization 1. forget everything you’ve learned about love. 2. investment is the social practice whereby one risks losing it all to be part of something that feels like release. lose everything with me. 3. indian time is a form of time travel. a […]
FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE
Exercise, by W. S. Merwin, via Matthew Ogle’s Pome (also available via Poetry Foundation). Exercise First forget what time it is for an hour do it regularly every day then forget what day of the week it is do this regularly for a week then forget what country you are in and practice doing it in […]
FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO
Richard Siken, via Pome by Matthew Ogle. from The Language of the Birds 4 To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of […]
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE
“Yours / The Life That I Have” — a poem code issued to Violette Szabo of the SOE by Leo Marks and used for encryption during WWII. The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I […]
THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX
From Bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward.
THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE
Mail testing at MIT, via Devin Kennedy.
THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO
Went through some old books today and found this bit ripped out from Brave New World. On what to want. “Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn’t there something in that?” he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. “Quite apart from God–though of course […]
THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN
David Whyte reading “Sweet Darkness” for On Being is beautiful. When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are […]
THREE HUNDRED AND TEN
Anonymous, found in James Boyle’s “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain.” The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things […]
THREE HUNDRED AND NINE
I found Ross Goodwin’s Adventures in Narrated Reality last night — it’s a really imaginative research diary with some impressive and stirring results. I plan to read this word.camera collection this week, which will be the first time in my life that I’ve read a machine generated book (that I know of?).
