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Oh you're in my blood like holy wine You taste so bitter and so sweet Oh I could drink a case of you darling And I would still be on my feet Oh I would still be on my feet ↗
For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying. ↗
Love at First Sight Both are convinced that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together. Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful. Because they didn’t know each other earlier, they suppose that nothing was happening between them. What of the streets, stairways and corridors where they could have passed each other long ago? I’d like to ask them whether they remember— perhaps in a revolving door ever being face to face? an “excuse me” in a crowd or a voice “wrong number” in the receiver. But I know their answer: no, they don’t remember. They’d be greatly astonished to learn that for a long time chance had been playing with them. Not yet wholly ready to transform into fate for them it approached them, then backed off, stood in their way and, suppressing a giggle, jumped to the side. There were signs, signals: but what of it if they were illegible. Perhaps three years ago, or last Tuesday did a certain leaflet fly from shoulder to shoulder? There was something lost and picked up. Who knows but what it was a ball in the bushes of childhood. There were doorknobs and bells on which earlier touch piled on touch. Bags beside each other in the luggage room. Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night, suddenly erased after waking. Every beginning is but a continuation, and the book of events is never more than half open. -translated by Walter Whipple ↗
Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment. But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner. This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment. Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust. ↗
Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sun That will not rise again. Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea, Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charity That lifts a man a little above the beasts that run. That this could be! That I should live to see Most vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown, So fitted out with purple robe and crown To stand among his betters! Face to face With outraged me in this once holy place, Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and hunted Truth was harboured out of danger, He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger! I would have sworn, indeed I swore it: The hills may shift, the waters may decline, Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it, But never your love from me, your hand from mine. Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under. Farewell, sweet light, great wonder! You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dream You have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came. ↗
How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive. ↗
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Do not look too far for you will see nothing. ↗
#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #nothing #philosophy
Teaching others, he corrected himself. ↗
#correction #corrections #dejan-stojanovic #himself #literature
How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that…we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies. ↗
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. ↗
