“Yes. A lot of poets don’t have any poems to write. After their first book, what are they going to do? They can’t keep saying their hearts are broken. They start to write poems about childhood. Then what do they do? Some of it is just academic poetry—they learn how to write the poem perfectly. But I don’t think anybody should be criticized because their taste is different from mine. Such poems are extraordinarily deft. There’s a lot of art in them. But I don’t understand where the meat is. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this kind of poetry. It won’t change my life, so why should I read it? Why should I write it?
By the time some writers—particularly poets—are twenty-seven or twenty-eight they’ve often used up the germinal quality that is their writing, the thing that is their heart. Not for the great poets, but for many poets this is true. The inspiration starts to wane. Many have learned enough to cover that with devices or technique or they just go back and write the same stories about their childhood over and over. It’s why so much poetry feels artificial.”
—Jack Gilbert, in conversation with Sarah Fay for The Paris Review, Fall/Winter 2005
19 Jan # 1 week ago
La muerte es una vida vivida. La vida es una muerte que viene.— Jorge Luis Borges 13 Jan # 2 weeks ago
…We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other…Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning? I think art has a right—not an obligation—to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic. And that tyranny requires simplification.— Geoffrey Hill, in conversation with Carl Phillips at The Paris Review 30 Dec # 4 weeks ago
SISTER WINTER
Oh my friends I’ve
Begun to worry right
Where I should be grateful
I should be satisfied
Oh my heart I
Would clap and dance in place
With my friends I have so
Much pleasure to embrace
But my heart is
Returned to sister winter
But my heart is
As cold as ice
Oh my thoughts I
Return to summertime
When I kissed your ankle
I kissed you through the night
All my gifts I gave everything you
Your strange imagination
You threw it all away
Now my heart is
Returned to sister winter
Now my heart is
As cold as ice
All my friends, I’ve
Returned to sister winter
All my friends, I
Apologize, apologize
And my friends, I’ve
Returned to wish you all the best
And my friends, I’ve
Returned to wish you a happy Christmas
25 Dec # 1 month ago
Pyongyang Overwhelmed with Grief at Demise of Kim Jong Il
(Source: fuckyeahmarxismleninism)
19 Dec # 1 month agoMany people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.— William James 19 Dec # 1 month ago
