Essays, Articles, Observations & Images – Through the Lens of the Salish Sea
A dazzling new critical biography of T.S. Eliot’s modernist epic. A book review of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, by Matthew Hollis (Faber & Faber) https://www.city-journal.org/the-waste-land-ts-eliot#.Y8a4oOzS6jB.link
I find that Robert Bringhurst brings to the world a unique perspective of humans and their role in nature. He argues the idea that humans are merely part of nature and the idea that we are here to rule nature and to separate it from our lives will not only remove us from reality but …
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I have reposted two items: 1) a fragment from an interview of Robinson where she describes the process of how American colleges evolved in the Midwest. 2) the complete essay Imagination & Community from her book of Essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. The imaginative makeup of a writer is established by …
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A book review of: The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight Drawings by Terrence Tasker 2013, Altaire Production and Publishing Potts Point, Australia December 4, 2013 Poets do not know this terrain. Yet they may meditate on its being, one that is multiplied by galaxies yet named. And here she claims a sun, it is hers. …
An excellent introduction to the man. This is a slide show presentation with Henri narrating. His poetic personality comes through clearly. He has a very unique sense of what photography is to him.
" Have you learned my song? Have you guessed its intent ? Well then, you higher men, sing me now my round. Now you yourselves sing me the song whose name is “Once More” and whose meaning is ” into all eternity” - sing, you higher men, Zarathustra’s round! O man, take care! What does the …
_____________________________________________ From The Univesity of Washington Archives ____________________________________________________ From - The Stranger - Seattle Weekly Publication TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012 BOOKS Heather McHugh Is Giving the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading at UW on Thursday posted by CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE on TUE, MAY 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM DAVID BELISLE Heather McHugh, the certified genius—by The Stranger and then, a few months later, …
Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love Huang Po taught his students they were already enlightened. I know of one student of Zen who threw a translation of Huang Po out of his apartment window, and the book, like a block of wood, made it, on more than one occasion, into an open trash can …
Continue reading "Huang Po (Huangbo Xiyun) ~ 黄檗希運 ~ zen buddhist ~ Chinese ~ Tang Dynasty ~ 850AD"
Hawks By Katharine Coles At the feeder finches scatter, then, Inches over the house, dragging their shadows, Two hawks sweep down into the canyon, Falling, ignoring paralyzed rabbit and vole, Wings pitched like sails to the wind, holding, Down to the crux where day’s pooled heat begins Its updraft, lifted by evening cool— The hawks, …
Frye stumbles on the idea of archetypal structure in literature. It resonates with Jungian thought, Gaston Bachelard, James Hillman and others in that poetics comes before philosophy or psychology. It seems to me that there is biological, deep structure, integration of the image and poetics, a structure that cannot be deconstructed but is elemental to human …
It is rare that a towering intellect will let an artist have the last words on the judgement of his own work and worth. But Rexroth has done just that here in this 1955 piece. This essay is a wide-ranging contemplation of Graves when he was in his prime. Rexroth was in his prime as …
From the Preface - A Treatise On Poetry, 2001, HarperCollins, NY, translated by Robert Haas: First, plain speech in the mother tongue. Hearing it you should be able to see, as if in a flash of summer lightning, Apple trees, a river, a bend of a road. And it should contain more than images. Singsong …
The Absence I speak to you across cities I speak to you across plains My mouth is upon your pillow Both faces of the walls come meeting My voice discovering you I speak to you of eternity O cities memories of cities Cities wrapped in our desires Cities come early cities come lately Cities strong …
Mr Palomar is an accomplished practitioner of zen buddhism. He is astute at seeing what is before him as it is. Where he gets into trouble is when seeing, or being, is not enough and he needs to develop his strategies and plans together with his angst at trying to do the right thing in …
It is a very peculiar climate, summed up by that man of undoubted genius, Monsieur Derrida, when he says that every text is a “pretext.” This is one of the most formidably erroneous, destructive, brilliantly trivial wordplays ever launched. Meaning what? That whatever the stature of the poem, it waits for the deconstructive commentator; it …
The video for the line spoken by Czeslaw Milosz. Production completed with the participation of students in the art school under the supervision of Monica Opole Nowojskiej. Content of the poem: Czeslaw Milosz - The Angels You deducted white robes, Wings and even the existence, However, I believe you, Messengers. Where on the left side …
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Poetry is innately related to theft. The lyre was invented, the Greeks tell us, by Hermes, who then gave the instrument to Apollo as compensation for stealing cattle. One reason people’s aversion to poetry sometimes passes over into strong annoyance, or even resentment, is that poems steal our very language out from under us and …
Continue reading "David Ferry’s Beautiful Theft – Dan Chiasson"
If genius is profuse, never ending - stuck in the middle of a work is - the wrong track, Genius is the track seen. Once seen it is impossible to keep from it. The superficial definitions, such as "genius is industry, genius is hard work, etc. " are nonsense. It is to see the track, …
The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead. In this core are the dimensions of time and space. What surrounds the core is timelessness. from Hold Everything Dear - John Berger
From Ovid's Poem "Fasti" (8 AD) "See how Janus appears first in my song To announce a happy year for you, Germanicus. Two-headed Janus, source of the silently gliding year, The only god who is able to see behind him, Be favourable to the leaders, whose labours win Peace for the fertile earth, peace for the seas: Be …
The First Time On The Pacific just eighteen. my nerves were adjusted. not only the speed but the direction. the pattern of rush lifted from stars and space, the place between planets and each other. is it black? what does it hold? the place we can't see, cannot understand. but we feel it. it shoots …
2011 National Book Award in Poetry - Head Off & Split Background http://nikkyfinney.net/index.html Lead photo by Forrest Clonts
Photograph by Vincent Mentzel 1988/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux. " Cage requires a fundamentally different mode of listening: you need to relinquish expectations that successive sounds will fall into familiar harmonic relationships, or indeed relationships of any kind, and instead treat each moment in isolation. You “regard” the sounds as you would objects in a gallery. More …
Czeslaw Milosz - The Wilno Poet Under California Skies November 2012 It is not an anomaly to be transformed by the breadth and scope of the Northern California landscape. To stand on a mountain and look over the rocky shore and the expanse of the blue Pacific is a powerful sensation. While one's awe eventually …
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To Robinson Jeffers If you have not read the Slavic poets so much the better. There’s nothing there for a Scotch-Irish wanderer to seek. They lived in a childhood prolonged from age to age. For them, the sun was a farmer’s ruddy face, the moon peeped through a cloud and the Milky Way …
Now It Is motions today are real, and yet they house potentialities that are full. They are not present and yet the scent of them is. it is the mystery of their unfolding that draws me in.
Lead Illustration: Tom Killion BY ROBINSON JEFFERS The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on …
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PHOTO BY AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA
we are the same as those who came before. yet our distance from our kind is great. do we not see that we the living, all of the living, are a clan? each with natures unique but living and this simple fact: our being. existence is a bond so great in this vast universe of …
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West Pacific Review 