ART & Thoughts
Literature
Hermann Hesse : Trees are sanctuaries
“When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere … Continue reading
Raymond Carver : Cherish
From the window I see her bend to the rosesholding close to the bloom so as not toprick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses andclips, more alone in the worldthan I had known. She won’tlook up, not now. She’s alonewith roses and with something else I can only think, notsay. I know … Continue reading
William Stafford: Being a Person
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invokethe owls. Invoke winter, then spring.Let any season that wants to come here make its owncall. After that sound goes away, wait. A slow bubble rises through the earthand begins to include sky, stars, all space,even the outracing, expanding thought.Come back and hear the little sound again. … Continue reading
The Poems of Our Climate – Wallace Stevens
“The Imperfect is Our Paradise ” Wallace Stevens Continue reading
Sylvia Plath “Insomniac”
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of starsLetting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictusHe suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessnessStretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions. Over and over … Continue reading
“I am too close …” Wisława Szymborska
I am too close for him to dream of me.I don’t flutter over him, don’t flee himbeneath the roots of trees. I am too close.The caught fish doesn’t sing with my voice.The ring doesn’t roll from my finger.I am too close. The great house is on firewithout me calling for help. Too closefor one of … Continue reading
Amanda Gorman: “The Hill We Climb”
On January 20, 2021, Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman paid homage to Angelou by greeting the new morning. Continue reading
Alejandra Pizarnik: She wants to speak…
2 [untitled] She wants to speak, but I know what she is. She believes love is death—even if everything devoid of love disgusts her. Since her love makes her innocent, why should she speak? Mistress of the Castle, her fingers play upon mirrors of pronouns. With every word I write I remember the void … Continue reading
Wislawa Szymborska: The three oddest words
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it. When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no non-being can hold. By Wislawa Szymborska Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Wislawa Szymborska The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996 … Continue reading
Go to the Limits of Your Longing – Rainer Maria Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let … Continue reading
The crunch: Charles Bukowski
— too much too little or too late too fat too thin or too bad laughter or tears or immaculate unconcern haters lovers armies running through streets of pain waving wine bottles bayoneting and fucking everyone or an old guy in a cheap quiet room with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe. there is a loneliness … Continue reading
Alejandra Pizarnik “All night I hear the noise of water sobbing”
All night I hear the noise of water sobbing. All night I make night in me, I make the day that begins on my account, that sobs because day falls like water through night. All night I hear the voice of someone seeking me out. All night you abandon me slowly like the water that … Continue reading
Wei Wu Wei: “For Sile” / Shōmei Tōmatsu
I am the sea too, and the stars, the wind and the rain, I am everything that has form — for form is my seeing of it. I am every sound — for sound is my hearing of it, I am all flavours, each perfume, whatever can be touched, For that which is perceptible is … Continue reading
Vladimir Nabokov “A Letter That Never Reached Russia”
“Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history … Continue reading
Fukuda Chiyo-ni: one of the greatest poets of haiku
dragonfly hunter how far has he traveled today I wonder? Chiyo-ni Said to be written after the death of her son. Her only child. . Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo) (福田 千代尼; 1703 – 2 October 1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, widely regarded as one of the greatest female haiku poets. … Continue reading
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