“Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.”
Frederico Fellini
(via mudwerks)
BOAST OF QUIETNESS
Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigous than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious
and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rythym of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensible, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away
he doesn’t expect to arrive.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"I am yours. Don’t give myself back to me."
— Rumi (via likeafieldmouse)
Portrait d’Une Femme, Ezra Pound
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you- lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind- with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.
Mar 26, 1892: A Day to Remember One of America’s Greatest Literary Figures
On this day in 1892, American poet Walt Whitman passed away in Camden, New Jersey. At a young age, Whitman worked as a printer and was exposed to classic works from Shakespeare to Dante. Later on, Whitman explored the world of journalism and founded the Long-Islander newspaper.
Whitman left his mark in the literary world through his self-published collection of poems, Leaves of Grass. His work stirred controversy as it explored sexual themes, which was uncommon at the time. Throughout the remainder of his life, Whitman dedicated his time to revising his work and publishing new editions.
What other events contributed to Whitman’s success? Learn more with American Experience.
Image (from top to bottom): Walt Whitman three-quarter length portrait c. 1887, Leaves of Green title page, Title page of Leaves of Grass (“deathbed” edition) with author’s note to the printer 1892 (Library of Congress)
“Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most important figures in the Beat movement of the mid-twentieth century. Two years after graduation from Columbia University, while working in New York as a market researcher, Ginsberg purchased this 1936 edition of Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-1935, which he signed “Allen Ginsberg / October 1950″ on the front free endpaper. Ginsberg’s extensive annotations to The Waste Land document his efforts to work through the poem.”
Allen Ginsberg’s copy of The Wasteland
(via poetsorg)
In my own country
I am in a far off land
I am strong yet have
No force or power
I win yet remain a loser
At break of day I say goodnight
When I lie down I have a great fear of falling
-- François Villion
