Midnight 5 April 1805. I will write as truly as I can from Experience [—] actual individual Experience — not from Book-knowle[d]ge. But yet it is wonderful how exactly the Knowle[d]ge from good books coincides with the experience of men of the World, as I have often noticed when much younger / in men of the World who beginning to withdraw a little into themselves, commonly by reading — I have noticed in them their deep delight in so many passages which had escaped me — so much in so many others which I had never heard of but from Books / Experience necessary no doubt, if only to give a light and shade in the mind, to give to some ideas a greater vividness than others, & thereby to make it a thing of Time and outward reality — practical — for all being equally vivid = the whole becomes a dream. But notwithstanding this & other reasons, I yet believe that the saws against Book-knowle[d]ge are handed down to us from Times when Books conveyed only abstract Science or abstract Morality & Religion / whereas in the present day what is there of real Life, in all its goings on, Trades, Manufacturies, high Life, low life, animate & inanimate that is not in books. Books are conversation at present. Evil as well as Good in this, I well know / but Good too as well as Evil —
— from Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection. Oxford 2002
*
What is a poet but a person
Who lives on the ground
Who laughs and listens
Without pretention of knowing
Anything, driven by the lyric's
Quest for rest that never
(God willing) will be found?
— "For Creeley" by Fanny Howe, from Foldemzine I. Pressed Wafer 2005
*
Gnosis is seeing
without acquisition.
*
the sail menders with hands
and feet repair into dawn
trailing bolts of canvas
maneuver fish needles in half light
reach top velocity in
pantheistic celebration
— from Emptied of All Ships. Stacy Szymaszek. Brooklyn: Litmus Press 2005
The poem is an oppurtunity to clarify your experience with the world. And in that clarifying proces, you become better equipped to deal with the places you inhabit.
*
My boy holding up fruit
and a book at my feet
sheaves of wheat in place of hair
And nursing on the other side now
comfortable next to crops
a child at my elbow
"No mystery was ever celebrated without dancing"
They went to the shore
and purified with sea-
water and probably
a sprinkling of pigs blood
The corn spirit
is a pig
A sow & her rows of milky teats
from "The Sun Person," Hoa Nguyen
*
At the entrance,
a plate of orange peels
dried in the Texas sun.
— from untitled poem by Kim Dorman
*
[ Books ]
Morning Gerald Coble / Texts by William Corbett
Emptied of All Ships Stacy Szymaszek
1 800*Flowers Robert Fitterman
Radios Ronald Johnson
without from within
[ MAGZ ]
Damn The Caesars Richard Owens, ed.
Stinkbug Barbiturates Jennifer Rogers & Michael Koshkin, eds.
*
And thanks to KD for his Gleanings, the inspiration behind this post....
Posted by Dale at June 26, 2005 03:32 PM