January 2012
186 posts
December 2011
224 posts
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“For last year’s word belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await...”
– T. S. Eliot, from Section II of Quartet no. 4 “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets
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To my son, this bildungsroman
This is my book full of weighty themes and brute subtext, bruised grammar and enflamed poetry all compiled just so to extract the youth from me. Whatever my intentions - and they are vast - you shall read more into them than I could ever fit in a table or index (no amount of editing can erase one from the record, even the absence is telling). All writing is confession - you will see me repeat...
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“For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things,...”
– from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) - Rainer Maria Rilke (via ruefle)
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My Top Ten Films of 2011
1. Tree of Life - I admit it took two viewings for me to get over exceedingly high expectations and calm down enough to see it clearly, but when I did, it was glorious. The best film of the year and of any other year.
2. Incendies - The best cinematic gut-punch in years by an up and comer director, Denis Villeneuve, that earns the rank of master. If you are not turned inside out by the power...
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The Fallacy of Scientific Realism
“about the four hundred and fiftieth year of his age, or latter end of his childhood, he dissected a great number of small insects not more than one hundred feet in diameter, which are not perceivable by ordinary microscopes, of which he composed a very curious treatise, which involved him in some trouble’ - Voltaire
In the process of this entry I will be evaluating a particular...
“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
– Emil Cioran (via comfortably-dumb)
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The Very Rich Hours
these are the very rich hours of our impoverished lives
the Limbourgs knew it well when they dappled
their mangy Christ in a moonless terrestrial night
only the faint glint of a halo to relieve the darkness
it was as if - so privately consumed -
the illumination of our savior sunk inwards
only the outer shell of the man stands in that garden
our savior as seen from the inside of a closed...
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Follow me and I'll follow you back
Let’s start this New Year off right.
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Mitya's Hymn
[a poem inspired by a passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, written late nineties]
only gravity knows for sure I exist
and at what pressure the body drops
but I alone know its dissent
slinking upon the earth
...
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crumbly
[probably the ugliest poem I have written, 1996]
slipping back
feeling too much i don’t want the world
i guess i want your love but like that it sounds
viciously plain. i don’t want to be a part of this
program. i love you. i’m like a pathetic animal
a mongrel. i need you, more than you.
i can’t breathe, no time to hide my eyes.
this world is crumbling, inside...
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Disappear
[and a poem closer to my own depression, less eloquent, but fisted out all the same]
thought i’d just leave
as if the wall was any invitation
as if the carpet hadn’t stained
thought i would just relieve the passengers
in relieving me
i just want to disappear
lying here, on the pier
why can’t i just disappear?
instead i am left with a sour hate
in knowing of the film...
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exitwound (for Reagan)
[a poem I wrote in the late nineties, about a suicide of someone I had never met but whose act triggered something I needed to get out]
In your mouth
I formed
a comment of
all spaces I have rent
For how many years
when we realize
it was unnecessary to even hold a conversation
with me. To love me, the fingerprints
...
some kind of record
Going to post a bunch of poetry I wrote when I was depressed and twenty. I am not posting them because I think they are great works of art, but to keep to this ambition to document my life, warts and all.
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in my room
[a poem I wrote in 1996]
in my room
a patient, undressed
i step into the morning
cling
calmed by the emissions i ingest
!a shard of love forcing out before i can even pretend
...
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Wuthering Heights Mixtape
Another literary mixtape from the past, this one inspired by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. As always, click on the mixtape tag beside this post to get the full inventory of mixtapes, and to listen to any of them go to the bottom of my blog and listen to it streamed on streampad.
Enjoy.
1) Wonderwall - Ryan Adams - This was a late selection, for the longest time I had set...
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Ryan Adams - Wonderwall (Oasis cover)
...
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wrlittle:
Johnny Cash - Thirteen
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Wolf Parade - You are a Runner and I am my...
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Eric’s Trip - Deeper
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Kristin Hersh - Gazebo Tree
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Gord Downie - Insomniacs of the World, Goodnight
“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless...”
–
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
illusionarysage:
America Allen Ginsberg
...
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This Voice is Borrowed
This voice is borrowed. The first murmur of the voice was whispered to me through Douglas Coupland’s book, Life After God. The stories were short, the descriptions sweet, and there were even pictures - naturally I was seduced, and found something meaningful where I had initially sought idle distraction. It was to be my introduction to the Melancholic. With each story he told I felt...
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I would usually put this thing on my rigmaroler...
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever...”
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (via a-cceptance)
