3.26.2006

towering crag

The best line is a towering crag.
It won't be woven into an ordinary song.
The mind can't find a match for it
but casts about, unwilling to give up.

—Lu Ji, The Act of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala, 1996), translated by Tony Barnstone

3.23.2006

the seamstress and the butcher

Sometimes the language is in need of a seamstress; other times a butcher is what’s called for.

3.19.2006

poetry's one-room schoolhouse

With a degree of sentimentality, we love the sonnet because it is poetry’s one-room schoolhouse.

3.12.2006

to bifurcate and ramify

Each line of poetry must bifurcate and ramify in the reader’s mind.

3.11.2006

specimen poem

Alas, specimen poem, all charm lost, you are now but a pinned and labeled butterfly.

3.10.2006

unnecessary confusions

...it is not necessary, because an epoch is confused, that its poets should share its confusions.

—Robinson Jeffers, "Poetry, Gongorism and a Thousand Years"

3.01.2006

Utopoeia

Utopoeia: the poem as utopia built from language; a place where the mind wants to dwell forever.