[Bϋchner] believed that the poet must strive to imitate reality, instead of improving upon and thereby distorting it, as do idealistic poets, who create mere puppets devoid of life. The individual, no matter how insignificant or unattractive, must take precedence over philosophical abstractions.
[…]
Bϋchner’s concept of beauty appears to be based upon unaffected sincerity among human beings and upon a Goethean perception of nature as an endless metamorphosis of forms and images that art can never fully capture nor transmit. Unprejudiced observation, he insists, leaves one open to an infinity of sensory impressions and human truths.
—Georg Bϋchner, “Bϋchner on Aesthetics,” Woyzeck and other Writings (Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers, 1982), edited by Henry J. Schmidt
10.30.2014
10.29.2014
10.28.2014
presidential library
Visiting Mt. Vernon last Sunday, the tour guide was heard to say that George Washington’s library was filled with books on science, military history, and poetry.
Labels:
books,
george washington,
home,
library,
military history,
science
10.27.2014
defiant end
When a poem defies an ending it’s perhaps finished.
Labels:
closure,
ending,
finished,
finished poem,
last line
10.24.2014
organizing principle
He would spend many hours arranging each poem within a book, but a collected poems by convention is just one book after another in chronological sequence.
Labels:
book,
chronology,
collected poems,
order,
organization,
sequence
10.23.2014
language x-ray
To view poetry as the skeleton of prose.
Labels:
poetry v. prose,
prose,
skeleton,
structure,
x-ray
10.22.2014
occupational disease
And we must at all costs avoid over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers if it were not their occupation.
—J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Harvard U. Press, 1962)
And we must at all costs avoid over-elaboration, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of poets if it were not their occupation.
—J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Harvard U. Press, 1962)
And we must at all costs avoid over-elaboration, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of poets if it were not their occupation.
10.21.2014
parasite adjectives
There are many dangerous adjectives, being naturally parasitic of certain nouns.
Labels:
adjectives,
dangerous,
nouns,
parasite,
parasitic
10.20.2014
stop sign
In order not to fear the period, the writer must think of it as a way station or jumping off place.
Labels:
block,
fear,
period,
punctuation,
stop,
way station
10.16.2014
10.14.2014
essential reins
Imagination, like wild horses, pulls hard and fast under the reins of reality.
Labels:
horses,
imagination,
reality,
reins,
wild
10.13.2014
10.12.2014
sound architecture
One very often finds that in a Moore poem every phrase is load-bearing. This is sound architecture, the weight brilliantly distributed.
—Maureen N. McLane, “My Marianne Moore,” My Poets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012)
—Maureen N. McLane, “My Marianne Moore,” My Poets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012)
Labels:
architecture,
load-bearing,
marianne moore,
maureen n. mclane,
phrase,
sound,
weight
10.08.2014
hidden in the negative space
All the words and passages cut away from the poem form a shadow poem that seems to stalk the final draft.
10.05.2014
intermittent narrator
The journal is only the form of memoir I can abide, being piecemeal, fragmentary, sequential only in fits & starts, like life.
10.03.2014
low bar
The only writer I ever knew who actually washed out of his MFA.
Labels:
creative writing program,
MFA,
washed out
10.01.2014
lesser editions
Book collectors seek nearly unread first editions. I love finding a dog-eared, beaten, heavily marked edition. I know then I’m in good company.
Labels:
book collector,
books,
dog-eared,
first edition
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)