this led to that

This book led me to that book which led me to next book I read, so on and on I read this way.

[Preparing for a presentation on the topic of commonplace books next Saturday.]

lays claim

Poetry lays claim to all language-made things that fit no other genre.

form before effect

The poem used words that perfected the form, but that sacrificed its effect.

let there be flowers

A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

—Mahmoud Darwish
From the poem, “To a Young Poet”
Translation by Fady Joudah

finding a gift

One of the pleasures of reorganizing my books is that inevitably I find I’ve got a duplicate or two. That gives me an opportunity to give away a book as a gift to someone I think will appreciate it.

poet jumps in

Power outage: the band couldn’t play, no laser light show. Then a poet jumped up onto the stage and enthralled all within the circle of how far a human voice can carry.

made thing

I went to a poetry reading tonight: Just wow—the human voice and all the experience contained therein expressed openly, asking for no safety—trusting the made thing that is the poem.

[The 59th Wallace Stevens Poetry Program with Brenda Hillman]

emerging poet

No longer an emerging poet, I imagine myself a cicada, buried in the ground at a shallow depth, wrapped in a paper casing of my poems, waiting to emerge from the earth seventeen years hence. For no reason. Making sounds no one wants the hear.

broken things

Their broken lines and broken lives, those troubled poets so impossible to ignore.

handling details

…for we must bear in mind that, when we look at a landscape, or any other extensive object, the eye in fact embraces exactly only one thing, or point, at a time. Every object, but the particular one upon which our eyes are fixed at the moment, is noticed only in part….In a good picture, therefore, this rule is observed; and, and while the one object on which the eyes are intended to dwell in particular is worked out fully, surrounding objects and details are left much elaborate; witness Murillo’s best pictures.
[…]
Let it not be supposed, however, that I disclaim all details in drawing; I only beg for them in their proper place; for, according to the very true Turkish proverb:
“He who knows not the details knows not the whole.”
[…]
It is, therefore, a mistake to try and acquire at once a bold and rapid style; it can only come by study and by practice, since it is the result of being familiar with details. These need not always be told in the drawing, but there can be no good drawing without a thorough knowledge of them.

—S. C. Malan, Aphorisms on Drawing (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856)

[n.b.: Quite an interesting biography of a clergyman, polyglot, and largely self-taught painter, Solomon Caesar Malan.]

singular world

I know no great poem that is not a world of its own.

hard and soft

Hard nouns are images, soft nouns are abstractions.

some bite, most nibble

Only courageous literary critics pronounce and speculate, while most are timid and content with contextualizing and anatomizing.

clean slate

The only way to write a poem is to forgive yourself for all the bad ones you’ve made.