like anyone's life

If a poet wore a bodycam you’d be surprised how boring the recording was.

not ever pure

Guillén was aware that, whatever else, purely poetic poetry would be quite boring. And something more serious: it was linguistically impossible since language is by nature impure. A “pure poetry” would be one in which language had ceased to be language.

—Octavio Paz, “Jorge Guillén,” On Poets and Others (Arcade Publishing, 1986), translation by Michael Schmidt.

plain wrapper

A publisher who was trying to bring back the boring book cover.

[Thinking of Wave Books]