odd entries

Search engines have made them obsolete and yet I have trouble letting go of my collection of reference books. From my reference books what I miss now are those odd entries catching my eye as I went paging through them toward whatever it was I was hunting for.

you too will rest

This is the most famous German poem ever written, one which all German children must learn by heart:

      On all hilltops
      There is peace,
      In all treetops
      You will hear
      Hardly a breath.
      Birds in the woods are silent.
      Just wait, soon
      You too will rest.

The idea of the poem is simple: in the woods everything is asleep, and you will sleep, too. The purpose of the poetry is not to try to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.

—Milan Kundera, Immortality (HarperCollins, 1999) translated by Peter Kussi

poet again

Sometimes all I need to do is to think of those times when I first thought myself a poet, and I’m a poet again.

poet of a certain age

If you call poetry ‘verse’ you immediately mark yourself as retrograde.

old songs

Old poems, old songs…how to let them go?