off message

Unlike politicians, poets never stay on message.

lives of the young poets

Politics was not our sole passion. We were even more attracted by literature, the arts, and philosophy. For me and for a few of my friends, poetry turned, if not into a public religion, at least into an esoteric cult wavering between the catacombs and the conspirators’ basement. I found no contradiction between poetry and revolution: they were two facets of the same movement, two wings of the same passion. This belief would link me later to the surrealists. The plural avidity: life and books, street and cell, bars and loneliness in crowds in cinemas.

—Octavio Paz, Itinerary (Harcourt, 1999), translated by Jason Wilson [33]

fierce company

Poetry decides power, not politics
or wealth, not torment. Fierce company,
those ragged lines, spells of a magician
that become; over time, more curse than elixir.

—Dennis Barone, "Side-Straddle Hop," After Math (Cyber Wit, 2023)