[Image: One of the pieces by American artist Brad Downey in his show, “Reverse Culture Shock,” currently at the gallery MU in Eindhoven, Netherlands. (Photo by Hanneke Wetzer.) Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!) Says MU at the Flickr page for all the photos from the show’s opening: “We are living in interesting times – and what a mixed blessing it is! The optimism that swept across the western world after the fall of the Berlin Wall has been replaced by bewilderment. ‘What the [beep/fuck/f**k] is happening?!’ would sum it up nicely.” It adds that the exhibition is Downey’s “most engaged exhibition to date because, as he says, sometimes poetry is not enough.” Hmm.]
From whiskey river:
Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing…
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.
(Ray Bradbury [source])
…and:
The Poem to End All Poems
If I had to write a poem to end all poems,
it would be the word ‘lonely’
in every language.
It would ask for nothing,
only echo, echo, cry, then sleep.
Please don’t make me write it.
Don’t make me be honest.
Not after all this time, all this
gorgeous pretending.
I have finally spun a story that doesn’t
look like a failure,
and all I want to do is stay in it.
All I want to do is keep singing.
Let me stay in this kingdom without
a name.
The one I made.
Let me sit with my tin crown on my makeshift throne.
Let me do all of it.
Let me fight.
Let me be the dragon and the
spear that kills it.
I would very much like to be both.
(Caitlyn Siehl [source])
…and:
My Segment on the NewsHour
(excerpt)But that is just half the story.
The Gospel of Thomas has what I take to be the full text.The Kingdom of God is within youThomas, Saying 3
and all around you.Split a piece of wood. I am there.Saying 77
Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.The holiest thing then, the kingdom, is inside,
the observing consciousness, the deep core of being,
and outside, the Brown Thrasher, the little girl skipping
over the squares of the sidewalk, the universe itself
that, so far as we know is unlimited.It would be best here to start singing and dancing
for the spacious joy of inside and outside.
(Coleman Barks [source])
