It’s like they say, character is fate. Obsessions are inescapable.
How does this translate into meaning? I have no idea. I wrote the book, this suite, to try to arrive at an answer.
If you’re a person of extreme persuasion, what happens when the tools to be as extreme as you fantastically imagined yourself being suddenly show up in your hands?
Like Max Weber, I think it’s dishonest and somewhat cheesy to use the lecture platform to voice one’s own political leanings. Students deserve better than to be harangued or have their liberal or conservative prejudices confirmed.
“Bearing witness I think is the best of what poetry can do sometimes.”
“To me, the most interesting aspect of writing is how it captures what it’s like to be a thinking presence in the world.”
I’ll be like, “I toured with the Silver Jews and Titus Andronicus! Why didn’t anyone publish my memoir of this scene?” And then my nurse will tell me to settle down.
Mary Leader says: “A poem is a thing.” By that definition, a poet would be someone who makes things. I think any narrower definition would seem to me needlessly exclusive.
Some people write from life, others from dreams — I write from research
If you want to surpass your childhood you have to pick up Aristotle or Hui Neng and imagine being on a long walk with the speaker, with the attitude of “I will listen.”