POET WRITER AUTHOR GENTLEMAN OUTSIDER
Shakespeare threw down his pencil, said I think I’m gonna start layin brick. There’s too much of this “Romeo stuff” enough to make anybody sick. To be or not to be I mean what’s that supposed to mean? I’m changing my image tomorrow, be a groupie, make the scene
~ John Cougar Mellencamp, Pray For Me
“In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.”
(Journal entry, 1938; quoted in introduction to 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men)
~ John Steinbeck
What’s a soul to do when confronted with poems that are one step beyond, that take you toward slant time and altered being? What to do when confronted with a poet who has a spiritual imagination, who creates written beauty, who is a genuine artist? I suppose one option is to just be quiet, be content in those moments of reading stupefaction. Or one can do what I’m doing now – try to say something about the experience.
I’ll start by looking at a photo of the poet, as if some clue to the hidden spirits of language might be registered there.
It’s probably wayward for me to say it, but I will anyway: the face of Georg Trakl is mad with hidden spirits of language. If I were told this picture had been taken inside a locked asylum for expressively coiled savants, I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s…
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ENDLESS
Sitting near the river the water reflecting the mind’s serenity of a secular moment the sudden sound of children laughing returns me to the world.
The present
I am alive and awake
Grateful to remain
When so many have already
Passed through the veil the
Brilliant light that waits
We are only waiting
To become another
Endless wave in the
Motion of the river’s tide
Another day to believe
Source: De Quincey & Rilke: Language of Profound Spiritual Resonance
Your soul will never be quiet until you find this new place. It is your destiny.
With it, you will illuminate the world.
