Field-Notes

Ahab [captain, prophet, madman] tell us how do we know the boat from the fish?

Moby Dick

Because whatever meaning one can find, however terrifying, is still preferable to the greater horror that there is nothing out there. Ahab's quest however manically self-serving and flawed at least offered a sense of purpose. Every man onboard that ship had at least a single moment in which he was alive with an overwhelming sense of purpose.

The Sublime compels men to their doom. Enjoy the doom.

First encounter with the sublime, we want to make it into beauty! 

We want Eden to exist but we can't live in it?

Because conceptions of the nature and purpose of art closely parallel conceptions of self and the world, the primary function of art is to interpret values. Therefore, aesthetic criticism, when it rises above mere technical analysis, attempts to understand these values in order to determine the worth of the interpretation.

Lover, Tyrant, Hero-God, My Achilles

Pallinode, Book 1, Section 8

By H. D.
 

     She is afraid, too. So she needs this protection. She has tried to conceal her identity with mockery, "I am a woman of pleasure." She knows what the Greeks think of her, and here is Greece-incarnate, the hero-god; true, he is shipwrecked; nevertheless, though wounded, he carries with him the threat of autocracy. She has lost caste. He is still Achilles. Or who is she? She says that Helen upon the ramparts was a phantom. Then, what is this Helen? Are they both ghosts? And if she is convinced of this, why does she entreat the flame that Achilles kindled, "let me love him, as Thetis, his mother"? Is she afraid of losing even her phantom integrity? And what of it? Thetis — Isis — Aphrodite — it was not her fault.

     O—no—but through eternity, she will be blamed for this and she feels it coming. She will blacken her face like the prophetic femme noire of antiquity. But it does not work. Achilles is here to impeach her. Why? We must blame someone. Hecate—a witch —a vulture, and finally, as if he had run out of common invective, he taunts her — a hieroglyph. This is almost funny, she must stop him, he is after all, the son of the sea-goddess. She has named Isis, the Egyptian Aphrodite, the primal cause of all the madness. But another, born-of-the-sea, is nearer, his own mother. Again, she thinks of her and reminds Achilles of his divine origin, "O child of Thetis." This is quite enough. Can you throttle a phantom? He tries. The end is inevitable.

                 How could I hide my eyes?
                 how could I veil my face?
                 with ash or charcoal from the embers?

                 I drew out a blackened stick,
                 but he snatched it,
                 he flung it back,

                 "what sort of enchantment is this?
                 what art will you wield with a fagot?
                 are you Hecate? are you a witch?

                 a vulture, a hieroglyph,
                 the sign or the name of a goddess?
                 what sort of goddess is this?

                 where are we? who are you?
                 where is this desolate coast?
                 who am I?    am I a ghost?"

                 "you are living, O child of Thetis,
                 as you never lived before,"
                 then he caught at my wrist,

                 "Helena, cursed of Greece,
                 I have seen you upon the ramparts,
                 no art is beneath your power,

                 you stole the chosen,
                 the flower of all-time, of all-history,
                 my children, my legions;

                 for you were the ships burnt,
                 O cursèd, O envious Isis,
                 you — you — a vulture, a hieroglyph";

                 "Zeus be my witness," I said,
                 "it was he, Amen dreamed of all this
                 phantasmagoria of Troy,

                 it was dream and a phantasy";
                 O Thetis, O sea-mother,
                 I prayed, as he clutched my throat

                 with his fingers' remorseless steel,
                 let me go out, let me forget,
                 let me be lost . . . . . . .

                 O Thetis, O sea-mother, I prayed under his cloak,
                 let me remember, let me remember,
                 forever, this Star in the night. 

 

 

Hilda Doolittle, "Pallinode, Book 1, Section 8" from Helen in Egypt. Copyright © 1961 by Hilda Doolittle.  Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.


Source: Helen in Egypt (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961)

Romantic Ireland's Dead and Gone

September 1913

By William Butler Yeats 

 

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save:

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were

In all their loneliness and pain,

You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair

Has maddened every mother’s son’:

They weighed so lightly what they gave.

But let them be, they’re dead and gone,

They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Word of the Day

sprezzatura, n.

sprɛtsəˈt(j)ʊərə/

Etymology:  Italian.
 

  Ease of manner, studied carelessness; the appearance of acting or being done without effort; spec. of literary style or performance.

1957   N. Frye Anat. Crit. 93   The quality that the Italian critics called sprezzatura.

1960   E. H. Gombrich Art & Illusion iii. vi. 193   Sprezzatura, the nonchalance which marks the perfect courtier and the perfect artist.

1960   Spectator 14 Oct. 569   The style governed by sprezzatura, dash and mandarin neoclassicism.

1973   Times Lit. Suppl. 14 Sept. 1063/2   Literary fashion and his own aristocratic sprezzatura demanded that he affect an unconcern.

 

Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". It is the ability of the courtier to display "an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them." Sprezzatura has also been described "as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance."

 

Not Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Jennifer Michael Hecht

 

                                                                I

Promises to keep was a lie, he had nothing. Through 

the woods. Over the river and into the pain. It is an addict's

talk of quitting as she's smacking at a vein. He was always

going into the woods. It was he who wrote, The best way

out is always through. You'd think a shrink, but no, a poet.

He saw the woods and knew. The forest is the one that holds

promises. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, they fill 

with a quiet snow. Miles are traveled as we sleep. He steers

his horse off the road. Among the trees now, the blizzard 

is a dusting. Holes in the canopy make columns of snowstorm, 

lit from above. His little horse thinks it is queer. They go

deeper, sky gets darker. It's the darkest night of the year.

                                                              II

He had no promises to keep, nothing pending. Had no bed

to head to, measurably away in miles. He was a freak like me,

monster of the dawn. Whose woods these are I think I know,

his house is in the village though. In the middle of life

he found himself lost in a dark woods. I discovered myself

in a somber forest. In between my breasts and breaths I got

lost. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I've got promises

to keep, smiles to go before I leap. I'm going into the woods.

They're lovely dark, and deep, which is what I want, deep lovely 

darkness. No one has asked, let alone taken, a promise of me,

no one will notice if I choose bed or rug, couch or forest deep. 

It doesn't matter where I sleep. It doesn't matter where I sleep.

 

 

 

Jennifer  Michael Hecht, "Not Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" from Who Said, 2013.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Leda and the Swan  

By William Butler Yeats

 

 

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

                                  Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

 

 

 

W. B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran, 1933.

Difference

By Mark Doty

 

The jellyfish

float in the bay shallows

like schools of clouds,

a dozen identical — is it right

to call them creatures,

these elaborate sacks

of nothing? All they seem

is shape, and shifting,

and though a whole troop

of undulant cousins

go about their business

within a single wave's span,

every one does something unlike:

this one a balloon

open on both ends

but swollen to its full expanse,

this one a breathing heart,

this a pulsing flower.

This one a rolled condom,

or a plastic purse swallowing itself,

that one a Tiffany shade,

this a troubled parasol.

This submarine opera's

all subterfuge and disguise,

its plot a fabulous tangle

of hiding and recognition:

nothing but trope,

nothing but something

forming itself into figures

then refiguring,

sheer ectoplasm

recognizable only as the stuff

of metaphor. What can words do

but link what we know

to what we don't,

and so form a shape?

Which shrinks or swells,

configures or collapses, blooms

even as it is described

into some unlikely

marine chiffon:

a gown for Isadora?

Nothing but style.

What binds

one shape to another

also sets them apart

— but what's lovelier

than the shapeshifting

transparence of like and as:

clear, undulant words?

We look at alien grace,

unfettered

by any determined form,

and we say: balloon, flower,

heart, condom, opera,

lampshade, parasol, ballet.

Hear how the mouth,

so full

of longing for the world,

changes its shape?

The Expiration

By John Donne

 

So, so breake off this last lamenting kisse,

    Which sucks two soules, and vapours Both away,

Turne thou ghost that way, and let mee turne this,

    And let our selves benight our happiest day,

We ask’d none leave to love; nor will we owe

    Any, so cheape a death, as saying, Goe;

Goe; and if that word have not quite kil’d thee,   

    Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too.

Oh, if it have, let my word worke on mee,

    And a just office on a murderer doe.

Except it be too late, to kill me so,

    Being double dead, going, and bidding, goe.  

Lethe

Lethe


Come to my heart, cruel, insensible one,
Adored tiger, monster with the indolent air;
I would for a long time plunge my trembling fingers
Into the heavy tresses of your hair;
And in your garments that exhale your perfume
I would bury my aching head,
And breathe, like a withered flower,
The sweet, stale reek of my love that is dead.
I want to sleep! sleep rather than live!
And in a slumber, dubious as the tomb's,
I would lavish my kisses without remorse
Upon the burnished copper of your limbs.
To swallow my abated sobs
Nothing equals your bed's abyss;
Forgetfulness dwells in your mouth,
And Lethe flows from your kiss.
My destiny, henceforth my pleasure,
I shall obey, predestined instrument,
Docile martyr, condemned innocent,
Whose fervour but augments his torment.
I shall suck, to drown my rancour,
Nepenthe, hemlock, an opiate,
At the charming tips of this pointed breast
That has never imprisoned a heart.

~ Charles Baudelaire

"Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art."

"The growth of the spirit is a tragic growth, which implies ever-increasing pain and destruction, but it nevertheless is a movement of becoming which marks a kind of progression. The failures are not just an alignment of identical absurdities, each one is enriched by the knowledge of the one that precedes it and the spirit grows by reflecting upon its successive aberrations."

~ Paul De Man, “The Double Aspect of Symbolism” in which he meditates upon the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé as a poetry of becoming versus Charles Baudelaire’s poetry of being and in this “contrast is summarized the double aspect of Symbolism.”

For you. All of it, always for you, my love.

Le Cygne

La vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous dechirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublie que hante sous le givre
La transparente glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!
Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre
Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre
Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligee a l'oiseau qui nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol ou le plumage est pris.
Fantome qu'a ce lieu son pur eclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mepris
Que vet parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Stéphane Mallarmé, 1885, published in La Revue Independante



The Swan

Will the virginal, strong and handsome today
Tear for us with a drunken flap of his wing
This hard forgotten lake which the transparent glacier
Of flights unknown haunts under the frost!
A swan of former times remembers that it is he
Magnificent but who without hope gives himself up
For not having sung of the region where he should have been
When the boredom of sterile winter was resplendent.
All his neck will shake off this white death-agony
Inflicted by space on the bird which denies space
But not the horror of the earth where his wings are caught.
Phantom whom his pure brilliance assigns to this place,
He becomes immobile in the cold dream of scorn
Which the Swan puts on his useless exile.

translation by Wallace Fowlie, 1953

Kafkaesque

“Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.”

― Franz Kafka

Eric Blair

“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.” 

“I do hope you'll forgive me if I overwhelm you with talk. When I meet somebody who's heard that books exist, I'm afraid I go off like a bottle of warm beer.”

― George Orwell

The Stain of Love

The stain of love covers
everything

Foolish one broken and bruised
the winged fiend

the foul jab
the artless arrow fling

Destroyer, Preserver
oh the sting.

The Siren's call
answered

I should have let it ring.

Read. Weep. Breathe.

Click here for four beautiful poems written by my friend TC. They are so achingly beautiful. I cried. Washed in tears I needed to shed.

A Love Song

Love Song

By William Carlos Williams 


 

I lie here thinking of you:—

 

the stain of love

is upon the world!

Yellow, yellow, yellow

it eats into the leaves,

smears with saffron

the horned branches that lean

heavily

against a smooth purple sky!

There is no light

only a honey-thick stain

that drips from leaf to leaf

and limb to limb

spoiling the colors

of the whole world—

 

you far off there under

the wine-red selvage of the west! 

 

Source: William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems (The Library of America, 2004)

To thine own self be true

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 

Polonius:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

Laertes:
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

― Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82

 

Love Requires Bravery

Don't you do that.
Don't you look at what I had for you and call it weak.
Not when you were the one afraid of it.
I stood there with my hands open,
my mouth bruised tender with supplication.
Don't you dare treat me like a victim of my own emotions,
like being moved to my knees by love
was a mistake that I regret.
I will go to my grave with the memory of the bravery in my bones.



― Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried

Three Poems by John Ashbery

My Philosophy of Life

By John Ashbery

Just when I thought there wasn’t room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea-- call it a philosophy of life, if you will. Briefly, it involved living the way philosophers live, according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones? 

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like. Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests, would be affected, or more precisely, inflected by my new attitude. I wouldn’t be preachy, or worry about children and old people, except in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe. Instead I’d sort of let things be what they are while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate I thought I’d stumbled into, as a stranger accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back, revealing a winding staircase with greenish light somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions. At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender, but something in between. He thinks of cushions, like the one his uncle’s Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great 
rush 
is on. Not a single idea emerges from it. It’s enough to disgust you with thought. But then you remember something 
William James 
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the fineness, 
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet 
still looking 
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it 
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and his alone. 

It’s fine, in summer, to visit the seashore. 
There are lots of little trips to be made. 
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler. Nearby 
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved 
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well, 
messages to the world, as they sat 
and thought about what they’d do after using the toilet 
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out 
into the open again. Had they been coaxed in by principles, 
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort? 
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought-- something’s blocking it. Something I’m 
not big enough to see over. Or maybe I’m frankly scared. 
What was the matter with how I acted before? 
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I’ll let 
things be what they are, sort of. In the autumn I’ll put up jellies 
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility, 
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well. 
I won’t be embarrassed by my friends’ dumb remarks, 
or even my own, though admittedly that’s the hardest part, 
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say 
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn’t even like the 
idea 
of two people near him talking together. Well he’s 
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him-- 
this thing works both ways, you know. You can’t always 
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself 
at the same time. That would be abusive, and about as much 
fun 
as attending the wedding of two people you don’t know. 
Still, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas. 
That’s what they’re made for! Now I want you to go out there 
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too. They don’t come along every day. Look out! There’s a big one...

And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name

By John Ashbery

 

You can’t say it that way any more.   

Bothered about beauty you have to   

Come out into the open, into a clearing,

And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you

Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange

Of you, you who have so many lovers,   

People who look up to you and are willing   

To do things for you, but you think

It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .

So much for self-analysis. Now,

About what to put in your poem-painting:   

Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.   

Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,   

Skyrockets are good—do they still exist?

There are a lot of other things of the same quality   

As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must

Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,

Dull-sounding ones. She approached me

About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was   

Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.   

Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head

Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something   

Ought to be written about how this affects   

You when you write poetry:

The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind

Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate   

Something between breaths, if only for the sake   

Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you

For other centers of communication, so that understanding

May begin, and in doing so be undone.

John Ashbery, “And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name” from Houseboat Days. Copyright © 1987

My Erotic Double

By John Ashbery

 

He says he doesn’t feel like working today.

It’s just as well. Here in the shade

Behind the house, protected from street noises,   

One can go over all kinds of old feeling,

Throw some away, keep others.

                                             The wordplay

Between us gets very intense when there are   

Fewer feelings around to confuse things.

Another go-round? No, but the last things

You always find to say are charming, and rescue me   

Before the night does. We are afloat

On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,

Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight   

That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams

As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.

I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.   

Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.   

Thank you. You are too.

John Ashbery, “My Erotic Double” from As We Know. Copyright © 1979 by John Ashbery. 

A Leaf Falls

[l(a]

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

E.E. Cummings

Two Words of The Day

numen, n.

Pronunciation:  Brit. /ˈnjuːmən/ , U.S. /ˈn(j)um(ə)n/

Inflections:   Plural numina Brit. /ˈnjuːmᵻnə/ , U.S. /ˈn(j)umənə/ , (irreg.) numena Brit. /ˈnjuːmənə/ , U.S. /ˈn(j)umənə/ ;

Etymology:  < classical Latin nūmen divine will, divine power, divinity, god < -nuere to nod (in e.g. abnuere, innuere, renuere; also as simplex in undated glosses) < the same Indo-European base as ancient Greek νεύειν to nod.

  Divinity, god; a local or presiding power or spirit.

1495   Trevisa's Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum (de Worde) xvii. cxlii. sig. Tiij^v/2,   And the wode that hyght Nemus hath that name of Numen: that is god, for therin Yoo made a maw met.

1582   S. Batman Vppon Bartholome, De Proprietatibus Rerum xvii. cxlii. f. 318/²,   The Woode that is called Nemus, hath the name of Numen, that is God.

1628   O. Felltham Resolves: 2nd Cent. xvi. sig. L ^v,   As if allowing them the name, they would conserue the Numen to themselues.

1634   T. Herbert Relation Some Yeares Trauaile 193   That what they first meet..they make their Numen and tutelary God for that day.

1662   H. More Coll. Philos. Writings (ed. 2) Pref. Gen. p. ix,   For it is the same Numen in us that moves all things in some sort or other.

1711   Ld. Shaftesbury Characteristicks III. Misc. ii. ii. 65   They madly dote upon Matter, and devoutly worship it, as the only Numen.

1790   Ann. Reg. 1788 Antiquities 120/1   Any local one [sc. idol], whose Numen and worship..was already established as local, would not do.

1835   J. Taylor Wks. I. 112   The Divine presence hath made all places holy, and every place hath a Numen in it, even the eternal God.

1874   J. Fergusson in Contemp. Rev. Oct. 765   In a cathedral town where all unite..in..adoring the sacred and historical numen of the place.

1910   Encycl. Brit. I. 760/1   To the primitive..the presence of the divinity was indicated by..landmarks; and from this..grew the theory that a numen might be induced to take up an abode in an artificial heap of stones.

1936   E. Underhill Worship x. 197   In the teaching of the prophets of the Reform of Josiah, and of the Exile, we find God recognized and adored..as the Numen, the Eternal One, the utterly Transcendent.., and as the giver of the Moral Law.

1994   C. DeLint Memory & Dream 329   You call them numena, yourself. Strictly speaking, a numen is merely a spiritual force, an influence one might feel around a certain thing or place.

noumenon, n.

Pronunciation:  Brit. /ˈnuːmᵻnɒn/ , /ˈnaʊmᵻnɒn/ , U.S. /ˈnuməˌnɑn/

Inflections:   Plural noumena Brit. /ˈnuːmᵻnə/ , /ˈnaʊmᵻnə/ , U.S. /ˈnuməˌnə/ ;

Forms:  17– noumenon, 19– noümena.

Etymology:  < German Noumenon (1783; plural Noumena ) < ancient Greek νοούμενον (plural νοούμενα , used by Plato in speaking of the Ideas, as perceived by the mind rather than the senses, e.g. at Republic 508c), use as noun of neuter of present participle passive of νοεῖν to apprehend, conceive (see noesis n.); introduced by E. Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher, in contrast to phenomenon n.

(in Kantian philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.

Kant uses the word in a Latin context in his De mundis sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et principiis (1770).

N.E.D. (1907) gives only the pronunciation (nɑu·mĕnǫn) /ˈnuːmənɒn/ /ˈnaʊmənɒn/ 

Chiefly Philos.

An object knowable only by the mind or intellect, not by the senses; spec. (in Kantian philosophy) an object of purely intellectual intuition, devoid of all phenomenal attributes.

1796   F. A. Nitsch Gen. View Kant's Princ. conc. Man 118   The conception we have of the world of Noumena, contains no knowledge of that world, but is a mere conception of demarkation [i.e. Grenzbegriff, or limiting concept].

1798   W. Taylor in Monthly Rev. 25 585   The phænomena of beauty, with respect to him [sc. Kant], rank among the noumena.

1803   Edinb. Rev. Jan. 267   We will admit to the transcendentalist his solitary noumenon and its separate functions.

1867   G. H. Lewes Hist. Philos. (ed. 3) II. 485   The peculiar merit of his doctrine is held to be that he distinguishes Phenomena from things in themselves, or Noumena.

1877   E. Caird Crit. Acct. Philos. Kant ii. xiii. 498   In a negative sense, a noumenon would be an object not given in sensuous perception; in a positive sense, a noumenon would be an object given in a non-sensuous, i.e. an intellectual perception.

1910   Encycl. Brit. XIX. 828/2   In the Kantian system the term ‘noümena’ means things-in-themselves as opposed to ‘phenomena’ or things as they appear to us.

1967   Listener 27 July 123/3   It was a revelation, a vision of the noumenon..and I fear that—for quite a long time—we will glory in the sensuous bliss of it all.

1993   B. Kosko Fuzzy Thinking (1994) xv. 279   It is not a Kantian noumenon or ‘thing in itself’ out there beyond the senses. It is a phenomenon in our senses and brain.

Shadows and Dust, A Farewell?

A Dream Within a Dream

By Edgar Allan Poe
 

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

A Prayer

I pledge:
to push hard to get better and smarter,
grow my devotion to the truth,
fuel my commitment to beauty,
refine my emotions,
hone my dreams,
wrestle with my shadow,
purge my ignorance,
and soften my heart—
even as I always accept myself
for exactly who I am,
with all of my so-called foibles and wobbles.

I pledge:
to wake myself up,
never hold back,
have nothing to lose,
go all the way,
kiss the stormy sky,
be the hero of my own story,
ask for everything I need
and give everything I have,
take myself to the river
when it's time to go to the river,
and take myself to the mountaintop
when it's time to go to the mountaintop.

~ Rob Brezsny

At the very least...

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”
~ Dalai Lama XIV

Sometimes...

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

~ Leonardo da Vinci

The Oracle of Delphi Advises: "Know Yourself"

"Delphi"

HIS SONG

Now I know
there is no before
nor after,
that all escape lies in the perfect
       contour;
now I know that the tale of his lust
is lies,
his allure has outwitted the flesh,
his lust
is pure-lust of the eyes
for beauty
in tangible things;
his words
fly with wings;

now I know
that all who have spoken ill,
who imperil
and threaten the god,
are holding their souls to the mirror,
light threatens, is active, is gone,
so it is with a song;

are you strong?
he is strong;
are you weak?
he prevails--but not you
to question
his power when you falter,
the blame is your own;
he knows not remorse nor repents,
he remains

faultless and perfect and whole;
he is;
you may burn,
you may curse,
you may threaten,
you may pour out red-gold on his
       altar,
he comes to no call,
not to magic,
nor reason;

his word
is withdrawn,
hieratic,
authentic,
a king's,
yet all may receive it;
he turns at a whim,
who answers no threat,
no call of the flute,
no drum-beat of the drum,
you may bargain
and threaten,
the prophet
is distant and mute;

yet one day
he will speak
through a child or a thrush
or a stray in the market;
he will touch
with the arm of a herdsman
your arm,
he will brush
with the lips of a brother
your lips;
you will flame into song,

that no merchant can buy,
that no priest can cajole;
he is here,
he is gone.

HIS PRESENCE

I foreswore red wine
and the white,
I was whole,
I foreswore lover and love,
all delight 
must come 
I had said,
of the soul;
I waited impassioned,
alone and alert
in the night;
did he come?

I foreswore child and my home;
I said,
I will walk,
to his most distant wood
for his laurel;
I wandered alone;
I said,
on the height, I will find
      him;
I said,
he will come with the red
first pure light of the sun;

I read volume and tome
of old magic,
I made sign and cross-sign;
he must answer old magic;
he must know the old symbol,
I swear I will find him,
I will bind
his power in a faggot,
a tree,
a stone,
or a bush or a jar
of well-water,
I went far
to old pilgrim-sites
for that water;

I entreated the grove and the spring,
the bay-tree in flower,
I was wise on my way,
they said I was wise,
I was steeped in their lore,
I entreated his love,
I prayed him each hour;
I was sterile
and barren
and songless.

I came back;
he opened my door.

HIS RIDDLE

In his power then
a toad,
or a flower,
I asked,
does it wither?
does he rise in the clod?
 does he die?
his riddle is painful,
his coming too facile,
if I serve him,
I lie
for years,
a field fallow
then furrows of rye, of wheat and of 
      barley,
spring up
all too early;

the wheat-ear
and the poppy,
nod, one with the lily,
iris
and anemone;
when my days are lonely,
he shuns me,
when busy,
he crowds through the throng
of my friends and my guests,
remember your vows, he says,
you are priest:

if I kneel at a shrine,
he says,
song is wine.

HIS ECSTASY

He is yours,
he is mine,
if we quarrel to hold him,
he goes;
his the red-lily,
the white-rose;
if you struggle to whet
your stylus,
if you hurry to melt
scented wax
for your tablets,
he knows
no pity;

you will write in the city
of fir-trees and loam,
in the fields
you will sing of the market;
you will be
among prophets,
a satyr;
when the note of the flute
calls to dance,
you will walk
drunk but not
with that mixed wine;
his tune is his own;
in his, not in your time,
ecstasy will betray you;
if he cares,
he will flay; 
if he loves,
he will slay you.



H.D. Collected Poems 1912-1944

"Love of My Flesh, Living Death"

By Lorna Dee Cervantes
 

after García Lorca

Once I wasn’t always so plain.

I was strewn feathers on a cross

of dune, an expanse of ocean

at my feet, garlands of gulls.

   Sirens and gulls. They couldn’t tame you.

You know as well as they: to be

a dove is to bear the falcon

at your breast, your nights, your seas.

   My fear is simple, heart-faced

above a flare of etchings, a lineage

in letters, my sudden stare. It’s you.

   It’s you! sang the heart upon its mantel

pelvis. Blush of my breath, catch

of my see—beautiful bird—It’s you.

"'Love of My Flesh, Living Death'" by Lorna Dee Cervantes, from From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger.

Time Does Not Bring Relief

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”

By Edna St. Vincent Millay
 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Time Does Not Bring Relief” from Collected Poems.

Mashup Messup Remix No More Redux

There were adventures, words, you're beautiful. Sometimes supportive, honest, intense intimacy. Too intense. Dancing in dreams. I thought you could hear me. To dance is to live. Kissing until you forgot your name. I've forgotten my name. I thought you could hear me. Messing up each others' lives. Denying the truth. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. What did it matter? Nothing else mattered. I thought you could hear me.

Musing

There is a beautiful old man,
a storyteller.
Sometimes I visit his dreams;
He calls me his muse.

He said once that for him
every sunset
is the color of my hair.
But that's not quite right.

He thinks I'm the ghost
of a long lost love,
who haunts him.
But I am not her;

I am alive.
His stories give me life.

And So It Is At An End

Tomb of Baudelaire

By Michael Palmer

 

At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. Then

it goes back into my throat drying my throat.

Miracle of Sicilian weeping. Bleeds in one of his many

dreams.

He announced that he was about to give a free ‘poetry

suicide’—a free ‘poultry recital.’ Everyone be-

lieved him.

_______   

At the end of the bridge is a state of prison. A

voyage will hide itself in your heart, bleeding from the   

left eye, the organ of sight. A voyage will hide

itself in someone unfamiliar like a heap of salt.

Mingled with the ordinary blueness would be waves of

foreheads shaped like cups.

She thought he could hear her.

To dance is to live.

_______   

Calm and order of an autumn sky. At the end of a

bridge is the state of prison, voyage of eye and   

throat full of the fear of night. Then all of winter

will enter like a red block, or like the calm and

order of an autumn sky.

139. Change of form. 139a. Change of colour.

122. Pitfalls. 136. Covers with a lid.

_______   

It doesn’t matter what you say but how you say it. By

pronouncing the words they become different. It comes

from above (pointing to his head). Then it goes all

sorts of ways down. Then it goes back into my throat

drying my throat.

Tonight it’s a certainty that the President will resign

(‘a virtual certainty’).

After the party they drove back to her house where she

sucked him off while he spoke to someone on the tele-

phone about the possibility of a job.

_______   

Plato’s warning against telling stories, mython

tina diēgeisthai.

Or the certainty of the ten fingers and ten feet. You

laugh a lot because during the first phase someone

who has taken hasheesh is ‘gifted with a marvelous

comic sense’ which contains its own opposite like the

end of a bridge.

The verb divides us evenly into two objects.

_______   

A pretty girl is like a melody.

You must be more confident now that you’ve won the

prize.

And if you listen. And if you listen hearing, if you   

listen thought. I’ve been thinking about the whole

trouble about how I got lost in the woods.   A man my-

self is lying in a house. Or alone among myself answering

a house. To be calm and voluptuous conjuring a house.

To be eligible for the house. If you listen image, if you

listen house. Ordinary calm and order of the house.

Coffee comma parentheses. Coffee parentheses order.

Coffee parentheses coffee. 131. Untrodden. 136. Covers

with a lid.

_______   

137. Combination. 138. Arrangement.

Plato’s admonition against telling stories about   

being, mython tina diēgeisthai.

Dear Apollinaire: We drove 500 miles to attend the

wedding of a relative. Our son was to be in the

bridal party. The wedding was to take place at 4 p.m.

on Saturday. On the Friday night before the wedding,

the bride and groom got into a fight and the groom

broke the bride’s nose so the wedding was canceled.

          What do we do with the wedding gift we were

going to take to the church? Who pays for the

tuxedo our son rented for the occasion and never got

to wear? And how about the motel bill?

 

 

“Tomb of Baudelaire” by Michael Palmer, from The Lion Bridge. Copyright © 1998 by Michael Palmer.

This is the way the world ends

The Hollow Men

~ T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
            A penny for the Old Guy


                       I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
   
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
   
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

   
                              II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death's dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind's singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.
   
    Let me be no nearer
    In death's dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer-
   
    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

   
                   III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man's hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.
   
    Is it like this
    In death's other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

   
                     IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
   
    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
   
    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death's twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

   
                           V

    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o'clock in the morning.
   
    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
                                   For Thine is the Kingdom
   
    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
                                   Life is very long
   
    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
                                   For Thine is the Kingdom
   
    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the
   
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
2. A...Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the "gunpowder plot" failed.
3. Those...Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante's "Paradiso".
4. Eyes: eyes of those in eternity who had faith and confidence and were a force that acted and were not paralyzed.
5. crossed stave: refers to scarecrows
6. tumid river: swollen river. The River Acheron in Hell in Dante's "Inferno". The damned must cross this river to get to the land of the dead.
7. Multifoliate rose: in dante's "Divine Comedy" paradise is described as a rose of many leaves.
8. prickly pear: cactus
9. Between...act: a reference to "Julius Caesar" "Between the acting of a dreadful thing/And the first motion, all the interim is/Like a phantasma or a hideous dream."
10. For...Kingdom: the beginning of the closing words of the Lord's Prayer.