Show, Don’t Tell
Americans are like two-year olds---
dazzled---
by bright pictures
of apples, dollars, guns, cars,
breasts and testicles.
The Poetry of Joe Bolton
Joe Bolton was born in 1961 in Cadiz, Kentucky. In 1990, shortly after completing his master's thesis, he committed suicide. It is estimated that Bolton wrote nearly 500 poems in the 80's, most of them while attending writing programs at Western Kentucky University, the University of Florida, and the University of Arizona. He published three …
Passion and Apathy
Wake up naked, alone, under a cosmos of faintly glowing star stickers. I am in Betsy’s bed. My bad. But where is she?
“this own-lee”
That coffee you drank, you’re sort of half-wondering whether it will go better with champagne than toothpaste and orange juice, but you can’t put too much thought into it now as there is a hungry demon on your windowsill doing business as a nut-obsessed squirrel you’d like to photograph. Besides, the meat of your proposal …
Virginia Hamilton Adair
"Anybody that could write a serious poem on the three blind mice … I just love it."
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions and Literature & Existentialism
Unlike many writers who oozed existential philosophy from every drop of ink that bled on their manuscripts, Jean-Paul Sartre does not shy from submitting a definition of existentialism.
Richard Ford
"I didn't want to write a half-assed book. I wanted to write a book that was in your face about what this book wanted to be in your face about and live with the consequences myself."
Tao Te Ching, by Lao-Tzu (excerpts)
Chapter 2: Verse 1. All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skillful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what the want of skill is. Chapter 8: Verse 1. The highest …
Self-Reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe …
The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James (Excerpt)
Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most "good" is not always most "true," when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human …
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