Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something(All The King’s Men)
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful.
BeautyIs the fume-track of necessity. This thought Is therapeutic.If, after severalApplications, you do not findRelief, consult your family physician
And the testicles of the fathers hang down like old lace
Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.
They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren’t any other people there wouldn’t be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.
If you want him to do it, you’ve got to change the picture of the world inside his head.
The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.
But, the stultifying lingo aside, the question I raise is a vital one for us all, we are all stuck with trying to find the meaning of our lives, and the only thing we have to work on, or with, is our past.
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.
Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.
. . . for meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event. Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself. The meaning. But we cannot do that. For it is the motion which is important.
The best luck always happens to people who don’t need it.
When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can’t get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.
He would get up and go out into a world which seemed very unfamiliar, but with a tantalizing unfamiliarity like the world of boyhood to which an old man returns.
There ain’t anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain’t built that way.
Sometimes sleep gets to be a serious and complete thing. You stop going to sleep in order that you may be able to get up, but get up in order that you may be able to go back to sleep.
For what blessing may a man hope for butAn immortality inThe loving vigilance of death.
You are dehydrated,” I said. “The result of alcohol taken in excess. But that is the only way to take it. It is the only way to do a man any good.
The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making his life meaningful. And in the end the poem is not a thing we see – it is rather a light by which we may see – and what we see is life.
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.