Michael Longley Quote

Einstein and Apple Pi

“Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.” Albert Einstein (born this day in 1879)

Hope everyone had a nice Pi Day … 3.14

Warfare in Homer's Iliad

In no manner do I glorify warfare, nor am I a devout pacifist. I have mentioned before that the prospect and reality of warfare both horrifies and fascinates me at the same time. I cannot fathom the fact that we have it in ourselves to utterly vanquish one another by means of brutality that darkly transcends the violence we see in the animal kingdom; and at the same time, the methods and strategic means by which we wage war, the competitive ebb and flow of it, intrigues my imagination. Devoid of any morbid fascinations with warfare, it utterly amazes me every time I read passages from Homer’s Iliad how descriptive and poetically visual he renders the violent acts of combat. One of my all time favorite quotes from the Iliad, as I have mentioned in the past, comes from Book 7, lines 275–281:

“War—I know it well, and the butchery of men

Well I know, shift to the left, shift to the right

My tough tanned shield. That’s what the real drill

Defensive fighting means to me. I know it all

How to charge in the rush of plunging horses—

I know how to stand and fight to the finish

Twist and lunge in the War-god’s deadly dance.”

Inasmuch as Homer’s descriptive passages are concerned, and with regard to the language he uses to make their violent acts visibly accessible, below are a hand full that I found to be especially impressive.

“With that he hurled and Athena drove the shaft and it split the archer’s nose between the eye—it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw and the point came ripping out beneath his chin. He pitched from his car, armour clanged against him, a glimmering blaze af metal dazzling round his back—the purebreds reared aside, hoofs pawing the air and his life and power slipped away on the wind.”

“Eurypylus, chasing Hypsenor fleeing on before him, flailed with a sword, slashed the Trojan’s shoulder and lopped away the massive bulk of Hypsenor’s arm … the bloody arm dropped to the earth, and red death came plunging down his eyes, and the strong force of fate.”

“… Agamemnon lord of men spilled the giant Odius, chief of the Halizonians off his car—the first to fall, as he veered away the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders, gouging his flesh and jutting out through his rids—he fell with a crash, his armour rang against him.”

“Antilochus winged a rock and smashed his elbow—out of his grip the reigns white with ivory flew and slipped to the ground and tangled in the dust. Antilochus sprang, he plunged a sword in his temple and Mydon, gasping, hurled from his bolted car face first, head and shoulders stuck in the dune for a good long time for the sand was deep—his lucky day—till his own horses trampled him down.”

“Meriones caught him quickly, running him down hard and speared him low in the right buttock—the point pounding under the pelvis, jabbed and pierced the blatter—he dropped to his knees, screaming, death swirling around him.”

Walt Whitman: The Amiable Poet

One of my all time favorite books to read is actually a series of lectures given by William James at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in the beginning of the twentieth-century. Collectively these lectures are called, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The lectures are a psychological exploration of various individual types of religious experiences and their commonalities. In his fourth lecture—a lecture which investigates individuals with a healthy-minded religious perspective—James appends commentary written by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke that pertains to the amiable disposition of America’s great poet, Walt Whitman. I found that this little nugget hidden away in all these lectures provided some wonderful insight into the kind of person this poet was, and I thought of no better place to share this insight than here: “His favorite occupation,” writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke “seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew the man,” continues Dr. Bucke, “it had not occurred to me that anyone could derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history, or against any trades or occupations—not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it.” Often we read the poems of poets without a clue of who these men and women were or are. I am, for my own part, almost always pleased to hear details about a poet’s personal background, especially when the details indicate (insofar as we can know) what kind of man or woman the individual was or is—and most especially if it imparts an idea of how poetic inspiration came about and swayed their musings. If you have any similar excerpts like the one above, excerpts that reveal a little bit more about a poet’s character, how they derive inspiration, or even just little facts about them that most people otherwise would not know, please, copy and paste them in the comments area. In fact, if you have any interesting tidbits that pertain to artists of any kind, we would love to hear about them—I will do the same and add more to the comments area as I learn little things about other poets as time goes by.

Existentialist, Karl Jaspers: A Quote

“To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.”

Karl Theodor Jaspers (1883 – 1969)

Born 137 years ago on this day, I first came to know Jaspers after having read his cross analysis of Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. I remember delighting in the fact that he was a sort of existential psychologist, and one who was willing to embrace theological considerations within his philosophical worldview.

Jaspers helped reinforced in me the idea that existentialism was by no means the philosophical endeavor of atheists (a claim latently implied by some of the French existentialists); and that, as Aristotle might say, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Socrates on Duty

[From a Facebook post four years ago on this date.] Saw this photo and was immediately reminded of an old quote by Socrates- even had to go find the book. 

"For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger, taking no account of death or of anything else in comparison with disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying."

Our Past as a Dream: Edgar Allan Poe

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” 

I cannot agree more with Poe’s statement here. Even within the stream of a single lifespan our distant past presents itself often as if it were a dream. One wonders: Is the life of the caterpillar a dream to the butterfly?

Let us entertain the thought that life persists after death (for myself, I believe it does). Just what will we remember of this existence? Will we remember the taste of the foods we enjoyed while we were here? Will we remember the cold sensation of winter breezes, the ancient auburn hue hovering over falling autumn leaves, the perfumed smell of loam-drenched trees after a summer thunderstorm, or the distant melodies of tiny birds greeting spring’s sunny advent?

One thing is certain, if life does persist after the death of our bodies, then Poe—at this very moment, wherever he is out there—knows the answer to our inquiry, and the truth of the above quote of his.

Edgar Allan Poe: January 19, 1809 — October 7, 1849 Happy 211th, dear poet

John McWhorter on Poetry: Meter vs Vers Libre

Poetry that tames language into tight structures and yet manages to move us comes off as a feat, paralleling ballet or athletic talent in harnessing craft to beauty. When poetry is based on a less rigorous, more impressionistic definition of craft, its appeal depends more on whether one happens to be individually constituted to “get it” for various reasons. The audience narrows: poetry becomes more like tai chi than baseball.

–Linguist, John McWhorter

Of Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke

La Piana & Bei Dao

La Piana: In 1989 you were exiled from China and you have been barred from returning since then. How has the experience of exile changed your relation to China and to the Chinese language?


Bei Dao: At first I thought I was being exiled only for a short time. But it got longer and longer. As a writer, the most important thing for me is to continue to write, no matter where I am. The last five years have in some sense been the most difficult of my life, although materially I am okay. But the sense of solitude is very difficult, so I feel that I have to continue to write. Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me. People have asked about my being cut off from the Chinese language. But writing is always a challenge anyway, whether you are writing in China or outside. The question is how are you going to respond to that challenge.

I Walk Alone

"I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, —
Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away;
Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street,
Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet."

Charles Baudelaire

Publius Ovidius Naso

“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”

Ovid, born this day in 43 BC

Look in Thy Heart

"Foole," said my Muse to me, "Looke in thy heart and write."
—Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella

 

Edgar Allan Poe and Words

My daughter asked me what my favorite quote was and I told her I have too many to pick from. She told me to pick one and I did, then I asked her what hers was … without missing a beat she said: “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” Wow! She told me these were the words of Edgar Allan Poe. Sweet! 

Poetry, Science, and Dirac

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

Paul Dirac

Of Truth

Preface to Lyrical Ballads - Quote

In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet’s thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man.

~William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Dream ...

Note that the complete poem is in the comments area.

An Anne Sexton Selection

Man of many hearts, you are a fool!
The clover has grown thorns this year
and robbed the cattle of their fruit
and the stones of the river
have sucked men's eyes dry,
season after season,
and every bed has been condemned,
not by morality or law,
but by time.

... very curious imagery from an extremely intense Anne Sexton poem, The Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts. If you want to read one of Sexton's more intense poems, click on the link and read this one. Let me know what you think, what you feel. I'll leave my opinion in the comments area as soon as I get a moment.