By: Mary OliverIn creative work—creative work of all kinds—those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor re
By: Erik RittenberryArt: Victor Lacomte“I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!”— Marcel ProustAs winter
Walden Pond Revisited by N C WyethIt's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see… — ThoreauSubscribe nowText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be
By: Sergei YeseninArt: Ivan ShishkinText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLife is a lie with enchanting anguish, And that's what makes it so powerful: With its crude hand it writes Lethal letters. Every time I close my eyes, I say, "As soon as the heart is disturb
On the unmaking of Humanity“We may be in the process of creating something unique in human history: a global anticulture, unmoored from reality and increasingly at war with.”― Paul KingsnorthI don’t read many contemporary books these days, but Paul Kingsnorth’s new book, Against the Machine, is quit
By. Carl Jung“However true that much of the evil in the world comes from the fact that man in general is hopelessly unconscious, as it is also true that with increasing insight we can combat this evil at its source in ourselves.” — Carl JungSubscribe nowModern man has lost all the metaphysical certa
By: Charles BukowskiText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedthey called Céline a Nazi they called Pound a fascist they called Hamsun a Nazi and a fascist they put Dostoevsky in front of a firing squad and they shot Lorca gave Hemingway electric shock treatments (and y
By: Erik Rittenberry“If you want a teacher, try a waterfall. Or a mushroom or a mountain wilderness or a storm-pounded seashore. That is where the action is.”~ Terence McKennaThis past October, I set out on a little pilgrimage through the wilderness of North Georgia and Tennessee, carrying only a ru
By: Nikolai BerdiaevA will to genius is already possible because genius is will, first of all, a passionate will and desire for another kind of being… The will to genius is a courageous overcoming of “the world.” Genius is a positive revelation…of man’s creative nature, a nature which is “not of thi
By: Henry Miller“We create our fate every day”― Henry MillerThe great hoax which we are perpetuating every day of our lives is that we are making life easier, more comfortable, more enjoyable, more profitable. We are doing just the contrary. We are making life stale, flat and unprofitable every day
By: D.H. LawrenceWe shall now see the reading public dividing again into two groups: the vast mass, who read for amusement and for momentary interest, and the small minority, who only want the books that have value to themselves, books which yield experience, and still deeper experience. — D. H. Law
By: Wisława SzymborskaArt: Frederick Childe Hassam, 1914Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. —Wislawa SzymborskaSubscribe nowI’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gesture
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik RittenberryMcSorley’s Old Ale House, located in Manhattan’s East Village, is one of New York City's oldest and most storied bars. I made a trip there a few winters back to photograph this legendary place and to throw back a few pints with the locals. It was establish
By: Poetic Outlaws"Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. It is not necessarily a moralizer; it does not necessarily improve one’s character; it does not even teach good manners. It is a beautiful work of nature, like an eagle or a hi
Photo: Erik Rittenberry“The poetry of the earth is never dead.” — John KeatsSubscribe nowText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThere is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea,
By: John W. GardnerHenri Gervex, Café Scene in Paris, 1877The capacity to germinate is in the individual seed. And the source of creativity for the society is in the person. Renewal springs from the freshness and vitality of individual men and women… A society decays when its institutions and indivi
By: Erik RittenberryText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAll of us, thrown into the slaughterhouse of history, thrown into a world of assassinated Caesars and crucified Christs, into a woeful world of useless wars and mayhem, a world one madman away from nuclear
BY: CATHERINE DE LEONBy the time Jack Kerouac died at 47 (on this day) in 1969, he’d exiled himself from the 1960s youth culture he’d partly inspired with the likes of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. Bloated by booze and reactionary politics, he bore little resemblance to that matinee-idol handsome
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik Rittenberry"The wandering man becomes a primitive man in so many ways, in the same way that the nomad is more primitive than the farmer. ... I am a nomad, not a farmer. I am an adorer of the unfaithful, the changing, the fantastic. I don't care to secure my love to on
By: Charles BukowskiArt: Gabriel AndreiText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe nights you fight best are when all the weapons are pointed at you, when all the voices hurl their insults while the dream is being strangled. The nights you fight best are when reason
