By: Julia VinogradBecause I can't trust Godto look after the world and my friends.Worship sure, wandering forests of legendbraiding flowers from the Tree of Life in my hairwhile God's beard storms overhead.But not trust. People die. Everyone dies.It may be God's will but it's my won't.Sea turtles li
“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”—Albert CamusAlbert Camus viewed life with moral seriousness devoid of illusions, which led him into the realm of the absurd. What is the “absurd” that Camus wrote so profoundly about? Well, he defines the abs
By: Marianne MooreART: Gustave Courbet, Woman With a Parrot.Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe. And whence is courage: the unanswered question, the resolute doubt, — dumbly calling, deafly l
“America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.”― Henry MillerThe chances are that during this transition period of glo
By: Joseph Campbell“The Christ in you doesn’t die — it resurrects.”— Joseph CampbellEaster is calculated as the Sunday that follows the first moon after the vernal equinox. It is evidence of a concern centuries before Christ to coordinate the lunar and solar calendars. What we have to recognize is t
Photography: Ali Zolghadri. “However, the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.” — Thomas MertonIn solitude, we remain face to face with the naked being of things. And yet we find that the
“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” — BukowskiAs The Sparrow Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTo give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and hollow upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed with
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. —Mary OliverSubscribe nowIn 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 somethin
On the Tenth Anniversary of the Poet's Death“Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.”— Jim HarrisonThe great writer, novelist, and poet, Jim Harrison, died ten years ago today. Harrison is one o
Art is not a thing; it is a way.Art: CHRISTIAN VAN DONCKWe have art in order not to die of the truth. —Nietzsche“The world must be romanticized. In this way, its original meaning will be rediscovered. Romanticization is nothing but a qualitative realization of potential. The lower self is identified
By: Robinson Jeffers“Civilization is sick: stand awhile and be quiet and drink the sea-wind, you will survive.” —Robinson JeffersRearmamentText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThese grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass Makes pity a fool,
By: Harold BloomIf you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. Read more
By: Llewelyn PowysPhoto: Erik RittenberryIf something in the words I publish here weekly stirs the blood, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This space runs on conviction, not algorithms. Paid support helps keep this newsletter alive. If you’re drawn to what’s beneath the surface, I’d love to have
By: Erik Rittenberry"You have to create your own space which has a lot of silence in it and a lot of books.”— Susan SontagHarold Bloom, a noted literary critic, professor, and author who died in 2019, was perhaps the most enthusiastic and obsessive reader that we know of in history. At least recent
Great Passages by Kerouac on his BirthdayLet’s all just say “the hell with it!” and become really creative at last… free, basking, wandering, idly stopping here and there, tasting, enjoying.”— Jack KerouacSubscribe nowHappy birthday to Jack Kerouac—novelist, poet, and icon of the Beat Generation—who
All warfare is based on deceptionThe next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever.—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of t
By: Bertrand RussellI cannot pretend to know how writing ought to be done, or what a wise critic would advise me to do with a view to improving my own writing. The most that I can do is to relate some things about my own attempts. Until I was twenty-one, I wished to write more or less in the style o
By: Louise GlückText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDon’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively. I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted. It’s very s
By: Emil CioranPhoto: David IngrahamOne can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world. Individual loneliness is a personal drama; one can feel lonely even in the midst of great natural beauty. An outcast in the world, indifferent to i
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik Rittenberry“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.”― Federico FelliniThe Romanian philosopher, Emil Cioran, once wrote that ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen. That was long ago. If only
