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Really Writing
When you’re in the room writing, there are a lot of people in there with you. Your teachers, friends, writers from history, critics…and one by one, if you’re really writing, they walk out. And if you’re really writing, you walk out. —Adapted from a talk with Philip Guston Note: Guston’s original comment concerned not writing, but painting. You can read it at Jim Finnegan’s wonderful, aphoristic blog, ursprache. In the photo, Guston is shown working on mural for the WPA Federal Art Project in connection with the 1939 New York World’s Fair.Read More
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Excerpts from a Manifesto (1924)
I put this post together last year, while writing my annual Adventures in Reading post. Then I forgot to post it! So, for your reading pleasure, a few excerpts from “Surrealism Manifesto,” by Yvan Goll (October 1, 1924), translated by Nan Watkins and published in full in The Inner Trees: Selected Poems of Yvan Goll, edited by Thomas Rain Crowe. Much wisdom here! Reality is the basis of all great art. Without it there is no life, no substance. Reality is the ground under our feet and sky over our head.Read More
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Too Lazy for an Essay
I am content to be a poet who deplores contentment in poetry.Read More