Sensuous, gorgeous poetry and puzzles of strange symbols like a private language or obfuscating code, Wallace Stevens combined in his art English Romanticism and French Symbolism like the performance of a highwire act. His poetry is a stunning negotiation of balance between the forces of conservatism- here expressed as the literary tradition of Romantic … Continue reading Wallace Stevens, on his birthday October 2
Love and friendship, the recognition of the self in the other and of the Infinite in all human beings, the joy of the dance of life and the reverence for its gift, rapture and the abyss of light that is beauty; Rumi has been a guide and companion throughout my life. He’s gotten me … Continue reading Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, on his birthday September 30
Satire, Absurdism, the birth of Humanism, self-referential metafiction half a millennium before its time; with Don Quixote, the civilization of Europe awakens from its long slumber, shakes off the spell of church and state like a giant rousing itself from an evil poison, and begins to question itself again. Miguel de Cervantes ignited the Renaissance … Continue reading Miguel de Cervantes, on his birthday September 29
Madness, ruin, and death; T.S. Eliot’s poetry was a lamentation on the death of civilization in World War One, written with brilliance, a fragile beauty, and immense scholarship. In The Wasteland alone we have The Grail Quest and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Iliad, Dante, The Tempest, the Satyricon, the Call of … Continue reading T.S. Eliot, on his birthday September 26
Maurice Blanchot is a matador, wielding the nonteleological sword of Nietzsche against the atavistic barbarism and monstrous brutality of history and of authoritarian tyrannies, his words swirling like a cloak of diversion and concealment. And it is as a performance that I esteem his works classics of world literature; with dazzling wit, nimbleness, and grace … Continue reading Maurice Blanchot, on his birthday September 22
Combining the qualities of his idols who are also the subjects of his brilliant scholarship, the layered philosophical depth of Dostoyevsky and de Sade’s satires of power and eroticism of transgression brought to life with the lyricism and hallucinatory nightmares of French Surrealism, Viktor Erofeyev spins myths of postmodern decadence. His novel Russian Beauty, … Continue reading Viktor Erofeyev, on his birthday September 19
Strangeness and dreamworlds, nonsequitors and wordplay, fantasies which intrude into our reality and realities which fragment and grow in kaleidoscopic transforms of gorgeousness; William Carlos Williams jostles our expectations and unbalances his readers to make us see anew. Like so much of American poetry, his was built on the foundation of Walt Whitman’s poetics of … Continue reading William Carlos Williams, on his birthday September 17
As from a genie’s lamp Pierre Reverdy summoned Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, and a cinematographic poetics. His reimagination of literary and visual arts was crucial in the invention of the modern world; read therefore his poetry, and his novels The Thief of Talant and Haunted House. There are many interesting connections between Pierre Reverdy and … Continue reading Pierre Reverdy, on his birthday September 13
“Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.” “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never … Continue reading Leo Tolstoy, on his birthday September 9
“Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.” “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never … Continue reading Leo Tolstoy, on his birthday September 9
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 