Our Good News Is… : A Summer Writing Course
“We often ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Denying Adorno
I have no idea that at the same time in the United States of America, Theodore Adorno has come out with the sweeping statement that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. A meaningful, powerful…
Keep Going
He used to say,“It is not your dutyTo complete the work, But neither are you freeTo desist from it…” –Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot, 2.21
Jack and Allen
This website is indebted in a variety of ways to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. For example, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from their one-liners such as “Be in love with yr life” (JK)…
Chant and Be Happy!
Chant when I go downstairs in the early morningChant as I walk around the block each day with radiant smile at 20 degrees Chant and remember all my misjudgments and chant not to repeat themChant…
In Appreciation
“Her records were the first evidence that one did not fight alone. It was playing of such uprightness, to put it into the moral sphere. There was such a sense of repose that had nothing…
Plus ça change, plus …
How yet resolves the Governor of the town?This is the latest parle we will admit.Therefore to our best mercy give yourselvesOr, like to men proud of destruction,Defy us to our worst. For, as I am…
Joanie’s Teacher
“Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant.” –Moshe Feldenkrais
Inspiration for the Day (or Decade)
If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised…