100. [T]oday it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the preset moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent. –Simone Weil 200. Poets who died with…
40. The principal truth is this: latent in every act of complete reading is the compulsion to write a book in reply. The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in…
Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet, edited by Milton Hindus National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, 1984 Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing…
Unlike critics and “language” poets, I have no agenda at all: I read books. –Eliot Weinberger, Written Reaction: Poetics, Politics, Polemics
Samuel Beckett’s novel, Murphy, sold exactly six copies in its first year of publication. adapted, Eliot Weinberger, Written Reaction
Re: Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation:A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan Dear Rob and Lindsey, I’m grateful to you both for sharing your writing with me and through…
Ten years ago, I read Eliot Weinberger’s anthology, World Beat: International Poetry Now (New Directions, 2006). Looking back, I’m grateful, because that volume (re)introduced me to Israeli Aharon Shabtai, Iraqi Dunya Mikhail, and Chilean Nicanor…
Take the vows Follow the precepts Study the sutras Honor my teachers Keep quiet Be relentless –from novel-in-=progress, Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris
I’ve read it every day of my life since I was thirteen. It is, among the man-made artifacts, my primary source of knowledge of the stuff of this world and the next. Its limitless archive…
Chris Wallach and I are starting a reading group in 2015 with the aim of reading one of the translations each month of such poets as Wang Wei, Han-Shan, Li Ch’ing-chao, Tu Fu, Su Tung-p’o, Bo Juyi,…