Today’s One-Liner (#37)

One advantage of knowing the classics is that no matter the what situation you might find yourself in, you’ll remember that someone else was there before you. –Kenneth Rexroth, quoted in Anne Waldman and Laura…

Amongst My Books

“… at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books…”—Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson “Amongst”  could…

Books Inspected This Afternoon

Arthur Waley, Confucius: Analects Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems and Translations Ai Weiwei and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ai Weiwei Speaks David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Tu Fu  Ezra Pound, Confucius:…

With Gratitude for Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth, 100 Poems from the JapaneseNew Directions, 1964 Dear EJ Kenneth Rexroth—poet, polymath, anarchist, and pacifist—is a fine guide to Chinese and Japanese poetry.  He provided six books of translation for the enrichment of…

Poets/1

Viva Tang Ten thousand and two texts A thousand and three tweets 644 Facebook status updates 87 cell phone messages save or delete Enough already! Take a deep breath Leave behind the technology And go…

Forty Years of Letters

Bill Morgan,  I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career:  The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg —1955-1997 I read a lot of Ferlinghetti in the 1980s, and loads of Ginsberg…

Summer Poetry Reading List 2014

Ernesto Cardenal, Apocalypse and Other Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Flights of Victory/Vuelos de Victoria Ernesto Cardenal, From Nicaragua with Love Ernesto Cardenal, Golden UFOs: The Indian Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Psalms Ernesto Cardenal, The Doubtful Strait Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour…

For Eileen

The mists rise over The still pools at Asuka. Memory does not Pass away so easily. –Yamabe no Akahito, 8th century translated by Kenneth Rexroth