"The Castniid moth and the Indecorous Eggar, to parasol and kerosene embark nonsequential to the Carcel lamps, with equal waste battering the votary. Useless this central shadow, loves delicate liberty incorporates through this amber trance of candlelight, desire inaccessible from behind some barrier of beautiful glass. Strike obsessively the preambling diaphane, the cluster of common hearts wounded by the volition of cresset, the futile courtship of moth and incandescence, an exact replication of my worthless seal that abides in embrace." --from Trompe L'oeil by Kristin Ryling (Firewheel Editions, 2000)

'If our present suffering ever leads to a revival, this will not
be brought about through slogans but in silence and moral
loneliness, through pain, misery, and terror, in the profoundest
depths of each man's spirit.' --Simone Weil, "The Responsibility
of Writers", in: The Simone Weil Reader

...the neurotic symptoms of physicalized conflict, surround
us in lieu of an intelligible world.

I would rather have 5 people tell me what they didn't like about
one of my poems, than hear the applause of 100 & not know
why.

   "Doomsday

The end of everything approaches;
I hear it coming
Loud as the wheels of painted coaches
On turnpikes drumming;
Loud as the pomp of plumy hearses,
Or pennoned charges;
Loud as when every oar reverses
Venetian barges;
Loud as the caves of covered bridges
Fufilled with rumble
Of hooves; and loud as cloudy ridges
When glaciers tumble;
Like creeping thunder this continues
Diffused and distant,
Loud in our ears and in our sinews,
Insane, insistent;
Loud as a lion scorning carrion
Further and further;
Loud as the ultimate loud clarion
Or the first murther."

--Elinor Wylie

I think about jail the way a medieval Christian must have
thought about hell, & as often.

In a way the 19c. bloating of the [book] market was a
temporary anomaly: television's audience arrived a few
generations before television did.