I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


Comments Welcome!

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

“The gnomic medium of verse”

 

November 4, 2019  (I was 74)

 

“The gnomic medium of verse” 

-Colin Wilson, regarding W.B Yeats reducing

 prose-length ideas into poetry.

 

Assuming our legends as history

older folk dances become the way

folks dance in memorial ceremonies

prancing into the costumed past

 

But all who dance must know

no generation dances as the last

nor as the next to this

Historic truth is a mere act of dance

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