From her beacon-hand

“Liberty’s Flameout,”  by John W. Tomac

Learn and Advance

We can only learn and advance with contradictions.

The faithful inside should meet the doubtful. The doubtful should meet the faithful. Human slowly advances and becomes mature when he accepts his contradictions.

— Shams-i-Tabrīzī

Rachel Wiley: “Glory in Two Parts”

Rexroth — Literary Potemkin Village

“

Behind the façade of this literary Potemkin village, the mainstream of American poetry, with its sources in Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Jammes, Reverdy, Salmon, and later Breton and Éluard, has flowed on unperturbed, though visible only at rare intervals between the interstices of the academic hoax.

„

 

— Kenneth Rexrot

Disengagement, 1957

SNODGRASS: Poetry and Personality

Gil Scott-Heron: NY is Killing Me

Rachel Wiley: “The Dozens”

Rankine: Hagiography

“ 

The narrative of greatness in this country has been inflated to compensate for our narrative of shame.

„

— Claudia Rankine

Source

DARWISH: Longing

“

We are not guilty of our longing, but of the thousand reasons for our separation.

„

 

— Mahmoud Darwish

RILKE: Solitudes

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

You don’t say

We tell people they are enough, when we need to tell them they are more.

PARKER: Neither Bloody Nor Bowed

They say of me, and so they should,
It’s doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

— Dorothy Parker

Today’s Poem:

…I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
 

— Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

Just Give the World Love

Love’s In Need of Love Today [1976]

Stevie Wonder

 
Good morn or evening friends
Here’s your friendly announcer
I have serious news to pass on to everybody
What I’m about to say
Could mean the world’s disaster
Could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain

It’s that
Love’s in need of love today
Don’t delay
Send yours in right away
Hate’s goin’ round
Breaking many hearts
Stop it please
Before it’s gone too far