Spring and All by William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

[1923]

Stephen Crane, 1871 - 1900

The wayfarer 


Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said, 5
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last, 10
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

Herman Melville Quotations

*A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

*If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

*Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.

*Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

*When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

*To the last, I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Opening lines of Moby Dick:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.


*A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville

*A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

*A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

*Art is the objectification of feeling.

*At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

*Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

*Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.

*He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

*He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.

*Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

*Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

*I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

*In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

*Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

*It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

*It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Archibald MacLeish, 1892 - 1982

Poet, playwright, and statesman Archibald Macleish, born in Glencoe, Illinois (1892). He did his best writing in the 1920's and 30's, starting when he quit his job as a lawyer and moved his family to Paris to concentrate on poetry. He wrote The Pot of Earth (1925), Streets in the Moon (1926), and Einstein (1929). He wrote radio verse plays, including The Fall of the City (1937), Air Raid (1938), and The Great American Fourth of July Parade (1975).

Hal Sirowitz

Correcting an Unbalance

I never listen to commercials, Father said.
They're aimed at trying to sell me something
I don't need. If I do need it I want to know
that the need originated from me & not
from others. I don't want to end up with lots
of junk I'm only going to throw out. Half
the things in this house aren't used. We
only really need food, clothing, shelter,
& of course, each other. You do need me.
Don't you? Your mother never gives me
much opportunity to talk. I'm supposed to listen.
I'm able to talk to you, but it'd please me
if you said something once in a while.

Teaching Poetry to 3rd Graders by Gary Short

At recess a boy ran to me
with a pink rubber ball and asked
if I would kick it to him. He handed me the ball,
then turned and ran
and ran and ran, not turning back
until he was far out in the field.
I wasn't sure I could kick the ball
that far. But I tried,
launching a perfect and lucky kick.
The ball sailed in a beautiful arc
about eight stories high,
landed within a few feet of the 3rd grader
and took a big bounce off the hard playground dirt.
Pleased, I turned to enter the school building.
And then (I don't know where they came from
so quickly) I heard a rumbling behind me
full tilt. They were carrying pink balls and yellow balls
of different sizes, black and white checkered
soccer balls. They wanted me to kick for them.
And now this is a ritual—this is how we spend recess.
They stand in line, hand me the ball and run.
The balls rise like planets
and the 3rd graders
circle dizzily beneath the falling sky,
their arms outstretched.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women-to teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction. One persistent male student, although barred from our class, insisted on his rights. So he, Nima, read the assigned material, and on special days he would come to my house to talk about the books we were reading.

.................

I could not see my favorite mountains from where I sat, but opposite my chair, on the far wall of the dining room, was an antique oval mirror, a gift from my father, and in its reflection, I could see the mountains capped with snow, even in summer, and watch the trees change color. That censored view intensified my impression that the noise came not from the street below but from some far-off place, a place whose persistent hum was our only link to the world we refused, for those few hours, to acknowledge.

That room, for all of us, became a place of transgression. What a wonderland it was! Sitting around the large coffee table covered with bouquets of flowers, we moved in and out of the novels we read. Looking back, I am amazed at how much we learned without even noticing it. We were, to borrow from Nabokov, to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction.