Gramsci’s famous motto, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” was taken from Romain Rolland who had taken it from Jacob Burckhardt’s description of the Greeks –which Nietzsche read to his friends at Sorrento in 1876. as perhaps a note on this post

the title of this post is from John Ash’s poem, “Second Prose for Roy Fisher,” page 54 in the volume, The Branching Stairs, published by Carcanet, Manchester, UK, although, England, might be more appropriate, in 1984, and refers to a “missile thrown without anger: speculatively, to see what would

While paranoia in everyday life asks questions it believes have terrifying answers, paranoid art knows the more terrifying (and inevitable) discoveries are further questions. For paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself. And so, paranoid art is the ultimate opposite, the urgent opposite, of complacent art. — Jonathan Lethem, Fear

Donald E. Westlake asks in his introduction to Charles Willeford’s The Way We Die Now… Well he starts out by saying “I knew Willeford some,” and knowing Willeford some he found him to be secure in his persona and to have attained a calm plateau that his character Hoke

I shall die without anyone knowing, There shall be a little blood by my mouth. The ones who don't know me shall say 'He definitely loved someone.' And the ones who know me shall say, 'Poor thing, he suffered a lot' But the real

Poetry magazine suggested, “John Ash could be the best English poet of his generation,” which prompted John to remark wryly, “Why ‘could’?” [- from here] I know I mix the present with the past, but that’s how I like it: there is no other way to go on. -