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from The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century by John Burnside, 2019—from Rilke to … Trump’s poem

Just below us, on a rocky outcrop, sits the Burgkirche of Raron, one of a series of extraordinary buildings (churches, town houses and daring bridges over terrifying precipices) designed by the gifted sixteenth-century architect Ulrich Ruffiner. On its own merits the church is well worth a visit, though it is
Simon Taylor 29 Aug 2024

Street Musicians (for Tassos Denegris) by John Ash

There must be mountains inside those clouds and the sea still exists where the port once was. A bitter rain attacks the last, Byzantine well-heads, and the custodian eyes you suspiciously as if you might steal that acanthus fragment or postcard of a saint— as if understanding were possession. The
Simon Taylor 28 Aug 2024

30 days to awaken the writer within …

… is a threat. Daniel Handler recommends the personal canon, not cannon. (“A cannon is a mounted weapon used for firing heavy ammunition, usually spherical projectiles. Canon refers to either a group of works in a particular area of study or art or a collection of religious rules.” source EasyBib, a
Simon Taylor 28 Aug 2024

After Utopia [great title, Judith N. Sklar’s]: The Decline of Political Faith, 1957, pub. date. gives us a lingering decline and utopia a long after

Shklar presents Johann Gottfried von Herder, the first Romantic: We know that we exist, and that God is, not because we think, but because our whole being tells us that it is so. We are directly and inevitably conscious of existence, just as we cannot even imagine nothingness. There can
Simon Taylor 01 Aug 2024

upon arrival

Asked to write a short intro for Avi Duckor-Jones, I found a column he wrote on the Affirm Press website just over a year ago for the publication of his novel Max. Called “The battle of living in duality,” it deals with the duality of being the son of a
Simon Taylor 25 Jul 2024

the biggest IT outage in history deserves a long title (Meganets: How digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities) and a short quote …

It is risky to outsource human thought to machines that lack the capacity for such thought. — David B. Auerbach, Meganets, 2023, p. 239
Simon Taylor 20 Jul 2024

 “Just as you’ve destroyed your life, here in this / small corner, so you’ve wasted it through all the world.”

death returns to the sea … is the other lyric running through my mind. I imagine it, am I imagining it?, sung, on the album September Songs, produced by Hal Willner, of Kurt Weill’s songs. “Just as you’ve destroyed your life …” is C.P. Cavafy’s. (“In these dark
Simon Taylor 12 Jul 2024

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