A brilliant little book and photo essay by Japanese author Natsuki Ikezawa and photographer Seiichi Motohashi about the people of Iraq. In the fall of last year Ikezawa travelled around Iraq visiting archeological sites and meeting the people. It makes for a profound meditation on the prospect of war against this nation.
The book is free to download in .pdf
Walter Bynner: Architect of the Spectra Hoax
Opus 101
He not only plays
One note
But holds another note
Away from it –
As a lover
Lifts
A waft of hair
From loved eyes.
The piano shivers,
When he touches it,
And the leg shines.-Witter Bynner
(courtesy of Golublog)
Poems about War: Caterina opens a new blog as an antidote to cheap sentimentalism. Thanks Caterina!
“Anger diminshes our power to distinguish right from wrong, and this ability is one of the highest human attributes. If it is lost, we are lost. Sometimes it is necessary to respond strongly, but this can be done without anger. Anger is not necessary. It has no value.”
— The Dalai Lama, How To Practice
Invisible Fathers
Perhaps they are here.
Something is.Something trails you
sneaking from doorway to doorway
like a cheap detective.Something you can’t shake:
a feeling with skin.You turn around.
You turn and turn and turn
dancing on the street cornerlike a compass needle
gone crazy.
A poetry collection online. A gem plucked from my referrer logs. Want another? Check this one out:
The Story
The story that forgets to tell itself is no less a story than the one that begs to be told nor is that reluctance a virtue but, simply, a posturing for that attention each story craves. What a sorry sight: a man sits at his desk trying to write a story. He’s been there two, perhaps three hours knowing there is no story to write, and that any story that does get written will be the activity’s story, not his. The typewriter hums distractedly as a man does busy at some menial task. He needs an electric typewriter because he has confused the weary expression “plugged in” with the literal fact of being plugged in. He believes the network of wires of which his fingers are an extension actually is a conductor of words. It’s all a silliness out of Cocteau’s radio and should have been left in that place. The typewriter is humming “It’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place except you and me.” But now he is hearing the voice of the woman singing in the bedroom softly and seductively, almost to herself. Had she forgiven him their quarrel or was she mocking him, bored, peeved at placing second to that machine? Weary, unable to locate inspiration, he rose from the defeat from which he fashioned pleasure, defeated in his heart again.