In Lieu of an Introduction

. . . he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly secured from damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet below the surface of the earth; and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact to some confidential friends, who in their turn were to send down the tradition to some discreet persons of the next generation; and thus . . . the knowledge that here and there the truth lay buried . . . and was to rise again in some distant age . . . —this knowledge at least was to be whispered down from generation to generation.

—Thomas De Quincey, “Walking Stewart”

Livius Andronicus: An Odyssey is peregrinatory, and an Iliad, no doubt, genocidal, but an Idyssey is gestational as regards idiosyncrasy--or oddness.

Dr Johnson: Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

Mrs Thatcher: There is no such thing as a womb with a view.

Ben Jonson: By G—, ’tis good, and if you like’t, you may!

—Petrus Tornarius, Imaginary Conversations

Snatched from the great gulf, like oysters by bibliomaniac pearl divers, . . . they first rot, then what was pearl . . . may be seen as such, and continue as such.

—Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, ch. 5, “The Fourth Estate”

A Beating of Wings

You distance yourself from me, time,

And wound me with your beating wings.

How could my mouth forget a line?

What's to do about quotidian things?

I have no lover left, no home,

No place to reorder my life.

The things that summon me to strife

Grow rich and cut me to the bone.

Freely imitated from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in his Neue Gedichte (1907), who entitled it simply "The Poet":

Der Dichter

Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde.

Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag.

Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde?

Mit meiner Nacht? Mit meinem Tag?

Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus,

Keine Stelle auf der ich lebe

Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe,

Werden reich und geben mich aus.

"No ideas but in things," says William Carlos Williams; I dedicate these lines, then, to my old wristwatch, bought at a Roses discount store for $8.99 circa 1989/90, but now no longer wearable, alas, and running down its final battery. Ave atque vale.

Friday, September 4, 2026

The Flower beneath the Foot

And suddenly the Angel of Death passed by and the brilliant season waned.

—Ronald Firbank, The Flower beneath the Foot

Spare the brilliance of the season,

Somebody Something with your tricks.

America had good reason;

It still survives—is there to fix,

But must be scrapped if hope is dead.

What might be left if it were gone?

The sun shines brightly up ahead.

There's golf, you know, Somebody said,

Whatever else the sun shines on!

Don't look at us—our plan is sound;

We’ll have a shelter underground

And will get through the "coming crash."

When all else comes to grief, there’s cash!

Pity though the hopeful young

Who’ll never see their battle won;

Will never gaze on land and sea,

And sigh, “All this, maybe, was meant for me!”

Thursday, September 3, 2026