The Spirit of the Staircase

“what you have to do as a writer: write day in and day out no matter what happens”

—William Stafford

Telling the truth as I saw it,

I became persona non grata:

The world's enormous certainties

Had no desire for those verities,

Threatening their insipidities.

Hence for forty wilderness years,

I threshed out learnèd others' words,

Winnowing clunkiness for pay.

I'd have it, the staircase spirit

Claims, no fondly celebrated way.

Obscurity in light of day

Is the best refuge from the fate

World loves to dish out to the great,

Rending its darlings in full flight.

Despite what happens, thus, I write.

It helps me pass the time of night.

Epigraph source: William Stafford interviewed by William Young, Paris Review 35 (Winter 1993).

Friday, December 5, 2025

Why I write the things I call poems

A reconstruction of Hekataios's world in Wikipedia.

“A boar was in the mountain and he did many terrible things to the Psophidians.”

—Hekataios of Miletus (ca. 550–476 BCE)

This is prose that time has turned into poetry. Everything's transforming itself, right under our noses. Boar and PsophidiIans are long gone, yet here they are.

In my closet hang neckties and a bespoke suit I'll never wear again. But I don't discard them either. They have their stories, and perhaps someone will want them again someday.

I buy my clothes now, when I do, mostly from Twice Is Nice. I prefer things that other people have broken in for me. They're more comfortable than new stuff. Cheaper, too, of course.

Others have also worn in my words for me. What if I had to invent them myself! Or buy them off the shelf at a word store—perhaps order them from Amazon. Heaven forbid!

    I walk most everywhere. Walking, I find things people have thrown out, even works of art, paintings that they have painted, or interesting objects that age, the long process of being something, has turned into art.

They may need a little cleaning, sanding, and staining, but they are undoubtedly art. Their previous owners failed to recognize them for what they were becoming and threw them out. Anything you put out on the sidewalk is up for grabs is the rule here!

    Contrariwise, many things that are called art aren’t, in fact, in my opinion. Although objects almost always become art of some kind if they last long enough.

“The tales of the Greeks are many and risible,” said Milesian Hekataios (“the Father of Geography") two and a half thousand years ago.

After lying around unloved for centuries, those ludicrous Greek tales became art—finally, even the very basis of Western civilization —if you can call what we have today civilization.

I write the things I call poems, not only because I enjoy doing so, but hoping that some day, maybe a long time from now, someone may find them on the kerb, so to speak, like them, pick them up, and take them home.

Hercules captures the Erymanthian boar that ravaged Psophis in Arcadia, depicted on a black-figured amphora from Etruria by the Antimenes painter (ca. 525 BCE). Louvre Museum, Paris.

On Hekataios of Miletus: see, https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/03/29/many-absurd-tales-some-fragments-froom-hekataios/

Thursday, November 4, 2025

Ingenium

Lacking ability,  a power greater than my own urges me on.—Ovid, Fasti 2.123 (8 CE)

Thus Ovid's Calendar, or Book of Days.

How to account for present ways?

Nothing lasting, nothing stays.

A sown whirlwind bears no fruit,*

Still, we must play it as it lays.

Folks' habitus is life's pursuit.

You will know them by their loot.

Much greater than a vibe, its root.

*Hosea 8.7, KJV: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.”

August–December 2025