Where do you derive your principles of poetry from?

In 'Breaking the body' essay in the Bars of Atlantis, Durs recognises that George Buchner derives his principles of poetry from physiology. Others before him from religion or ethics.



In 'the Poem and its secret' - Philosophy could only theorize about the imagination. Its practitioners were virtually clueless about its uses and abuses.

Metaphor

Not knowing another language, culture we miss out on many similes and metaphors which we would have otherwise seen.
Being in an unfamiliar place, listening to an unknown language, attentive to all that goes on.
Of the times spent with friends, each recalls different things.

Hume for lunch

Hume - How do we know a bread is nourishing other than from past experience?
Why elasticity, gravity?

Walking on a pavement, I see a stop sign and realise that this symbol will mean the same thing always. There is no hidden thing in it.

Chose reading him over walking even in a good breeze.

Elasticity allows for a thing stretching to become an another still retain its original shape and content. Stretching our mind to believe in the mutability of things.

Getty Villa

While reading og the compluvium and impluvium, I was reminded of my uncle's house in a village, which had such a thing. Sure enough, it had a grill too like the olden Roman times.

Imagine paitings on your
wall

Sticks and Bears

A sloth bear grabs a branch
with all its limbs in a forest
Tamed, knocking door to door
it hugs a stick
a bride on her way to new home

Letter to Marge Piercy

Stone, Paper, Knife

Dear Ms Piercy

tears as an act of aggression in Ragged ending
make me wonder why men dont cry.

When I lingered at
What you have abandoned
is not behind but far ahead
where we shall never
now arrive

the ending of your poem Being Left

I understood it more.

Reader

Size a nation

As kids, we have read how Japan did a turn face after the war. In all these mentions, they do not tell you that it is a small country. And because of the size, it is easier to work constructively like in Singapore.
Global Sociology

Volatile Karma

Can all the world's
wrongs be absolved
by asking
those who suffer
willingly

Sin eaters

Penns Woods West

Penns Woods West

The introduction celebrates 'the Good land'
Ed Peterson's teacher Miss Murphy made him see the importance of taking care of the land - Penns Wood west
The book begins with a good look at the Leo constellation that augurs spring.
Sugar camps with the maple sap collection portray the sweetface of seasons of February and March
Thorn creek - In all the walks, the description of the colt foot blossoms, bluets evoke the place in front of us. With the sunlight and shade variations on the kind of blooms it is a 3D experience.
After the hike to Mt Davis, the author looks to the skies and reads the clouds. In his cloudwatching, he talks about what the cirrus and cumulus clouds mean for tomorrow's weather. all the great poets had something to say about the cumulus.

Aug 6,2010

Country Driving

To know more about China, I picked the book 'Chasing China: How I went to China in search of a fortune and found a life'. It has the mayhem of the traffic and the author spending time at a house maintained as a part hotel. I didnt get too far with that. I did not expect much with this book too.
'Country Driving''s main appeal is in that the author knows the language of the place. In his travels he takes us along to different geographical places - loess, desserts. While he is covering all this ground tracing the Great Wall, nothing escapes his attention, the narrow alleys of hutong or the yaodong, cave homes.

Aug 12,2010

cotidiano

I was reading Spanish 'Nuevo testamento' aided with an English version of it and a bilingual dictionary. When I came across 'pan cotidiano' - daily bread. I was reminded of quotidian. This made me happy.

Happiness that follows from a sense of achievement.
Life has promise.
Plato on Happiness

Tree and a Machine

An acacia tree with its trunk making its ways in three directions like a circle of girls holding hands and swaying. This lack of edges is so soothing. Its a break from maquin - machines. But the strangeness of machines is not the lack of their soul. Down the line it aids people.

Travel light

Look at any picture
Imagine yourself in it
Now turn to night
and see how
theres the object
in front of you.

Might there not be another
light
that can show more
than what you see
in the day

Womb

We come from the same
deep cave
we care
fed from the same
placenta
theres a phantom cord
that holds us
that tugs me back
to this world
each time I want to
free fall

Austerity

plans in
Spain
Romania

Shouldnt it
be by choice?

Pursuit

of hapiness
ranks with freedom

right to happiness
right to define
happiness

Intersection

is where we meet
where we depart

is where we stop
where we

check the pulse
declare the patient
dead or alive

Metropolitan seminars in art

Portfolio 4. Abstraction
John Canaday

I didnt know that Picasso excelled at traditional ways of painting too. that Cezanne did abstract painting. Pines and rocks (Fontainebleu)

Pricing

1. regulates addiction

Words

Will we ever be free of them?
I dont will so.

Gloria Naylor, in the essay The Meanings of a word writes about subtle things of how sometimes we mishear words,how we misinterpret and misunderstand them.

The art of seeing

Helen Keller asks, "How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note?" in her essay Three days to see
I wonder how I missed the tower on the end of a corner building. I have even wished to dine on the rooftop of that building. I could bet 100$ that this conical roof wasnt on the building.
Having walked for years, I have still missed glaring details of buildings.
This time I did notice that US Airways center building has brick wall frame around glass on the west side while a building to its south has it reverse on the south face. I mention this to remember the play of material with bricks and glass. I saw a brick building recently and thought it could not be done well in any other thing. That being said, there are some people who get bored of those things and ask architects anything but that. And thats how Frank Gehry gave metal buildings.
When I sketch, I do see more details.
A View from the Bridge

Diversity

In the evening, all of us, kids in the hostel sat in a line by the wall. Sisters, the nuns at the convent school distribute the snacks. We have no idea of what is going to be the catch of the day. This wont last long. The snacks have been collected (forced to give away) from the kids who brought them from home after vacation. This was necessary. There were other kids- Chenchus who probably didnt bring any and many others who brought less. Imagine the cauldron with all sweets and savory snacks from different households.

The corner store

In this short excerpt from an essay by Eudora Welty, few lines that sum up a store's fascination.

"It was up to you to remember what you came for, while your eye traveled from cans of sardines to tin whistles to ice-cream salt to harmonicas to fly-paper(over your head, batting around on a thread beneath the blades of the ceiling fan, stuck with its testimonial catch)."

As a kid, the store that I frequented had a lady who was very tall like a Greek sculpture. Later she had a baby too. Statue of Liberty.

Between ends and beginnings

The carrots in 'Chicken cashew salad' at Cheesecake factory. A big fan of Broccoli. Even I dont understand this. But I wasnt always like this. There was a time when I had to give up on rice. Is that possible? And before that I had to eat all raw vegetables. Siddha Samadhi Yoga. And that wasnt the only change. I had to move for college.
When I joined this program my parentd would have thought that it will do me good. A healthy student can face college better. The ending of the program just about coincided with the beginning of college. Such being the schedule, feeling weak from the lack of comfort food, I was not up to battling the anxiety of coping in a college where there would 424 students who have proved themselves to be better than me.

All in a day

Pittsburgh Steelers ABC: My First Alphabet Book (My First Alphabet Books (Michaelson Entertainment)) 

Last Monday I was upto many things.
Least of which was dropping a car key into the recycle dumpster before a license extension task.
Once there my eyes scanned at 'when driving at 65 miles per hour, to halt it takes a distance longer than a football field'.
This line is from Saturday Evening Post, January/February , 1975 included in Patterns Plus