Konstantin Leontyev and Byzantism. Henry Lawson, Past Carin’. Hart Crane. Tomas Tranströmer. Supply chain fragility. Alexander I and the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. Every poet is an émigré. Nobel Peace Prize misses the point.
Tag Archives: poetry
Flowers of the Mind 3. Asvina (week 1) 2021
Wallace Stevens. COVID zero fanatics. The Novel is dead. Saint Galgano. Louise Glück. How democracies die. Solzhenitsyn.
Flowers of the Mind 1. (září, week 3, 2021)
Michael Oakeshott, Marina Tsvetaeva, Elena Shvarts, Russian Ark, St Petersburg
Dr Cogito endures Melbourne’s fifth … and sixth and seventh… lockdown
I am reposting this post from maybe May or June. In Melbourne now all the weeks bleed into one. Do not forget us, world – we were a people with soul once, and a few of us can still find the courage to resist. **** Dr Cogito, a persona I know who inhabits the ghostContinueContinue reading “Dr Cogito endures Melbourne’s fifth … and sixth and seventh… lockdown”
Watch my poetry readings on YouTube
I have begun a YouTube channel, The Burning Archive, where I will feature short videos of my writing and interests in culture, history and literature. To begin the channel I am releasing a set of five poems that I have read from each of the fascicles of Gathering the Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems,ContinueContinue reading “Watch my poetry readings on YouTube”
My collected poems
I am very pleased to announced that I am publishing my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems, 1996-2020 in both a print and e-book edition. You can purchase through online retailers such as Amazon and Booktopia. You can buy the print edition from Amazon here and the e-book edition from Amazon here.ContinueContinue reading “My collected poems”
A task: from Milosz to me
This morning I read this poem. “A task” by Czelaw Milosz, chosen randomly from his collected poems. It reminded me of the post I made on reading this poem initially in 2017. It resonated again today amidst so much degraded public discourse. I will add to this repost the closing paragraph of the other poemContinueContinue reading “A task: from Milosz to me”
The poet W as comedian
Wallace Stevens is a poet of comedy, and comedy relieves the distress of tragic history. Comedy reconciles the restless, Romantic imagination with the present and the real. When the world falls apart, one must cultivate one’s garden, but also tell some comic stories over dinner. It is comedy, not alone but inseparable, that moves the infinite conversation on.
Three tankas on my garden
Over the last difficult year my garden has been a constant companion and a source of renewal and strength. Here are three tankas composed in thanks for my garden. I Freshly dug earthOpens its arms for rain.Here dreams were planted.Yesterday, my flowers died.Tomorrow, my ferns will grow. II Plants await plantingAtop a stone ledge besidePreparedContinueContinue reading “Three tankas on my garden”
A revelation from Rumi
This morning I read some poems from Hafez (c 1315-1390) that celebrated love and wine and striving of a mysticism. Notwithstanding the art, the sentiments left me cold, and so I recovered from an earlier post this different sentiment of Rumi that speaks more to my sense of the spirit of the times: “Sometimes theContinueContinue reading “A revelation from Rumi”
Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments
The story of Ezra Pound’s mind cannot be told in plain and simple affirmations. Three twisted trees grow from this mind in all accounts: poetry, unavowable politics, and madness. They stand tangled and tragic in a strange, haunted copse that very few today will see as an holy trinity. The iconoclasts of today’s fanatical cancelContinueContinue reading “Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments”
Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche
In April 2017 I wrote the following post in an experiment, a form of improvised association and regathering of the fragments of my mind. I will write some more of these kinds of posts soon. Please enjoy. Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche (originally posted 23 April 2017) After a morning during which I searched my ravagedContinueContinue reading “Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche”
13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat
In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays – on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I wrote it still aiming to revive a career in the bureaucracy, but perhaps gripped by the fates to know, as I know with high resolution tonight, that poetry andContinueContinue reading “13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat”
Report from a besieged city (Melbourne)
Today 12 February, Melbourne and all the citizens of Victoria have been thrown, with eleven hours notice, again into a futile, fickle lockdown that is not founded in evidence of effectiveness. The reason? Five people who have tested positive and are assumed to have acquired the traces of the virus locally when over 24 000ContinueContinue reading “Report from a besieged city (Melbourne)”
Cantos from a cage
Today I am reposting this reflection on the true heritage of Ezra Pound, Cantos from a cage, which I originally posted in April 2018. I have borrowed from the local library, Daniel Swift The Bughouse: the poetry, politics and madness of Ezra Pound (2017) that tries “to make our peace, as best we can, withContinueContinue reading “Cantos from a cage”
This grey spirit seeking a sinking star
But more so than the moulted carapace of governing that lies at my feet, I connected to the adventurer of the spirit, weakened by age and misfortune, that Tennyson saw in Ulysses. It was this grey spirit that I turned to this morning for the courage to continue.
Taking time with Szymborska
I have established several practices for the New Year to make it a more mindful, culturally enriched and satisfying year than the plague year of 2020, now buried in an urn of oblivion. I have begun a bullet journal to record habits, moods, and experiences, and in which to write the plans and dreams ofContinueContinue reading “Taking time with Szymborska”
Fragments from the Burning Archive: Anna Akhmatova
In my study is a box of old index cards with fragmentary thoughts, notes on narratives and characters, and quotations taken from my reading. The box is labelled “Notes to Digitise,” and perhaps that will one day be a retirement project. But for now it is a stimulus to dig deep down into the BurningContinueContinue reading “Fragments from the Burning Archive: Anna Akhmatova”
Viral Meltdown – Year in Review
As part of my The Kaeleidoscope of 2020: Year in Review post I have updated with my reflections on the pandemic and lockdowns in this section, Viral Meltdown Viral Meltdown How could the year in review not begin with the pandemic and the virus? Since January I have followed the story of the coronavirus andContinueContinue reading “Viral Meltdown – Year in Review”
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857. I wonder if, over the next 5 to 10 years, we will be conducting sad online mushairas (poetic symposiums) and singing laments for the collapse of the Washington court? Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857 (February 4,ContinueContinue reading “Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857”