December 20, 2004

atrocious stylists

quoted from The magical world of Fernando Pessoa, by Gary Lachman:

But what really troubled the author of The Book of Disquiet is that all these mystic masters were such atrocious stylists. "When they write to communicate... their mysteries," he said, "[they] all write abominably. It offends my intelligence that a man can master the Devil without being able to master the Portuguese language." Yet Satanists alone are not at fault. "To have touched the feet of Christ," Soares tells us, "is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation."

Posted at 12:07 PM

December 01, 2004

* jacket

jacket, a free Internet-only literary magazine

overwhelms me

maybe I'm being really unfair

foreign

literature as a central organizing principle of life

links and hooks everywhere like velcro

favorite names Dale Smith, Creeley, many many many

many hours later

I could become unstuck

there's a resistance there resisting the jacket the stream the river the mainstream fighting the current swimming upstream not somewhere I want to go without the armor of a harsh smile

gritted teeth and girded loins

need somewhere of more relaxed ambition like

I was we were already in paradise

and spoke with tongues like those of angels

thin and flickering

PS Has me wondering is there a limit to what an editor can absorb, even if he is Australian and official?

Posted at 05:34 PM