the walking devil

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writng is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus the so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life. He who even nicks the solidity of this apparition does a piece of work superior to that of Hercules when he cleaned the Augean stables.

~ William Carlos Williams, in Prologue to Kora in Hell: Improvisations

I am very grateful to Dr. Williams for giving me the exact words I needed. I finally wrote a thank you note to Robert Bly for the Ponge book. I used this quote to introduce my thanks. It’s an amusingly exaggerated compliment that does a great honor to the work of Object Poems.

A strange few days. My schedule was disrupted today, but it had no impact, positive or negative, on my work. S got bitten by a dog yesterday, and today bounced seven checks. (I suppose that’s better than being bitten by seven dogs and bouncing one check.) Yesterday, when my son mentioned what we all thought was an ultra-obscure title, his chemistry teacher went to his bookshelf and pulled out the book: Messages from Water, by Masaru Emoto. I saw a segment of rainbow in the cloudscape this evening on the ride home from work. The walking devils of modern life.