The Ontology Murders

Poetry is not the poem any more than humanity is the child. That would be to insult the child to label it so.

If a poem is constituted, first and last, in being the most reliable means by which poetry is enacted, so be it, but we cannot be convinced.

God is the answer to Why, as art answers the question Why not.

Purity is best rendered in acts of utter self-neglect.

I do not care much that art and poetry meet, but I would like to see poetry and interstate trucking brought into closer proximity.

The first fact was being from which no other facts could be deduced. The first fact was a point of being. A poem can suggest this truth, which is all we can do on the artistic end of the spectrum. On the opposite end is plain old worship, which is another sort of pure form.

Poetry matters in the same way that accidents disturb my sleep.

Conversation should not be conducted in neglect of meaningful silence.

All silence is a kind of conspiracy against meaning.

The fact of a thing exists at a 270 degree angle to the shadow of its being. When I say shadow, I mean old friends.

I was true, then more true, then alive to death before I suddenly was true again.

The new thing is not the old, but the old made new by understanding.

You say you fell, but I saw leap.

Language has in common with music an elaborate scheme for the exchange of tickets.

Criticism is essential, as is weeping.

I trust that at the end of day I will be credited with having fashioned my own coffin from out of virtual paper.