Friday, September 18, 2026

inner madman

17
soviet clown
From How to Become a Star, Licedei Theatre (1986)


“He who hides his madman, dies voiceless.”
19 SEP 2026





—AndrĂ© Gide
from Le traite du Narcisse

thinking poem

16
hand sand
Luke Stephenson, "An Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds"
19 SEP 2026
Lisa Robertson
from an interview in the
Northern Poetry Review


“I just try to make a poem that can think its own thoughts.”

already been said

15
old emojis


“Everything has already been said, but since nobody listens, we must continually start again."
Early emoticons in the American humor magazine Puck in 1881.
Interesting related article here
18 SEP 2026





—AndrĂ© Gide
from Le traite du Narcisse

Thursday, September 17, 2026

totality of existence

14
cuba kitchen
Simone Leuck - Cuba TV Series
“Poetry’s impulse to use metaphor, to discover resemblance, is not to make comparisons . . . it is to discover those correspondences of which the sum total would be proof of the indivisible totality of existence.
17 SEP 2026






—John Berger
from “Dream,” in And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 1982

monks head

13
monks head
Wooden sculpture of a monk's head bearing an inscription on the interior, Japan, 1328 from Sign, Image, Symbol (ed. George Kepes)
“One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind’s imagining into another.”
17 SEP 2026





—John Keats
from his marginalia in Paradise Lost

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

a dry psyche

12
hand sand
attribution unknown
17 SEP 2026
Heraclitus
(translated by Guy Davenport)
“The stuff of the psyche is a smoke-like substance of fine particles that give rise to all other things, particles of less mass than any other substance and constantly in motion . . . The psyche rises as a mist from things that are wet. . . . A dry psyche is most skilled in intelligence and is brightest in virtue. . . . A drunk man, staggering and mindless, must be led home by his son, so wet is his psyche.”

love

11
young flannery
Flannery O'Connor as a girl, reading
via the Ina Dillard Russell Library
Georgia College & State University


"To begin with, let us take the following motto. . . Literature is love. Now we can continue."
17 SEP 2026






—Vladimir Nabokov
from Despair

Monday, September 14, 2026

glass of water

10
little P
Hannah Hoch – Der Kleine P (Little P)
“There’s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.”
17 SEP 2026




 —Mignon McLaughlin
author of 3 volumes of neurotic aphorisms

original context unclear 

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

reality intolerance

09
black zebra



“No artist tolerates reality.”
photographer unknown
17 SEP 2026







—Friedrich Nietzsche
(paraphrased)

Monday, August 7, 2023

a wise reader

08
wise reader
Lucien Freud
The Artist's Mother Reading, 1975


“A wise reader reads . . . not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine.”
21 JUL 2026





—Vladimir Nabokov
from “Good Readers and Good Writers”

Thursday, November 11, 2021

critical judement as art

07
blindfolded reader
Eliseo Mattiacci - To think the thought (1973)
“A critical judgement of an artistic production has no civil rights in the realm of art if it isn't itself a work of art, either in its substance, as a representation of a necessary impression in the state of becoming, or in the beauty of its form and open tone...”
20 JUN 2026





—Friedrich Schlegel
from "Critical Fragments" (no.117)

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

truth takes too long

06
wise reader
Daido Moriyama - Memory, 2012

“You can't tell everyone the truth all the time, and you certainly can't tell anyone the whole truth, ever, because it would take too long.”
06 MAY 2026





—Lydia Davis
from "Our Trip"