his poetry wants so much to belong to us—to those who know intimately why a relentless self-exposure to the world has to be made, somehow, into a virtue because otherwise it is just abuse. (AN)
Leave the womb
Leave the fear
Leave the nest
Hit the road
Hightail it
Head the hell out
Live hidden
Without a sound
Not seen
Nor heard
Be not
From this earth
But from nothing.
Ex Nothing (Ex Nada), Cecilia Vicuña, translated from the Spanish by Rosa Alcalá
Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse, Anahid Nersessian
Information delayed. Information withheld.
Saturation with info, useless and helpful blended. Plot
not “completed.” Size and significance of events
unemphatic: far too much attention paid to
tiny subjects. Option on funny noises.
Order of info homogeneous. Litotes, a Greek god,
Litotes of Lacedaemonia. Why isn’t this boring?
Do I need this info? It changes all the time,
doesn’t repeat itself, it only almost does.
What is a “conditional honorific”?
Randomness and inductive method, both at once.
“So what?” is a valuable question to ask. Frame story,
like Taming of the Shrew, but W.S. didn’t
finish the frame! A is really a pretext for B. B is what counts.
Title Not Given, Caroline Knox
Support Structures, Céline Condorelli, 2009, Sternberg Press.
El día de mi suerte – Héctor Lavoe, Orquesta de Willie Colón
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.
Song of Myself, 7 , Walt Whitman
via Narcos (Netflix).
Rilke : “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love” via Popova.
Jason Hirata and Park McArthur, Lot C. 11 July?–?8 November 2026.
Incurva, curated by Saim Demircan. There is a checklist and floorplan.
Isabella Marie Garcia on Bakehouse and Wynwood Norte (Prism)
Spain, 2026 World Cup champion.
Ben Eastham on Reba Maybury and Lucy McKenzie’s Pervert or Detective?, edited by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen with an afterword by Susan Finlay, was published by no place press in 2025. It accompanied an exhibition on view at Ca’Buccari, Venice. (e-flux)
When used to camouflage a deeper conservatism, which is so often the function of cliché, the phrasing reassures readers that their engagement with the work of art in question affirms their opposition to the injustice they might recently have observed in the world, might even be feeling guilty about. Aesthetic experience is reconciled with ethical principle, pleasure equated with virtue, the beautiful made consistent with the good.
In the conversation at the heart of this book, [the] artists … dismantle this comforting delusion.
That “perversion” … carries the implication of a desire that cannot be subordinated to any ethical framework.
Art might in turn alert us to the “violence in which we live,” as McKenzie puts it, and lead us to establish creative spaces—subcultures—outside of those strictures.
By decoupling art from received morality, they reclaim it as an arena in which hierarchies and social norms can be brought into question without repercussion.
Only by expressing our unconscious desires and then measuring them against abstract ideals of the good can we approach self-knowledge and establish a workable politics.
The right to make my dreams come true,
I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!
Calling Dreams, Georgia Douglas Johnson
And who delivers the worst?
Schwartz: I didn’t love Zendaya as Athena, the only deity depicted onscreen. There is a heaviness and sorrow to that wise, ingenious goddess that obscured the character’s power and playfulness—a choice made by Nolan, no doubt to emphasize his dark themes.
Brody: All of these actors are professionals, charismatic and persuasive; when a performance is off, it’s usually the director’s fault, as here, with Matt Damon, in the lead role of Odysseus. He portrays the character, as per Nolan’s script, as a reserved, terse, inexpressive, stoic American soldier—it’s not Damon’s fault that his performance, however committed and skillful, suggests nothing of the sly ruses and scheming quickness that mark Homer’s complex hero.
via an interview with Caroline Mimbs Nyce, New Yorker Newsletter editor
A person protests to fate:
“The things you have caused
me most to want
are those that furthest elude me.”
Fate nods.
Fate is sympathetic.
To tie the shoes, button a shirt,
are triumphs
for only the very young,
the very old.
During the long middle:
conjugating a rivet
mastering tango
training the cat to stay off the table
preserving a single moment longer than this one
continuing to wake whatever has happened the day before
and the penmanships love practices inside the body.
A Person Protests to Fate, Jane Hirshfield
I don’t know what to do
????? ????? two states of mind in me
51: I don’t know what to do, translated by Anne Carson
I have had not one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead.
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to
me, This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly.”
I said, “Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
Sappho