Weekly Edition #28
Art by Alex Russell Flint
What it’s like to be human by Mark Strand
If every head of state
and every government official
spent an hour
a day reading poetry
we’d live in a much more humane and decent world …
Poetry delivers an inner life
that is articulated to the reader.
People have inner lives, but they are poorly expressed
and rarely known. They have
no language
by which to bring it out
into the open.
Two people deeply in love can look at each other
and not have much to say except
“I love you.” It gets
kind of boring
after a while —
after the first ten or twenty years …
When we read poems from the past we realize
that human beings have always been
the way we are.
We have technological advancements
undreamt of
a couple of thousand years ago,
but the way people felt then
is pretty much the way people feel now.
We can read those poems with pleasure
because we recognize ourselves in them.
Poetry helps us imagine what it’s like to be human.
I wish more politicians
and heads of state would begin to imagine
what it’s like to be human.
Other poems I read this week:
"And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.
Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.
Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease.
Make us proud. Make yourself proud.
And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause." -A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Rios
"This poem has no restraint
It will not say
plum blossom
sunset
rubbing stone
cat’s cradle
It refuses to be evasive
I miss you
I miss you
Come home
•
It won’t talk of passion
but the sleep that follows
when our bodies
touch
that moment
just before waking
when we realize
we’ve been holding one another
in our sleep" -This is a Love Poem Without Restraint by Lorna Crozier
And my happiest moment
occurred when I realized
you were falling for me,
right down to the core, and the rest,
relatively speaking, has flown past
faster than the speed of light.
-Einstein’s Happiest Moment by Richard M. Berlin
"I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow–the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat." -II by Jorge Luis Borges
"I prefer movies. I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case." -Possibilities Poem by Wislawa Szymborska
Recommended Listening:
I'll Find A Way - Rachael Yamagata
Oye Como Va - Tito Puente Last Life Performance
Ambivalence - Yoshinori Hayashi
Sakura - Susumu Yokota Dopamine - Proc Fiskal No One's More Happy Than You - Clem Snide Thom Yorke - Open Again (Suspiria Radio Session)
Links of the Week:
Tableaux Vivants: Caravaggio paintings performed live The Little Prince: Braille edition How a Napping Subway Commuter’s Brain Knows When It’s Their Stop
What is the most wholesome fact you know?
My Grandfather’s Memory Book Melemchi: A History of Herders Interview: Chilly Gonzales