A title adaptation for Drunkspeare:
"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn Square."
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Crimson Peak: Only the Dead
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Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Cut to the Chase
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Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving
"So thou beholdest the contingent things
Ere in themselves they are, fixing thine eyes
Upon the point in which all times are present."
Related material:
This journal, November 20, 2009:
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Tuesday January 13, 2009
The Mists of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn
“Typically, each piece depicts a monumentally sized object that often comments archly on its surroundings….”
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Architectural |
Arch at |
For some context, see
- an entry of Nov. 25, 2002, that contained the above two images
- and the two entries of last Sunday, with their references to Marion Zimmer Bradley and to the Brooklyn Bridge.
The ashes of Bradley,
who wrote about Camelot
in The Mists of Avalon,
are said to have been
scattered at Glastonbury Tor.
For material on the afterlife
and Brooklyn, see
Only the Dead.
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Friday, May 23, 2008
Friday May 23, 2008
The Idea
of Identity
of Identity
“Philosophers ponder the idea
of identity: what it is to give
something a name on Monday
and have it respond to
that name on Friday….”
Conclusion of “Analyze That” —
“There’s a place for us….”
New York Times
on Friday, May 23:
“A poem should not mean
But be”
— Archibald MacLeish,
quoted in a Friday comment
on a Thursday night column
by Rosanne Cash
Thursday evening photo
by Josh Haner for Friday’s
online New York Times:
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Sunday, May 18, 2008
Sunday May 18, 2008
From the Grave
in yesterday's New York Times:
"From the grave, Albert Einstein
poured gasoline on the culture wars
between science and religion this week…."
An announcement of a
colloquium at Princeton:
Above: a cartoon,
"Coxeter exhuming Geometry,"
with the latter's tombstone inscribed
"GEOMETRY
600 B.C. —
1900 A.D.
R.I.P."
The above is from
The Paradise of Childhood,
a work first published in 1869.
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Paul Simon
Albert Einstein,
1879-1955:
"It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely-personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation…."
— Autobiographical Notes, 1949
Related material:
A commentary on Tom Wolfe's
"Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died"–
"The Neural Buddhists," by David Brooks,
in the May 13 New York Times:
"The mind seems to have
the ability to transcend itself
and merge with a larger
presence that feels more real."
A New Yorker commentary on
a new translation of the Psalms:
"Suddenly, in a world without
Heaven, Hell, the soul, and
eternal salvation or redemption,
the theological stakes seem
more local and temporal:
'So teach us to number our days.'"
and a May 13 Log24 commentary
on Thomas Wolfe's
"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"–
"… all good things — trout as well as
eternal salvation — come by grace
and grace comes by art
and art does not come easy."
"Art isn't easy."
— Stephen Sondheim,
quoted in
Solomon's Cube.
For further religious remarks,
consult Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
and The Librarian:
Return to King Solomon's Mines.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Tuesday May 13, 2008
Only the Dead
Know Brooklyn
Know Brooklyn
David Brooks in
today’s New York Times:
“The mind seems to have
the ability to transcend itself
and merge with a larger
presence that feels more real.”
Sometimes in rather strange ways… An example–
Sunday morning’s entry Annals of Poetry was linked, via the word “tesseract,” to an entry of May 12, 2006, which in turn had a link to the Log24 entries of February 1-15, 2003. From those entries:
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Singing-Masters Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
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Last Sunday night (May 11),
Turner Classic Movies
showed a film featuring
Jimmy Durante as a
singing-master of
Frank Sinatra:
From earlier this month,
an entry featuring Sinatra and a
different singing-master — not from
Brooklyn but from Tidioute —
an entry featuring Sinatra and a
different singing-master — not from
Brooklyn but from Tidioute —
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A Diploma for Frank from… The Old School
These little town blues…
“… all good things — trout as well as eternal salvation — come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.” — A River Runs Through It |
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Monday, December 19, 2005
Monday December 19, 2005
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Tuesday April 27, 2004
Last Exit:
A Meditation for Poetry Month
Click on the picture below for details.
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Notes on the compiling of Only the Dead:
Today’s obituary of the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn suggested I look up Wolfe’s short story, “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” That story contained, near its end, a reference to drowning. Thoughts of drowning and of Brooklyn suggested (this being poetry month) Hart Crane’s classic The Bridge. When I looked for material on Crane on the Web, I found, to my considerable surprise, that today is the anniversary of Crane’s death.
As Wolfe says, apropos of Selby and Brooklyn,
“Red Hook! Jesus!”
As Crane says, apropos of Wolfe and the Brooklyn Bridge,
“Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry….”
Unfortunately, the bridge is not for sale. However….
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