from Other Trespasses

from Other Trespasses

Wagering on the existence of a divinity, or making a leap of faith … do either of these acts resemble devotional behavior?

Pascal’s wager? I must be hedging my bets.

If there’s one thing worse than a gamekeeper condescending to a poacher, it’s a gamekeeper who wants to pass himself off as one …. But, don’t worry, neither impertinence will have much bearing on us — their prey.

The task of poets is to inherit as much of their traditions as they are humanly able, extend them by cross-pollination from all the other cultures to which they can gain access, and then hurl the results with all their might into whatever future may follow. It’s as simple as that.

Identity politics: life’s conflicts may appear to reinforce identity by the re-assertive reactions of self-definitions when under attack; but the courses of such conflicts in themselves will only too likely break up the grounds for those identities through loss, dismay, and self-parodying propaganda.

The self-made are only too prone to behave in ways unpredictable to themselves and others. The real sources of their characters are what they most desire will be overlooked by other people and, it should surprise no one, by themselves.

The benefits in reading translations shouldn’t be sabotaged by being mistaken for the supposed gains in ‘encountering foreignness’; they come from developing the habit of living with multiple perspectives, and are hard to distinguish in kind from learning languages, traveling, talking to people, or simply reading widely.

Only the creative can achieve real change and the supercession of the past; the destructive provoke rebuilding programmes.

Le mot juste: consider the different relations between a sense of inevitability and necessity created, above all, by the nature of a rhythm, though reinforced and straitened by syntax and context, and a more broadly cultural sense of freedom and creative choice (the ‘mot juste’ as the best selection from the possibilities); by contrast, consider the stymied feeling when a draft offers nothing but one necessary direction for development, and that one already known. The work dies in a desert of non-variables. Where there is no possibility, no uncertainty, and hence no unpredictability of outcome, there can be no creativity. Then the ‘mot juste’ is not strictly a creative conception at all, but merely a bit of post-facto preening in the artist, or back-slapping on the part of a well-disposed critic.

Overwhelmingly not quite convincing: somebody trying to seduce or impress you.

Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence’: the Divine Will relocated in an individual and his fate.

The anecdotal method in poetry and elsewhere: what happened willy-nilly, happened to me.

They say poetry is the Cinderella of the arts, and we all know what to expect if you get involved with her … You’ll live happily ever after in a great big castle on the hill.

How fortunate that my anger can be construed as resentment! It can thus have no bearing on your behaviour and obliges me miserably to amend mine.

Jaundiced and droopy with thoughts of fall already, how the shrine leaves move!

Idealism takes some beating.

As if Adorno had actually recommended that no poetry be written after Auschwitz ... pessimistic analyses of cultural collapse, of barbarism, or dumbing down haplessly collaborate with the conditions they powerfully illuminate.

If looks could kill, we would all be on death row for first-degree murder.

Strong poets? Good poets need to be strong enough not to over-defend their work against the strengths that derive from its weaknesses.

Negatively capable poets try to have the courage of their lock of convictions.

In a world where self-interest is the rule, generosity must pay twice (in kind and in cash) — but that is its reward.

Morality requires energy. Tired people fall into vice.

If the beautiful wisteria is strangling the tree, that is how it’s meant to be in nature.

But in art only time will tell who or what are the hosts, who or what the parasites.

Literary criticism could at least aspire to be the grain of sand in the oyster shell.

Poets have to serve so many masters that they’re likely to lose track — which is doubtless how they become their own master.

While the only way to discover our own limits is to push against where we think they may be to see if they ‘give’, the only way to discover others’ limits is to try and describe, with all the generosity available, the points where ‘give’ gives out.

Yet don’t forget, if — to recall a title of Oscar Wilde’s — critics are artists, the appreciation of others’ limits must be one way they discover — by pushing up against them — their very own.

If Milton should be living at this hour, and fame really were the spur, then he’d have gone blind in the entertainment industry.

Just because you don’t happen to be top dog does not mean you mustn’t allow yourself to bark at all.

Other Trespasses is a continuation of the aphorisms collected in the first part of Untitled Deeds (Salt Publications, 2004).