A brilliant shroud covers Simon Weil’s name, woven from the praise of the twentieth century’s literary giants. She was "the best spiritual writer of the century" (André Gide) with a "genius akin to that of the saints" (T.S. Eliot). Weil's reputation is perhaps greatest among creative writers. Yet it is not Weil's poetry that generated such a reputation, but her philosophical works. Even today, mentions of Weil by contemporary writers focus on either her philosophical works or empirical person. We should not forget, however, that Weil once insisted, "Workers need poetry more than bread.…They need some light from eternity." "The Stars," with its themes of submission and necessity, may be seen as an aesthetic expression of the ideas Weil explored in her prose—may be seen as some light from eternity.Noah Rawlings on "The Stars" |
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Translating Modernist Visual Poetry: Olivia Sears and Eugene Ostashevsky
"Simultaneità in poetry [is] like this: the artist is 'the mobile center of the living universe' and the poem is 'a flow, a fabric of sensations diffused concentrically around the expressive point of genius—the creator.' Rather than the unfolding of a particular theme or the expression of a single sensation, the poem is a 'simultaneous amalgam' of everything the poetic self experiences: the sights he sees as he walks the streets, the sounds and smells, the memories and emotions triggered—all swirling together on the page."
via ASYMPTOTE |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Brian Teare on Taylor Johnson’s Inheritance
"Maybe you already know inheritance is vexed by paradox. Boon or burden, boon and burden? Each of us enters Johnson’s book through that singular, seemingly never settled and always unsettling noun, holding a small flat object labeled Inheritance. A thing made and possessed by another, and now—is it really yours? A thing given, but was it freely chosen? 'Extraordinary limitation,' Johnson writes, 'playing freedom.'" |
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