R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 42

Coming into being

Coming into being

By R.M. Engelhardt

Midnight. Domestic violence and hip hop shaking the

windows free of sleep.

Disturbed creatures laughing & singing in the

hallways with the echoes of drunken stupidity.

Jack’s old angels don’t come here anymore, barren of

all love and jazz, exulting no happiness or

joy but only decay. City televisions blare with

overseas casualties, games of hide and go seek with

terrorists & madmen manifesting themselves as heroes. But would

death answer all of your questions?

Wasting all of your days away trying to figure out a

reason why? Small minds put politics into

everything and steal our most sacred lives over & over

again and throughout time, evolution not withstanding.

But beyond all this is the quiet serenity of coming

into being, a place where they can never touch you, or

your dreams.

A place called “peace”

____________

Why Literature?

It has often happened to me, at book fairs or in bookstores, that a gentleman approaches me and asks me for a signature. “It is for my wife, my young daughter, or my mother,” he explains. “She is a great reader and loves literature.” Immediately I ask: “And what about you? Don’t you like to read?” The answer is almost always the same: “Of course I like to read, but I am a very busy person.” I have heard this explanation dozens of times: this man and many thousands of men like him have so many important things to do, so many obligations, so many responsibilities in life, that they cannot waste their precious time buried in a novel, a book of poetry, or a literary essay for hours and hours. According to this widespread conception, literature is a dispensable activity, no doubt lofty and useful for cultivating sensitivity and good manners, but essentially an entertainment, an adornment that only people with time for recreation can afford. It is something to fit in between sports, the movies, a game of bridge or chess; and it can be sacrificed without scruple when one “prioritizes” the tasks and the duties that are indispensable in the struggle of life.

It seems clear that literature has become more and more a female activity. In bookstores, at conferences or public readings by writers, and even in university departments dedicated to the humanities, the women clearly outnumber the men. The explanation traditionally given is that middle-class women read more because they work fewer hours than men, and so many of them feel that they can justify more easily than men the time that they devote to fantasy and illusion. I am somewhat allergic to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings; but there is no doubt that there are fewer and fewer readers of literature, and that among the saving remnant of readers women predominate.

[…] I am happy for these women, but I feel sorry for these men, and for the millions of human beings who could read but have decided not to read.

”

~
Why Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa

Ars Poetica

Reblogged from THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, ALBANY NY:

“Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases…

Read more… 73 more words

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his young...

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Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his younger self standing down the timeline from his present life, bare toes curling in teenage beach sand, looking ahead to today and watching his future life collapse in on itself like a dying star. His future life becoming small and dark and dense, its gravity apparently grim and inescapable.

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow spent some cash on a bottle of vodka and drank it at home within an hour.”

~ Warren Ellis, Gun Machine (2013)

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/10/entertainment/la-ca-jc-warren-ellis-20130113

Source: R.M. on PinterestA day off, good books, my ol...

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Source: R.M. on Pinterest

A day off, good books, my old harley boots and coffee ☕☕☕

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aw...

 
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.

Reblogged from THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, ALBANY NY:to the ...

Reblogged from THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, ALBANY NY:

to the centre of the city where the roads meet, waiting for you

to the dephts of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you

i was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you

in a room with a window in the corner, i found truth

Read more… 4 more words

Ian Curtis ... Poet.

The Resurrection Waltz – The New Book of Poetry from R.M. Engelhardt, An Interview With Albany Poets

 

R.M. Engelhardt

This coming Thursday, March 14, at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza local poet R.M. Engelhardt will be launching his brand new book, The Resurrection Waltz, with a special reading and a performance by Murrow (Thom Francis and Keith Spencer). R.M. has been a a big part of the local poetry scene for over 20 years. In that time he has hosted many open mics and events including Saint Poem, The School of Night, Ghost in the Machine, VoX, LISTEN, and P.R.O.P.A.G.A.N.D.A.. His works has been published in Retort, Rusty Truck, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, The Boston Literary Review, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, 2nd Avenue Poetry, and right here on AlbanyPoets.com.

We recently sat down with Rob to talk to him about the book and some upcoming projects …

 

http://albanypoets.com/2013/03/the-resurrection-waltz-the-new-book-of-poetry-from-r-m-engelhardt

Δώρια

Ezra Pound

 

“Be in me as the eternal moods

of the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are —

gaiety of flowers.

Have me in the strong loneliness

of sunless cliffs

And of gray waters.

Let the gods speak softly of us

In days hereafter,

the shadowy flowers of Orcus

Remember thee.”

 

~
Δώρια by Ezra Pound

 

Buk“The hangover was brutal but he didn’t mind.It told ...

Buk

“The hangover was brutal but he didn’t mind.

It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good.”

~ Charles Bukowski