By: Edward Abbey"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them." But is it true that the mass of men
By: Wendell BerryArt: Winslow HomerText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIf we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it... then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live her
By: Michel HouellebecqAdrift, 1982 Andrew WyethText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThere is always a city, traces of poets Whose destinies crossed within its walls Water flows almost everywhere, my memory murmurs Names of cities, names of people, holes in my head
“The art of dying is the art of living also.” — OshoMost people die clinging. They don’t want to die, and one can understand why they don’t want to die. Only at the moment of death do they recognize the fact that they have not lived. Life has simply passed as if a dream, and death has come. Now ther
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik RittenberryI stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything.—Pablo NerudaAs war, chaos, idiocy, and uncertainty spread like a plague across the globe, I wake before dawn, strap on my worn boots, grab a thermos of coffee and my old rucksa
By: D.H. LarwrenceText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThey talk of the triumph of the machine, but the machine will never triumph. Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun, for
The German-Swiss author and Nobel laureate, Hermann Hesse, grappled with and wrote profoundly about the societal shifts triggered by World War I. Like many other artists and writers, especially Stefan Zweig, Hesse saw the war as a cataclysmic rupture that accelerated the erosion of traditional Europ
By: Tommy SwerdlowText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published1 I have just won the Irish sweepstakes Of self-loathing The banner is black on black And the confetti that’s falling is sharp No one gets out of here alive or dead So the best thing to do is sit down Rest awh
By: Julia VinogradBecause I can't trust Godto look after the world and my friends.Worship sure, wandering forests of legendbraiding flowers from the Tree of Life in my hairwhile God's beard storms overhead.But not trust. People die. Everyone dies.It may be God's will but it's my won't.Sea turtles li
“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”—Albert CamusAlbert Camus viewed life with moral seriousness devoid of illusions, which led him into the realm of the absurd. What is the “absurd” that Camus wrote so profoundly about? Well, he defines the abs
By: Marianne MooreART: Gustave Courbet, Woman With a Parrot.Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe. And whence is courage: the unanswered question, the resolute doubt, — dumbly calling, deafly l
“America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.”― Henry MillerThe chances are that during this transition period of glo
By: Joseph Campbell“The Christ in you doesn’t die — it resurrects.”— Joseph CampbellEaster is calculated as the Sunday that follows the first moon after the vernal equinox. It is evidence of a concern centuries before Christ to coordinate the lunar and solar calendars. What we have to recognize is t
Photography: Ali Zolghadri. “However, the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.” — Thomas MertonIn solitude, we remain face to face with the naked being of things. And yet we find that the
“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” — BukowskiAs The Sparrow Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTo give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and hollow upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed with
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. —Mary OliverSubscribe nowIn creative work—creative work of all kinds—those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is somethin
On the Tenth Anniversary of the Poet's Death“Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.”— Jim HarrisonThe great writer, novelist, and poet, Jim Harrison, died ten years ago today. Harrison is one o
Art is not a thing; it is a way.Art: CHRISTIAN VAN DONCKWe have art in order not to die of the truth. —Nietzsche“The world must be romanticized. In this way, its original meaning will be rediscovered. Romanticization is nothing but a qualitative realization of potential. The lower self is identified
By: Robinson Jeffers“Civilization is sick: stand awhile and be quiet and drink the sea-wind, you will survive.” —Robinson JeffersRearmamentText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThese grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass Makes pity a fool,
By: Harold BloomIf you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. Read more
