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November 2012

Nov 26, 2012 4 notes
#ozymandias #percy #bysshe #shelley
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”



Oscar Wilde


Nov 26, 2012 2 notes
#aphorisms #dorian #gray #oscar #wilde #preface #novel #book #literature #art #aesthetic
Nov 26, 2012 5 notes
#the painter #paint #brush #poetry #ocean #artist #verse #beautiful #john #ashbery
Nov 24, 2012 2 notes
#Song #Of #Myself #Walt #Whitman #poem #poetry #Barbaric #Yawp #one #with #the #earth #beautiful
Nov 19, 2012 1 note
#My #Voice #Oscar #Wilde #Poem #Poetry #Relationship #end #bitter #sad #beautiful
Nov 19, 2012 1 note
#Her #Voice #Oscar #Wilde #Poem #Poetry #Beautiful #relationship #end #regret
Apologia

IS it thy will that I should wax and wane,

Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,

And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain

Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

 -

Is it thy will–Love that I love so well–

That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot

Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell

The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

 -

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,

And sell ambition at the common mart,

And let dull failure be my vestiture,

And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

 -

Perchance it may be better so–at least

I have not made my heart a heart of stone,

Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,

Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

 -

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence

In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,

Trodden the dusty road of common sense,

While all the forest sang of liberty,

 -

Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight

Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,

To where the steep untrodden mountain height

Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.

 -

Or how the little flower he trod upon,

The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,

Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun

Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

 -

But surely it is something to have been

The best belovèd for a little while,

To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen

His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

 -

Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed

On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,

Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed

The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!

-Oscar Wilde

Nov 19, 2012
#Oscar #Wilde #Poem #Apologia #love #beautiful #gone #worth #it #poem #poetry
Nov 19, 2012 4 notes
#Love #Dare #Not #Speak #Name #Oscar #Wilde #Speech
Play
Nov 7, 2012 42 notes
#edgar allen poe #reading #poem
Nov 7, 2012 3 notes
#finish #charles #bukowski #poem #poetry #flower #lost #prime
Be Kind

we are always asked

to understand the other person’s

viewpoint

no matter how

out-dated

foolish or

obnoxious.

one is asked

to view

their total error

their life-waste

with

kindliness,

especially if they are

aged.

but age is the total of

our doing.

they have aged

badly

because they have

lived

out of focus,

they have refused to

see.

not their fault?

whose fault?

mine?

I am asked to hide

my viewpoint

from them

for fear of their

fear.

age is no crime

but the shame

of a deliberately

wasted

life

among so many

deliberately

wasted

lives

is.

-Charles Bukowski

Nov 7, 2012 10 notes
Nov 6, 2012 12 notes
#La Figlia che Piange #T.S Eliot #poem #poetry #urn #sunlight #hair #flowers #beautiful #The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
Nov 4, 2012 4 notes
#So #We'll #go #no #more #a #roving #light #moon #poem #poetry #beautiful #loss #love #parting #Lord #Byron #George #Gordon
To a young Poet

Don’t believe our outlines, forget them

and begin from your own words.

As if you are the first to write poetry

or the last poet.

If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,

but to correct our errs

in the book of agony.

Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?

You know who your mother is.

As for your father, be your own.

Truth is white, write over it

with a crow’s ink.

Truth is black, write over it

with a mirage’s light.

If you want to duel with a falcon

soar with the falcon.

If you fall in love with a woman,

be the one, not she,

who desires his end.

Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think

of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.

If you ponder a rose for too long

you won’t budge in a storm.

You are like me, but my abyss is clear.

And you have roads whose secrets never end.

They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

You might call the end of youth

the maturity of talent

or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,

the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

One thousand birds in the hand

don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.

A poem in a difficult time

is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

Example is not easy to attain

so be yourself and other than yourself

behind the borders of echo.

Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.

So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,

follow it before you reach your path.

Don’t tell the beloved, you are I

and I am you, say

the opposite of that: we are two guests

of an excess, fugitive cloud.

Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

Don’t place two stars in one utterance

and place the marginal next to the essential

to complete the rising rapture.

Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.

Believe only the caravan’s trace.

A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart

a deadly wisdom.

Be strong as a bull when you’re angry

weak as an almond blossom

when you love, and nothing, nothing

when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:

plains and hills, rivers and valleys.

Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily

follows you or the gallows.

Your tasks are not what worry me about you.

I worry about you from those who dance

over their children’s graves,

and from the hidden cameras

in the singers’ navels.

You won’t disappoint me,

if you distance yourself from others, and from me.

What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.

From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.

Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow

like candle tears, of who will see you

or follow your intuition’s light.

Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

No advice in love. It’s experience.

No advice in poetry. It’s talent.

And last but not least, Salaam.

-MAHMOUD DARWISH

Nov 1, 2012 3 notes
#To #a #young #poet #MAHMOUD #DARWISH #no #advice #love #experience #talent #poetry #poem #don't #believe #be #yourself
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