Scarmoge

Begin Post – Part 4
The first draft of my poem Coming to Jakarta was written in an intense burst of energy thirty years ago, as I strenuously wrote myself out of a near mental breakdown. A decade later, when the poem was honored in an issue of the literary review Agni, I attempted to analyze the diverse sources of my mental discomfort:

The first…[Read more]

Begin Post – Part 3
For most of my life I have felt split between two conflicting approaches to reality: 1) as a researcher trying rigorously and methodically to understand violence in the world, and 2) as a poet, responding to intuitive impulses to say what moved me, whether rational or not. But recently my editor Mark Selden suggested that I…[Read more]

Begin Post – Part 2
The following article can be found gratis on-line in pdf ….
Coming to Jakarta and Deep Politics: How Writing a Poem Enabled Me to Write American War Machine (An Essay on…[Read more]

This is the fifth time that I have attempted to post in the last 2 hours. I’m going to try several small posts ….
‘The fate of poetry depends on whether such a work as Schiller’s and Beethoven’s ‘Ode To Joy’ is possible. For that to be so, some basic confidence is needed, a sense of open space ahead of the individual and the human species” -…[Read more]

… so does this mean that these caravans are NOT “huddled masses yearning to be free” … Say it ain’t so Joe, say it ain’t so. (sniff, sniff) – Turns out this phrase was, according to Joseph J. Jackson himself, an early example of “fake news” …
but the caravans are instead … ?
… Mexico “not telling” possibly related (connected to) the…[Read more]

An interesting lecture by Paul Wienpahl (abridged)
The opening paragraph sets the tone …

THE following remarks, which I have with misgivings called “philosophical” reflections, will appear disconnected. They will not flow from one another as sentences in rational discourse should. This is because the connections between the reflections are not…[Read more]