So, yesterday was the official kick-off of the Keep Portland Weird festival here in Paris, which meant that I had a reading/screening in the...
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What is it that man--each man, each woman, every man, every woman--desires? "To desire is to become that which one essentially is," intones Mr. Miller. This one line summarizes his book, as well as humanity.
To expound upon Miller's central notion, in poetry (of which method the author himself might have approved, whilst finding much to scoff at within and between actual lines):
the seething, trembling, raging, weeping, sparring, loving, despairing, every-ing masses
of scramblers, divers, climbers, leapers, supplicants
they are the bituminous stuff that may
possibly, perhaps, probably not
compress, succumb, relent, accept
and become gems.
A hundred thousand million billion hot-white, blinding diamonds;
worthless because of their numbers, overflowing the cartels of family, company, society, state;
spilling into a marketless world;
precious not because they are precious
but because they are as they are.
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The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller
JCZ, September 18, 2006
What is it that man--each man, each woman, every man, every woman--desires? "To desire is to become that which one essentially is," intones Mr. Miller. This one line summarizes his book, as well as humanity.To expound upon Miller's central notion, in poetry (of which method the author himself might have approved, whilst finding much to scoff at within and between actual lines):
the seething, trembling, raging, weeping, sparring, loving, despairing, every-ing masses
of scramblers, divers, climbers, leapers, supplicants
they are the bituminous stuff that may
possibly, perhaps, probably not
compress, succumb, relent, accept
and become gems.
A hundred thousand million billion hot-white, blinding diamonds;
worthless because of their numbers, overflowing the cartels of family, company, society, state;
spilling into a marketless world;
precious not because they are precious
but because they are as they are.
(9 of 17 readers found this comment helpful)