At Rhino.
Teaser quote: The Japanese Buddhist monk Ennin is a very interesting figure. He and a couple disciples sailed with a Japanese delegation to China, in 838 AD. He wanted to collect Buddhist texts, visit Buddhist mountains, and have various Buddhist paintings copied. His plan was to return to Japan with all these goodies, and then—I don’t know what. Be a Buddha.
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: It has always seemed to me that English speakers have to take Russian poets on faith a lot—basically whenever the originals are written in rhyme and meter. Most English translators have very little love for old-school prosody, and exclude it entirely from their work, with no sense of loss. If anything, they think they are “freeing these wonderful birds from their cages.”
At Blazing Stadium.
Teaser quote: The camera is only interested in the beautiful…
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: I have always found the “withholding” there funny. Like with much of Nietzsche’s humor, there’s a lot going on. I think Nietzsche is playfully hinting that he himself does not know the source of the quote, and can’t be bothered to hunt it up. It really is an obscure quote….
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: The cloth binding is delectable saffron silk, rough and highly textured—and the page layout and everything is exemplary. But the real treat is what you get from a tour through a personal anthology of Buddha-jewels, compiled by somebody who’s spent a lifetime sincerely searching the Tripitaka for goodies. The book is Red Pine’s recommended reading list, and every item therein comes equipped with a cheerful and informative preface, and as many footnotes as atoms in ten Buddha-worlds.
At Blazing Stadium.
Teaser quote: All lie awake, sweating and ashamed…
At Blazing Stadium.
Teaser quote: Body can’t tell disgust from fear. Mind is better than body….
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: For normal people, the temptation with medieval literature is thinking the Middle Ages were just the Middle Ages: a kind of intellectual and aesthetic Ice Age, a period in which time stopped, and everyone dressed in rags and pointed hats, and spent a lot of time praying.
At Blazing Stadium.
Teaser quote: If you bend a wire, but not too much…
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: Treewatching is quite a bit easier than birdwatching, for the very excellent reason that trees do not fly away while you are struggling to pull out the field guide. More, if it happens to be too dark, just now, to identify your tree, you can simply come back later and examine the case in better light. On this point, birds are uncooperative.
At Fence.
Teaser quote:
♩ Walking in LA! ♬
♬ walking in LA…? ♩
♩ only a nobody walks in LA! ♬
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: Suppose you decided that you were going to commit to loving old Chinese poetry the way it is loved by Chinese literati. Stop right there. You might not realize what you’re agreeing to. Look at the terms of the contract very carefully. You’re not just saying you want to love old Chinese poetry; you’re saying you want to love it the way it was meant to be loved. That first thing? just loving it? Piece of cake. But loving it as intended—means making yourself Chinese. Even if you are Chinese you might have to make yourself Chinese.
At The Point.
Teaser quote: Couple months ago, I read Wang Wei’s poetry, floor to ceiling. He, as you know, was this big Buddhist; so his poems refer to Buddhist lala, left and bloody right. I, who am supposedly interested in Buddhism, was picking up on exactly none of these references. There’d be something about a phantom city. I check the footnote: “Lotus Sutra, Chapter Whatever.” There’d be something about the way a particular Sanskrit letter is written. Footnote: “Nirvana Sutra, Chapter Whatever.” Sutra this and sutra that.
At Blazing Stadium.
Teaser quote: By music I am energized…
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: It should bother you that these are Petrarch’s deathbed poems, his last word on Laura, himself, and the rest of it. It should bother you that these poems exercised a special appeal among early female translators, including Mary Sidney (yes, her) and Queen Elizabeth I. And it might put a fire under your ass, just me summarizing the thing’s structure. ’Cuz it sounds kind of cool….
https://www.fjordsreview.com/download_fjords.html
Teaser quote: xueiby3q8634-vuqrlb3.
in Blazing Stadium (have to scroll maybe).
Teaser quote: I don’t want an oat cracker.
[originally posted Monday 14 December 2020]
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: Here’s a terrific book. It makes me sigh twice. The first sigh is because I wish I’d had this book when I was twenty-two and just starting out. The second sigh is because it would have been wasted on me.
At Rhino.
Teaser quote: Have you ever seen the bizarre Rodin statue of Balzac, where his penis is a sort of alluvial land formation that flows to the floor—?
