Oct 6, 2003

Waxing Amish on quietude, Boston, aesthetics, schools in general. Watching this one from the sidelines watching myself disappear.

Stephen Owen said something that, although it is in the context of a defense of translation, I'd like to put forth here.

"It's only poetry."

We all have to pay the bills, we all have to stay sane and stay alive, we all have to mend our broken hearts. Why squabble?

When tricking the cyclops in The Odyssey, there's a pun where Odysseus is asked his name and he says "I'm nobody." Which in greek is "Oudeis," thus it forms a pun on Odysseus. The lesson for poets, I think, from one of our seminal western texts:

I'm nodody. I am from nowhere. No home no school no love no body and I'm just like you.

Oudeis.

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