“What maps do, is they abruptly take you from the darkness to the light.”
Maps are one of those inventions, the timekeeping, that are vital but overlooked. Think for a moment, how could the modern world operate without maps?
Category: Thinkers
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Though I urge possession-by-memory of poems, through repeated readings, I suspect that reading aloud is also a valid test for poetry and fictional prose alike. Reciting a bad poem is a distressing experience, reading aloud a poor story is scarcely better. But it can be astonishing how an excellent story or poem suddenly expands into a cosmos of absolute illumination when one listens to its recitation. I remember then that the Homeric epics were chanted aloud to audiences, and that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in order to read his work at the royal court and in the house of the great nobles.
– Harold Bloom
How can you tell if your story or poem has potential? Read it aloud to your self.
Do you cringe?
Are you distressed?
Bloom, Harold. Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages. United States, Scribner, 2002.
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I undertook with pleasure what others might have thought a hardship
Upon reading this, I immediately thought of Paul Graham’s quote:
Turner, Pamela S.. Comet Chaser: The True Cinderella Story of Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer. United States, Chronicle Books LLC, 2024.
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A child, lonely and gifted, will employ a marvelous story or poem to create a companion for himself or myself. Such an invisible friend is not an unhealthy phantasmagoria, but the mind learning to exercise itself in all its powers. Perhaps it is also the mysterious moment in which a new poet or storyteller comes to birth.
– Harold Bloom
Introductions to books get a bad wrap, but often I find them inspiring.
Bloom, Harold. Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages. United States, Scribner, 2002.
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Blank pages beg to be filled, and it helps to have them around.
– Seth Godin
Keep blank pages around, but don’t keep them blank forever.
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There I think the attitude of Epictetus helps guide one to the right reaction. He thought every mischance in life, however bad, created an opportunity to learn something useful, and one’s duty was not to become immersed in self-pity but to utilize each terrible blow in a constructive fashion.
– Charlie MungerMunger, Charles T.. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. N.p., Stripe Matter Incorporated. pp279
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You won’t be surprised given my proclivity to sailing, and poetry, and the occasional pipe, that it’s Ratty, is the figure with whom I identify most strongly. Although there’s a bit of Moley in me as well, I think.
– Malcolm GuiteSometimes the algorithm is correct. Malcolm Guite on YouTube might be the find of the year.
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The patron saint of overworked teachers, Alice Kober, taught five classes at a time at Brooklyn College in the 1940s. At any rate, she taught during the day. At night, she set about deciphering an ancient language, Linear B, that had been uncovered on clay tablets at the turn of the century and that stood as a Mount Everest for linguists, a seemingly impossible puzzle. A middle aged spinster, the daughter of working class immigrants, she collected the statistics for each sign of the dead language onto two hundred thousand paper slips. Because of paper shortages during and after the war these slips had to be repurposed from any spare paper she could find. The slips in turn were collected into old cigarette cartons. Her work was cut off by an untimely illness, but she laid the foundation for the dramatic decipherement that took place only a few years after her death.
One never knows when their work will bear fruit. Keep going.
Hitz, Zena. Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. United States, Princeton University Press, 2021. (pp 41)
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We promise “till death do us part” when our love is young and good-looking and when life is full of promise, but it is in failure or decrepitude or at the hospital bed that we learn what we meant and why.
Zena HitzZena dropping truth right from the introduction.
Hitz, Zena. Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. United States, Princeton University Press, 2021.
Floodlights and Goalposts 