We’re crazed infidels on the verge of mixed emotions.
— Bill Berkson, from “Start Over,” Serenade.
“I Wanna Be Your Dog,” The Stooges, The Stooges.
We have reached a place where everything
Can be signed away while hours
Sprint by on the glinting legs of cranes.
Can be signed away while hours
Sprint by on the glinting legs of cranes.
— Noelle Kocot, from “Our Days Are Numbered,” Poem for the End of Time & Other Poems.
Lifeguard with Skywriting, John Button. 1977. Gouache on paper.
“I Shall Be Released,” Cass Elliot, Joni Mitchell, & Mary Travers, live in 1969.
There are hazards here, more so than before / The Furies struck and scarved the white night sifting // The bright waterlights blinking / And grieving over a mash of ice. / Like them, I wanted only to die, moon-dark, blessed, // Poised beneath the driest arrows of my suffering, / Far from the flocks of burning, singing gulls, / Face to face with the God of my childhood.
— Noelle Kocot, from “I Am Like a Desert Owl, an Owl Among the Ruins,” Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems.
“Spellwork,” Austra, Feel It Break.
“Oh Heartland, Up Yours,” Owen Pallett, live in Copenhagen.
I can only say real happiness yields from the world of poems. And its practitioners are secret, sacred vessels to an ancient divinity.
— John Wieners, from “The Lanterns Along the Wall,” Cultural Affairs in Boston: Poetry & Prose 1956-1985.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.
— Delmore Schwartz, from “Narcissus.”
We are not alone in our glamour, as we pass the pipe of Mariweedje between us, dreaming of Mexico and small Italian towns along the Mediterranean coast.
We exist upon the fringe of the world, small bright fragments that somehow burn away the fire’s edge. We do not smoke. We scorch, but go on, bearing the scars.
— John Wieners, from “Prose Poem,” Cultural Affairs in Boston: Poetry & Prose 1956-1985.
Appropriate me from the living.
— John Wieners, from “On the First Page,” Cultural Affairs in Boston: Poetry & Prose 1956-1985.
“So Young,” Antony & The Johnsons, live at The Knitting Factory, January 2001.
