Sublime

Thanks to the help of some fellow poets, Brodsky was able to find refuge in the United States and soon he had teaching positions at Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Michigan. In 1991, nineteen years after being exiled from the Soviet Union (and what must have seemed like an entirely different lifetime), Brodsky was appointed the United States... See more

this remains one of my favorite pieces of internet cultural criticism https://t.co/722WCUehm6

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

fo... See more

I want to know

if you are prepared to live in a world

with its harsh need

to change you. If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand.

— David Whyte, 'Self-Portrait' [from Fire in the Earth]

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfilment. Such... See more