In Conversation

Bambi? Erotica? “The local priest”? I was beside myself at what I only assumed was my great fortune.

I can tell you all sorts of reasons why you won’t sink. I mean, I think ways not to sink include deciding what you want to do vocationally in your early 20s, and devoting time each day, secretly or illegally, to doing what you need to do to pursue your vocation. I.e. Write. Every day. Meet people who will inspire you rather than get you down. Not have bad relationships. Not take too many drugs. It’s a balancing act between exploring your inner and outer anarchy, exploring your libidinal volcanic impulses, and also looking forward…

…I think it speaks so well to our moment, because we are so inundated with different types of culture, and this idea that we should be hierarchically stacking them or appropriately engaging with them at certain moments or not—I think that’s over, that’s passé, and John’s work is much more fluid, and then you realize all the experimental and progressive work in poetry is that way, too…

With a twist. The problem is people. When they come into power, no matter what, they do bad things. The paintings are generally about people in power, it doesn’t matter what country…

Some of the translations are more academic, aiming mainly to reproduce the content of the poems without bothering too much about the form. Others strive to turn the poems into equivalent works in English, with varying degrees of success. Part of the attraction of a collection like this lies, hopefully, in the unity of its approach, and that is largely due to the collection being one translator’s version of Claus…

For those uninterested in the history of materials, it may seem strange that some colors cannot exist divorced from their material wellspring. Mummy Brown, for example, is a brown obtained from the ground up fragments of Egyptian mummies…

Simply put, fashion is the largest, best-funded and best-scripted NGO in existence—and one that’s not above using politicians as instruments for social command and control…

For instance, through the response which is made to the child’s instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions…

The poem and the book want to think about what kind of people we are on Sunday and what we’d have to do to build an article in front of that term—to be a people rather than people…

Consciousness itself arises, writes Mearleau-Ponty, in the realization that “I am able” meaning the realization that one can reach beyond the immediate…

One fine morning, I awoke to discover that, during the night, I had learned to understand the language of birds. I have listened to them ever since. They say: ‘Look at me!’ or: ‘Get out of here!’ or: ‘Let’s Fuck!’ or: ‘Help!’ or: ‘Hurrah!’ or: ‘I found a worm!’ and that’s all they say…