belief concept expectation reason

desire emotion intention passion

Correctness

realistic expectations
idealistic intentions

accurate predictions
proper indictments

Give me

Olson's special view of history
AND
Quine's general take on the world.

We must assume that Olson was Olson;
and Quine was Quine. Now, some Olsons
no doubt, pretend to be Quines,
occassionally moved and rarely reading,
but a Quine, out at the elbows, his
fly gaping, pretending to be an Olson?

Concepts are more or less intuitive.

Emotions are more
                                or less
                                         institutional.

Alt take

Poets struggle to be clear.

Philosophers eschew intensity.

Poets struggle to be clear.

Philosophers beseech intensity.

If you were emotionally precise about this
you would not be moved.
If you were conceptually precise about it
you could not be stilled.

Belief constrains desire;
desire disturbs belief.

Every full moon is enough.
Given the dead certainty
of its recurrence, there is
no cause for despair. Just
suffer through and circle
back to the wolf you are.

Of things, precision of reference—a perspicuity.

Of people, precision of deference—an intensity.

One wants to be precise:

            clear in the stillness
      of the scene with the thought,
      of the thought with the image,

            sharp in the movement
      from the image to the feeling,
      from the feeling to the deed.

We see what's to be done.

I live in the moment. Unfortunately, on most days, memory and imagination stretches it thirty years into the past and thirty years into the future.

The War Effort

From 1942 to 1945, Charles Olson and W.V.O. Quine were both living and working in Washington, D.C.
Olson was writing propaganda; Quine was breaking codes.

Justice

This is just a sentence.

This is just
                     a poem.

A scientific discovery is always also the discovery of a new source of power.

The function of science is to discover truths, but the function of academia is to maintain ideology. Fortunately, an ideological system that does not allow the discovery of new truths is untenable.

The world remains,
unchanged.
History proceeds
accordingly.

Life is not finished.
It's repeating.

When all the knowledge and all the power has been automated, we will find our work in the grammar.

Theory is to philosophy as practice is to poetry. This is reflected and beheld in the grammar.

That is, I don't have a theory of philosophy and poetry, nor a philosophical or poetic practice. My work is purely grammatical.

* * *

"There is nothing more human (that is, less mineral, vegetal, animal, and even angelical) than grammar." (Jorge Luis Borges)

"I am a grammarian. We will or we will not cry together." (Getrude Stein)