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.