This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Poem |
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power of God.
R. W. Dixon, fully Richard Watson Dixon
And being such the soul doth recognize The doubleness of nature, that there lies A soul occult in Nature, hidden deep As lies the soul of man in moveless sleep. And like a dream Broken in circumstance and foolish made, Through which howe’er the future world doth gleam, And floats a warning to the gathered thought, Like to a dream, Through sense and all by sense conveyed, Into our soul the shadow of that soul Doth float. Then are we lifted up erect and whole In vast confession to that universe Perceived by us: our soul itself transfers Thither by instinct sure; it swiftly hails The mighty spirit similar; it sails In the divine expansion; it perceives Tendencies glorious, distant; it enweaves Itself with excitations more that thought Unto that soul unveiled and yet unsought.
Future | Instinct | Man | Sense | Soul | Spirit | Warning | World | Circumstance |
One day while studying a [William Butler] Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life.
Robert Hass, aka The Bard of Berkeley
A Faint Music - Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.
Friend | Fury | Good | Grace | Hero | Kill | Little | Music | Need | Nothing | Novelty | Order | Pain | Play | Poverty | Rage | Reason | Self-love | Story | Thought | Novelty | Poem | Thought |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
O God, my countenance falleth, When I remember all wherein I have provoked Thee. For all the good which Thou hast bestowed on me I have requited Thee with evil. For Thou hast created me not from necessity, but from grace, And not by compulsion of circumstance But by favour and love. And before I was, With Thy mercies didst Thou precede me, And breathe into me a spirit and call me into being, And after I came forth into the light of the world Thou didst not forsake me, But like a tender father didst Thou watch over my growing up, And as a nurse fostereth a suckling didst Thou foster me. Upon the breasts of my mother Thou madest me rest trustfully, And with Thy delight didst satisfy me. And when I essayed my feet, Thou didst strengthen my standing And didst take me in Thine arms and teach me to walk. And wisdom and discipline didst Thou impart to me, And from all trouble and distress didst Thou relieve me, And at the time of the passing away of Thy wrath In the shadow of Thy hand didst Thou hide me, And from how many sorrows concealed from mine eyes didst Thou deliver me! For before the hardship came Thou didst prepare the remedy for my distress all unbeknown to me, And when from some injury I was unguarded, Thou didst guard me, And when I came within the fangs of lions Thou didst break the teeth of the whelps and deliver me thence, And when evil and constant distress anguished me, Thou hast freely healed me, And when Thy dreadful judgment came upon the world, Thou didst deliver me from the sword And didst save me from the pestilence, And in famine didst feed me, And with plenty sustain me. And when I provoked Thee, Thou didst chastise me as a father chastiseth his son, And when I called out from the depths of my sorrow, My soul was precious in Thy sight, Nor didst Thou send me empty away. But all this didst Thou yet exceed and add to When Thou gavest me a perfect faith To believe that Thou art the God of Truth And that Thy Law is true and Thy prophets are true. For Thou hast not set my portion with the rebels and those who rise up against Thee And the foolish multitude that blaspheme Thy name; Who make mock of Thy law, And contend with Thy servants, And give the lie to Thy prophets, Making a show of innocence But with cunning below, Exhibiting a pure and stainless soul, While underneath lurketh the bright leprous spot: Like to a vessel full of shameful things, Washed on the outside with the waters of deceit, And defiling all that is within.
Call the bald man, Boy; make the sage thy toy; greet the youth with solemn face; praise the fat man for his grace.
Little |
Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay
Words, those precious gems of queer shape and gay colours, sharp angles and soft contours, shades of meaning laid one over the other down history, so that for those far back one must delve among the lost and lovely litter that strews the centuries. They arrange themselves in the most elegant odd patterns; the sound the strangest sweet euphonious notes; they flute and sing and taber, and disappear, like apparitions, with a curious perfume and a most melodious twang.
Body | Despair | Fear | Life | Life | Mortal | Will | Loss | Poem |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
One morning I went to a place beyond the Dawn. A source of sweetness, that always flows, and is never less. I have been shown a Beauty that would confuse both worlds. I won't cause that uproar. I am nothing but a head, set on the ground, as a gift for the Sun.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Every sin is a greater injury to him who does it than to him who suffers it.
Conscience | Day | Hope | Mercy |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
The Lord gave clear evidence of His supreme power in what He endured from hostile forces when He endowed human nature with an incorruptible form of generation. For through His passion He conferred dispassion, through suffering repose, and through death eternal life. By His privations in the flesh He re-established and renewed the human state, and by His own incarnation He bestowed on human nature the supra-natural grace of deification.
Church | Faith | Hell | Injustice | Injustice | Lord | Promise | Religion | Right | Sacred | World |
Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.
Faith |
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man to know what he ought to believe to know what he ought to desire and to know what he ought to do.