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Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays
James Richardson is one of the finest poets now writing, and the best contemporary practitioner of the art of aphorism."—Publishers Weekly
"Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin's translations and adaptations of aphorisms in Asian Figures, some thirty years ago, has an American poet managed to put down so much delightful and compelling wisdom."—American Literary Review
"No one theme or moral pervades these tesserae of specificity. Rather, Richardson's elegant compression invites the reader to fill in the blanks with personal experience… Richardson's knack for the quintessential, sustained for more than a hundred pages, left me satisfied yet hungry for more."— Times Literary Supplement
"Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That's because Vectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace."— Boston Review
"James Richardson's Vectors... penetrates to the very heart of human nature. I stand looking in the mirror, alert to my own foibles, shaking my head as I tolerate what I know he knows about who I am."— The Georgia Review
"Almost every entry... introduces a new insight, provides a revelation, supplies a surprise... it is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining."— Gulf Coast
"Vectors is the kind of book you read, reread, thumb through, and pick up several extra copies because you want to share the joy you found in perusing it with friends."— Barrow Street
"James Richardson's Vectors is a book of subversive wonders. Stunningly precise, these brilliant aphorisms and ten-second essays show a mind assessing, reassessing, discovering, and interrogating assumptions in ways that feel diamond-sharp, at once good-natured, quietly sly at times, and always, always, very shrewd. 'It can never be satisfied, the mind, never,' wrote Wallace Stevens. Vectors is a remarkable testament to such questing, vivid minding, as these aphorisms alight on everything from the nature of perception, to God, success, fear, shame, self-consciousness, love and friendship."—Laurie Sheck
"Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin's translations and adaptations of aphorisms in Asian Figures, some thirty years ago, has an American poet managed to put down so much delightful and compelling wisdom."—American Literary Review
"No one theme or moral pervades these tesserae of specificity. Rather, Richardson's elegant compression invites the reader to fill in the blanks with personal experience… Richardson's knack for the quintessential, sustained for more than a hundred pages, left me satisfied yet hungry for more."— Times Literary Supplement
"Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That's because Vectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace."— Boston Review
"James Richardson's Vectors... penetrates to the very heart of human nature. I stand looking in the mirror, alert to my own foibles, shaking my head as I tolerate what I know he knows about who I am."— The Georgia Review
"Almost every entry... introduces a new insight, provides a revelation, supplies a surprise... it is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining."— Gulf Coast
"Vectors is the kind of book you read, reread, thumb through, and pick up several extra copies because you want to share the joy you found in perusing it with friends."— Barrow Street
"James Richardson's Vectors is a book of subversive wonders. Stunningly precise, these brilliant aphorisms and ten-second essays show a mind assessing, reassessing, discovering, and interrogating assumptions in ways that feel diamond-sharp, at once good-natured, quietly sly at times, and always, always, very shrewd. 'It can never be satisfied, the mind, never,' wrote Wallace Stevens. Vectors is a remarkable testament to such questing, vivid minding, as these aphorisms alight on everything from the nature of perception, to God, success, fear, shame, self-consciousness, love and friendship."—Laurie Sheck
120 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2001
6 people are currently reading
347 people want to read
About the author
James Richardson
323 books36 followersThis is the disambiguation page for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as James Richardson.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 11, 2017
My reading has been scattershot lately. I’ve been dipping into Kipling’s short stories, and into Chekhov’s. I’ve been reading essays by Loren Eiseley and George Orwell, too, but the only book I’ve read cover to cover in the past several weeks is this one. James Richardson is apparently a poet, but I don’t read much poetry and don’t know him that way. He’s quite a good aphorist, however, and it seems to me that aphorists are due some fresh appreciation in this era of abbreviated attention spans.
Which is not to say that a good aphorism is exhausted in the few seconds it takes to read it. On the contrary, a good aphorism cracks open at the end in some unexpected way and rewards leisured contemplation. Take, for example, this one, which I have selected at random from my well-marked copy of Vectors:
“Ah, what can fill the heart? But then, what can’t?”
Indeed. We like to think grandly of ourselves, don’t we? But then it may be that the heart is not always so expansive a place as we imagine. Petty obsessions, grudges, etc. may consume it totally.
Another:
“On what is valuable thieves and the law agree.”
Let us be careful that we not agree with them.
One more:
“If the couple could see themselves twenty years later, they might not recognize their love, but they would recognize their argument.”
As a husband for something near the twenty-year mark myself, I like this one very much. Love need not vanish in twenty years, of course, and I’ve been blessed in this regard, but love will – and, I think, must necessarily – change. That’s because love is alive. It grows, alters, matures in unpredictable ways, like any living thing. This is as it should be, and I would never trade the love I have toward my wife now for the by-comparison-adolescent love I had for her when we first married. That said, it’s true we argue today about precisely the same things that we did at the beginning of our relationship. Perhaps that’s because the unhappy parts of any relationship are unhappy because they lack a life of their own, because they are the dead ends we drag about with us.
Which is not to say that a good aphorism is exhausted in the few seconds it takes to read it. On the contrary, a good aphorism cracks open at the end in some unexpected way and rewards leisured contemplation. Take, for example, this one, which I have selected at random from my well-marked copy of Vectors:
“Ah, what can fill the heart? But then, what can’t?”
Indeed. We like to think grandly of ourselves, don’t we? But then it may be that the heart is not always so expansive a place as we imagine. Petty obsessions, grudges, etc. may consume it totally.
Another:
“On what is valuable thieves and the law agree.”
Let us be careful that we not agree with them.
One more:
“If the couple could see themselves twenty years later, they might not recognize their love, but they would recognize their argument.”
As a husband for something near the twenty-year mark myself, I like this one very much. Love need not vanish in twenty years, of course, and I’ve been blessed in this regard, but love will – and, I think, must necessarily – change. That’s because love is alive. It grows, alters, matures in unpredictable ways, like any living thing. This is as it should be, and I would never trade the love I have toward my wife now for the by-comparison-adolescent love I had for her when we first married. That said, it’s true we argue today about precisely the same things that we did at the beginning of our relationship. Perhaps that’s because the unhappy parts of any relationship are unhappy because they lack a life of their own, because they are the dead ends we drag about with us.
February 18, 2017
These short passages remind me of those metal links puzzles that were so tricky to figure out, but gave a huge sense of satisfaction once you'd figured it out. A fascinating look into an artist's thought processes.
August 2, 2022
"497 I'm trying to hold it all in my head, Life, one swift, lifelong sentence, clause depending on clause, parenthesis within parenthesis, whose meaning will come together only with its very last word."
And 499 other such.
And 499 other such.
November 13, 2024
This book contains 500 aphorisms. Some consist of a single sentence, while others are comprised of a sentence or two, or a short paragraph or essay. Some contain truisms and challenge the intellect. Others appear meaningless and can be discarded.
December 22, 2019
Modern aphorisms? Just start here and work your way back through history. If you read essays or philosophy then you'll enjoy jumping into this oft overlooked genre of literature.
October 8, 2024
“Determinism. How romantic to think the mind a machine reliable enough to transform the same causes over and over again into the same effects. When even toasters fail!”
October 14, 2024
Take your time reading these. Lots of thought provoking quotes in here.
March 18, 2017
“A beginning ends what an end begins.”
“The wound hurts less than your desire to wound me.”
“When it rains you discover which things you did not want out in the rain."
“I have so much trouble choosing that I wish restaurants would ask me for a list of things I absolutely will not eat, and then select a dish at random from the rest. In that case, I would only have to figure out how it was good in itself, and not why I again failed to know what would make me happiest.”
“That the bookstores divide into romance and mystery suggests the two most powerful fantasies are someone to love and someone to blame.”
February 10, 2020
What do I say about this book? Here are some of my favorite aphorisms by James: https://www.raghuveer.net/aphorisms-a...
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Read
March 9, 2011I liked this book a lot. I found it helpful for understanding myself better and becoming a happier and kinder person.
This is a book of 500 aphorisms and ten second essays. None of these are more than three or four sentences. Most are less than that. The book reminded me of two other books: Sand and Foam, by Khalil Gibran (which can be found here in full http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole...) and "Your Time has Come," by Joshua Beckman. What connects these books is that they express lots of realizations and, at their best, epiphanies, with tiny amounts of words. Khalil Gibran does it mystically. He's highly metaphysical and philosophical. Joshua Beckman tells us of little experiences and thoughts he had during a summer in Manhattan. They're deeply felt and sincerely and simply expressed. They are experiences and thoughts that many of his readers have had and he knows that by organizing them into a book, people realize a metaphorical meaning in them. He's less philosophical (at least overtly so). In Richardson's book, he's similar to Gibran and Beckman at different points, both philosophical and experiential. Check out these quotes…
"All stones are broken stones." -Richardson
"You cannot judge a man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge." -Gibran
"I love how people keep dying and I can spend all day worrying about that petty thing she said about me." -Beckman
"Often my child asks me something utterly trivial not because she cares for it but because she needs to hear me say Yes, yes." -Richardson
"Only when a juggler misses catching a ball does he appeal to me." -Gibran
"These drugs have absolutely nothing to do with our happiness. O god now I really sound like a junky." -Beckman
"You do not have to be a fire to keep one burning." -Richardson
"I too am visited by angels and demons, but I get rid of them. When it is an angel I pray an old prayer and he is bored. When it is a devil I commit an old sin, and he passes me by." -Gibran
"Someone planted those flowers and I like them." -Beckman
"Loving your enemies takes away their right to hate you. Kinder to endure being the enemy they need." -Richardson
"Train to Chelsea is thinking like me." -Beckman
I think you should read all three of these books. Gibran's and Beckman's can be read in an hour. Richardson's in two. You'll want to go back to them again and again.
Where these books are at their best is when they speak of things incredibly specific but also universal to the human experience. Often there's a feeling of…"Ah I could have written that."
note: I might have f-ed up the Beckman quotes a little bit as I gave that book away to someone and don't currently have a copy.
This is a book of 500 aphorisms and ten second essays. None of these are more than three or four sentences. Most are less than that. The book reminded me of two other books: Sand and Foam, by Khalil Gibran (which can be found here in full http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole...) and "Your Time has Come," by Joshua Beckman. What connects these books is that they express lots of realizations and, at their best, epiphanies, with tiny amounts of words. Khalil Gibran does it mystically. He's highly metaphysical and philosophical. Joshua Beckman tells us of little experiences and thoughts he had during a summer in Manhattan. They're deeply felt and sincerely and simply expressed. They are experiences and thoughts that many of his readers have had and he knows that by organizing them into a book, people realize a metaphorical meaning in them. He's less philosophical (at least overtly so). In Richardson's book, he's similar to Gibran and Beckman at different points, both philosophical and experiential. Check out these quotes…
"All stones are broken stones." -Richardson
"You cannot judge a man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge." -Gibran
"I love how people keep dying and I can spend all day worrying about that petty thing she said about me." -Beckman
"Often my child asks me something utterly trivial not because she cares for it but because she needs to hear me say Yes, yes." -Richardson
"Only when a juggler misses catching a ball does he appeal to me." -Gibran
"These drugs have absolutely nothing to do with our happiness. O god now I really sound like a junky." -Beckman
"You do not have to be a fire to keep one burning." -Richardson
"I too am visited by angels and demons, but I get rid of them. When it is an angel I pray an old prayer and he is bored. When it is a devil I commit an old sin, and he passes me by." -Gibran
"Someone planted those flowers and I like them." -Beckman
"Loving your enemies takes away their right to hate you. Kinder to endure being the enemy they need." -Richardson
"Train to Chelsea is thinking like me." -Beckman
I think you should read all three of these books. Gibran's and Beckman's can be read in an hour. Richardson's in two. You'll want to go back to them again and again.
Where these books are at their best is when they speak of things incredibly specific but also universal to the human experience. Often there's a feeling of…"Ah I could have written that."
note: I might have f-ed up the Beckman quotes a little bit as I gave that book away to someone and don't currently have a copy.
March 2, 2009
The strongest aphorisms and essays in here are the ones that don't try too hard to emulate Zen koans. Richardson hits in here the kind of boiled-down wisdom that makes poetry so vital. I hate to say that there is the occasional item here that actually goes too far, but there were some that had me sold before their final twist at the end, but these are far outshone by the most brilliant. This is a book to tear into shreds to hang off your steering wheel, on the lampshade, to pop up randomly on your computer screen, jsut to remind you of what you should know.
Read
December 17, 2007These aphorisms are really marvelous, in the tradition not only of proverbs, like Blake's "Proverbs of Hell," but also of fragment. I love the idea of the fragment as a unit of poetry - Jim's book is also fantastic for teaching the idea of a poem as the form of a thought, which has been invaluable introducing students new to poetry to the essentially formless-form of free verse. One of my favorites from the book, "All stones are broken stones."
July 27, 2010
Richardson has made himself the posterchild for aphorists. Some times these aphorisms come very close to preachy zen-moralizing, but it’s a great genre and includes many great tibbets of wisdom and some rather fine poetry besides.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews