Scott Bielinski > Recent Status Updates

“Reading Milosz”

Sometimes your tone
transforms us for a moment,
we believe-truly-
that every day is sacred,

that poetry-how to put it?-
makes life rounder,
fuller, prouder, unashamed
of perfect formulation.

But evening arrives,
I lay my book aside, and the city's ordinary din resumes-
somebody coughs, someone cries and curses.

“No one should shun the companionship of Czeslaw Milosz’s books.” (125)

And laying aside the pen, dipped
Not in tears’ volatile liquid
But in the black ink of the heart’s well,
To read again what the hand has written
To the many voices’ quiet dictation.

“Everyone was talking about ‘the unstoppable stampede into chaos’, …. and the ‘approaching catastrophe’ without a clear notion of … these frightening words, since, he surmised, this epidemic of fear was not born out of … increasing certainty of disaster but of an infection of the imagination whose susceptibility to its own terrors might eventually lead to an actual catastrophe…” (95-96)

Starting tonight so the Swedish Academy does the right thing. Give the Nobel Prize to the Hungarian prophet!

Can’t stop laughing

Totally stunned when I read “Emblems of Conduct.” A stellar poem. Then I read he plagiarized it! Sad.