7 files changed, 26 insertions, 17 deletions

@@ -19,11 +19,11 @@ What is poetry?
 Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry.
 Here is the problem: life is very big and complex.
 Human beings are neither.
-We are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all the hours of every day.
+We are small, simple beings that don't want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all the hours of every day.
 We much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
 This is why many people are depressed.
 
-Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so contemptibly.
+Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe check on something else that isn't staring us in the face so contemptibly.
 Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think.
 So we write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our existence to see something else.
 
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting.
 It should be a rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister vanilla plants.
 They feel the pain of having their children taken from them.
 A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty.
-The reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them.
+The reader does nothing to achieve this---they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them.
 In a way, poetry is a crime.
 But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
 
@@ -7,12 +7,12 @@ project:
     css: autocento
 ...
 
-I wanted to tell you something in order to \
-explain the way I feel about the Universe, \
-its workings, etc.  But I couldn't yesterday \
----I'm sorry---I wanted only to ball \
-myself up and cry all day.  It was the sixteenth \
-day in a row this happened to me, and to be
+I wanted to tell you something in order [to][] \
+explain the way I feel about the [Universe][], \
+its workings, etc.  But I couldn't [yesterday][] \
+---I'm sorry---I wanted only to [ball][] \
+myself up and cry all day.  It was the [sixteenth][] \
+day in a row this happened to me, and to [be][]
 
 more than two weeks waiting to cry is, \
 especially when, the whole time, I wasn't able to, \
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ times, and all you can think is, "Some sixteenth \
 birthday!  Maybe I will go die in a hole."  Yesterday, \
 at times like this, is a luxury the cruel Universe \
 refuses to give you.  This is when it's a pain just to _be_, \
-when that Marvell line about "rolling our stuff into one ball" \
+when that Marvell line about "[rolling our stuff into one ball][Marvell]" \
 just seems glib, when you don't want one body, let alone two.
 
 Something else that may come as a surprise to \
@@ -52,3 +52,12 @@ and step around it lightly, as I would an exercise ball,
 but the problem is, dear Universe, there's no way I could be \
 something as hard as all that, to wake up yesterday \
 morning, stretch over my sixteen selves, bound out like a ball.
+
+[to]: poetry-time.html
+[Universe]: initial-conditions.html
+[yesterday]: exasperated.html
+[ball]: ouroboros_memory.html
+[sixteenth]: sixteenth-chapel.html
+[be]: love-as-god.html
+
+[Marvell]: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm
@@ -51,4 +51,4 @@ with an argument for the white beauty of January.
 
 They know it's hard; they say each season \
 has its detractors. One day, they say, the weather \
-will be controlled - until then, patience in January.
+will be controlled---until then, patience in January.
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ project:
 
 Memory works strangely, spooling its thread \
 over the nails of events barely related, \
-creating finally some picture, if we’re \
+creating finally some picture, if we're \
 lucky, of a life---but more likely, it knots \
 itself, catches on a nail or in our throats \
 that gasp, as it binds our necks, for air.
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ So when Jane said, "Sure, I have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely
 "It's Ms, not Mrs.
 Em ess.
 Miz.
-No ‘r,' Larry."
+No 'r,' Larry."
 She sounded patient, as if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her title.
 But how often can that happen?
 Larry thought, and he was suddenly deeply confused.
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets this bit apart from that
 Most of the time I think of language as limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not.
 
 In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing," which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people off.
-To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever.
+To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the same point on the circle---of numbers, of the universe, whatever.
 Maybe it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the limitations that language sets upon us.
 I think that's the role of the poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around, at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and cannot get to it.
 A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the way there, and never will.
@@ -28,13 +28,13 @@ and over but they do not listen \
 they think of their children at home \
 lying in bed dreaming sweet \
 childhood one of them is staying over \
-at a friend’s house they are staying \
+at a friend's house they are staying \
 up late they never want it to be over \
 not like the man. His life on the radio \
 will be the only one he ever has \
-his life it is wasted he’s being spoken over \
+his life it is wasted he's being spoken over \
 such pain is in his voice. I wish you \
-could hear it. It’s something never over. \
+could hear it. It's something never over. \
 Suffering everywhere always and over it \
 the same serene murmur of the comfortable \
 distracted or worse looking over \