2021-04-09 06:36
I have a newsletter/blog: “Encouragement.”
Please do visit and subscribe. It’s different from this blog. I’m not as interested in writing essays or commentary as m… Read More
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Rethink. | Ora Sono Ubriaco D'universo. (ungaretti) Blog
ashokkarra.com
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Critiques media and politics today by contrasting our concerns with the concerns of thinkers past.
2021-04-05 17:37
Vsevolod Nekrasov’s “The Soul” scores a direct hit on the awkwardness of the word itself in poetry:
The Soul
Vsevolod Nekrasov
The Soul
/just kidding/
When I st… Read More
2021-03-31 03:29
Often, I try to disassociate “natural” from the “natural world.”
Yes, there are plants, animals, forces, and plagues. They are a world unto themselves, apart… Read More
2021-03-25 07:06
The idea of travel can possess me with guilt.
How dare I try to leave? To see something more, something new? If I were truly grateful, I would try to make the most of where I am.
If I… Read More
2021-03-22 03:42
“The world / might become the / Kingdom of Peace,” Ryan writes. I should be overjoyed at the prospect. Many who are hurt will be uplifted. Justice and happiness will spill over t… Read More
2021-03-21 01:47
The trap in commenting on the specific work of a specific scholar is that the audience can become hopelessly lost. So I know it’s important to make a few remarks about Plato’s Cl… Read More
2021-03-19 02:13
Calling distance from others difficult is an understatement. If unloved, distance can be especially maddening. You might as well be a ghost in the world, seeing but never seen, hearing but n… Read More
2021-03-12 15:23
In “Decline and Fall,” Evelyn Waugh throws his protagonist into prison. He then reports the protagonist became happier in prison because he did not have to worry about the news e… Read More
2021-03-09 05:20
Hass, in the translation below, lets Issa’s anger show. You can’t really say that a stoic or calm attitude is demonstrated here. Even if haiku may be considered part of religious… Read More
2021-03-05 05:01
41 as of yesterday. What echoes: “What do I have to show for it?”
I’m not depressed thinking about it, but it’s tough to think through. It’s a nagging, aggra… Read More
2021-03-02 03:52
“Extreme exertion / isolates,” says the poem.
My mind remembers being isolated from help. However, I did not think myself exerting much of anything, unless Olympic events exis… Read More
2021-03-01 05:50
Dickinson declares “Publication… is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man,” and straightaway I feel like an idiot and a sellout.
I feel stupid. I don’t know if I&rsquo&hell…Read More
2021-02-28 03:46
Highly recommended: Allison Seay’s beautiful consideration of this poem, where she talks about the journey and the destination.
*
The ancient sense of what makes an omen puzzles… Read More
2021-02-27 04:50
Not often, but sometimes, we’ll be asked to list joys. To count blessings, show ourselves we should be grateful. To inspire a feeling, remind ourselves of how we could feel.
Can we… Read More
2021-02-26 04:29
Yesterday I wrote about quiet graces.
Today has been… more difficult, let’s just say that.
Some days the good can’t be visible. If you saw it, you’d be t… Read More
2021-02-25 02:24
Yesterday, I did not know how I wanted to feel.
I started with wanting to be sad. Wanting anger towards myself.
And I couldn’t indulge it. Some amazing conversations. Met someone… Read More
2021-02-23 03:18
Nietzsche begins “On the Pathos of Truth” with a sentence that merits an essay: “Is fame actually nothing but the tastiest morsel of our self-love?”
When I first r… Read More
2021-02-22 02:23
Dickinson says “I can wade Grief… Whole Pools of it… I’m used to that.” I want to tell her “Teach me.” What grief destroys for me is consistency… Read More
2021-02-21 01:48
Karisma Price’s “Can’t Afford Sadness in a Time Like This” has me imagining a giant painting. Maybe on canvas, but like the frescoes of churches, speaking the reason… Read More
2021-02-18 19:12
Let’s talk about weapons.
Gunmetal Gray (from Overland)
Natalie Eilbert
Man's best weapon, how
we describe the dying ocean.
“I sing of arms and the man.” Of bu… Read More
2021-02-14 03:16
“How much longer must I carry this body of grief,” Ono no Komachi laments.
I hear her, though I do not see “the living grow fewer, the dead increase” yet… Read More
2021-02-09 05:07
A few friends have asked: “How much power does Trump have now?”
It’s a good question, bearing fruit even through an informal, pundit-like discussion. The reason why it p… Read More
2021-02-03 03:57
A few times I’ve been lucky. Got something like a posh hotel room—great view, immaculate walls, clean design—and witnessed the sun’s brightness set it alight. Not bur… Read More
2021-01-31 09:59
What kind of people want to deny those spending hours in the fields, aching and sweating while picking as fast as possible, soap and water?
No. That’s the wrong question. “Wha… Read More
2021-01-27 07:51
The mouse ears are a simple shape, almost a scribble. But there might not be a symbol as simple, ubiquitous, and immediately recognized by all—save one.
It’s strange to watch… Read More
2021-01-27 03:00
Right now, feeling down. Rejected by oh-so-many. It’s easy to dive into a pool of self-pity and never return.
Working with self-pity is challenging. I used to think it was completel… Read More
2021-01-25 06:35
A thought, thrown away: “no six, I missed one / it was there anyway.” I can recall when I spoke—even counted—like that. Especially tedious tasks at retail and stockin… Read More
2021-01-24 05:00
“Mirror” demands self-reflection from its very title.
It took a little effort to grasp what I feel when I look in the mirror. There isn’t any flexing of biceps or &ldqu&hell…Read More
2021-01-22 03:20
“Make more of each moment” is an imperative with a gooey, sickeningly sweet casing.
It’s advice from Hallmark cards and TV specials in which, say, grandparents giv… Read More
2021-01-21 07:04
It has a rhythm, you know. Traditional, conservative talk about “manliness.” Sure, it starts with what seems a debatable contention: perhaps masculinity offers virtues that if lo… Read More
2021-01-19 19:02
“Banish Air from Air” and “Divide Light if you dare” superficially sound like scientific experiments. A moment’s pause and you realize how ridiculous at least o… Read More
2021-01-19 02:06
Komachi tells of a tree burdened by its memories. “The pine tree,” she says, has “branches [which] lean towards the ground:”
Untitled
Ono no Komachi (translated by… Read More
2021-01-18 01:35
Why do we create?
This is America. Many believe that if you don’t produce, you don’t deserve to exist. This absurdity drives people to publish on the weightiest matters witho… Read More
2021-01-13 06:36
Bogan opens with knowledge from pain. Now she knows “that passion warms little of flesh.”
She did not know this before.
A relationship gone wrong was a trial, in which in… Read More
2020-12-20 05:26
Often I think about doing. It is a form of procrastination but potentially more. When Dickinson wonders about a man who trekked “so far so cold… / For little Fellowmen,” s… Read More
2020-12-18 03:38
“Loneliness makes you part of the largest group of people in the world,” I used to tell myself. It never worked. I felt miserable no matter how many words were applied.
Robert… Read More
2020-11-13 19:40
Moths, gathering. Watching us, separated by a glass barrier. Attracted to the light.
There’s not a lot of things political philosophy can do, but it should speak to how a nation los… Read More
2020-11-10 19:02
Right now in the United States, we worry. There was an election. One man won with millions more votes for him. The party opposing him did not fare terribly, gaining more seats in one legisla… Read More
2020-11-05 11:37
One criticism of Leo Strauss is that he pays far too much attention to trivial details. For example, Socrates swearing by the gods. Why do the times Socrates says “By Zeus!” warr… Read More
2020-10-29 08:48
Szymborska’s “The Three Oddest Words” haunts me. She speaks of three words—“Future,” “Silence,” and “Nothing”—which have a p… Read More
2020-10-27 06:30
“Draw not nigh hither,” says the Lord to Moses; “put off thy shoes from off they feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus, 3, 5). There is, t… Read More
2020-10-25 04:11
Memories of a certain significance entail grand gestures, rituals piled atop rituals. Every so often, Twichell climbs to a height where a cairn memorializing one of her parents lies. Wheneve… Read More
2020-10-24 05:50
Mastery, as VanderHart demonstrates, is an exceptionally cruel word. This did not need to be the case. However, hundreds of years of slavery and not nearly enough serious reckoning with ever… Read More
2020-10-23 04:47
What I would like is success. I’d like to do a thing well, get something good, and feel secure about what I can accomplish.
Maybe “success” is the wrong word. Mayb… Read More
2020-10-21 17:42
Machiavelli testifies to “catching thrushes with my own hands” in the Letter to Vettori. “I would get up before daybreak, prepare the birdlime, and go out with… a bu… Read More
2020-10-17 04:43
With a sluggish gait, my mind moves from half-formed thought to half-formed thought. Looking through older work of mine, I see more clearly where I failed to fully explain what I wanted to s… Read More
2020-10-11 16:46
Watch Tom Brady at his peak throw a football low and away to a receiver who has yet to turn around and dive for it. It isn’t a misplay. That’s the actual play. The cornerback cov… Read More
2020-10-10 13:51
The visible war, it says. In the visible war / we look. War carries distinction, division, and destruction. It should be difficult to look at, to contemplate. We look for things to improve /… Read More
2020-10-09 14:51
Growing with a poem seems a quaint triviality. More pressing matters must receive attention. Employment calls for competence, not reflection; the love given to family should be immediate, fe… Read More
2020-10-03 07:11
for Ariana
“During the pandemic,” Rick Barot informs us, “I thought of abstract art.” Deadly sickness and artistic style can appear a strange combination, but perh… Read More
2020-08-16 08:58
I hear the axe has flowered is quite a sentence. It combines an instrument of violence, an axe, with a vision of growth. In case one feels tempted to say an axe merely prunes or cultivates&m&hell…Read More
2020-07-04 08:37
Merely staring out the window, Dickinson envisions no less than a sacrament:
Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze —
Permit a child to join.
Some may be temp… Read More
2020-06-25 05:22
At the battle, where one maneuvers around life and death, the mountain comes into view over and over. The mountain, “this stone,” breaks the sky, but Ungaretti’s “Son… Read More
2020-06-23 10:40
Our earnestness our sincerity… when we learned to sing America.
When studying Greek political thought, I’m tempted to think Americans especially naive. For an example, consi… Read More
2020-06-22 03:48
In “I dwell in Possibility,” Dickinson declares hers “A fairer House than Prose.” At the end of the poem, she tells what she does in that “House:”
For… Read More
2020-06-20 18:05
I want to thank everyone who has been reading and has plans to continue reading this blog. While I was wading through Ungaretti recently, it struck me that his themes correspond with those o… Read More
2020-06-13 21:20
I believe I have located a parallel in Ungaretti’s “My House” and a verse from Heidegger’s “The Thinker as Poet” which may be of use to those asking what… Read More
2020-06-02 09:02
The inexpressible nothing. It is meant in a lovely way, encapsulating an affectionate gesture. But it bridges two complicated realities hinted in the gesture. “The inexpressible nothin… Read More
2020-05-31 08:19
To speak of hope or possibility in these times looks foolish, if not dangerous. Plenty will say any advocacy for change risks disproportionate response from those who hold power. Some have c… Read More
2020-05-30 06:33
This is what language is: a habitable grief. Reading those words back to myself, I struggle to understand how they apply to the current situation. I watched a group of wealthy young men ente… Read More
2020-05-24 08:11
It sounds strange to say a superhero movie constitutes a serious comment about the War on Terror. But that’s what The Dark Knight is, and it is understandable if people find themselves… Read More
2020-05-23 05:10
Lately, I have not been looking at nature too closely. It feels a blur of bugs and heat, an encompassing disorder I must move through. At this moment, though, I’m sitting at the comput… Read More
2020-05-22 02:02
One of the tasks of political philosophy, I imagine, is accounting for how it is possible for an entire people to be in denial. Emphasis must be placed on “how it is possible.” C… Read More
2020-04-14 04:02
For a number of us, quarantine entails meeting our insecurities and rediscovering our weaknesses.
This isn’t to say that getting attention constantly is a good thing. But more socia… Read More
2020-04-10 03:50
At home, trapped in social distancing—a sort of self-quarantine—while the pandemic rages. Lots to do. Lots to clean and organize, lots to read, lots of dreams and regrets to indu… Read More
2020-03-11 07:06
Panic is learned, I believe.
It could be natural. Maybe humanity has an instinct to fear the unfamiliar. —Still, there are babies radiating brightness, trying to say hi to every oth… Read More
2020-03-09 00:38
“How was your birthday?” Well-meaning, polite people ask this, and I want to give a response better than “I had sushi” (I actually had Popeye’s) or “I rea… Read More
2020-03-03 08:27
One and One — are One, intones Dickinson.
You could say, as the kids do, that Dickinson is being “extra.” Two — be finished using is her very next line. She&rsquo&hell…Read More
2020-02-29 05:16
1 The unexamined life is not worth living does not seem true. We can be very hurt in friendships and relationships; we can fall to pieces when goals, large or small, can’t be met. When… Read More
2020-02-27 04:41
Law spoke, says the poem.
Law spoke, creating the world in which I live. A world where I enjoy Internet access and am sometimes of help to human beings.
Law spoke, and I constantly fee… Read More
2020-02-25 19:49
I wonder how my best students make something special out of what I assign.
I’m staring at an essay—the first chapter of Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others— Prof… Read More
2020-02-24 05:08
I am using the Anastaplo & Berns translation. Plato’s Meno, tr. Anastaplo & Berns. Newburyport: Focus, 2004.In this lecture I want to address three different issues which I do… Read More
2020-02-21 05:52
After another day of worrying about everything and nothing, I find myself drawn to imaginative realms, specifically places for meditation and of meditation. Dickinson, with painterly words… Read More
2020-02-19 02:16
Akhmatova’s imagination brings us to a cruel but familiar place. She reads Hamlet, casts herself as Ophelia, and then sets herself to the task of confronting Hamlet’s incredible… Read More
2020-02-08 04:11
James Baldwin’s “A Letter to My Nephew” is a masterclass in authorship. You’re saying duh and getting ready to roast me. Tell us about that theory of relativity, Eins… Read More
2020-02-05 09:24
for Gordon Schochet
A certain kind of person likes to label things “great” or “important” and not bother to explain why. I worry I am becoming that kind of person… Read More
2020-01-17 05:53
Maybe I’m naive, but loving relationships seem like hard work, requiring a combination of thoughtfulness, awareness, and sacrifice not easily obtained, let alone found.
I guess that… Read More
2020-01-14 20:52
1 Maybe the scariest thing about abandonment is how comfortable we are with it.
2 I can’t prove it, of course, but “Light On” sounds an awful lot like two people ghosti… Read More
2020-01-13 08:22
I want my writing in 2020 to demonstrate far more attentiveness to craft. How do writers create sentences their readers want to quote? How do they give them images and scenes they want to re… Read More
2019-12-30 11:38
“We whisper reconciliation, but forget how the old king’s priests sang the words and blessed the killing.” —Mournful Namman, from Horizon Zero Dawn‘s side quest… Read More
2019-12-29 12:27
I like to believe that I think a lot about aging gracefully, but have I put in the effort to actually age well? I’m angry at myself for not reading and writing enough, for not exercisi… Read More
2019-12-22 11:13
At the opening of the Metaphysics, Aristotle proclaims “all men naturally desire knowledge.” Is it true? I wonder if people in the Middle Ages read those words and broke into ope… Read More
2019-12-20 10:50
At once, “The Second Coming” is overblown and understated. Every generation thinks if they do not act, the world will end. Opponents are framed in stark terms, as wreckers of tra… Read More
2019-12-13 23:36
I can’t stress enough one lesson I’ve learned the hard way, over and over again, my whole life. You can read so much so well, carefully considering the author’s most subtle… Read More
2019-12-11 06:32
In the history of ideas, utility looms large. You’re probably familiar with “utilitarianism,” the greatest good for the greatest number, an idea used not only as an ethical… Read More
2019-12-09 05:37
“Pamphleteer” opens quietly, a rapidly moving guitar getting louder, until drums crash in. Then, with a full sound, three big, anthemic chords ascending, followed by three big, a… Read More
2019-12-07 03:22
Last night I watched a man who could barely take a step without struggling to breathe buy cigarettes.
I don’t want the image to leave me. Dark, pronounced lines marked his features… Read More
2019-12-05 04:43
Dickinson’s reflections on sexuality can be harsh. The last two lines of this short poem have a distinct tone, as she seems to feel wronged, holding a certain pride at the isolation of… Read More
2019-12-04 04:45
I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with this poem if it weren’t for an incredibly embittering experience. I just watched a young man blithely dismiss the lives of others in or… Read More
2019-12-03 05:25
At times I wish I were a physicist. I would like to properly marvel at the forces at play in driving a race car or understand the energies indicating the presence of cosmic objects otherwise… Read More
2019-11-24 05:37
It’s the pacing. The pacing crushes. Listen to how these short, bullet-like sentences fire and linger: I had to. I learned it. It was if. With “I had to,” necessity breaks… Read More
2019-10-13 03:18
Before reading this walkthrough, you probably want to play Troll Factory a few times and see if you can get 15000 shares and 2000 followers within a week. If you do, you too can be the &ldqu&hell…Read More
2019-10-06 03:08
Sound may be addressed to you or it may not—I confess that when I’ve been neglected I’ve become more tense, felt my blood storm my mind, indulged anger. When I’ve bee… Read More
2019-10-03 05:37
tl;dr: 1) start personal 2) read around / think around–if it feels too narrow a topic, it is too narrow 3) they say, I say–find opinions to work with or critique. Whatever you do… Read More
2019-09-21 17:28
Teaching has changed my views on the interpretation and analysis of fine art and sundry objects (e.g. comic books). On the one hand, while I work with a toolbox heavily influenced by New Cri… Read More
2019-09-15 02:40
When I first started blogging—really, I should say when I first started writing for public consumption—I worried incessantly about creating the perfect “About Me” pag… Read More
2019-09-11 22:48
Paul Hoover presents us with prophets, men seeking dialogue with God. His portrait in “To the Choirmaster” brings forth the brutal honesty in trying to talk to the supreme being… Read More
2019-09-07 02:47
The rock lives in the desert, solid, taking its time. I’m jealous. I feel torn, unable to take time. As time wastes away, I am paralyzed, stymied by sheer amounts to do. So much must b… Read More
2019-09-01 04:57
Other ages will not understand our cruel cynicism, exercised in the name of power. They won’t equate the painting below and Shepard Fairey’s “Hope;” they’ll see… Read More
2019-08-28 07:20
[Note: In my Introduction to Philosophy class, I start with Wittgenstein, precisely because he pushes us to explain what we normally take for granted. In the “Lecture on Ethics,”… Read More
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