From "Proverbs"

“…The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.
He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul;
but he hear that heareth reproof getteth understanding.
The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom;
and before honour is humility.”

- Proverbs 15:31-33

From "The Easter Parade", by Richard Yates

“….One day when Emily was finished at the supermarket—she had learned how not to be stultified by the supermarket, how to deal with it in quick, competent movements that brought results—she sat for a long time in the steaming brilliance of the laundromat. She watched the whirl of suds and soaked cloth in the porthole of her machine; then she watched the other customers, trying to guess which were students and which were faculty and which were people from the town. She bought a chocolate bar and it tasted surprisingly good—as if, without her knowing it, sitting here and eating this chocolate was the one thing she had wanted to do all day. Waiting for the drying cycle to end she began to feel a vague dread, but it wasn’t until she was at the warm, lint-speckled folding table that she figured it out: she didn’t want to go home.”

- Richard Yates, from Part 2, Chapter 1 of “The Easter Parade”

Jack Gilbert - What to Want

The room was like getting married.
A landfall and the setting forth.
A dearness and vessel. A small room
eight by twelve, filled by the narrow iron bed.
Six stories up, under the roof
and no elevator. A maid's room long ago.
In the old quarter, on the other hill
with the famous city stretched out
below. His window like an ocean.
The great bells of the cathedral counting
the hours all night while everyone slept.
After two years, he had come to
the beginning. Past the villa at Como,
past the police moving him from jail
to jail to hide him from the embassy.
His first woman gone back to Manhattan,
the friends gone back to weddings
or graduate school. He was finally alone.
Without money. A wind blowing through
where much of him used to be. No longer
the habit of himself. The blinding intensity
giving way to presence. The budding
amid the random passion. Mortality like
a cello inside him. Like rain in the dark.
Sin a promise. What interested him
most was who he was about to become.

- Jack Gilbert

From Thomas Merton

“When you are by yourself, you soon get tired of your craziness. It is too exhausting. It does not fit in with the eminent sanity of trees, birds, water, sky. You have to shut up and go about the business of living. The silence of the woods forces you to make a decision which the tensions and artificialities of society may help you evade forever. Do you want to be yourself or don’t you?…Are you going to stand on your own feet before God and the world and take full responsibility for your own life?”

- Thomas Merton, from Contemplation in a World of Action

If you've enjoyed the site...

Consider checking out my book of poems, NORTH AMERICAN STADIUMS (paperback version now available).

Published by Milkweed Editions (2018), the book is described by Booklist as “Exquisite…Chambers executes a magic that is perhaps unique to poetry: he conjures a moment from nothing, draws the reader inside, and disperses the spell with something as gentle as a shift in the wind direction, or a quiet revelation…A crackling first act by a promising new poet.” 

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