“It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”
– William Carlos Williams
“Look at / what passes for the new. / You will not find it there but in /
despised poems.” – William Carlos Williams
The above lines appear so simple that any literate child could have written them in her or his off moments.
At the same time, it took me twenty years of periodically re-reading and returning to these lines before I was able to understand them in their deeper levels, or in what Ralph Ellison called “the higher frequencies.”
I always knew there was something there, but just what it was always seemed to elude me.
It was this mystery, this enigma, this most simple yet deepest of riddles, which kept me returning to these lines, as with so many other great lines of poetry.
When you know what it is but also know you don’t really know what it is (and Socrates said the most important thing to know is what you don’t know), the mind-heart-body-spirit must engage with the work in a way that is beyond mere mental exercise, but also is mental exercise of the highest kind.
By the word “high,” I mean that it makes you feel high.
The word “kind” in another guise is another thing poetry is, even when it’s savagely satirical.
The honest and plain truth is that poetry says what nothing else can say, whether that something else be politics, science, philosophy, or even religion, which is why poetry is a religion to many.
It is a religion to an uncountable, indefinable, and scattered multitude, now and always.
It is what made us human (“in the beginning was the Word”) and it will be the last thing to go when and if we ever become no longer human.
There is nothing to believe; but somehow poetry makes you believe it anyway.
Key Notation: A novel like MOBY DICK or JANE EYRE or a Nathaniel Hawthorne or Carson McCullers short story are also, very much so, “poetry.” Wallace Stevens said that we should go around collecting poetry from the epiphanic moments in our lives and put those moments into words only afterwards; and so on one level, there is no greater argument for the holiness of poetry in and of itself than this.
(Editors’ note. We are collectively gobsmacked by this collection of photos snapped by Christopher J Ananias, and we are equally pleased with the text. Enjoy–the Eds.)
They came running. Maybe this will never happen again? Giant, once they were upon us. Their size was intimidating, but something made me want to pet them on top of the head. I feared for their tameness.
The Light Bringer was amazed. I asked the Light Bringer what she thought, and she said, “They’re huge… Kinda scary.”
“Yeah, I wish we had some food, Light Bringer.” A sadness gripped me. I so wanted to make the magnificent birds happy.
The Light Bringer looked around inside the car, but the cupboard was bare. They surrounded our vehicle. The Light Bringer said, “Move now, c’mon now, Honey. Please move.”
“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.” – James Joyce
“Shut your eyes and see.” – James Joyce
(Note: We conclude another fine week by our Editor DWB. And for the time being he will be appearing in months to come with full weeks. The offer is open to many of our friends who have published previously with us. So, something to consider–Leila)
This un-mundane but minuscule screed possesses a very specific target audience. It is aimed directly at anyone who has ever lived, is now living, or will ever live who has even the tiniest bit of interest in the Irish author James Joyce, or in creative writing itself as purely an art form.
The greater your interest in HIM (and he is his work) or the greater your interest in creative writing as art, the greater your interest in this missive will be. There is much so-called “creative writing” that is much closer to formulaic hack writing than it is to what we (I) mean when we say “art.” This kind of commercialized-hack-writing-as-creative-writing tends to win things like the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize and even the Nobel Prize – to prove this all you need to do is look backward at the list/s of writers and works which have historically won these so-called prizes; Joyce himself, the greatest fiction writer in English of the twentieth century (by far), never won any major prizes and was never even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Joyce is the greatest fiction writer in English of the twentieth century, which bears repeating. More than this, forced to make a list of the top half-dozen writers of the English language so far in any genre, that list would be: William Shakespeare; Geoffrey Chaucer; John Milton; William Wordsworth; James Joyce; and Jonathan Swift; in that order. Maybe Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Edgar Allan Poe (just ask them in France), Walt Whitman, John Keats, John Donne or William Blake could replace someone in this list. (All such lists are really just a speculative game, of course, except for the first four, which are really a historical fact.)
Spiritual events are the biggest events in our lives. In many ways, somehow unrequited romantic love (including but not limited to the death of the loved one as in Poe) is an unbeatable spiritual event – and by that I especially mean small cap’s romantic love when it is propelled by capital R-and-L Romantic Love, i.e. the kind of love that was also preached and practiced by the British Romantics such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and the Shelleys, all of whom had their profound influences on James Joyce (he once dubbed himself a modern-day synthesis of Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe fame, and William Blake).
Joyce has been and is one of the biggest spiritual events in my own life so far on a personal level. As such, this screed that is also a missive is also a memoir of a little over 1,300 words, which is around the average length of one of Paul’s letters or many of Hemingway’s best stories.
I started reading Joyce when I was around fifteen years old in the American Midwest. In many ways, I was finished reading Joyce by the time I was around twenty or so, even though I’ve continued to reread him to a greater or lesser extent in every year of the last thirty-nine years. So I absorbed, and even memorized, much of Joyce still during the time/s when my youth made me very, very impressionable.
All young people who have the gift or the penchant for reading or who have a questing soul at all should read and reread some of James Joyce when they are young if they are lucky, specifically the first four stories in his collection Dubliners, which blow The Catcher in the Rye out of the water but are in the same vein and should be read first or beside it, along with Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. If these four Joyce pieces accidentally missed you when you were “young,” but you are still young inside, go to these stories now and your haunting youth will be magically returned to you in all its best, and worst, aspects. The complete realism of these brief yet all-encompassing tales is comforting even as their idealism inspires, or makes the breath quicken.
The rest of this writing will present in brief yet pungent and cogent form what are my own personal favorite things in James Joyce as of right now. His work is endless to meditation so some items shall be, I am sure, accidentally omitted but what is presented here can also be seen as an outline of his most important work from the heart and soul of one loving reader’s perspective.
…
DUBLINERS.
The first four stories: “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” “Araby,” and “Eveline.”
“The Boarding House” from the middle of the collection and “The Dead” from the end, and especially the end of “The Dead,” and especially the very last paragraph of this long story or short novella.
“The Dead”: the dramatic, life-altering moments between the MC and his wife in their hotel room around Christmastime will never leave you. The last paragraph of “The Dead” is, hands down, one of the greatest paragraphs ever written in the English language, a fact that has been acknowledged by many long before me and will continue to be acknowledged by many long after “yours truly” has departed this mortal sphere (praise God may it not be for a while, thy will be done). I personally have read this paragraph not hundreds but thousands of times. It is like a sad song I replay over and over when alone in the car, but better.
…
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.
The title of this book alone has had a massive impact on my entire life at every level I can possibly imagine, an impact so vast it feels beyond Jungian in its depth, oldness, oddness, and neverendingness.
The sea girl on the seaside like a sea bird and Stephen’s limerence-like fascination with the girl, the bird, and the sea. The beautiful longing of it all.
The experimental and experiential opening of this novel which actually captures all of infancy, babyhood, and toddlerhood in less than one page from the kid’s perspective.
The friend with friend notations and conversations that end the book.
The phrase “silence, exile, and cunning” which became one of my own personal credos when I was a teenager and remains so until today, and will be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after that, too. Among other things, the rebellious spirit of the original rock and roll is contained within this phrase. One of the greatest influences on Bob Dylan ever is and was James Joyce, by Dylan’s own admission.
There is SO MUCH in these literal and metaphorical four words when put together like this that you can literally build an entire life on and around it.
It is more than an impenetrable fence but it is also an impenetrable fence, the only kind that can allow for true growth of the spirit and the personality, the only real possession we can ever possess here on Planet Earth.
…
ULYSSES.
The title itself, alone, along with all it implies.
The “friends” episode in the sea tower at the beginning of the book.
Leopold Bloom’s eternal peregrinations.
Stephen and Bloom drunk together in the whorehouse and elsewhere, wandering around.
MOLLY BLOOM, especially her end (“Yes”) in more ways than one.
Marilyn Monroe wanted to make a movie where she played Molly.
…
FINNEGANS WAKE.
The title itself.
Finnegans – plural. Wake – verb.
Resurrection, reincarnation, and/or all of the above.
The Irish drinking song where the title comes from: a drunk guy in Chicago falls off a ladder, dies, then springs to life again at his own funeral, leaping out of his own casket and SMILING at all his friends and enemies.
Her name: Anna Livia Plurabelle. And the rivers of life.
His name: H.C.E. (Here Comes Everybody.)
Shem the Penman.
The alpha and the omega: the beginning and the end.
Instead of only blaming the inventors, propagators and perpetrators of these products, we should turn the blame around once in a while and place it squarely on the individual consumer/s of said products as well. No one is placing a gun against anyone’s head in this matter. Take it from one who once had a gun placed against his head on a Chicago sidewalk. And a switchblade placed right below his eye in a Kansas City tavern. And a frying pan swung (hard) in the direction of his head in the kitchen. (The author of this opinion piece is good at ducking, fleeing, and flying (out the back door), as well as staring people down – or talking them out of it when necessary.)
Ruthless billionaire businessmen ye shall always have with you. In 2026 USA, one has the option to ignore them, or at least not to utilize their products beyond what’s necessary, selective, or right, depending on the situation.
They have figured out a way to feed the people exactly what the people wish to eat. And the people go to the hand of the master and lap up the usual b.s. because it is the usual b.s. they long and crave for. If universal wisdom, truth, love and beauty were popular and profitable, the business people would sell that instead.
There are some people who are not in control of their minds and thus have gone out of their minds by feeding their minds on nothing but The Algorithm.
As for the rest of us, we have the option to opt out and choose better materials at any time.
It is a matter of cultivating your one and only soul. If you let someone else feed your soul with nothing but junk, you will end up with a nothing, junk soul created by someone else, which will mean that you have abdicated your personality, the only real possession you possess in this vale of tears. This egregious and pathetic non-condition will not serve you, or others, well when the shit hits the fan, as it’s sure to do again and again in this world that is both spiritual battleground and mortal coil.
The Algorithm is not a gun against anyone’s head. You can choose NOT TO CLICK ON IT and not even to look at it at all, for that matter. Any addict who’s ever gotten over anything can tell you that you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Nietzsche said, “There are so many things in this world I never want to know.” He knew a little and ignored the rest. He also said, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” right before going permanently insane.
A great picture is infinitely more valuable than a bad book (and can be read almost in the same way as reading a good book (and as the book of nature can also be read)).
“Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine…” – The Beatles
When I say “freak me out,” I mean in a good way.
(To the elite few of you who want to review who Boo is, see photos.)
ONE: Sometimes constantly watches me from across the room of the book-strewn apartment as if to make sure I’m all right (until he dozes off, which happens just as frequently).
TWO: Catches wild squirrels in his mouth between his fangs, doesn’t chomp down upon them, drops them down onto the ground and sets them free, then watches them flee (run away) without going after them.
THREE: Leaps into my lap when he gets scared.
FOUR: Hides behind me when he gets scared if I’m standing up.
FIVE: Puts himself between me and whoever it is when someone is approaching us at night along the sidewalks or in the alleyways of the Chicagoland area we roam through (or wherever we roam through). If it’s more than one person approaching, becomes even more fearlessly vigilant.
SIX: Follow verbal commands when they, paradoxically, are not even spoken aloud by me. (In other words: READ MY MIND.)
SEVEN: Refuse to follow commands just as often, and act like he thinks it’s funny, and in his own way, I do believe he thinks it’s funny.
EIGHT: Run so fast that he literally morphs into a black-and-white blur that looks like it’s flying across the ground. Fastest dog I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen many.
NINE: Stare into the distance while intuiting the Spirit World.
(Leading one to the astonishing conclusion that if dogs could talk, we wouldn’t even be able to believe what they would tell us…)
(Bonus point: can climb fences and trees when he wants to bad enough…)
“Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me / I’m not sleepy and there is
no place I’m going to.” – Bobby D.
Since the enigmatic being who sometimes calls himself “The Drifter” shall turn 59 years of age in two days from today, and has already had a stroke (FULLY recovered at every level), he wishes to prove that he can still levitate.
The evidence for this amazing fact is included in the photos which come with this column.
If anyone tries to sue him over the reliability of this, the Drifter is prepared to act as his own attorney, call himself as a witness, and testify with his hand upon a stack of Bibles that no AI nor anything like AI was used in the creation of these pictures nor have they been messed with in any way whatsoever.
Many have said that Rembrandt, Vincent, and Frida painted themselves so often because they couldn’t afford models etc. etc. etc.
The Drifter does not believe that for a moment. (Not everything can be explained by money or the lack of it.)
The Drifter believes these great artists painted themselves so often because they believed Jesus when Jesus said: “The kingdom is within you.” And also when he said (joyfully): “Take up your cross and follow me!”
The good life is not waiting somewhere up around the bend; it is not on a billionaire’s yacht; it cannot be found on the “dream coasts” exclusively; and it does not involve material possessions, of any kind, at all.
The Tufted Titmouse shamelessly workin’ the pole at Big Daddy’s.
The Mississippi Kite was way off course in a nature park near Indianapolis. Many of our fellow birders flocked in to see it, careful not to disturb.
The “Chipping Sparrow” is one of the smallest sparrows. A friendly little bird that will help themselves to your black sunflower seeds and seedcakes for dessert.
The Sandhill Crane a large marsh bird who’s got the moves.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” – George Orwell
“All bad poetry is sincere.” – Oscar Wilde
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell
What is art? asked Leo Tolstoy of himself and his readers in the late nineteenth century.
He had many answers – because he was possibly the most comprehensive writer since Shakespeare (or one of them) and there are many answers.
One of the answers which Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, provided was this: “divine play.”
Vlad said art equals “divine play” because nowhere else and at no other time does the human subject get closer to the divine than when creating art.
And the second part of the equation is equally crucial.
If it were real, we wouldn’t be able to digest it and allow our imaginations to work upon it in the same way (thereby helping us create our own identities among many other practical tasks, like helping us decide what to do when we realize that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and soon it might be you, too).
If we were really watching Hamlet slaughter everybody and be slaughtered in turn, our reactions would be quite a bit different at almost every level to say the least, starting with physiology.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard thought art was “indirect communication.”
If you just stand there spewing out (or hurling out) all your preconceived and received (and stale) opinions, this is propaganda and obnoxious behavior, but it isn’t art.
Jesus said, “It isn’t what goes into your mouth but what comes out of it that makes you sinful,” and how I wish this quotation were read aloud from endless pulpits every single Sunday in the USA, from Maine to Timbuktu.
It seems pretty clear that there are three categories of art.
The gigantic bottom.
The vast middle.
And the higher realm/s (and levels of the high/er, from the bottom of the higher to its very top).
The bottom revels in sensationalism, titillation, distraction, the same old same-old yet again (and again). (“Entertainment” and art are not the same thing.)
The higher kind lasts much longer, sometimes many, many centuries, because it goes deeper as well as higher – the mind, the heart, the body, the soul of the human are there in higher kinds of art in ways that they simply are not in the gigantic bottom or even the vast middle.
The gigantic bottom is more popular in the moment, just as the higher kinds of art are far, far more lasting and durable, and therefore much more popular, in the long term.
Shakespeare said, “So long lives this and this gives life to thee,” while one of Shakespeare’s American heirs said, “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.” (During Shakespeare’s day, the population of London, largest city in the world, was around 200,000. The population of Des Moines, Iowa, USA, today, in 2026, is around 200,000. The world has changed.)
Bob Marley, the Jamaican Shakespeare, said, “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look? / Some say it’s just a part of it – we’ve got to fulfill the Book.”
I was almost shocked one time when I heard a Catholic priest say quite clearly to a church full of restless elementary school children, “The story of Jonah and the whale isn’t a real story. No one has ever been swallowed whole by a whale then vomited out upon the shore fully intact three days later. It isn’t a real story. But the truth it tells is real.” (He then went on to use the word symbolic and explain what it meant.)
The anonymous Jewish author who wrote the thousand-word story of Jonah and the Whale also didn’t think the story was “real.” He, or she, too, knew that the story’s truths were internal, representative, real only in the sense that they tell it like it is, so to speak (the outward facts are not what the issue is when it comes to art).
…
The book of Genesis in the Bible contains not one, but two, creation stories, almost completely contradictory in many of their aspects, just as the gospels of Matthew and Luke contain two different accounts of where Jesus came from.
Neither of these facts either prove nor disprove anything having to do with the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being, a Creator God, an Unseen Power that lives well beyond, or inside, us, or both.
I have heard many people who claim to be agnostics give fevered atheistic (and veiled capitalistic, materialistic) explanations for why they are agnostic, apparently not understanding the difference between agnosticism and atheism, especially in American academia, where such arguments are the dominant mode of thought and have become utterly stale and unoriginal. People parrot these kinds of things because they think not doing so will make them look bad.
Some of us turn to God when we can no longer stand the pain (or the meaninglessness).
Art is the thing that helps put us in deeper touch with the mystery or reminds us when we forget.
The mystical branches of Islam believe people need to be reminded, not converted.
ART, not organized religion, is my religion because the first religion was art and art was the first religion.
People and people-like creatures were being nailed to crosses (symbolically) for millions of years before Jesus came along.
No wonder they called him “The Word.”
GRIPPING END NOTE: Art is also amazing because of its dual nature: alone while not alone or with others while solitary amounts to the best of both worlds combined and makes Art relevant forever!
ANOTHER GRIPPING END NOTE from The Drifter on Genre, AI, and a few other issues: The Drifter considers this piece of writing to be a comic philosophical essay on the meaning of, or reason/s for, human art. It contains elements of the personal essay through the lens of Gonzo journalism.
Since it contains personal HUMAN thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions, AI could neither write nor read and understand this.
The comic philosophical essay is nothing new under the sun, also practiced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Plato, Henry David Thoreau, and Philip K. Dick among many others.
The Drifter is thoroughly versed in the lives and writings of all five philosophers named. So much so that they appear as living beings in his dreams. This little treatise could not have been penned (and most of the rough draft was penned before it was typed, a practice I recommend to all beginning or aspiring writers, since if you aren’t willing to make the effort it won’t be worth anything) without them. In other words, it builds upon them.
I have made crucial, life-altering decisions based on the info I thought these five philosophers were giving me. Art is about tutelary spirits, connections through time, both past and future; AND your own original voice interacting with all of the above in the present.
As Thomas Paine wrote pamphlets and William Blake was an engraver and Bukowski and the Samizdat writers in Russia made mimeos, so do we all use the tools we find at hand. Nothing less; and nothing more.
It isn’t supposed to be easy.
FINAL THOUGHT (For Now): Instead of mechanical plot devices, stock characters, and unchallenging themes, Shakespeare and Cervantes, those mysterious twins, gave the world natural plots, realistic characters, and challenging themes.
I generally don’t believe in hell until I think of someone like J. Edgar Hoover and what he did to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Perhaps one of the most egregious things he did was send King a letter right before Martin was scheduled to leave for Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.
It was an anonymous letter.
It started by stating that the letter-writer would not address King by the titles of Mr., Dr., Reverend, or any other honorary title because Dr. King didn’t deserve the respect.
J. Edgar pretended to be a black man who was writing the letter.
And in the letter he projected on Dr. King a whole host of perversions and sexual excesses that are clearly the fantasies of none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself, having absolutely nothing to do with what King himself had ever done.
The letter repeatedly calls King “a beast,” which is not a term a black man would likely have used to describe another black man, even if he hated him.
Hoover also sent the letter to King’s wife.
When Coretta opened the letter (which was of course accusing Martin of adultery of various kinds) in front of Martin then handed it to him, Martin looked at it and immediately said, “This is from Hoover.”
The letter also threatened to expose Dr. King to the world for being a sexual pervert even though King hadn’t done any of the things he was accused of doing in the letter.
Martin outsmarted Hoover at almost every turn, which was probably one of the many reasons Hoover hated King so much.
But the pressure got to Martin.
Being followed around, being wiretapped all the time, and now being sent this hideous composition from the madman could not have helped but make Martin feel paranoid, pursued, unjustly accused (of course), hated (for no reason), hounded by the devil. By the devil himself.
Hoover was a repressed, hateful and hate-filled man who also worked hard to kick Charlie Chaplin out of the USA, and finally succeeded in getting Charlie kicked out of the country.
Hoover justified all these horrors to himself by claiming that he was protecting the United States from ne’er-do-wells, radicals, revolutionaries.
He was not protecting the United States. He was helping to damage and ruin it in some ways like no one had ever done before.
He clung to power for 48 years.
Once Martin started to try to end the war and bring all poor people together in solidarity no matter the color of their skin, Hoover and all the others like him had had enough.
Last time I checked, the King family did not believe that James Earl Ray acted alone.
I do not believe it either.
(Neither did James Earl Ray himself, who repeatedly stated that he did not act alone.)
If there is a hell (and I’m not necessarily saying there is one), J. Edgar Hoover is in it.
…
John Meacham, the brilliant historian and biographer, recently told Charlie Rose in an interview that the reason Abraham Lincoln was great was because, at the critical moments, old Honest Abe always chose to do the right thing. Even when it was at great cost to himself.
Martin Luther King, Jr., did not choose greatness. He had it thrust upon him at the young age of 25. No one else could do what he did, because no one else had his talents to do it.
He had greatness thrust upon him.
But he always answered the call.
…
In his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Oslo on December 11, 1964, Dr. King said: “Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors, and brutality in the destroyers.”
He also said, at another time, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
He also said, “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
…
I guess I don’t believe in hell, or definitely not the kind of hell where God officially sentences you to be burned alive forever, tortured in flames for the rest of all eternity. If I believed that kind of thing, I would probably spend even more time than I already do having various kinds of panic attacks.
But I’m not so sure there isn’t a hell where He makes you SEE, finally see, really see, just what it was you did and were doing during your tenure here on Planet Earth.
Saragun Springs 