POEM #8--APHORISMS

APHORISM ASSIGNMENT (cliches, axioms and spin-ner-esque language also welcome)

Read: THIS ESSAY ON HOW POETRY SHOULD BE MADE ACCORDING TO CHARLES OLSON

Sonnet

  by Bill Knott

The way the world is not
Astonished at you
It doesn't blink a leaf
When we step from the house
Leads me to think
That beauty is natural, unremarkable
And not to be spoken of
Except in the course of things
The course of singing and worksharing
The course of squeezes and neighbors
The course of you tying back your raving hair to go out
And the course of course of me
Astonished at you
The way the world is not

A Book Of Music

  by Jack Spicer

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers.  Where
Did it end?  There is no telling.  No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end.  Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons.  Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.

Improvisations On A Sentence By Poe
by Jack Spicer
"Indefiniteness is an element of the true music." The grand concord of what Does not stoop to definition. The seagull Alone on the pier cawing its head off Over no fish, no other seagull, No ocean. As absolutely devoid of meaning As a French horn. It is not even an orchestra. Concord Alone on a pier. The grand concord of what Does not stoop to definition. No fish No other seagull, no ocean—the true Music.

Aphorisms

  by Antonio Porchia
translated by W. S. Merwin 

Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take 
the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.

                      *

When one does not love the impossible, one does not love anything.

                      *

Every time I wake I understand how easy it is to be nothing.

                      *

Now you do not know what to do, not even when you go back to being 
a child. And it is sad to see a child who does not know what to do.

                      *

Only a few arrive at nothing, because the way is long.

Measurement Fable
by Rusty Morrison
like water in water —George Bataille Eggs, transparent and sometimes red-veined as insect wings, might be hidden in bark crevices or a scatter of tawny leaves. The distance between one gestation and the next, a pleat of the dress I wear carelessly, as if I could sew myself another. Practiced, my tendon-reflex where the tunnel narrows its halo into a noose. I trust dexterity as a kind of nourishment, as I believe my own mother couldn’t. To own, beauty is the first lie of it, and brief as incident is gray thistles turning silver in sunrise as if for my eyes alone. I see you surround me, mother, measuring what my exoskeleton withstands. Embellishment is thin. When the eye inside blinks, its bone-house splinters. No eye inside sky but an insect drone can cause the entire horizon, seasonal as hindsight which follows rain. No death will stop measurement spiraling out, a long ribbon of salt I must choose repeatedly to cross.

No world is intact
by Alice Notley
No world is intact and no one cares about you. I leaned down over don’t care about, I care about you I leaned down over the world in portrayal of carefulness, answering something you couldn’t say. walking or fallen and you were supposed to give therapy to me— me leaning down brushing with painted feathers to the left chance your operatic, broken book.

The best way to explain what an aphorism is to offer examples, and as I am becoming lazy and have company this week, I'll offer a few off of the Wikipedia entry:

"Usually an aphorism is a very concise statement expressing a general truth or wise observation often in a clever way. Sometimes aphorisms rhyme, sometimes they have repeated words or phrases, and sometimes they have two parts that are of the same grammatical structure. Some examples include:

    * Science is organized knowledge. — Herbert Spencer

    * Lost time is never found again. — Benjamin Franklin

    * Greed is a permanent slavery. — Ali

    * Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

    * Death with dignity is better than life with humiliation. — Husayn ibn Ali

    * That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Nietzsche

    * If you see the teeth of the lion, do not think that the lion is smiling to you. — Al-Mutanabbi

    * When your legs get weaker time starts running faster. — Mikhail Turovsky

    * Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

    * The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs. — Celia Green

    * Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see. — Mark Twain

    * It is better to be hated for what one is, than loved for what one is not. — André Gide

    * A lie told often enough becomes the truth. — Vladimir Lenin

    * Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long. And in the end, it's only with yourself. — Mary Schmich

    * Like a road in Autumn: Hardly is it swept clean before it is covered again with dead leaves. — Franz Kafka

    * Hate the Sin; Love the Sinner. — Mahatma Gandhi"

Many famous quotes are aphorisms, and many philosophical conclusions as well.

This week's assignment is to gather (or create) several of them, and then mix and match them to create/distort your own wisdoms.  The work that you read this week is filled with aphoristic statements (sentences that FEEL like aphorisms).  Feel free to follow the above poets as stylistic models.  I would like you to start from familiar-seeming statements, but you should rework them into your own brilliance.