A subtitle to any thesis on contemporary reputations might well be: How truth fares among us today.
— William Carlos Williams, “A Note on the Recent Work of James Joyce,” Selected Essays
In this struggle for details we were guided by a desire to reveal concretely as possible the very process of the revolution. In particular it was impossible not to try to make the most of the opportunity to paint history from the life.
— Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution
- 199 “So then an egoist can never embrace a party
- 200 Or take up with a party?
- 201 Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself
- 202 Be embraced or taken up by the party.”
— Louis Zukofsky, “Poem beginning ‘The’” attributed to Max Stirner
I think these days when there is so little to believe in—when the old loyalties—God, country, and the hope of Heaven—aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends.
— William Carlos Williams, January: A Novelette
- Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies
- a girder, still itself among the rubbish.
— Charles Reznikoff, Jerusalem the Golden
Friends are not made; they are recognized.
— Carl Rakosi, Ex Cranium, Night
- To have gathered from the air a live tradition
- or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
- This is not vanity.
- Here error is all in the not done,
- all in the diffidence that faltered . . .
— Ezra Pound, “Canto LXXXI”
- DRAWING
- Not by growth
- But the
- Paper, turned, contains
- This entire volume
— George Oppen, Discrete Series