David Steindlin Rast quoted by Vincent Ross, Parabola, August 1983 ( Read more... )

In describing the appeal of fantasy, David Gemmell, the author of Legend said, "Societies need heroes. So we travel to places where the revisionsists cannot dimmantle the great."

"Films are like dreams; they articulate the social subconscious."

John Shirley, Parabola, Winter 2007

"The narcissim of depression is a hole with very deep sides."

Mark Doty

“You see, language begins with the breath. It is the vocalization of the breath. This vocalization takes breath, which is ultimately pure and ineffable, and it configures it. That configuration gives meaning. It’s just like creation. Creation began with pure essence, a universal breath, but the universal breath reverberated and produced, ( Read more... )

“Not only does the immanent state lack meaning in isolation-so too does the transcendent state. According to a sacred tradition (hadith qudsi) cherished by the Sufis, in the solitude of eternity God was a ‘hidden treasure’ that yearned to be known. The condition of manifestation is that of the One Being seeking to reveal and experience itself. ( Read more... )

“There’s a wonderful passage in the Masnavi of Rumi in which he speaks of the heart as a womb. Through that womb a new world is born, and so each of us in our incarnate existence is consciously or unconsciously in the process of birthing a new universe There is a constant dialogue between eternity and this moment and between infinity and this ( Read more... )

“Only poetry in this larger sense-only the art of language -makes possible a full understanding of an art work’s ‘world.’ Language, the distinctively human possession, was what allows” stone, plant and animal” to be fully perceived, in a way that they can’t perceive themselves. “Where there is no language…there is also openness of what is, “ ( Read more... )

I read poetry at Fantasia, a local coffee house on Monday nights. This was read this week ( Read more... )

Jeanette Winterson says, “Art does not imitate life. Art anticipates life.” We tend to be a society of things and consumption. Although art too can be consumed, it is intrinsically subversive because it is about ideas and states of being expressed in words, images and performance ( Read more... )