September 25, 2011

A Leaf

A LEAF, treeless
for Bertolt Brecht:

What times are these
when a conversation
is almost a crime
because it includes
so much made explicit?

(Paul Celan, quoted in ACTS, A Journal of New Writing, eds. David Levi Strauss & Benjamin Hollander, Issue 5, 1986. Thanks to John Sakkis for sending.)

Comments (3)

  • I made something like a diligent attempt to find where I called you petty, but have failed to locate this. Thanks for the inclusion in your coloristic excess of aggressive mentation which saturates my word with iridescent throngs of unearned hidden breathe.

    of course, to be wordy, stupidity is considered ameliorated these days, in theory, of course we stupid suffer all the more for that

    pettiness, to be sure, is a nice and effective insult among a certain class – so ends my diary

  • you’re not wrong, i can be very stupid. will have to consider the charge of pettiness though. i don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me. maybe it’s true.

  • zog kadare says:

    Answer: Utopian times, since in the era of civic freedom only restriction can have the luster of the extraordinary word. (To be sure it is not merely the reversal of the exoteric, but celan ought to totenbaum his way back to Heidegger’s hut for a brain exame, that is if I read her poem ‘correctly’ here. gross got
    !” ..imbicility by numbers reigns here

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