Michael Simms: God, Poetry and Trauma
In the 19th century, if you asked a scientist whether he believed in God, he would have answered, ‘Of course, I don’t believe in God, I’m a scientist.” But if you ask a scientist today whether he believes in God, he would answer, “Of course, I believe in God, I’m a scientist.”
Joseph E Davis: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’ — it’s people in distress
The idea that one’s distress is primarily caused by a neurochemical deficiency that can be corrected by a drug is a fiction. The idea that it explains first-person experience or that it offers some exemption from responsibility is a fiction as well.
Gary Margolis: I was Living in a Poem
Lines so plain I didn’t know, at first,
I was living in a poem.
Judith Sanders: The Farewell
“Picture a staircase,”
the hypnotist said.
“At the top, a door
will open
onto a landscape.”
Sandra McPherson: Going to See Dr. Jones Out of Loneliness, 1966
You have to get ready
for a more complicated life.
You have to tell him the simple things
don’t know how to put their round heads together.
John Samuel Tieman: A Sonnet for the 50th Reunion of the Mercy High Class of ’68
Let us make a little list from our lives, who of us got a little fame and who got a little probation, who of us lived tame and who recalls … Continue reading
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