Sunday, October 8, 2023

What I'm Reading Today

Every time I move, especially from one country to another, I lose a lot of books. I used to have an excellent book of modern European poetry. This one:


 But I lost that about five moves ago! One poem I remember very well is The Invention by Paul Éluard. I ran across it again in this book:

Halfway through and this is the first poem that I can recall reading before. Here is how it ends:

The art of living, liberal art, the art of dying well, the art of thinking, incoherent art, the art of smoking, the art of enjoying, the art of the Middle Ages, decorative art, the art of reasoning, the art of reasoning well, poetic art, mechanic art, erotic art, the art of being a grandfather, the art of the dance, the art of seeing, the art of being accomplished, the art of caressing, Japanese art, the art of playing, the art of eating, the art of torturing.

Yet I have never found what I write in what I love.

(Translated by Samuel Beckett)

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