6.5.2023 – crazy — you’d have build

crazy — you’d have build
these gas stations all over
and pave these long roads

From the passage:

“Don’t you suppose someone must have argued to Henry Ford: ‘But that’s crazy — you’d have to build these gas station places all over the country and pave these incredibly long roads.’”

Great imaginations are almost always unreasonable, but they almost always triumph in the end.

As it appears in The imaginations of unreasonable men : inspiration, vision, and purpose in the quest to end malaria by William H, Shore, 2010, New York

6.4.2023 – value boundary

value boundary
epiphenomenal could
move underneath them

Adapted from the passage: As when he compared mathematicians and physicists in Internal Constitution of the Stars, Eddington’s presentation of disciplinary boundaries was epiphenomenal to the values that could move underneath them.

In the book, Practical mystic : religion, science, and A.S. Eddington by Stanley, Matthew, 2007, University of Chicago Press

6.3.2023 – the stupidities

the stupidities
of my world dominate that world —
then there is heaven

Education a Failure by Williams Carolos Williams

The minor stupidities
of my world
dominate that world —
as when

with two bridges across
the river and one
closed for repairs
the other also

will be closed by
the authorities
for painting! But then
there is heaven

and the ideal state
closed also
before the aspiring soul.
I had rather

watch a cat threading
a hedge with
another sitting by
while the bird

screams overhead
a thrash
in the cover of the
low branches.

the stupidities
of my world dominate that world —
then there is heaven

6.2.2023 – could sing all the songs

could sing all the songs
were ever invented? Should
then be contented?

The Savage by the Sea by Frances Cornford

If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented,
If I could kiss all the pebbles that ever there were,
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could drink all the waves as they break over there,
Should I then be contented?
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair?
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented?

Frances Cornford, née Darwin, (1886-1960) was a British poet and translator. She was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin. She was educated at home in Cambridge where she remained for most of her life. She married Francis Cornford a classical scholar in 1909. They had five children, the eldest John Cornford a poet was killed in the Spanish Civil War. She published her first volume of poems in 1910 and she followed this with eight more volumes over the next 50 years. Two of her poetry volumes were illustrated in woodcuts by Gwen Raverat who was a cousin. Her last volume, On a Calm Shore (1960), was illustrated by her son. Her poetry style is short and unpretentious, some elegiac and others humorous. Her triolet ‘To a Fat Lady Seen From a Train’ is often quoted. Her Collected Poems (1954) was the official choice of the Poetry Book Society and she won the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1959. (The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers)

6.1.2023 – fashionable world

fashionable world
system works respectfully
appointed distances

Adapted from the passage:

The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house in town is awake.

In Lincolnshire, the Dedlocks of the past doze in their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly.

In town, the Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility, loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall.

The fashionable world—tremendous orb, nearly five miles round — is in full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed distances.

As it appears on the book, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.