"Garageland" (1977)

I don't wanna hear about what the rich are doing,
I don't wanna go to where, where the rich are going,
They think they're so clever, they think they're so right,
But the truth is only known by guttersnipes.

Lyrics by Joe Strummer & Mick Jones (The Clash)

From a book review

"Osman's etymologies uncover social and economic prejudices, suggesting that the legacy of slavery remains in the strata of the words we speak." (p. 252)

Chicago Review 57:1/2 (Summer/Autumn 2012) — Kate McIntyre — reviewing Jena Osman, The Network, (9781934200407) Albany, NY: Fence Books, 2010. (115 pp. $17.95)

Worstward Ho (1983)

"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

— Samuel Beckett
Worstward Ho (1983)

From the Introduction to "The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu: The First Full English Translation" [Translated and Introduced by James Green]

~ "Zen" is a Japanese name for a particular teaching tradition within the overall framework of Buddhism which came to Japan through China from India where it originated in the life of Gautama Buddha around 500 BCE.
~ Gautama was not born as "Buddha", that is "the enlightened one", in the sense that this was not an inherited title. Being Buddha was something he earned through spiritual exploration. His diligent spiritual quest brought him to what is traditionally called "enlightenment", a direct experience of the core reality of being wherein the apparent paradox of subject/object duality is resolved, and the underlying life force, which is both something and nothing at once, is perceived.
~ In the aftermath of his enlightenment experience, Gautama felt it was his duty to help others to the same experience and to enunciate his insight into the nature of human existence. Thus, he began to teach those who showed interest. The foundation of his teaching was that having a similar enlightenment would create a release from suffering and spiritual anxiety — a nirvana, a state of being free from this suffering and spiritual anxiety. (p. xv)


— James Green, from the Introduction to "The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu" [9780761989851, Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, CA, 1998.]

from Leaving the Atocha Station: A Novel by Ben Lerner

The best Ashbery poems, I thought, although not in these words, describe what it's like to read an Ashbery poem; his poems refer to how their reference evanesces. And when you read about your reading in the time of your reading, mediacy is experienced immediately. It is as though the actual Ashbery poem were concealed from you, written on the other side of a mirrored surface, and you saw only the reflection of your reading. But by reflecting on your reading, Ashbery's poems allow you to attend to your attention, to experience your experience, thereby enabling a strange kind of presence. But it is a presence that keeps the virtual possibilities of poetry intact because the true poem remains beyond you, inscribed on the far side of the mirror: "You have it but you don't have it. / You miss it, it misses you. / You miss each other." (p. 91)

— Leaving the Atocha Station: A Novel by Ben Lerner — Coffee House Press, Minneapolis 2011 — 9781566892742