[weltenwellen]

On Seatbelts and Sunsets Hanif Abdurraqib

[weltenwellen]

An Interview with Richard Siken

[weltenwellen]

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

[lifeinpoetry]

What distinguishes grace from everything else? Grace is unearned. If you’ve moved through the world in such a way as to feel you’ve earned cosmic compensation, then what you’ve earned is something more like justice, like propriety. Not grace. Propriety is correct. Justice is just. There’s an inescapable transactional quality: perform x good, receive y reward. Grace doesn’t work that way. It begins with the reward. Goodness never enters the equation.

— Kaveh Akbar, from Martyr!

[nousrose]

The opposite of anxiety is not calmness, it is desire. Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility of relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. There is nothing mysterious about the anxious state; it leaves one teetering in an untenable and all too familiar isolation. There is rarely desire without some associated anxiety: We seem to be wired to have apprehension about that which we cannot control, so in this way, the two are not really complete opposites. But desire gives one a reason to tolerate anxiety and a willingness to push through it.

Open to Desire

Mark Epstein

[weltenwellen]

Franny Choi, from "Perihelion: A History of Touch"

[funeral]

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity

[weltenwellen]

Jonice Webb, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect

[weltenwellen]

Natalie Díaz, from "American Arithmetic", Postcolonial Love Poem

[dk-thrive]

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

— Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Reitzel Publishers, 1843) (via Dylan O'Sullivan)

[processes]

[weltenwellen]

Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

[weltenwellen]

Louise Glück, Poems 1962-2012

[weltenwellen]

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

[weltenwellen]

Ada Limón, from "To the Busted Among Us", Sharks in the Rivers

[weltenwellen]

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation