The Spirit of Poetry Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

The Spirit of Poetry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is a quiet spirit in these woods, That dwells where’er the gentle southwind blows; Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. With what a tender and impassioned voice It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, When the fast ushering star of morning comes O’er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid The silent majesty of these deep woods, Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. For them there was an eloquent voice in all The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunnyvale, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old poetic legends to the wind. And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill The world; and, in these wayward days of youth, My busy fancy oft embodies it, As a bright image of the light and beauty That dwell in nature; of the heavenly forms We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues That stain the wild bird’s wing and flush the clouds When the sun sets. Within her tender eye The heaven of April, with its changing light, And when it wears the blue of May, is hung, And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair Is like the summer tresses of the trees, When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, It is so like the gentle air of Spring, As, from the morning’s dewy flowers, it comes Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy To have it round us, and her silver voice Is the rich music of a summer bird, Heard in the till night, with its passionate cadence.

Blessed are You, Force of the Universe

 Blessed are You, Force of the Universe

For creating me with anxiety.

You shaped me from a billion years of stardust

And breathed anxiety through my nostrils

And for that I give thanks.

I bless and thank my Anxiety Disorder for keeping me safe.

You make yourself known when you have an important message for me,

And at times in my life when I was not taking care of or valuing myself, and not listening to you,

You made yourself heard by shutting down my life so I’d have to stop and listen:

You did this by sending intrusive thoughts and a racing heart

Until all I could do was sit on my couch, an island of refuge I was terrified to leave

And all I could do was listen.

And because of your extreme measures — though unpleasant — I was able to start to take care of myself and honor my value:

I finally started therapy.

I left the relationship in which I was not treated according to my worth.

I turned away from other toxic relationships and focused on manifesting shalom, peace.

I paid more attention to what I wanted and to making my dreams a reality.

I learned more about my identity and built a relationship with myself that I sorely needed.

I did teshuvah, a repentant turning back

To myself.

I used to fear and despise you, but now I know that you are a part of me;

A confused golem in a corner of my brain, doing its best to protect me,

For that is what it was created to do.

Desperately trying to keep me safe

Out of love.

And now that I have learned to stop and listen to the message behind the feeling, I have learned to work with you rather than against you.

I have learned that caring for myself is the key to caring for you.

And have realized your messages are messages from Shamayim, Heaven.

You are malach sheli, my guardian angel.

For all of this, I thank and bless you, Anxiety Disorder.

Amen

From the Almagest

 Those who have been true philosophers, Syrus, seem to me to have very wisely separated the theoretical part of philosophy from the practical. For even if it happens the practical turns out to be theoretical prior to its being practical, nevertheless a great difference would be found in them; not only because some of the moral virtues can belong to the everyday ignorant man and it is impossible to come by the theory of whole sciences without learning, but also because in practical matters the greatest advantage is to be had from a continued and repeated operation upon the things themselves, while in theoretical knowledge it is to be had by a progress onward. We accordingly thought it up to us so to train our actions even in the application of the imagination as not to forget in whatever things we happen upon the consideration of their beautiful and well ordered disposition, and to indulge in meditation mostly for the exposition of many beautiful theorems and especially of those specifically called mathematical.

For indeed Aristotle quite properly divides also the theoretical into three immediate genera: the physical, the mathematical, and the theological. For given that all beings have their existence from matter and form and motion, and that none of these can be seen, but only thought, in its subject separately from the others, if one should seek out in its simplicity the first cause of the first movement of the universe, he would find God invisible and unchanging. And the kind of science which seeks after Him is the theological; for such an act can only be thought as high above somewhere near the loftiest things of the universe and is absolutely apart from sensible things. But the kind of science which traces through the material and ever moving quality, and has to do with the white, the hot, the sweet, the soft, and such things, would be called physical; and such an essence since it is only generally what it is, is to be found in corruptible things and below the lunar sphere. And the kind of science which shows up quality with respect to forms and local motions, seeking figure, number, and magnitude, and also place, time, and similar things, would be defined as mathematical. For such an essence falls, as it were, between the other two, not only because it can be conceived both through the senses and without the senses, but also because it is an accident in absolutely all beings both mortal and immortal, changing with those things that ever change, according to their inseparable form, and preserving unchangeable the changelessness of form in things eternal and of an ethereal nature.

the cherry end of your cigarette against the pale sky by Levi Romero

 

the cherry end of your cigarette against the pale sky

Levi Romero

outside the prickling air burned hot against what we’d left behind and all that we scraped and cupped ourselves for while trying to catch the last vestiges of someone’s history their life here and back and somewhere in that hummed and whistled journey across the plains and valleys and state lines invisible to hunger and thirst and the pursuit of want and need tomorrow the railroad tracks will shimmer in the heat of the summer that arrived as we were heading out of town because as in those things past we too have someplace we need to go what does it matter that there are no words to compensate for the longing and emptiness of the evening’s solitude brought in by the winds of our own stormy reluctance unwilling to settle for anything less than what we give in our taking our own words muted by a laughter-less language rattling bucket-empty like a windmill spinning against a prairie horizon that does not distinguish between yesterday or tomorrow them or us his or hers yours or mine it was what you didn’t say that caught my attention and how you pressed your lips to the wind your eyes blazing in the moonless night

Bare Foot Truth by Benjamin Volkov ‘Nicolaievitch’

 Bare Foot Truth

***W***

I stuck my board down in the sand

A guy came up and shook my hand

I saw he didn’t own his shoes

His feet would go just where he planned

***H***

We talked a while and all he told

The things he knew both new and old

Of things that men can often lose

And how a heart and mind run cold

***E***

He slapped my board then walked away

I asked him why he couldn’t stay

He smiled and said “I got one fuse”

But what he meant I couldn’t say

***T***

I watched him as he turned and walked

I thanked him as some others mocked

They might have thought he was some ruse

But truth was in the way he talked

***H***

He’s gone now but still in my mind

I hear his words ‘just seek and find’

But was he just some common muse?

Or can truth still be deeper mined

***E***

I stuck my board back in the sand

Just hoping I could understand

The wisdom covered in tattoos

With weathered skin so deeply tanned

***R***

And when I finally walked away

I had the urge to wait and stay

But some things come in fading hues

If there was more I’d have to pay

***End***

Benjamin Volkov ‘Nicolaievitch’ (that wanderingly vague last name)

Th3 Man!c 1>3pr3ss!v3’s Alphab3t

 

Th3 Man!c 1>3pr3ss!v3’s Alphab3t

Shar3 on Fac3book

Shar3 on Tw!tt3r

Shar3 on Tumblr

V!3w pr!nt mo1>3

Copy 3mb31> co1>3

A1>1> th!s po3m to an anthology

Loa1> au1>!o play3r

Anah!ta Monfar31>

A !s for ant!psychot!cs, th3 only a1>v3rt!s31> long t3rm solut!on

B for th3 b3ta block3rs bought to slow th3 boom boom of a b3at!ng h3art

C as !n chron!c: (of an !lln3ss) p3rs!st!ng for a longt!m3 or constantly r3curr!ng, caus!ng comorb!1>!ty, so th3y r3comm3n1> cogn!t!v3 b3hav!oural th3rapy

1> 1>!als th3 1>SM-5 han1>!ng out 1>!agnos!s aft3r 1>!agnos!s, g!v!ng lab3l to your 1>!stract!b!l!ty an1> 1>3cr3as31> n331> for sl33p, so th3y r3comm3n1> 1>!al3ct!cal b3hav!oral th3rapy wh3r3 th3y t3ach you 1>!str3ss tol3ranc3 to 1>!lut3 your 1>3lus!ons

3 !s 3nsur3, th3 van!lla-flavor31> m3al r3plac3m3nt 1>r!nk for wh3n you cannot 3at 1>ur!ng m31>!cat!on sw!tch3s to th3 3xt3n1>31> r3l3as3 formula

F !s for your f33l!ngs, 3xp3r!3nc31> at an alarm!ng !nt3ns!ty !n compar!son to th3 av3rag3 human, th3y t3ll you th!s !s 1>ang3rous (th3y b3!ng 1>octors who 1>on’t know your nam3 !f not r3a1>!ng !t off of your f!l3, th3y b3!ng 1>octors who 1>!agnos3 an1> pr3scr!b3 aft3r t3n m!nut3s !n a room w!th you) th3y t3ll you th!s can b3 fatal, wh!ch, hon3stly, soun1>s k!n1> of fuck!ng fun

G for th3 gatora1>3, on3 bottl3 !n 3v3ry room, two !n th3 bathroom

H tak3s you to th3 hosp!tal, h!gh off hypoman!a, wh3r3 you w!ll ch3ck yours3lf !n an1> a1>m!t you n331> th3 h3lp. H3r3 th3y w!ll 1>!agnos3 you w!th som3th!ng w3 us31> to call, “hyst3r!a”

! !s for !nt3rp3rsonal 3ff3ct!v3n3ss, th3 mo1>ul3 !n 1>BT that t3ach3s you how to k33p your fr!3n1>s 1>3sp!t3 your !rr!tabl3 !nstab!l!ty

J !s for “Just k!1>1>!ng!” aft3r you’v3 sa!1> too much, too qu!ck

K !s wh3n you prom!s3 you w!ll not k!ll yours3lf, w!thout call!ng h3r f!rst

L !s th3 l!th!um, to stop th3 lows, to l!ght3n th3 loa1>

M r3pr3s3nts MA1> pr!1>3, a mass ma1>n3ss mov3m3nt for m3ntal h3alth s3rv!c3 us3rs, an1> th3 al!gn31>, a1>vocat!ng that !n1>!v!1>uals w!th m3ntal !lln3ss shoul1> b3, coul1> b3, prou1> to b3 MA1>

N !s for normal, you n331> ba1>ly to b3 so, an1> so you tak3 th3 p!lls but all you ar3 !s numb an1> naus3ous an1> st!ll qu!t3 n3urot!c

O !s ov3rpr3scr!b31>! Four y3ars on 250 mg of l!th!um an1> four on 250 mg of s3roqu3l, all b3for3 you can l3gally 1>r!nk

P !s for th3 pan!c 1>!sor1>3r th3 psych!atr!st 1>!agnos3s you w!th. !t 3xpla!ns your parano!a (but not your prom!scu!ty) you l3av3 h!s off!c3 w!th a pr3scr!pt!on for propranolol

Q !s for th3 qu3t!ap!n3 you st!ll can’t qu!t

R !s rac!ng thoughts an1> for th3 rat3 of su!c!1>3, runn!ng at 19% for 3v3ryon3 w!th th!s 1>!sor1>3r

S !s for s!1>3 3ff3cts. You ar3 so stup!1>ly s31>at31> but at l3ast now you sl33p off th3 s3xual trauma an1> susp3ct31> sch!zophr3n!a

T !s st!ll tr!gg3r31>, 1>3sp!t3 3v3ry tr3atm3nt

U !s for un3mploy31>, th3 long str3tch3s wh3r3 you ar3 mor3 !ll than you ar3 us3ful

V !s for th3 vacant look !n your 3y3s an1> th3 vo!c3s !n your h3a1>

W !s for th3 w!th1>rawal, wh3n you stop tak!ng th3 w3llbutr!n

X !s for xanax, wh!ch th3y’ll put you on for thr33 months you 1>on’t r3m3mb3r at 16

Y !s for yoga, wh!ch actually, you pract!s3 1>a!ly. !t h3lps, y3t you st!ll want to ð!3

Z !s for zypr3xa, th3 1>rug you f!nally r3fus3 to tak3

Copyr!ght © 2025 by Anah!ta Monfar31>. Or!g!nally publ!sh31> !n Po3m-a-1>ay on Jun3 30, 2025, by th3 Aca1>3my of Am3r!can Po3ts.

In a Grain of Sand by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez

In a Grain of Sand

Jesús Papoleto Meléndez

To see a world in a grain of sand …     from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake We are Starseeds                      every one of us –                                                        you & me,                          & me and you                              & him & her,                                                       & them                                                       & they                                                       & those                       Who know of this                            are truly blessed  …    True for all                       living beings,                                           beings living –                                                                  not humans only,                                            but ants & trees                                                 & the open breeze,                                                     things that breathe                                                         air or fire,                                                            water, earth                                          all  kinds of dust                                                                   & dirt,                                                                      particles                                           a  part of all,                                                               all a part                                                                             of     Everything               that is           in everything;                                    Thus, it Sings!!!                                                         & its song                                                                       is Life,                                                                          & Life                                                                                  is!!! …     a  seed of Stars,                         the dust of Suns                                                   & Moons                                                           rocks & dust                                          &  outer smoke                                                       in outer space     Floating           in a bath of timelessness,                                              counted, measured                                                     numbered                                      by some species –                                                         others caring not;     Science & Mathematics                        trying to plot                                                Poetry in motion,                                                                                  Motion                                                   in a Helix’s curve,                                   And Life                                          on Earth                                            becomes visible                                                                   to You                                          through the naked I!

 

Thanatos and Technophilia by Carlos Manuel Rivera

 

Thanatos and Technophilia

Carlos Manuel Rivera

Algae that they soften, restlessness of loneliness and agglomerations of rivers and carnations in discomfort of his entourage. Delves the piercing channel from the intersection. Would pass the rites, the vintage screen and the bow of the scream to pause this transit from a distance. They would imaginate hallucinations that unite ancestral backgrounds of the lordships when passers-by they walked long as emissaries. Then in the face of the torch they would sweat the symphonies, if the skull she exists as a muse. Entity inside enemies ‘war machines,’ flooding with opprobrium absent as of movement who rides the grotto submerged until the increase. Fall in noise and masks, the adversaries. They’d smile of Nereids their vessels, basins & Lights that sound the sunset, marble what means your death, and the apparatus laughs like nothing of his footprint

The Three Kinds of Ghosts (poetry) by Pandeism Fish

 

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The Three Kinds of Ghosts

(poetry)by Pandeism FishMarch 17, 2012

Draw close now, my children, and listen up well,
For there's a lesson to learn in the tale I will tell,
Of three kinds of ghosts which may wander the land,
Which you might recognize, should you see them firsthand.

The first kind of ghost haunts the place of its death,
Wherever it was when it drew its last breath
Most often this shade met a violent fate,
And so in the spot where they died they yet wait,
Whether done in by murder, disaster, or war,
They cling to that pocket of ground evermore,
With their phantasmic chills, they remind passers by,
That on this spot, abruptly, somebody did die.

The ghost of the second kind finds its way home,
And there does it stay, no more given to roam.
The house where in life it kept comfort most sure,
Is the place where the spirit in death will endure.
No matter where body became split from soul,
'Tis the manse of its memories which it will patrol.
Forever it wanders the rooms of its days,
There to glimmer in thought of habitual ways.

The third kind of ghost with the body remains,
Whether tucked in a graveyard or tossed out on the plains.
No matter where once it had lived or had died,
It stays near the corpse, thereupon to reside.
The crypts and the graveyards must be thick with such ghosts,
Regarding their gravesites and maintaining their posts.
And this must explain, in the days growing older
Why cemeteries stay just a little bit colder.

Now there are, to be sure, times when things coincide,
Where the body remains in the place where it died,
Where the death came about in the home of its life,
And the corpse stayed right where it had memories rife,
Why the ghost chose this place we may never find out,
But one thing is certain without any doubt:
You've not far to wander, far ahead or behind,
Before one of these species of ghosts you will find

The Crypt Seed By Jackie Wang

 

The Crypt Seed

Jackie Wang

The seed is a wound in the form of a little girl buried alive. Buried inside me the sol de la terre. What do I remember of last night’s dream, that the children were painting a mural that spread beyond the surface of the wall. There was a blue spirit a benevolent ghost with no eyes that hung over the children like a cloud reaching out its arms. Did the image fatigue me? I was fatigued by everything. There were space chairs facing the walls and I kept falling asleep.  Cry at my library carrel. Cry when I step off the bus. A crystal-clear sky over midtown and I no longer have the energy (will?) to masticate subjective experience. Wrote nothing about the breakup. It’s as though nothing actually happens to me.  I wanted a quiet life—to keep the casket. They don’t even notice I’m half-here, while the other half lives in the crypt. Go down to the grotto with your headlamp and crowbar. Release the girl lost and afraid. I’m not here. No one touches her. Reserve a little for myself. To self-witness. But what’s become of my mind there is no world. What did I want to say to him—that there’s a crypt-shaped seed I show to no one: it is my fate. The impossibility of making a day, leaking one’s soul for want of an angel. The night was forever. And pearls of light rained down on me I lost myself in the lonely expedition toward the center of everything I would become: nothing there’s no time but love was a thing hanging in the air at night when I’d stalk the streets with my heart in my mouth.  Bury my heart in the haute mer. Find me not I’ve flushed it to spare myself the humiliation of being seen. She’s nowhere to be found or maybe there’s a casket bobbing on the ocean with a note inside that says, “The secret to survival is to disappear.”

We Dreamed You Keisha-Gaye Anderson

 

We Dreamed You

Keisha-Gaye Anderson

I see her face when my lids surrender to the limits of this battered body and it makes the cane ash sting less in my throat. She has fat brown cheeks red satin ribbons floating on fluffy plaits. She hums, traaa-la-la-la-la, so sweet like a sugar in a plum. She skips along a carpet of flamboyant petals, red like  the rose apple she nibbles on an already full belly. Laughter like a bird song no thick memory whatsoever of who sent her into this future finally free.

time, space, and thought

 

1. Images

   Videos

   Exploring "time, space, and thought" requires an integrated evaluation across philosophy, physics, and cognitive science. We can structure the analysis into three interrelated axes: metaphysical foundations, scientific formalization, and cognitive representation.

   ---

   1. Philosophical Foundations

   (a) Kantian Perspective

   Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) revolutionized the understanding of space and time:

   • Space: Form of outer sense, providing the framework for perceiving objects.
   • Time: Form of inner sense, structuring the sequence of inner experiences.
   • Thought: Intellectual representation (conceptual cognition) presupposes space and time for coherent judgments.

   Kant asserts that space and time are a priori intuitions, meaning they are conditions imposed by the human mind to make experience possible. Objects do not inherently possess these dimensions; rather, our perceptual framework organizes phenomena within them. Mathematically, space can be represented as a manifold, and time as a one-dimensional continuous axis, both serving as structuring scaffolds for experience.

   (b) Post-Kantian and Phenomenological View

   Hannah Arendt emphasized that cognitive processes themselves traverse a mental spacetime continuum:

   • Thought simultaneously engages temporal recollection (past) and anticipation (future).
   • The "location" of thought is non-spatial in the ordinary sense: it occupies a conceptual nowhere, structured by mental attention and reflective activity.
   • Human cognition constructs the experience of time and space by situating the agent between past and future, producing a psychological present.

   This philosophical lens highlights that space and time are inseparable from conscious thought, forming the substrate for mental modeling, planning, and memory.

   ---

   2. Physical and Scientific Frameworks

   (a) Relativity and Space-Time

   Einstein's theories unify space and time into four-dimensional spacetime:

   • Spatial coordinates and temporal measurement are relative to the observer's frame of reference.
   • Time dilation and length contraction demonstrate that space and time are not independent absolutes but elastic quantities influenced by motion and gravity.
   • Phenomena previously thought distinct (space vs. time) are now linked in a dynamic metric, calculable via:

   $d{s}^2=-c^{2}d{t}^2+d{x}^2+d{y}^2+d{z}^2$

   or, in general relativity:

   $d{s}^2=g_{\mu u}d{x}^{\mu }d{x}^u,$

   where (g_{\mu
   u}) is the spacetime metric tensor.

   (b) Quantum and Cognitive Implications

   Modern physics, particularly quantum gravity, suggests that at the Planck scale ($\sim 10^{-35}\text{m}$), space and time may be quantized, forming a "spacetime foam" where classical continuity fails. This aligns with the philosophical notion that space-time structures are conceptual frameworks rather than ontologically continuous absolutes.

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   3. Neurocognitive Perspective

   • Our nervous system encodes space-time relationships to guide perception and action.
   • Sensory systems detect changes, forming temporal sequences essential for movement and decision-making.
   • Cognitive science treats space and time as modes of thinking: mental maps (spatial) and internal clocks (temporal) integrate to inform anticipation, memory, and problem-solving.
   • Experiments on saccadic eye movements, visual delay, and motion perception illustrate that temporal and spatial processing are interdependent in behavior.

   ---

   4. Synthesis: Time, Space, and Thought as a Triad

   1. Time provides the structural ordering of events and thoughts.
   2. Space allows for the localization and relational mapping of entities.
   3. Thought mediates experience, integrating temporal succession and spatial configuration into coherent cognition.

   This triad implies a co-constitutive relationship:

   $\text{Thought}\underset{}{\overset{\text{mediates}}{\leftrightarrow }}\text{Time}\mathrm{\&}\text{Space},$

   where thought both depends on and shapes our experience of spacetime, forming the bridge between subjective cognition and objective physics. Philosophically, space and time are mind-instituted structures; physically, they are measurable yet relative; biologically, they are processed through neural representations governing perception, memory, and action.

   ---

   5. Implications and Perspectives

   • Ontology: Space and time are not inherently “things” but forms of experience and frameworks for representation (Kant, Arendt).
   • Physics: Objective measurements depend on observer-relative spacetime; fundamental discreteness may emerge at quantum scales.
   • Cognition: Thought is embedded in, and partially constructs, spatiotemporal experience; mental time travel alters the phenomenology of experience.
   • Interdisciplinarity: Understanding reality requires integrating philosophical, physical, and neurocognitive insights into a holistic model of spacetime-consciousness.

   ---

   Conclusion

   Time, space, and thought are interconnected dimensions of reality:

   • Philosophically, they are a priori conditions structuring experience.
   • Physically, they form an elastic spacetime fabric responsive to mass, energy, and velocity.
   • Cognitively, they are processed through neural systems enabling abstraction, memory, and anticipation.

   This synthesis suggests the profound thesis that thought itself is inextricably spatiotemporal, simultaneously constrained by and shaping how reality is experienced and conceptualized.

   ---

   References

   1. Melnick, A. Space, Time, and Thought in Kant, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
   2. Arendt, H. The Life of the Mind, 1978.
   3. Einstein, A. Relativity: The Special and General Theory, 1916.
   4. Nijhawan, R., Khurana, B. Space and Time in Perception and Action, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
   5. Sciencenewstoday.org. "7 Mind-Bending Theories of Space-Time."

   This triadic framework—thought entwined with space and time—remains central to contemporary philosophical and scientific discourse.

   

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