Wave Hill, Early August

At long last I have completed reading the Oppenheimer biography (earlier posts on it are here and here). While it is excellent, I continue to think that it would have benefited with a trim of about 100 pages and, also, that telling the story through the lens of Oppenheimer was far too constraining. But I am glad to have read it as much as I am glad to be done reading it. Certainly far better than the alternative summertime “adventure” of spending time with plastic toys in a Quixotic effort to invest them with a meaning they cannot and never will possess.

Bodies in Motion, Body at Rest

“Many philosophers have existed only in their own minds, but I think I may well be the first to exist only in other people’s.”
—Kathleen Stock [May 19, 2023]

I have lately been thinking about things well over my head, even more than usual. Perhaps it has something to do with reading Ronald Blythe’s The Age of Illusion, about England in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s hard to choose a favorite quote, but here are a few:

It Is Spring

In that progress of life which seems stillness itself in the mass of its movements—at last SPRING is approaching.

—William Carlos Williams, Chapter XIX, Spring and All (1923)

Mark Kerstetter, a fine poet himself and an incisive reader of the poetry of others, has embarked upon a series of posts offering thoughts and commentary on William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. I’m only a little way in, but already entranced.

Freedom for the Daffodils!

Einstein has remembered us
Savior of the daffodils!
—William Carlos Williams
St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils (first version)

Innisfree opened early, and the daffodils are out!

Short Takes: Walking, Mid-April

Great Egret with Jogger, Central Park

I am wide/awake. The mind/is listening.”
—William Carlos Williams

The photographs were taken mid-April on walks in Riverside Park and Central Park.