[New-Poetry] Philosopher/philosopy poems

[jforjames at aol.com]

Wittgenstein’s Cottage


I said it would be dark, and he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, and he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad, and he said God preserve him from sanity.
 --Bertrand Russell (recounting a conversation with LW)


The sea is all black when it is not grey.
The fireplace, a kind of clock burning the days.
A sheaf of papers left on a wooden table.
The tabletop scarred from many fish 
having been gutted on its surface,  
and the tea gone cold. Wind comes 
through a door left open by the man in residence 
who went out on a walk away from the sea. 
It torments him with its constancy
of tide and wave. He tears through a thicket
to escape the grating sound of water against sand. 
The papers begin to blow about the room. 
By the time he gets back from his walk,
bloodied by briars, clotted marks 
on his forehead, the papers are the only light 
left in the room. He stoops to pick them up, 
carefully, as though their order mattered.



-----Original Message-----
From: jforjames at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:00 am
Subject: [New-Poetry] Philosopher/philosopy poems



Tad's post, made me think of a poem I ran across recenlty by Anne Carson....


Outwardly His Life Ran Smoothly 



 

Comparative figures: 1784 Kant owned 550 books, Goethe 2300, Herder 7700. 

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