by Warren Gaston | Sep 6, 2019
Resist with all your might the temptation to know the unknown. It cannot be done and should not be attempted. Know all the facts you need to know. Facts are useful. The unknown is not useful, it is absolutely essential. The unknown is the boundary against which we...
by Warren Gaston | Aug 3, 2019
Before poetry is a form of art it is a mode of thinking. Thinking requires the use of words. We think with words in two ways; literal, each word having a precise meaning, and figurative, each word suggesting relationships with things beyond the literal meaning. All...
by Warren Gaston | Jul 25, 2019
July 24, 2019, 4:00 in the afternoon. I am sitting in my garden facing the three-dimensional space of my backyard. Horizontally it is deep and wide. Vertically it is sky high. At night the stars and moon appear in my sky. Now I look across the lawn into shadows...
by Warren Gaston | Mar 18, 2019
In the early spring of 1966 I worked at the ‘Sow on its Back,’ nickname for Northwestern University’s Deering Library in Evanston, Illinois. I was stationed at a table at the entrance to the stacks admitting those who had a proper pass, sending away those...
by Warren Gaston | Feb 12, 2019
I am reading Homer on the Fort DeSoto Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida. Actually a book about Homer: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson. (Picador/2014) A rich read making The Iliad and The Odyssey even more beautifully terrifying. It is a perfect beach book. The...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 24, 2018
It is Christmas and the cold world jangles attempting joy. This is a season of blurred lines: God appears out of character in a baby boy body, a fat elf descends down a hundred million too tight chimneys with gifts for girls and boys, many of whom have too much...
