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The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

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Tag: poetry

Posted on February 24, 2021

Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments

The story of Ezra Pound’s mind cannot be told in plain and simple affirmations. Three twisted trees grow from this mind in all accounts: poetry, unavowable politics, and madness. They…

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Posted on February 18, 2021

Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche

In April 2017 I wrote the following post in an experiment, a form of improvised association and regathering of the fragments of my mind. I will write some more of…

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Posted on February 17, 2021

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat

In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays – on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I wrote it still aiming…

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Posted on February 12, 2021

Report from a besieged city (Melbourne)

Today 12 February, Melbourne and all the citizens of Victoria have been thrown, with eleven hours notice, again into a futile, fickle lockdown that is not founded in evidence of…

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Posted on January 31, 2021January 31, 2021

Cantos from a cage

Today I am reposting this reflection on the true heritage of Ezra Pound, Cantos from a cage, which I originally posted in April 2018. I have borrowed from the local…

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Posted on January 5, 2021

This grey spirit seeking a sinking star

But more so than the moulted carapace of governing that lies at my feet, I connected to the adventurer of the spirit, weakened by age and misfortune, that Tennyson saw in Ulysses. It was this grey spirit that I turned to this morning for the courage to continue.

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Posted on January 3, 2021January 7, 2021

Taking time with Szymborska

I have established several practices for the New Year to make it a more mindful, culturally enriched and satisfying year than the plague year of 2020, now buried in an…

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Posted on December 29, 2020

Fragments from the Burning Archive: Anna Akhmatova

In my study is a box of old index cards with fragmentary thoughts, notes on narratives and characters, and quotations taken from my reading. The box is labelled “Notes to…

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Posted on December 18, 2020

Viral Meltdown – Year in Review

As part of my The Kaeleidoscope of 2020: Year in Review post I have updated with my reflections on the pandemic and lockdowns in this section, Viral Meltdown Viral Meltdown…

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Posted on December 15, 2020December 15, 2020

Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857

Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857. I wonder if, over the next 5 to 10 years,…

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Posted on November 29, 2020

The Coming Renaissance of the Second Culture

Terrible events occur in history that devastate the cities that our minds build. The Barbarians sack Rome, and other-named disasters have similarly brought ruin to all past civilisations across time…

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Posted on October 4, 2020December 16, 2020

Poem: Two voices vie in my head

This poem is a dialogue about how we are to act in this moment of cultural decay, when we face a choice between living in lies or taking the path…

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Recent musings

  • Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments February 24, 2021
  • The persistence of the Mahabharata February 21, 2021
  • Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche February 18, 2021
  • 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat February 17, 2021
  • Sound and fury told by the American cultural “elite” February 16, 2021

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Adam Phillips America Australian politics autobiography Bakhtin Blanchot blogging bureaucracy change China civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture culture wars death decay democracy Donald Trump dream election Empire Essays Ezra Pound featured Fernandez-Armesto Foucault Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing Harold Bloom history history of emotions Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible Kierkegaard literature lockdown machiavelli madness Melbourne memory music Nietzsche philosophy poetry political decay politics power progressive politics Prose public service quotes reading Russia Russian history samizdat society Solzhenitsyn Symborska terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel violence W.G. Sebald Wallace Stevens WB Yeats Weber William Dalrymple writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

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The burning archive is my symbol for our cultural condition, and my own experiment with a new literary form. Read more here

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