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The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

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Tag: Wallace Stevens

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 March 25, 2017March 25, 2017

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat XIII: the long waits of winter

XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird…

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Posted on March 25, 2017

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat XII: the thaw, the flight

XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird I dwell in a land where the rivers are always moving,…

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Posted on March 25, 2017March 25, 2017

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat XI: people who live in glass coaches

XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of…

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Posted on March 19, 2017March 19, 2017

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat IX: servants of Utopias.

IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird There is a strange…

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Posted on January 31, 2017February 17, 2021

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat

“Psychoanalysts don’t usually write essays; they tend to write lectures or papers or chapters, or what are called, perhaps optimistically, contributions.” Adam Phillips “Coda: up to a point” in One…

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Posted on October 28, 2016October 28, 2016

The book of my soul

Image source: Gitksan woman Shaman and Chief, Kispiox, British Columbia, 1909, by George Thornton Emmons Collection no. 131 (University of Washington Libraries) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Why do we write…

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Posted on October 7, 2016

The nobility of poetry and a normal life

Yesterday I visited the State Library of Victoria and there I read from the Collected Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens is perhaps my most loved American poet,…

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Posted on October 19, 2015August 8, 2016

Wallace Stevens’ mind of winter

Wallace Stevens is a poet for lovers of beauty among ruins. For those of us in the second half of life he is of unique importance: diligent insurance executive, sometimes…

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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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