Tag Archives: Amanda Preston
How the Rain Speaks
A translation (original German lyrics follow) für Birgitt und Simone “The Language of Rain” Understand the language of rain and know of what it speaks; in the night’s darkness [descend] and in the morning light awakens again. I want to be: … Continue reading
On Companionship
I’ve kissed her more times than snow has fallen, thought her more beautiful than the greatest masters’ masterpieces have always wanted to be–seen: what we like to believe Helen was worthy of, but she is. I’ve seen her stretch more … Continue reading
New Poem Published
Read it here!
A Teaching Philosophy
Language represents one of our most uniquely human characteristics, whether mathematical, musical, somatic, or linguistic. It is a human instinct, according to cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, the limits of thought, according to German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the model of higher cognition … Continue reading
Two Rooms
Two rooms sit side-by-side with only a thin paper wall between them. On the one side lies a sleeping woman whose light reveals her silhouette to the darker room’s occupant. He, lit by only a single candle from the stock … Continue reading
On Identity
The question of identity is one that philosophers, poets, science fiction authors, neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, and theologians have mused over for centuries. What is identity? Who are we, as a species, a kind, an organism that is but one of … Continue reading
Wanderer to the Sun
There are whole symphonies waiting to erupt, unseeable landscapes that spring up every time you reach for me. Your touch is all story, all drum beat and legend around the fire. When you leave, ghost worlds are left behind; they … Continue reading
L’envoi
All the words in me bloom for you. At night these roses howl at the moon. Come dance with me in the garden beneath ancient stars, and I’ll throw the petals of my skirt around you, love you in the … Continue reading
On Higher Education & Infantilization
“I wish schools would take our cell phones away from us.” — Approximately 90% of my students on their #1 recommendation to improve the educational environment (in both K-12 and college). Facebook post from a Texas College instructor “Take” is … Continue reading
A Simple Rhetorical Analysis: “On Truth and Lies…”
Nietzsche’s Rhetoric and Man’s Worn Out Coins “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” was written in 1873 by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In my reading of this text, Nietzsche attempts to persuade his audience to see that intellect … Continue reading
HM Cancri
The most perfect poem is the one that cares to live. Will you dance with me, then, under the stars in the city or the cemetery, paint it with our breath and the warmth of our bodies so that all … Continue reading
Two new poems out online!
Two new poems out online! Check it out!
Nostos
I will make a ruler of your absence to measure the moon’s face by until its little sail is close hauled and waxing in the black waters over this city, promising to bring you in. Somehow that distant arc must … Continue reading
Dreamweaving
An interior Kreuzweg turns six conjoined points out as in time—honeycomb tension— self-taut; each intersection, membrane potential radiates outward potentiating— in- and ex—spires radial— emanation of expressivity, grows antennae, extends extensions: every possible whatcouldbe circumscribed by nothing rings around them. … Continue reading
Avoiding Conversation at a Bar: Or, Recalling “Hand with Reflecting Sphere”
It’s that pleasure of cold, salt,that light carbonated sugar—alcohol and silence, remembrance—an implied comfort, familiarity,strangeness; I wanted to be there.Sitting—here—in an empty divewhere any somebody could benobody because everyoneis preoccupied with nothing.The music is melancholy—how I imagine you are.But you … Continue reading
The Darkest Night
Once a year honeyed madness descendsfrom the onset of the vernal equinox,when Bacchante prevails over great minds,when generative bodies become spirit-full.Beauty and danger—living death—overpoweropen, receptive souls with kairotic momentsthat spill—above embankments, thresholds,horizons girding what is appropriate, what is moral.Maenads appear … Continue reading
Spreading Activation
By stringing together beadsof wild-born color, shape, texturewe make jewelry to ornamentour naked bodies, as buildersbind stones into walls, archesunder which people can gather,dressing and undressing themselveswith space they claim to ownfor a time, like dinner partiescoming out of nowherewith … Continue reading
Dodos and Natural Selection
Like self-propelled pool balls bouncing off bumpers and borders come the idiots who wear their words like awards of truth, pinned to labile tongues for loyalty, courage, faith— so many dawdling, flightless birds. They will never see the other side … Continue reading
Ars Poetica
Spiders are born with the innate knowledge and biological make up to spin webs. No great spider of ancient history invented web design which all spiders since have learned to imitate. It is something unique to their species and something … Continue reading
A Little Riddle
Petit Sphinx Gardien by Leonor Fini, 1943-44. Oil on canvas. What is it that wounds and also heals, disappears and reappears, hides and reveals. Sphinx, I dare not give the word for fear that it will then have power over … Continue reading
What Cannot be Said
I want to whisper cliches that the days are too short and cost more than we know, but saying so is not enough. Still I am charged, dear friend, by the weight that amputates many a future rendezvous, distance and … Continue reading
The Veil of Exile
So many aches are shadows of pleasures that elongate when a light source moves away from us; we see darkness deepening, cast by the fire burning only, now, behind us. What turns us away from the flame so we step … Continue reading
Between Meaning and Objectification
Words take on value only insofar as context emerges in relation to others, with words, with an attentive reader. Dollar bills acquire their value in the trade, the need and want, exchange— hand to hand, account to account. Nuts and … Continue reading
Sphinx
She kneads me in the middle of the night while I should be sleeping and leaves affectionate pin pricks that are still there on my skin in the morning and look a bit like a rash on my rib cage. … Continue reading
A Tired Mother
Damn poet–child–won’t let me sleep. All she wants to do is goof off, put on, make up silly songs or riddles. She’d skip about the place if I’d let her, but the downstairs neighbors!
The Arrest
The deeper joy in body lies while under madness dream descries, a tragedy unborn: will, rise! Still–what complies with hope: remains unstable.
A New Year’s Eve Reflection
Considering consciousness through Heidegger’s Poetry, Language, Thought What can we discover but some concealed aspect of self always already in the world? Reflection lights appearance with the eye of apperception. There the building of dwelling being arises to wed the seeming … Continue reading
Symbolic Weaponry: The Book Gun
There is something about this image that seems inexplicably apropos. Loaded knowledge, here as language, can be weaponized and used forcefully in its original form. However, when turned into a metametaphor, what happens to the message? Something that is meant … Continue reading
Aesthetic Truth
My life in you becomes a living dream— reality without a gravity. between the spheres I cannot find a seam dividing good from good’s depravity. between our eyes a portal opens wide, a hall of mirrors, in yours I see … Continue reading
Memoria
© 2012 Jasper James Photography Man breaks those windows silvered with years of regret— ice melts into streams.
A Letter to Students at Semester’s End
Fare thee well, fellow travellers! It has been a pleasure getting to know all of you through your writing and in-class dialogue. We have traveled far and wide across many intellectual landscapes. Thank you for your hard work. Together we … Continue reading
The Poet's Glass 
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