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LIFE

WE CAN VIEW OURSELVES AND OUR SONGS BREATH IS LIFE AND THE INTERMINGLING OF BREATHS IS GOOD LIVING

“In this way we learn how we can view ourselves and our songs so that we may approach both rightly. Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living.”

Gunn Allen, Paula. “The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Indian Perspective on American Indian Literature.” In Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome and Diane Rothenberg, 174. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1983.

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University of California Press

EVERYTHING SEEMS POSSIBLE WHERE THE DEAD RETURN TO LIFE AND THE LIVING DIE ONLY TO LIVE AGAIN WHERE ONE

“The fire tricks, the ‘miracle’ of the rope-trick or mango-trick type, the exhibition of magical feats, reveal another world—the fabulous world of the gods and magicians, the world in which everything seems possible, where the dead return to life and the living die only to live again, where one can disappear and reappear instantaneously, where the “laws of nature” are abolished, and a certain superhuman ‘freedom’ is exemplified and made dazzlingly present.”

Eliade, Mircea. “The Epilogue to Shamanism.” In Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse toward an Ethnopoetics, edited by Jerome and Diane Rothenberg, 61. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1983.

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University of California Press

USEFUL EYES EVOLVED MANY TIMES IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE THE EYES OF THE OCTOPUS ARE SIMILAR TO OUR OWN

“In fact, the ability to see is so useful that eyes have evolved many separate times in the history of life. The eyes of the octopus are eerily similar to our own, despite the fact that our last common ancestor was a blind aquatic slug-or snail-like creature that lived well over half a billion years ago.”

Ramachandran, V. S. The Tell-tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. p. 41.

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W.W. Norton

SUCH THAT THERE IS NO END AND NO BEGINNING JUST LIFE BEING MADE EVEN AS IT IS BEING LIVED THROUGH LIKE

“Her poetry has its own kind of proliferation and plenitude, and its own kind of incompleteness; for the very lack of "system" in the poetry, the very openendedness of its conception of the creating self, is such that there is, properly speaking, no end and no beginning—just life being made even as it is being lived through. Of something like this, I think, Emily Dickinson must have been conscious—although she puts it in her own typically restrictive terms—since, in spite of the overarching of her imaginative grasp toward things, there was for her no Whale, just her own soul in the world.”

Pearce, Roy Harvey. "On the Continuity of American Poetry." The Hudson Review 10, no. 4 (1957): 535. Accessed August 11, 2021. doi:10.2307/3848911.

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THE SCHOOL-ROOM POETS ASSURED READERS THAT LIFE WAS NOT AN EMPTY DREAM ALL WAS REAL AND EARNEST

“Their poetry assured their readers that life was not an empty dream, that all was real and earnest, that the natural world was as it was to give men lessons-by-analogy, that their Snow-Bound reveries were means of getting perspective on the actualities of their day-to-day life.”

Pearce, Roy Harvey. "Mass Culture / Popular Culture: Notes for a Humanist's Primer." College English 23, no. 6 (1962): p. 426. Accessed May 27, 2021. doi:10.2307/373204.

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JSTOR

SHADE I KNEW THAT ONLY THE TRUTH IS TRUE THAT LIFE IS ONLY THE ACT TO TRANSFIGURE FACT AND LIFE IS

“…For in our shade I knew
That only the Truth is true,
That life is only the act
To transfigure all fact,
And life is only a story…”

Penn Warren, Robert. From Promises. In "Historicism Once More," by Roy Harvey Pearce. In The Kenyon Review 20, no. 4 (1958): 589. Accessed July 5, 2021.

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JSTOR

MYSTERIOUS SILENCE ZERO VIBRATIONS NEVER ZERO IN THIS LIFE UNTIL THE BONES DISAPPEAR THE PROCESS OF DYING

“Beauty of fading physical being
toward that special mysterious silence
zero vibrations
Never zero in this life until the bones disappear

The process of dying
also sound”

Oliveros, Pauline. "The Earth Worm Also Sings: A Composer's Practice of Deep Listening." Leonardo Music Journal 3 (1993): 36. doi:10.2307/1513267.

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JSTOR

FECUND CREATIVITY BRILLIANT SPARK SOUNDING PULSE LIFE UNENDING BEAUTY OF FADING PHYSICAL BEING TOWARD

“Abundance, fecund creativity
Brilliant spark
Sounding pulse
Life unending
Beauty of fading physical being
toward that special mysterious silence”

Oliveros, Pauline. "The Earth Worm Also Sings: A Composer's Practice of Deep Listening." Leonardo Music Journal 3 (1993): 36. doi:10.2307/1513267.

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JSTOR

PASTURES THE BLOOD OF PLANTS THROBBING BENEATH THE LIFE GIVING SUNSHINE HEARD AND FELT BEFORE OUR EYES

“Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.”

Muir, John. The Writings of John Muir: Sierra Edition. Vol. II. The Mountains of California. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917. p. 67-8.

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Internet Archive

INSTITUTIONALIZED IN THIS SOCIETY THE TOLERANCE IS THE LIFE ELEMENT THE TOKEN OF A FREE SOCIETY WILL NEVER

“I committed this petitio principii in order to combat the pernicious ideology that tolerance is already institutionalized in this society. The tolerance which is the life element, the token of a free society, will never be the gift of the powers that be; it can, under the prevailing conditions of tyranny by the majority, only be won in the sustained effort of radical minorities, willing to break this tyranny and to work for the emergence of a free and sovereign majority - minorities intolerant, militantly intolerant and disobedient to the rules of behavior which tolerate destruction and suppression.”

Marcuse, Herbert. “Repressive Tolerance.” In A Critique of Pure Tolerance by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. p.123.

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Herbert Marcuse

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS AS DEATH IS THE PRICE OF LIFE THAT RENUNCIATION AND TOIL ARE PREREQUISITES

“We know that destruction is the price of progress as death is the price of life, that renunciation and toil are the prerequisites for gratification and joy, that business must go on, and that the alternatives are Utopian.”

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. London: Routledge, 2002. p. 149.

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OF CONDITIONS IN WHICH MAN CAN SHAPE HIS OWN LIFE NO LONGER SUBORDINATING LIFE TO REQUIREMENTS

“The real interest, the attainment of conditions in which man could shape his own life, was that of no longer subordinating his life to the requirements of profitable production, to an apparatus controlled by forces beyond his control.”

Marcuse, Herbert. An Essay on Liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon, 1969. p. 16.

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Beacon Press

TO UNDERSTANDING A CENTRAL MYSTERY OF HUMAN LIFE HOW THE PHYSICAL EVENTS OCCUR IN OUR BRAINS WHILE

“We believe that once we have mastered the secret of this simple form of awareness, we may be close to under standing a central mystery of human life: how the physical events occurring our brains while we think and act in the world relate to our subjective sensations—that is, how the brain relates to the mind.”

Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. "The Problem of Consciousness." Scientific American 26, no. 3 (1992): 159. Accessed August 13, 2021.

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JSTOR

PATTERN BE WED SMELL WATER SEE SAND OH BOY AIN'T LIFE GRAND OH OH NOW AND THEN HERE AND THERE EVERYWHERE

“HAVE A HEART

Have heart Find head
Feel pattern Be wed
Smell water See sand
Oh boy Ain’t life grand


OH OH

Now and then
Here and there
Everywhere
On and on”

Robert Creeley, “Gnomic Verses.” The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. p. 422.

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University of California Press