Kay Ryan:

It’s such an interesting paradox: we can see a voice; we hear through the eyes. But I think that’s the way it is, really, with poetry: I think poetry’s voice happens in the reader’s head. The voice need never pass over anybody’s actual physical vocal chords. I could imagine that some of Emily Dickinson’s poems were never said aloud. And come to think of it, what voice could be their mental equal? The best poet’s best voice is never transmissible outside of individual skulls, and that’s fine by me. The poet speaks to one reader at a time, forever.

There is no learning; only doing.

     ~ Jack Sonville ~

Some related things on the significance of “ideals."

Kay Ryan:

But here’s the thing: the thing that’s exactly right may be a tiny part of a great deal that is much less exact, not very right at all and certainly not that right. … The job of almost all the words is to suspend the essential words, which cannot exist without some context.

This is ennobling all the way around. It imparts value to all the whistling needed to suspend those two transcendent notes that open the dark.

Some really impressing views watching a storm move through the Canyon today.

This first one was on Maricopa Point. We decided to step away when we realized that everyone’s loose hair strands were standing straight up and that that repeated feeling of a spider web on your arm or face was actually the static charge in the air.

Shocking experience all around 🤓

Let’s go north, and leave this Phoenix heat behind

The Toasted Owl in Flagstaff • A side-menu worthy of Jack’s refined tastes

The sign of a good “a.m. eatery”