WC80 Updrafts

Updrafts
Edited by Dan Vera

Help these boys build a nation of their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literature for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale, and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light. Jamie O'Neill

If people are highly successful in their professions they lose their senses.  Sight goes.  They have no time to look at pictures.  Sound goes.  They have no time to listen to music.  Speech goes.  They have no time for conversation.  They lose their sense of proportion — the relations between one thing and another.  Humanity goes.
Virginia Woolf

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.   Leonard Cohen

I do not care much about the mysteries of the universe, unless they come to me in words, or in music maybe, or in a set of colours, and then I entertain them merely for their beauty and only briefly.
Colm Tóibín

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.  Ishmael Reed

The beauty of words in a democracy is that anyone can offer them up, and they live or die not by the ruler’s dictate, but by their ability to permeate hearts and minds, to ignite passions, and to provoke action. Throughout our history, we have learned that words with enough resonance — whether from a slave, a student, or a songwriter — can change history as dramatically as any decree.  Joannie Fischer

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think.
Music is immediate; it goes on to become.      W.H. Auden

Oh fellow mortal out there in the world!  Until you learn how to join together once more, to fuse your sorrowful and lonely hearts in some new communion, you can never make true music.  The sound you will produce will continue to be the agonized expression of separate and unshared life.  Mabel Dodge Lujan

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet,
music in some living form will accompany and sustain it
and give it expressive meaning.   Aaron Copland


Dan Vera is the White Crane's managing editor.  He is also the author of the recently released book of poetry, The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books).  He lives in Washington DC.  For more on Dan visit www.danvera.com

Updrafts is a regular feature of  White Crane.  If you have a little bit  of wisdom to share with us, send it to us at dan@gaywisdom.org

For more White Crane, become a fan on Facebook and join us on Yahoogroups.

Subscribe today and keep the conversation going!  Consider giving a gift subscription to
your friends who could use some wisdom!  If there's an article listed
above that was not excerpted online, copies of this issue are available
for purchase.  Contact us at editors@gaywisdom.org

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *