Aphorisms by Gerald Stern
Posted on October 26, 2009
Filed Under Aphorisms | 4 Comments
Gerald Stern is best known as a poet, and a teacher at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, but in 2004 he published a book of aphorisms, Not God After All (Autumn House Press). In the introduction, Stern explains that he wrote the aphorisms over a period of about two weeks in the spring of 2002, quite a sustained period of spontaneous aphoristic combustion. “These aphorisms, petite narratives, whatever they are … represent my feelings during that time, feelings that were angry, arch, focused, political and unified,” he writes. “They also reflect both my reading and the sheer accident of my experience.” Once again, I thank the ever aphoristically alert Jim Finnegan (check out his blog, ursprache) for bringing Stern’s aphorisms my attention.
Walking down I don’t count the stairs
as I do when walking up.
If there was time I’d stop
saying good morning to Zeno.
There is no difference between
one whip and another.
What is more bloodthirsty and
oppressive, God or Country?
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Programmed lives. Programmed lies.
One has as much of a passion for the lurid as another for the lucid.
What divides Brooklyn and Los Angeles? Ask a baseball fan with a memory.
Ah, “te-tum, te-tum, te-tum, tea-time…” What if everything was so easy to understand and appreciate…as this simple rhythem in most aphorisms I’ve come across is to beat time to…
To enjoy the banquet you don’t have to like every dish.
One (me) wonders what one does when one doesn’t stop wondering when to stop writing aphorisms, does it (the wondering) go on forever? Or does one just go on holiday for a couple of weeks and forget all about wondering about thinking up a few aphorisms, and go and write a few aphorisms?