Tag Archives: Fernando Pessoa

TWENTY-NINE: INTO THE FLOWER’S BLACK EYE (page 93)

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

Williams ends Spring and All with a poem containing only one mark of punctuation, a poem that seems to round from the last word back to the first, while many of the individual words call back to words we’ve already … Continue reading →

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ELEVEN: A BLACK WIND (pages 19-26)

Posted on April 12, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

Next we have, for me, a few of the least impressive pages of the book, followed by some of the most impressive. Let’s start with the least.

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Forgive Me Fernando

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Mark Kerstetter

Forgive me Fernando, but it’s harder being a whole personthan breaking off bits and blowing the whims of life into them. Forgive the word “whim” but if it weren’t for a relinquishmentas to a wind of the many selves clamoring … Continue reading →

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Pessoa (no one is safe)

Posted on June 8, 2022 by Mark Kerstetter

No one is safe—Johnny Depp Pessoa—the man known as “Pessoa”—has run out of rooms.We must learn to speak of himin the past tense.Oh, but who is “we” here?Random Google searchersfrom alias to zenith,inquiring minds of all kindswho just want to … Continue reading →

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Reading the Gombrowicz Diary: an introduction and a warning

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

One must play with uncovered cards…. Other diaries should be to this one what the words “I am like this” are to “I want to be like this”…. One cannot be nothingness all week and then suddenly expect to exist … Continue reading →

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The Book of Disquiet, a Thousand Times

Posted on December 7, 2018 by Mark Kerstetter

I’ve never been able to lose myself in a book…. After a few minutes it’s I who am writing….–Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Richard Zenith ed. Penguin paperback There are a thousand ways to read The Book of Disquiet. … Continue reading →

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What’s in Your Ego Tunnel?

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Mark Kerstetter

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger is one of those books I should have read when it came out in 2009. But, like many of the books I read, I came to it by chance, in this case when a … Continue reading →

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Monday with Pessoa (and Marianne Moore)

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Mark Kerstetter

This will be chatty, really an announcement of sorts. There’s a new Disquiet in town.

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Yahia Lababidi’s Balancing Acts

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Mark Kerstetter

The poems of Yahia Lababidi recall some great names: Borges, Pessoa, and Baudelaire. The spirit of Baudelaire looms large in the poems of Balancing Acts. But I think of visual artists too. Striking, novel images are conjured, mysterious and dreamlike, … Continue reading →

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Out of the Shadows with Maldoror

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Mark Kerstetter

Parle, et, puisque, d’après tes vœux les plus chers, l’on ne souffrirait pas, dis en quoi consisterait alors la vertu, idéal que chacun s’efforce d’atteindre, si ta langue est faite comme celle des autres hommes. —Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror … Continue reading →

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