Literature: poetry XII

notes found in an 1890 diary 

by Kilian

my fellow men, 

can we be like that 

or even better? 

I turn to you, 

you poor in exaltation, 

timidity or rest,

seek wealth in your 

breathless chest, not on the 

golden platter. 

since gold is rare and your stay long, 

mine over soon, but 

saying this 
I've found the cure, 

for isn't it a pleasure 

not floundering 

all in vain, rather one thing 

pure in heart that's 

firmly planted, so every 

shine now gone 

will mirror in ourselves 

and soul can merge, enchanted by 

rapture, apart, painless, 

undaunted

Literature: poetry XI

xx

 sss

the dramatist, rid of dialogues 
by Kilian

these days
snow covered
my house and garden
not undue the hour, calm, sanguine,
breathe on the window pane
as the blurred air fades
I begin to draw,
somewhere else, find
not much more than
what I'd won
long before, already
reached what there's to be at,
undoubted, my lands
end earlier than I thought
they would, comforting
that I know them well
for they embrace
with careful hands
the outward,
my wicked good

Literature: poetry X

Apache 
by Kilian

I'm good at things

that I can't loose,
solitude and patterned moves
the bleaching arm of hills
in rain and
vessels, thick enough
regain the substance from this
foreign peak where
tides are gold
and flush is weak
cisterns now begin to spill,
I'm bleached in rain,
a man-soaked hill

Literature: poetry IX

grasslands
 by Kilian 

once out of 

haven 
I washed my back
from pears and oil,
savannah's lair and groves
of spoiling paranoids,
there
the filthy senses raise with pomp,
stiff and ugly, how can those 
be the sons of 
pitied Fronde, a mess and more, 
though I come 
to see 
that cleansing sumps is 
paradoxed, but one 
and two, not much, enough, 
and just
as I've swapped
the love for innocence
I learn to see
that
heart is bold betimes
and dirt genteel
instead

Literature: poetry VIII

patrol 
by Kilian 

nine crowds,
varied types of beings
slowly
walk beside me on
white walls
at night, foreseeing
that we will not compromise
for I don't know one
single word
written on their shoulders,
teeth are black and
heads are grey, all of
them grown older

Literature: poetry VII

the edge of buildings

by Kilian

what if the parody

is true but lost

and my visions plod

in corners

how can I waste

the many things, tossed,

cosy, cheap suborners

Literature: poetry VI

visitors/particles 
by Kilian 

have you rested in a
thousand years,
your voice ahead of millions,
tunnels in congested spheres
through sticky tons of
trillions

Literature: poetry V

xx

this site

by Kilian

speaking

I'm not represented

here and in these words

in juddering sequence,

move then and

map

the vast, shady piles,

therefrom clap-

trap,

a stutter is gushing out,

night-blue sallowness

where it defiles

with rigours and odds,

but now 
cycles have ended

and augur 

remains a lie, what I 
was all about,
I cannot 
identify

Literature: poetry IV

to spend one day 
by Kilian 

do what pleases you
laud your minutes,
they are long
find your urge, then
lead a life
get where you want, dive
deep and pick up your
pieces
from this ground

Literature: poetry III

the hurried 
by Kilian

there can be no somnolence
there can be no silence
and no rest
instead of holding
effort's throwing
and when it lands in the still growing
no sleep could interrupt
the striving pursuit for completion,
holiest ambition

Literature: poetry II

tale 
by Kilian 

ideas without origin
I picked you up on railroad tracks
what will it be,
where are you from?
the hint is long and
dim the word
I thought I heard it once,
it's you who had been told and I was there
and then you were with me
and whispered that
this way, you would be coming back

Literature: poetry I

morning
by Kilian 

the world not created by myself

I see it clear-cut
loose ends and flesh
in storied rooms
space is forming
and I watch
how it all turns upon itself
a sparkling fury
in a lighthouse on a rock
I'm lifting weights in heaven's stores
my light as pale as fog

Literature: Ways

by Kilian

We know our destinations,

We search for the ways there.

We know our ways,

We look for the aim at their ends.

Today we’re going the same way,

Why don’t we go together?

Literature: Dave Hill - Tasteful Nudes Interview + Giveaway

Journalist, actor, comedian, guitar God and now writer - Dave Hill is everything.
 
Should you be in search of a thought-provoking, intellectually challenging novel, maybe read this post about Kafka and buy a copy of "The Trial". "The Judgement" and "Metamorphosis" are also great if you are looking for short stories. There are a ton of books out there for you - this is not one of them.
 
Should you, however, be looking for a light summer (or autumn, or winter...) read that will make you smile, chuckle and even laugh every now and again "Tasteful Nudes" is the way to go - with a bit of luck, I will even send  you a copy!

My expectations for Tasteful Nudes were pretty big. Partly because of the mass of good reviews, partly because of Dave's completely shameless self-promo, that no bad author could ever get away with. He even has a blog to share pictures of people reading his book and judging by the amount of sent in nudes, I figured it had to be good. When was the last time you loved a book so much you decided to share it with everyone on the internet - naked?

Tasteful Nudes by Dave Hill: The Incredible Music Video - watch more funny videos

Literature: Interview - Flower Violet + 'The Jacket'

Sometimes you come across someone so unbelievably talented, you have to check the age again to make sure they aren’t professionals. I had that feeling when first reading ‘The Jacket’ by Flower Violet. In fact, I checked the age more than once again and even asked her in a mail if it was true. It was hard for me to believe someone could write this story at barely 14 years of age. Even to someone who has read from a very early age, she is significant. And even though she is no friend of praise, she definitely deserves every single bit of it; reading her answers to my questions, she reminded me a little bit of Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

Read on for an interview packed with thoughts, inspiration and favourite books of this young writer as well as her story ‘The Jacket’.

 

Literature: Encounter and Unfamiliarity

A view on the writer Franz Kafka

It is quiet around us, no word can be heard. A tail of questions obtrudes, coming from outside, from afar. It soundlessly pulsates around us: Do we exist with sense? What moves us, makes us run? It is sometimes so empty inside us, is it absurd if it was different? Franz Kafka enters the room, leans on a brick wall, takes a pad and starts writing. This is where we meet this man for the first time, in a quiet room, in the evening light, familiar and yet unfamiliar.

Who was he, the author, who was catapulted into the world literature of a century by a broken  promise? Franz Kafka, german-speaking in Czech Prague, a Jew between Christians, with an Austrian passport, not German. Someone who wrote in a style that could be too dry to us, to turn another page, but about things whose compelling shimmer could only be captured by him. Novels, fragments, short stories- tales that revolved around recurring subjects. Something big in little things, inimitably deep, frightening, frantic, enlightening. The world through the eyes of a man, who knew he could not understand it.

If you listen carefully, you could think to find a meaning, a realisation, a view: The world is small, but overwhelming things happen in it. A single human being in a strange unfathomable environment, lost, feeling secure, sometimes somewhere in between. A feeling in him that something unknown and confusing is ambushing  him, to be lost in a world that you can not understand and certainly not control.

At the mercy of a higher power, whose face you don’t know.

Everything told in sober words. The opposite force is the confusing, the cryptically animated surrounding. The style of writing can be explained with his job: Kafka worked for a big insurance company, wrote reports, articles and protocols. The bureaucratic tint came from work, but where did his connection to the inexplicable, his tendency to the “confusion prose” come from? Perhaps from the string of tragedy, that pulls itself through his young life: He fought for the respect and recognition of his father, who was not at all pleased with his son all his life, the relationships he had faded into nothingness, the marriage he desired, never happened-for others a small temerity in the moral of the early 20^th century, for him the fate of a bachelor.

Kafka stood in his own life and in the world with a philosophical-sceptical keynote, tossed into a country and era. Nothing he wrote was really bound to his time, if you free the thoughts from the robe of age, you find wisdom directed at the world, portioned inconspicuously, wrapped up in the ordinary and unremarkable with a tint of quiet absurdity.

When you read, you want to meet him, in some hotel lobby, in a corridor, or between a city’s buildings. You want to have a cup of tea with him, empty a bottle of wine and get to know this person, Kafka. How was he? Like you or maybe even like me? Would it be a good conversation, a good encounter in the oddity of the early 20^th century?

He is still standing in the room, calmly leaning on the wall, the evening light in his face. In actual fact I only want to ask him one question: “Why are we here?”.

Kilian.

sources:picture

picture

Literature: Black Like Me

When Texan journalist John Howard Griffin released his provoking non-fiction book Black Like Me in 1961, the United States of America – mainly the Deep South – was still stuck in the midst of racism and segregation. Therefore, you need to appreciate, above all other aspects, his outstanding courage to stand up and raise his intelligible voice for human rights, at a time when most of his fellow southerners rather wanted to see a white civil rights devotee dead than an African American vote.

Although, father of two children Griffin moves to New Orleans in 1959, wanting to experience the true conditions, under which blacks had to suffer in the ghettos of America’s South. He consults a doctor to change his skin color by medication, lives, travels and suffers as a “Negro”, and pens down his sometimes desolate, sometimes hopeful experiences all around the soggy swamps and white beaches of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Even though facing “hate stares”, segragation, humiliation and various offenses (he has even been hanged in effigy in his hometown Mansfield, Texas, after the release of the book), Griffin proves his strength, arguing consistently and logically for the equality of all men (which has been unexceptionally guaranteed in the US-constitution – at least theoretically).

Looking at the aftermath of the release, one can easily observe that it was about time, time for a change. Still, Griffin was among the first few intellectual Whites to take a stand for his black brothers. Using all available means of the national media (books, newspapers, radio interviews), he tried to educate the openly as well as the unconsciously racist population of his homeland. By combining information from different statistical sources, he connects all the little episodes of the journal to one bigger story, “the story of how the Negroes are kept down”.

On one hand he argues very rationally, e.g. when talking to a white driver, who suggests that blacks have a lower sexual morality. Griffin explains with reason, that the poor living conditions in the ghettos cause the lack of morality. He also exemplifies how the inferior education of blacks in segregated schools purposely destroy the potential of those kids, and how segregationists use this tendency again to support that they are superior over the blacks.

Sources:

·GRIFFIN, John Howard: Black Like Me, Braunschweig 2009

·http://digitalcollections.lclark.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/pubs&CISOPTR=25

Hendrik

Literature: The Boots

Old man and young man meet. Young man says: “Why do I have to wait so long to get what you already have? I want it now. And I want more of it.” Old man not looking at him: “And why just can’t I get back to where you are? I can live my way, I have everything, and yet I won’t get back to what I once used to be.” Young man glances blankly at the shiny shoes of the Old “You want to get here, to me?” and shows him his worn out boots. “Only to fret that you can’t be as far as you’re now?” The Old looks on the boots, recognizes that he once wore the same, then looks on his silver watch and says with a firm voice: “I know that you will understand soon. For we’re running in circles and here it all begins again.”

Kilian