Tim Miller

Poetry * Mythology * Podcast

Tao Te Ching #81: “True words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not true”

True words are not beautiful,
beautiful words are not true.
The good are not argumentative,
the argumentative are not good.
Knowers do not generalize,
generalists do not know.
Sages do not accumulate anything
but give everything to others,
having more the more they give.
The Way of heaven
helps and does not harm.
The Way for humans
is to act without contention.

– Thomas Cleary

 

True words aren’t beautiful
beautiful words aren’t true
the good aren’t eloquent
the eloquent aren’t good
the wise aren’t learned
the learned aren’t wise
sages accumulate nothing
but the more they do for others
the greater their existence
the more they give to others
the greater their abundance
the Way of Heaven
is to help without harming
the Way of the Sage
is to act without struggling

– Red Pine

 

Words to trust are not refined.
Words refined are not to trust.
Good men are not gifted speakers.
Gifted speakers are not good.
Experts are not widely learned;
The widely learned are not expert.

Wise rulers for themselves keep naught,
Yet gain by having done for all,
Have more for having freely shared;
Do good not harm is heaven’s Way;
The wise act for and not against.

– Moss Roberts

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Anthology: Poems on Modern Life (new episode) Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 4/17/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems on modern life—whatever “modern” might mean in words spanning the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. In many of the poems we hear the complaint of every age, that “the world has never been so bad.” In others, descriptions of the suburbs are enough, or of car culture, or of how we get our news or even begin to live with stories of atrocity and war. Some poems ask us to pay attention to the work and details of everyday life, others wonder if we shouldn’t look to past poets for wisdom and guidance. If a “modern” mindset means anything, it seems to mean proliferation and flux, a sense of not being settled. The poems I read are: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021), “In Goya’s greatest scenes” Kathleen Jamie (1962- ), “The Way We Live” Laurie Sheck (1953- ), “Headlights” Derek Mahon (1941-2020), “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford” Ted Kooser (1939- ), “Late February” Philip Larkin (1922-1985), “Here”  Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), “New Mexican Mountain” T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), “Image” Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), “Editor Whedon” Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “The blab of the pave” William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “London 1802” Mary Robinson (1758-1800), “A London Summer Morning” Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), “A Description of the Morning”  William Shakespeare (1564-1616), “The queen, my lord, is dead” R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), “Suddenly” You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com. — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/humanvoiceswakeus/support
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  2. An Interview with Amit Majmudar (new episode)
  3. Ted Hughes: 11 Poems from "Remains of Elmet" (new episode)
  4. Anthology: Visionary Poems from Yeats, Whitman, Blake & Myth (new episode)
  5. Wallace Stevens: 11 Essential Poems
  6. Ted Hughes: 6 Poems from "River"
  7. Anthology: Poems on Being a Parent
  8. Anthology: Poems About Childhood & Youth
  9. Ted Hughes: 7 Poems from "Moortown Diary"
  10. The Sound of Beethoven