Readings: On Memorial Day

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In dreams begin responsibilities? The hell. In dreams the death-wish renews itself.
XX~ Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire

I am humbled before the prodigious realization that I know, without a footnote, that Roethke's words are a response to Delmore Schwartz. I am humbled that I know who Delmore Schwartz was; that I know Lou Reed to have cited the book here alluded to by Roethke as seminal to his own urge to create. Since VU days, Lou Reed’s music has humbled me. I am humbled by my own knowledge; humbled that I can drive a truck and earn my bread, never sending my knowledge out to whore in the marketplace, where a rose is not a rose, but a bar-coded commodity.

Today is Memorial Day. So, who’s dead? Show of hands, please.
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