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The Success Inside

An Interview With Tom Paxton

The bottom line is whether I think I have the power to change people’s minds and the answer is no. All I can do is write my songs, put them out there, and what happens after that is out of my control. The effect that they have is beyond me. My job is to make sure that I write the best songs I can write.

The Witch, The Swan, And The Middle Class

I’m not praising the middle class, but we are returning to the problem of why so many of our poems carry no values except private ones. I think the universities have had a part in this. One could say that the M.F.A. programs de-class a young poet.

Teaching, And The Mood Of Relativity

Many years ago when I first taught college English, I made a discovery in the first or second week of teaching, namely, that the main obstacle to instruction, to one’s ability to teach someone something they don’t already know, is the mood and spirit of relativity.

Sunbeams

There’s nothing wrong with the world. What’s wrong is our way of looking at it.

Henry Miller, Big Sur, and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Theme For English 1200

“As a white person,” a student asks me, “are you uncomfortable teaching black literature to blacks?”

“Of course,” I answer. “Of course.”

Celebrating Seth

Seth is an elder but an equal, who insists, “Basically you are no more of a physical being than I am, and I have donned and discarded more bodies than I care to tell. . . . Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. . . .”

Sunbeams

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

Sylvia Plath

Sunbeams

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things. To us what matters is the individual. To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment.

Mother Teresa

Editor’s Note

Sunbeams

I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.

Eugene Debs