From a new book I just started called “What is poetry?” by John Hall Wheelock, I came across a real beaut. It’s one of those old “out-of-print” books that boils down a subject to its’ essence. I’m often reminded of the classic lyrics by Pete Townsend from “905” on "Who Are You", when I come across a book like I this, I hear “Every sentence in my head, Someone else has said.” I’ve come to believe that the best advice that mankind has to offer has already been written, and the last 50 years has been nothing but repackaging it, renaming it, and ultimately over-complicating it.

Anyway, I was browsing the library shelves today and bumped into this quaint tome. It looks like a fast read, but I’ve a sense that it’s faded cover and yellowed pages offer treasures untold. So I crack open the old book and that comforting mildewy scent of old books wafts up to my nose. It already feels like a long lost friend. On the very first page it contains, what I might even consider a manifesto:

“Habit, routine, our daily humdrum apathy and indifference, this is the shield we put between us and reality, the shield with which we protect ourselves from life while we were engaged in the business of living. It is the function of the arts to pierce that shield, to re-awaken in us a forgotten knowledge.“