Poet R. B. Simon's "Shorn" is a concise self-reflective piece, in which the narrator desires to be unburdened and liberated of decades' worth of burdens.
Tag: liberation
The Full Awareness of Breathing
In the Anapanasati Sutta, the Buddha presents a visceral kind of practice with the breath, that illuminates the experience of joy, calm and impermanence.
‘Your Job Is to Put On a Splendid Performance’: Epictetus’ Design for a Skillful and Happy Life
Epictetus' path to freedom attends to the aspects of life that can be controlled, while meeting with equanimity the things we can do nothing about.
A.R. Ammons – Play
The first lines of A.R. Ammons Play are an exaltation of the freedom contained within demise and a call to 'yearn too high' and 'drill imagination through necessity.'
Philip Larkin – High Windows
Written in 1967, at the height of the sexual revolution and the Summer of Love, Philip Larkin's High Windows is about sex, freedom, generational shifts and transcendence.
Matthew Kohut – I Me Mine
The germ of the poem I Me Mine came to Matthew Kohut when he startled awake on a train that was passing through the area where he grew up.
The Inscrutable Energy that Preserves the Breach
In this excerpt from an article published prior to the release of Between the World and Me, Coates talks about his childhood in West Baltimore. He describes the gap he felt between his own world and the world he saw through the TV set, as well as the perplexity and disingenuity of being fed a stream of non-violent role models at school.