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Mark Fitzpatrick's avatar

I think of this "how can I know what happens to my words once they leave my pen? There’s no way to know. Yet I speak here."... And I think of one of the most moving experiences as a teacher I've ever had: with a university class, we were discussing "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" by Walt Whitman, and these lines and following:

"And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose."

And I said to them, "look! He is writing this over a hundred years ago, but he sees us! He is thinking of us! He is speaking to us directly and we are in his mind as he is in ours!" .... It felt like the most profound moment of explicit contact across time and space through literature. Yes, we set our paper-boats a-floating, not knowing where they will come home. But we may pitch our sight, by a magical act of the imagination, to see them land, to see them gathered in, on other shores far down the river....

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CansaFis Foote's avatar

…experiencing someone creatively definitely feels more intimate than looking at a picture of their ass…it is beyond cliche to call substack only fans but words at this point but fitting also it is starting to get infiltrated by those whose creativity is ass photos…the paying world values us more as objects…less as ideas…

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