John Madera
@johnmadera.bsky.social
Author of 𝘕𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). Editor of @BigOtherMag.bsky.social. Find more at http://johnmadera.com.
"You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven."
—Jimi Hendrix
—Jimi Hendrix
November 27, 2025 at 3:15 PM
"You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven."
—Jimi Hendrix
—Jimi Hendrix
"[T]he poet is working not to make the artifact (which is just the midpoint in the total action), but to remake human sentience; by means of the poem, he or she enters into and in some way alters the alive percipience of other persons."
—Elaine Scarry, THE BODY IN PAIN
—Elaine Scarry, THE BODY IN PAIN
November 27, 2025 at 3:15 PM
"[T]he poet is working not to make the artifact (which is just the midpoint in the total action), but to remake human sentience; by means of the poem, he or she enters into and in some way alters the alive percipience of other persons."
—Elaine Scarry, THE BODY IN PAIN
—Elaine Scarry, THE BODY IN PAIN
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
—Wendell Berry
—Wendell Berry
November 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
—Wendell Berry
—Wendell Berry
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
—Oscar Wilde
—Oscar Wilde
November 24, 2025 at 6:24 PM
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
—Oscar Wilde
—Oscar Wilde
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Image: Philippe Halsman's Dalí Atomicus, 1948)
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Image: Philippe Halsman's Dalí Atomicus, 1948)
November 24, 2025 at 6:23 PM
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Image: Philippe Halsman's Dalí Atomicus, 1948)
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Image: Philippe Halsman's Dalí Atomicus, 1948)
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
November 24, 2025 at 6:20 PM
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.'”
―Henry David Thoreau
(Image: Barbara Morgan's Martha Graham, Lamentation (1935))
―Henry David Thoreau
(Image: Barbara Morgan's Martha Graham, Lamentation (1935))
November 24, 2025 at 6:19 PM
“Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.'”
―Henry David Thoreau
(Image: Barbara Morgan's Martha Graham, Lamentation (1935))
―Henry David Thoreau
(Image: Barbara Morgan's Martha Graham, Lamentation (1935))
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
―Dr. Seuss
―Dr. Seuss
November 24, 2025 at 6:15 PM
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
―Dr. Seuss
―Dr. Seuss
Paging through my Guy Davenport firsts today, his birthday! (None of them are signed, alas...)
November 23, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Paging through my Guy Davenport firsts today, his birthday! (None of them are signed, alas...)
Received today: an inscribed copy of marvelous poet Elizabeth Robinson's VULNERABILITY INDEX (Curbstone Press)!
November 21, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Received today: an inscribed copy of marvelous poet Elizabeth Robinson's VULNERABILITY INDEX (Curbstone Press)!
Happy birthday, BIG OTHER contributor Tony Leuzzi! Celebrate by reading this superb suite of Leuzzi poems I published in the journal in 2025!
bigother.com/2025/11/19/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/19/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
From the Archives: Dissolve to Cloud: Treatments for Five Frames from Tierney Gearon’s Explosure, by Tony Leuzzi
Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Tony Leuzzi! Celebrate by reading this superb suite of Leuzzi poems we published in 2025! 1: Frame 22, 2007 Our clouded heads dissolve to cloud. …
bigother.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Happy birthday, BIG OTHER contributor Tony Leuzzi! Celebrate by reading this superb suite of Leuzzi poems I published in the journal in 2025!
bigother.com/2025/11/19/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/19/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
"Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity...No to scorn of people. No to degradation of people. No to exploitation of people. No to the butchery of what is most human in people: freedom."
—Frantz Fanon
—Frantz Fanon
November 15, 2025 at 10:54 PM
"Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity...No to scorn of people. No to degradation of people. No to exploitation of people. No to the butchery of what is most human in people: freedom."
—Frantz Fanon
—Frantz Fanon
“We do not lack communication; on the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.”
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
November 13, 2025 at 6:49 PM
“We do not lack communication; on the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.”
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
“What is style? Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introducing a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity to the appearance of freedom.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 AM
“What is style? Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introducing a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity to the appearance of freedom.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:11 AM
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts [...], unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 AM
“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts [...], unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself)."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 AM
"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself)."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it..."
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
November 13, 2025 at 4:09 AM
"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it..."
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
“I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:09 AM
“I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
―Roland Barthes
―Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:08 AM
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
―Roland Barthes
―Roland Barthes
"[O]ne might say there are sexy sentences: disturbing by their very isolation, as if they possessed the promise which is made to us, the readers, by a linguistic practice, as if we were to seek them out by virtue of a pleasure which knows what it wants."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:08 AM
"[O]ne might say there are sexy sentences: disturbing by their very isolation, as if they possessed the promise which is made to us, the readers, by a linguistic practice, as if we were to seek them out by virtue of a pleasure which knows what it wants."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes