Aphorisms

Thomas Farber sums it up well, the paradox of writing aphorisms, a process that involves attempting to write something very very big in a format that is very very small: “Such an odd form: to strive for compression, verbal surprise, paradox, shock, rueful acknowledgment, or revelation of moral blindness may bring out one’s own oddities … Focusing, laser-like, on a single line—erotics of the irreducible; or working on a tiny canvas, like the 1970s artist who painted imaginary postage stamps.” Farber crams a lot into his own sayings, which he refers to as epigrams more often than as aphorisms. Many are miniature novellas—a glimpse of some hinted-at encounter, a one-sided dialogue with characters only known as ‘he’ or ‘she’. Farber is a senior lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley, and a recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment,Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor fellowships. His sayings can be found in the books Truth Be Told and The Twoness of Oneness.

Old age. Farewells-in-progress, some not articulated. Oneself in the mirror: person to whom you must be sure to say goodbye.

“Who gives a shit?” the asshole asked, neglecting to wipe his mouth.

“I might…” Maysayer.

Writer: someone who can’t go without saying.

Material times: the going rate of self-interest.

Raised voices (should) raise skepticism.

“Aphorisms are like caffeinated drinks,” says Olivia Dresher. And hers definitely give you a refreshing buzz. Dresher describes her aphorisms as “often personal (“I” statements) and poetic; some are written in the form of questions. They’re colored by intuition as well as thought. I hope some of my aphorisms bring a female sensibility to the mostly-male form.” She cites Antonio Porchia (see the Guide, pp. 379–381) as one of her favorites, and his gentle, Zen-like insights are also present in Dresher’s aphorisms, too. Dresher is is a writer, publisher, anthologist, former musician, and an advocate for historic preservation. She is also a devotee of the fragment, and is founder, director, or editor (and sometimes all three) of Impassio Press (an independent literary press publishing fragmentary writing), the Life Writing Connection (an online, annotated directory of unpublished American life writings from the 20th century), and FragLit Magazine. You can read more about Olivia Dresher here, and read additional aphorisms here. Here is a small selection (Warning: contains caffeine!):

Ordinary life is like a bad novel: clichés everywhere, and no real character development.

A vacation is a cage of freedom.

Life used to be cheap because it was short. Now it’s cheap because it’s long.

Nothing lasts these days except what we throw away.

Parables can often be considered aphorisms in story form. The story has to be very short, of course, in keeping with the first law of the aphorism: It Must Be Brief. But many parables consistently meet this and the other four laws: It Must Be … Definitive, Personal, Philosophical, and Have a Twist. There is a distinguished genealogy of authors who produced parables/aphorisms, as evidenced in the rich parables of the world’s religions. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, the ancient Jewish sages were all master storytellers and master aphorists. Many Zen koans are parables, and writers like Kierkegaard and Kafka regularly used parables to get their philosophical points across. And so does Steven Carter, whom I first blogged about on July 9, 2008 (alas, a post that has disappeared from my site, most likely due to the catastrophic site failure I described here. If anyone has a live link to this post, please send it along…)

The poor teacher
The lion lay down with the lamb. The lamb said, “Teach me how to be a lion.” The lion devoured him. Then, a muffled voice: “I am waiting.”

The master and the disciple
The disciple: “Thank you, master, for your wisdom.” The master: “True humility is to refuse all compliments. Difficult to do, since the only way to be unworthy of compliments is to return them.”

The polarized King Solomon
What would wisdom seem like in a polarized universe, where plus is minus and black is white? Not so different as you and I might think!
Two women were brought before King Solomon; both lay claim to the same child; each argued eloquently on her own behalf. Solomon listened patiently, then dismissed them, saying they would have his decision the next day. The next day both women appeared, beaming in anticipation of Solomon’s judgment. He said, “It is my decree that both of you shall be cut in half to make one woman, so that the child may have its proper mother.”

The identical bald men
Two identical bald men sit down at table. Pointing to his bald pate, one says, “On me it looks good.” The other agrees, “On you it looks good.” Both are comforted.

The rope
“A poor fellow went to hang himself, but finding by chance a hidden pot containing money, flung away the rope, and went merrily home; but he that had hidden the money, when he found it had been removed by someone, hanged himself with the rope the other man had left behind.”
Don’t hide your money; invest it in the man who manufactures rope.

Like Tim Daly, Drew Byrne is a practitioner of the syllogistic saying. His aphorisms have a whiff of E.M. Cioran around them, something dark and vaguely sinister around the edges. The gathering gloom is alleviated, to some extent, by a kind of bitter paradoxical humor, a final twist that raises what could be a smile or could be a grimace. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell which is which.

We all make mistakes, possibly the first one is being born.

Small people stick together, possibly to encourage each other to be smaller.

He who can still say he is confused, can also say he is getting there.

If you can only look for what your looking for, you will only find what you see.

A river flows under my street. A long time ago, it ran on the surface, when this place was an open field, dotted with ponds. Then, somewhere along the line, the river sank. It was diverted into pipes and submerged beneath roads and homes. We lost track of it. Now we only notice it during heavy rains, when it percolates into people’s basements or bursts its banks and bleeds into the street, turning it once more into a river. The river is still there, even though we don’t see it. It is still fleet, still flowing. And it knows exactly where it’s going.

A version of this abbreviated essay appears in the March issue of Ode.

I first blogged about Tim Daly’s aphorisms back on May 3, 2008. Here are several more sayings, many of which follow an almost mathematical formula characteristic of a certain strain of counter-intuitive aphorism: If X, then Y. Many aphorisms take on this almost syllogistic structure. There is a process of deduction at work in deciphering an aphorism, though that process does not necessarily obey the laws of conventional logic. In fact, aphorists often use this structure precisely to lead readers astray, to prepare them to expect some trite conclusion before slipping in some apposite or unconventional truth, as Tim Daly does here:

Whilst stories cannot die, some are never told.

With great irresponsibility comes great power.

When you find yourself in denial, plant seeds.

Ego: The illusion of being only one person.

Clint Frakes is a poet, a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the Northern Arizona University writing program, and the University of Hawaii. He has published widely in literary journals in North America, England, Australia, and Argentina. His aphorisms are imagistic; imagery rather than overt statement conveys the message. Yet the sayings are moralistic, too; couched in the image is a little lesson. These aphorisms are published in FragLit, the online journal dedicated to the fragment and all things brief, edited by Olivia Dresher.

The most telling artifact is usually in the garbage.

When you’re lost you take everything as a sign.

Destiny: a drunk ambushing a flock of birds.

Usually one must first be sick before one is brave.

Only when I was completely drenched did I bother to smell the rain.

To read more of Clint Frakes’s aphorisms, click here.

A native of New York City, Richard Krause is the author of the collection of stories, Studies in Insignificance, and his writing has also appeared in a variety of U.S. literary magazines. He teaches English at Somerset Community College in Kentucky. His aphorisms often take the form of ‘proverbial play’; i.e. the core of the aphorism consists of a well-known proverbial saying or familiar expression, which the aphorism then tweaks through some ironic reversal or witty gloss. It’s a tough trick to pull off, since these types of sayings can easily seem contrived or merely apposite. Krause does it with panache. These aphorisms are published in
FragLit, the online journal dedicated to the fragment and all things brief, edited by Olivia Dresher.

Even if you seize the moment it will leave tooth marks on your neck while sleeping.

Nothing blows brilliance to the wind like caution.

If you ignore people enough they eventually go away, ignore yourself however and you will come back as one of them.

If you think people are out to get you, they already have.

Putting people in their place shows that you yourself have nowhere to go.

The faith you lose in people is almost enough to start a religion elsewhere.

When you are washed up you never realize the extent of shoreline you have to yourself.

To read more of Richard Krause’s aphorisms, click here.

It is ubiquitous but hidden, until sunlight streams through a window to reveal that we are swimming in it. It swirls around and surrounds us like krill in an ocean current. We cannot escape it. It falls like rain, incessantly, until it covers everything, like silt at the bottom of a lake. The slightest movement stirs up whole galaxies of the stuff, spiral nebulae of hair follicles and skin flakes. We move from day to day, from room to room, like comets, shedding shreds and fragments in our wakes. When the light changes, though, the trail vanishes. Dust still swarms in secret onto every surface, but we can’t see it. Even what is nearest, most prolific is invisible unless properly lit.

A version of this abbreviated essay appears in the January-February issue of Ode.

William Stafford is often classified as a “Western” poet, much in the same way that Robert Frost is classified as a “New England” poet. In fact, the poetry of the two men is similar in many respects: a concern with the natural world, a focus on the quotidian, and a dedication to clear, almost conversational speech. I had no idea that Stafford, who died in 1993, also wrote aphorisms, until Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the ursprache blog alerted me. Stafford’s aphorisms are a lot like his poems—deceptively prosaic and dwelling on seemingly insignificant details that suddenly open a panoramic vista onto the wild west of the human spirit.

The selection below comes from Stafford’s “Aphorisms,” which is included in In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing (Impassio Press, 2006) edited by Olivia Dresher.

My thanks to Jim Finnegan for sharing Stafford’s aphorisms with me. If you like thinking about poetry, check out his ursprache blog.

It is legitimate to crawl, after the wings are broken.

Every mountain has that one place when you begin to know it is a mountain.

Lost pioneers were the ones who found the best valleys.

If there is a trail, you have taken a wrong turn.

I hear the clock’s little teeth gnawing at time.

At first it’s not much of a river.