Aphorisms

Born in Belgrade, Serbia, Igor Braca Damnjanovic writes aphorisms, poems, stories, and plays. He founded and edits Sipak, an online satirical magazine. His aphorisms have the classic two-part construction characteristic of jokes—first the set up, followed by the punchline—and the dark sarcastic humor characteristic of the Balkans. (Translations, with slight edits from me, by Sue Suncica Vilic.)

We’ve wasted enough time. From now on, we’re doing nothing.

This is not the end. There are two rock bottoms.

I got another clock. I’m buying time.

I am not drunk. You are two-faced!

I can’t believe it: I became an atheist.

I like listening to lies; there is some truth to that.

I got serious; I became a humorist.

Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the ursprache blog and author of the aphoristically amazing Tramp Freighter, sends news of The Smallest Space: Lyric Aphorism in Contemporary Poetry by Hannah Brooks-Motl in The Kenyon Review Online. The essay explores, as Brooks-Motl puts it, how “Aphorisms, and aphorism-like language, can increasingly be found in poems written by poets associated with avant-garde movements of the past few decades … [and] how, and why, and for what reasons poets typically grouped as “resisters” might turn to a technique aligned with universal truth, objective reality, and univocal speakers.”

In the essay, Brooks-Motl quotes W.H. Auden, who, in the Faber Book of Aphorisms, wrote: “The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser or more intelligent than his readers.” I don’t share Auden’s view of what he called the “aristocratic” character of aphorisms or his assertion that aphorists regard themselves as wiser or more intelligent than readers. I think aphorists are more like stand up comedians or very very short storytellers, both of whom rely on their audiences to be complicit in and complete what they say. The best aphorisms create moments of shared insight, not didactic lessons handed down from on high.

Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the ursprache blog and author of the aphoristically amazing Tramp Freighter, shares this selection of 6-word memoirs from Minneapolis, one of the city’s public art projects. Smith Magazine started the 6-word memoir craze. Because of the strict word limit, writing these compressed autobiographies forces you to become aphoristic pretty quick. In Minneapolis, participants submitted their memoirs online or wrote them directly onto posters in community centers and cafes, kind of like slam-o but then not surreptitiously. Some 6-word memoirs from Minneapolitans…

A map, desire, two wheels. H0me. —Aaron, 23, Seward

I would rather guess than know. —Nancy, 43, East Isles (See W.H. Auden: Guessing is more fun than knowing.)

Go to the park and play. —Zara, 4, Fulton

My banjo keeps me emotionally grounded. —James, 43, Northeast

six words is six too many —Moses, Homeless

It’s safe to go home now. —Courtney, 30, S. Minneapolis

6 Words Minneapolis was initiated and curated by Emily Lloyd (@PoesyGalore). Do try this at home.

In this piece from Forbes, communication coach Carmine Gallo explains how Steve Jobs, as depicted in the new biopic ‘Jobs’, learned how to describe the novelty of the personal computer using metaphors and analogies: “I told [director Joshua Michael] Stern that I believe the previous scene was pivotal because it reflected how Jobs ultimately learned to be a world-class communicator—Jobs was tapping into the power of metaphor and analogies to refine and articulate his ideas.” Read the full article here.

Dean Anthony Granitsas, an undergrad from Ohio, writes what he calls “lessays, a truncated or diminutive essay.” This smattering of aphorisms comes from a collection called That: Aphorisms and Lessays.

Absurdity is hell’s miracle.

A good philosopher should study everything but philosophy.

Once you have resigned yourself to your sentence, the guard always unlocks the door.

Either no hope or a lot of hope; a little hope is the worst.

The bottom feeder also inhabits the depths.

There is no joy in simple things because there are no simple things.

Zoran Doderovic lives in Novi Sad, Serbia, where he writes short stories, aphorisms and haiku. The former editor of Haiku Moment and Haiku Informator, he is also the author of a book of haiku, Poisoned River (2000), and contributed to the anthologies Crosswinds (2003) and PreZENt Anecdote (2006). In his aphorisms, Mr. Doderovic gives the kinder, gentler notion of haiku a decidedly darker Balkan twist…

At the police station, I found out how much injustice hurts.

An elevator is a metaphor of life; you’ll understand when you get stuck.

Privatization has yielded visible results: Beggars on every corner.

Those educated by police batons fear butterflies’ shadows.

When the moment of truth came, no one noticed.

Michael Curran’s aphoristic role models are La Rochefoucauld and Pascal so his sayings are, he writes, “rather serious and dark rather than witty or pointed.” His subjects are similarly La Rochefoucauld-like and Pascalesque: psychology, self-interest, pride, vice, virtue. Mr. Curran’s aphorisms are available on his blog Sentences, where the collection can also be downloaded as an ebook. A selection follows…

You don’t glimpse how shallow some people are, till they unfold their deepest beliefs.

Thinking’s the disease. More thinking’s the cure.

Sentimentalists don’t pretend to feel a real emotion, they sincerely feel a confected one.

Flattery, like fornication, can be decently done only in private between no more than two people.

Poets make an art of strange conjunctions, which they yoke together with bands of assonance.

Chance will choose your interests, and your interests choose all else for you.

I first blogged about Eino Vastaranta’s aphorisms in 2010. He lives and blogs in Helsinki. This new selection is from his book Vastalauseita (‘Objections’ or ‘Protests’ in English), which contains 300 aphorisms and was published last year, as well as some sayings he intends to publish in his next collection.

From a bird’s-eye view we’re all shitheads.

People and animals are tortured because they don’t talk.

Natural diversity increases, thanks to mutations.

Supporters of nuclear power tilt against windmills.

A gift for someone who has everything? A sense of proportion.

The exclamation mark: a cannon shooting its own ankle.

What you want done unto you you have to do yourself.