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T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Image a: T. S. Eliot – Ida Kar – National Portrait Gallery, London

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” represents a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.

Introduction with Text of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot composed a little volume titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which under the influence of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, became Cats, one of the ten longest running musicals [1] on Broadway.

How does one reconcile the lavish and hilarious persona responsible for the likes of old possum and the cats with the gloomy, spiritually dry personality of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land mentality? That conflation is somewhat like confusing a man with little education and travel experience for the writer of the Shakespearean canon [2].

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Reading by Anthony Hopkins

Commentary on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot is really a very funny poet. His works are taken way too seriously. A reader needs to think irony, satire, and sarcasm and then enjoy a few belly laughs when reading Eliot. And his character J. Alfred Prufrock offers one of the finest examples of Eliot’s humor, as he, at the same time, skewers the direction of art in the 20th century.

Prufrock Killed Poetry

The American humorist Garrison Keillor [3] has offered his experience with and opinion of “old Pru,” claiming that the poem is

a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers. This poem pretty much killed off the pleasure of poetry for millions of people who got dragged through it in high school.

Keillor and his ilk who learned to hate poetry because of being “dragged through it in high school” might benefit from revisiting the poem and considering it through a lens of irony brushed with satire and sarcasm.

For a more precise understanding of the poem, it is also important to realize that it is focusing on and providing a critique of the flaws of modernism, the movement that was having demoralizing effects on the art of poetry.

The ironic humor of the poem clearly rails against the angst-infused positions that were rendering poetry not only unintelligible but ultimately without literary value.

Who is J. Alfred Prufrock and what does he want?

Critics regularly note the ironic disjointedness in the title as a love song apparently sung by a man with a business-suit name. But they then descend into the maudlin angst of this poor pathetic creature, and ultimately they take the work as a criticism of modern society in general, instead of a criticism of the skewed direction of art.

Eliot was poking fun at such criticism and such stances. The poem itself is a mishmash of form, consisting of 131 lines separated into free-verse paragraphs (versagraphs), yet it has rime throughout, delivered in uneven rhythms.

The form itself makes fun of free-verse and phony erudition (the many allusions to classic works that seem so out of place) as it floats them down a stream-of-consciousness.

Opening Movement: The Anesthetized Patient

The first three lines set up the hilarious mood of the poem:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table.

The first line sounds as if the speaker of the poem is inviting someone to go somewhere in the evening, perhaps a social gathering or just an outing with a lady friend; after all it is a “love song.”

But the reader is slammed in the face as the evening is described as a patient on an operating table being prepared for surgery. The romance of supposed “love song” has died by line three.

The speaker continues to mumble, describing the evening quite negatively, briefly mentioning one night stands in nasty hotels, disgusting eateries, and the boring streets that lead to boring places of ill-repute—yet all this leads on to “an overwhelming question.”

But then the speaker cuts off the thought by telling his listener not to bother asking what the “overwhelming question” is but instead says let’s just get going “and make our visit.” Now, it sounds as if the speaker and his companion are definitely going to a social gathering, maybe a dinner party.

But the dinner party never materializes, and it becomes quite apparent that the speaker is simply addressing himself, likely while looking at his face in a mirror. There is no companion; there is no evening engagement, just a musing voice that is making fun of all the modernist techniques that the poet is employing in the poem through this pathetic speaker.

The Italian Epigram: Professing an “Insidious Intent”

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

The epigram that opens the poem alerts the reader to the “insidious intent” of the speaker in the poem. The six lines feature a quotation from Dante’s Inferno (XXVII, 61–66). The following is a rough translation from the Italian of the epigram:

If I believed I was trying to bullshit
someone who could return to the world,
I would hold my tongue.
But since no one ever lives to return
to life again, at least so they say,
I will spew forth whatever I please.

The following is an interpretive paraphrase of the Italian epigram:

if I thought such nonsense would really be foisted on the world, I would not concoct it, but since those who delve into the avant-garde poetry world have nothing to take back, I have deigned to let it fly

Modern Boredom: Vacuous Social Gatherings

The speaker describes the fog in the metaphorical likeness of a dog: it rubs its back and muzzle on the window-panes, and it “[l]icked its tongue into the corners of the evening.”

The speaker is concerned about social gatherings; he has often encountered them, and the lines “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” become a mantra.

And the line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” which follows his claim to have known all those bored people in offices, lounges, and evening affairs demonstrates the speaker’s awareness of his own boredom.

Floating Down the Stream: Tricky Man, Very Tricky Man

The speaker inserts telling images into his stream-of-consciousness descriptions of angst-filled scenes with outrageous images such as “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Another outlandish sight is “I grow old … I grow old … / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

And while these are famous lines often cited as showing the modern angst of Prufrock, they are quite humorous when one realizes that the speaker is making fun of the serious tone that critics will take regarding the style and highly allusive nature of the poem. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock has tricked many readers with his dry, spiritually destitute personality.

Tricked by Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock

The radio star Garrison Keillor blames “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for “kill[ing] off the pleasure of poetry.” Keillor complains that the poem is “a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers.”

It is somewhat puzzling that Keillor, whose own banter attempts to lace humor with reportage, does not see the humor in “Old Pru.” Robert Frost asserted that his poem “The Road Not Taken” was “a tricky poem—a very tricky poem.”

However, many other Frostian poems have turned out to be quite tricky as well. And T. S. Eliot became a master at composing some of the trickiest poems to grace the poetry world.

The Character of J. Alfred Prufrock

The speaker of T. S. Eliot’s most widely anthologized classic is J. Alfred Prufrock himself, and his personality is the theme of the poem; he is a ridiculous character, utterly laughable. As Roger Mitchell [4] has explained,

[Prufock] is the Representative Man of early Modernism. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded (many have said impotent), ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism.

In other words, “old Pru” is merely a conglomeration of many of the ridiculous traits of humankind—and the literati in particular; therefore, readers cannot take Prufrock seriously and are thus at liberty to laugh and enjoy the nutty things he thinks and says.

Failure to Read Closely

Keillor refers to the following lines: “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” and “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?” The former radio personality has been tricked by Eliot’s poem, and in Keillor’s comment about the poem, two assertions demonstrate his misunderstanding.

The first false assertion about the poem is that it is a “small, dark mopefest of a poem”: this is a false assertion because the poem is too funny to be a “dark mopefest,” plus it is really a longer poem than most lyrics; thus the descriptor “small” remains inaccurate.

The second false assertion is that, “old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers”: while “old Pru” does ask if he dares “eat a peach,” he does not question whether he will roll up his trousers.

These two false assertions suggest the reason that Keillor has been tricked by the poem; he simply has not read it carefully and closely enough, and likely his high school teacher was not adept at comprehending and teaching poetry.

Other Funny Lines

The opening of the poem, at first, may simply seem startling, but upon further study, the reader can see the hilarity in the absurdity of “the evening [ ] spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.” The juxtaposition of “evening/sky” and “etherized patient/table” is just so ludicrous that it is laughable.

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”: fog becomes a cat or a dog, and the speaker likes that metaphor so well that he repeats it in the next stanza. Fog as a dog jumps like a frog into the mind as one encounters those lines.

A close consideration of the lines, “To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’ / Time to turn back and descend the stair, / With a bald spot in the middle of my hair,” reveals again the absurdity of taking Keillor’s criticism seriously.

The jarring juxtaposition of a pathetic creature double questioning his traipsing down a stairway and then hastening to the bald spot in his pate cannot help but elicit a laugh, provided the reader/listener is paying close attention.

While Prufrock would be a sympathetic character were he less pitiful, he becomes a caricature, who instead of drawing sympathy draws derision from the reader. Perhaps by tweaking their reading a bit and by reading closer, Keillor and other casual readers could learn to enjoy the misadventures of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Sources

[1] Mark A.Robinson. “Broadway’s 10 Longest-Running Musicals.” Broadway Direct. March 24, 2019.
[2] Linda Sue Grimes. “The “Shakespeare” Writer.” Linda’s Literary Home. February 11, 2026.
[3] Garrison Keillor. “Choosing the Right Lunch Partners.” The Writer’s Almanac. February 20, 2007.
[4] Roger Mitchell. “On ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.” Modern American Poetry. November 2, 2015.
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October 8, 2026
Liza Libes on Postmodern Literary Studies
Image: Liza Libes Pens and Poison

Liza Libes on Postmodern Literary Studies

The literary world has always depended upon readers who believe that books are more than cultural artifacts. Liza Libes is one such reader, writer, poet, and cultural critic.

Her work has emerged from a deep affection for literature and from a growing conviction that great books should be read as works of art that illuminate the human condition rather than merely as vehicles for contemporary political arguments.

Through her writing, teaching, videos, podcasts, and literary project Pens and Poison, Libes has become an increasingly visible voice in the discussion of literature and the future of literary education.

Introduction: Restoring Literature to the Humanistic Tradition

Liza Libes describes herself as a writer and cultural critic. She earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, studying the poetry of Sylvia Plath as an undergraduate and T. S. Eliot as a graduate student [1].

Her academic training gave her an unusually close acquaintance with the literary tradition, but her experience in the university also produced the central question that has shaped much of her subsequent work: What happens to literature when political theory becomes more important than literature itself?

Libes has argued that contemporary literary study has become too heavily dependent upon ideological approaches. In a 2024 essay, “Why I Am Not a PhD,” she describes becoming increasingly dissatisfied with an approach in which works such as The Great Gatsby or The Canterbury Tales were primarily approached through political themes. She concluded that she was being taught to discuss political literary theory rather than to study literature itself [2].

Her criticism is not simply a rejection of literary theory in general. Libes explicitly states that she does not advocate eliminating theory from universities. Her objection is to what she regards as the disproportionate influence of political and ideological frameworks over the actual literary works. For Libes, literature possesses a purpose that transcends contemporary political disputes: it can reveal universal truths about human nature and at the human condition.

This conviction became the foundation for Pens and Poison, the literary project she established after leaving graduate study. The project describes its mission as resisting the assumption that literature must be interpreted through political lenses and refocusing attention upon the humanistic tradition [3]. In this respect, Libes has positioned herself not merely as a critic of contemporary literary education but as an advocate for the recovery of the appreciation for literature itself.

Early Life and the Love of Literature

Libes has written that her desire to become a writer began when she was a young child. In describing her childhood, she recalls spending time creating stories and entering imaginative worlds of her own invention. Writing was not initially a career calculation; it was a natural expression of her imagination [4].

As she grew older, her childhood stories gave way to an increasing interest in serious fiction and the literary classics. She developed a particular affection for authors whose works investigate the psychological and moral dimensions of human existence. Among her most important literary influences are Sylvia Plath and T. S. Eliot, the subjects of her undergraduate and graduate theses at Columbia University.

Libes’ academic career therefore began from genuine enthusiasm for literature. She did not enter the university as someone hostile to literary scholarship. On the contrary, she hoped to become an English professor. In her account of her experience at Columbia, she recalls imagining herself as a future literature professor standing before a classroom and discussing poetry with students [5]. That ambition gradually changed.

As she progressed through her university education, Libes became increasingly concerned about what she regarded as the dominance of ideological criticism in literary studies. In one autobiographical account, she explains that she began questioning approaches that seemed to reduce literary works to political arguments about race, class, gender, capitalism, or social power.

Her disagreement became particularly significant and galling for her because she continued to love the books themselves. The issue was not whether political questions could ever be discussed in connection with literature. Rather, she questioned whether those questions should displace the literary, moral, psychological, and aesthetic dimensions of a work.

Columbia University and the Turning Point

After completing her B.A. at Columbia University, Libes graduate work culminated in an M.A. thesis examining T. S. Eliot and Wagnerian parallels. Her academic experience, however, eventually convinced her that she did not want to pursue the traditional academic career she had once imagined.

In “Proud Not to Be PhD,” Libes describes finishing her master’s thesis during the pandemic in 2020 and leaving graduate study with her degree but without the academic future she had once expected. She describes the decision as liberating. Rather than becoming a professor within a literary system she had come to distrust, she began looking for ways to engage readers directly.

Her essay “The Year I Quit Reading” provides an even more personal account of this transition. Libes describes reaching a point at which she found herself unable to read major works without automatically applying the theoretical frameworks she had encountered in the academy.

Instead of meeting and enjoying a novel or poem as a work of art, she found herself searching for Marxist, postcolonial, feminist, or other ideological interpretations [6]. This experience effected an important turning point; she wanted to reclaim the pleasure of reading. She wanted to experience literature again as literature.

Pens and Poison

Because of that conviction, Libes created Pens and Poison, a multi-platform literary project designed to encourage readers to appreciate literature and the written word as works of art instead of target practice for ideological arrows.

The project includes articles, essays, videos, podcasts, and other forms of online literary discussion. Its stated purpose is to challenge—even refute— the assumption that literature must be understood through predetermined political categories and to redirect attention toward the humanistic tradition as preserved in letters.

The project has also given Libes a direct relationship with a contemporary audience. According to her biographical sketch, Pens and Poison reaches more than 140,000 Instagram followers and more than 45,000 YouTube subscribers. Her work has thus moved beyond the traditional academic audience of literary criticism and into the much larger world of online readers.

In 2024, Pens and Poison also introduced a magazine intended to provide young poets and writers with a platform for their work [7]. Through this work, Libes is not merely criticizing contemporary literary culture. She is attempting to build an alternative literary community in which young writers can read, write, discuss, and appreciate literature without first having to adopt a particular political interpretation.

Criticism of Postmodern Literary Study

One of the defining themes in Libes’ criticism is her objection to the postmodern assumptions she believes have become influential in university English departments.

In “Why Contemporary Publishing Is Broken,” Libes argues that postmodern approaches have helped establish several assumptions in literary study: that meaning is relative, that authorial intention is irrelevant, and that claims to universal truth are inherently suspect [8].

She believes these assumptions have consequences beyond the classroom because university graduates frequently enter publishing, education, and the broader literary world.

Her argument is especially concerned with the relationship between literary criticism and the purpose of literature. According to Libes, if students are trained to regard every literary work primarily as a product of social power or political ideology, they may lose the ability to ask what a work says about human beings themselves. Her alternative is a humanistic understanding of literature.

Libes argues that great literature can teach readers about human nature precisely because individual stories can reveal universal experiences. In discussing the classics, she has rejected the idea that a work loses its value simply because its author belongs to a demographic group with which a contemporary reader does not personally identify [9].

For Libes, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Plath, and other major writers remain worth reading because literature can cross boundaries of time, culture, sex, class, and nationality. A reader does not have to resemble an author in order to discover something true in that author’s work. This belief is central to her criticism of contemporary literary education.

The Case for Humanistic Literature

Libes’ criticism is ultimately constructive. She does not merely want to identify what she believes is wrong with literary education; she wants to restore something she believes has been lost.

In her essay “The Case for Humanistic Literature,” she examines Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and connects the novel to the older humanistic tradition of Western literature [10]. She argues that literature has historically served purposes larger than entertainment. Great works can force readers to confront questions about morality, meaning, civilization, suffering, virtue, and the nature of human existence.

Her essay “How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature” develops the same argument. There she contends that literature should not merely provide an open-ended space for ideological interpretation but should help readers think about what constitutes a good and meaningful life [11].

This argument is perhaps the most important feature of Libes’ criticism: her opposition to ideological literary interpretation grows out of her belief that literature matters. She objects to political reductionism because she believes books are capable of doing something more profound.

Writing, Poetry, and Education

Libes’ literary interests extend beyond criticism. She is also a poet and writer whose work has appeared in literary journals and publications including Persuasion, The American Spectator, the Jewish Book Council, and others.

She has published poetry collections including Broken Weekend, Vintage Lovers, and Illicit Kingdom, plus another very recently published collection, Girl Soldier. Her poetry addresses subjects including identity, Judaism, desire, and other dimensions of personal experience.

Libes has also made education an important part of her professional life. She founded Invictus Prep, a college-consulting company through which she works with students on writing and college preparation [12]. The company describes her work as helping students develop their writing and intellectual abilities while guiding them through the college-application process.

Her concern about declining writing ability among students has also become part of her public criticism. In “Why Can’t Our Kids Write?,” Libes describes working with college-bound teenagers and observing what she considers a troubling decline in students’ ability to write effectively [13]. Her criticism therefore extends beyond literary interpretation to the larger question of whether young people are being adequately prepared to read, think, and communicate.

A New Kind of Literary Critic

Liza Libes represents an unusual figure in contemporary literary culture. She possesses the academic credentials of a traditional literary scholar but has chosen not to remain within the conventional academic system. Instead, she has taken literary criticism into the online world.

Her work combines scholarship, poetry, cultural criticism, education, entrepreneurship, and social media. Through Pens and Poison, she communicates with an audience far larger than the readership normally associated with academic literary criticism. Her importance may ultimately lie in this combination.

Libes is not arguing that literary studies should become less intellectual. She is arguing that it should become more fully intellectual by returning to questions of meaning, truth, beauty, morality, psychology, and the human condition. Her criticism of postmodern literary study is therefore part of a broader argument about what education is supposed to accomplish.

For Libes, literature should not merely train students to identify ideological categories. It should teach them how to see. It should enlarge the imagination. It should deepen the reader’s understanding of other people and of himself. And above all, it should remain literature.

The Libesian Opposition

The case against Liza Libes is strikingly insubstantial: one published polemic built on factual reductionism and personal contempt, followed by the usual anonymous online sneering masquerading as critique.

Karen Myers’ November 2025 post at Mad Genius Club [14] is the centerpiece of the attack. It dismisses one of Libes’s essays as a “heartfelt entitlement/industry whine” and portrays her as “young and snobbish,” sneering that she has “only” three poetry collections and supposedly lacks any understanding of the market.

This assertion is not a serious rebuttal of Libes’s claims; it is a credential-counting exercise designed to imply that a writer may not criticize literary institutions unless she has first accumulated whatever résumé Myers considers sufficiently substantial.

That framing is especially evasive given Libes’s actual record. She has cultivated a sizeable independent audience across Instagram and YouTube, built a Substack that reached bestseller status, published essays in The Boston Globe, Persuasion, and The Daily Wire, and continued to produce fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism.

Pretending that her career can be reduced to “only three poetry collections” is not analysis; it is selective accounting deployed to make the writer look unserious. Myers’ objection ultimately appears less concerned with whether Libes is right about ideological conformity in academia and publishing than with the fact that Libes still takes conventional literary prestige seriously.

On an indie-publishing site, that ambition is recast as vanity or delusion. But treating an author’s aspiration to serious literary recognition as proof of incompetence is not a factual refutation; it is an ideological preference, expressed with the confidence of a verdict.

Beyond that post, the opposition largely disintegrates into drive-by abuse: social-media insults, vague insinuations, and the occasional YouTube comment declaring Libes “full of herself.” None of it meaningfully addresses her arguments about political gatekeeping, institutional conformity, or the narrowing range of acceptable viewpoints in literary and academic culture.

The so-called critics do not defeat her analysis; they mostly avoid it, substituting irritation at her visibility and ambition for an actual argument. The weak responses of these ideological critics demonstrate more about their self-aggrandizement than about the target of their criticism.

Sources

[1] Liza Libes. “About.” Liza Libes. Accessed August 25, 2026.
[2] – – -. “Why I Am Not a PhD.” Persuasion. October 22, 2024.
[3] – – -. “A Letter from the Founder.” Pens and Poison. Accessed August 25, 2026.
[4] – – -. “Proud Not to Be PhD.” Pens and Poison. August 10, 2025.
[5] – – -. “When Literature Lost Its Way.” Pens and Poison. February 16, 2026.
[6]. – – -. “The Year I Quit Reading.” Pens and Poison. Accessed August 245 2026.
[7] Editors. “Liza Libes.” Poets & Writers. Last update: January 1, 2025.
[8] Liza Libes. “Why Contemporary Publishing Is Broken.” Pens and Poison. June 15, 2026.
[9]. – – – . “Q&A with Liza Libes.” Pens and Poison. August 31, 2024.
[10] – – -. “The Case for Humanistic Literature.” Pens and Poison. June 30, 2025.
[11] – – -. “How Postmodernism Killed Great Literature.” Pens and Poison. January 2, 2026.
[12] Editors. “About Us.” Invictus Prep. Accessed August 25, 2026.
[13] Liza Libes. “Why Can’t Our Kids Write?” Pens and Poison. April 3, 2025.
[14] Karen Myers. “Old Pub.” Mad Genius Club. November 6, 2025.
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August 25, 2026
Flesh and Desire
Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

Flesh and Desire

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” —T. S. Eliot

Into the fire of wisdom, thoughts go to perish.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” Christ commands.
But we still wobble behind the Devil
Hoping to be snatched from the arms of death
In time for supper and for the many tomorrows
We image we still possess.
In the valley of dreck and poison, I have lived
Even as I knew better or thought I did.
No, I am not here to testify.
Although a word or two of testimony
May slip out every line or so!
I can pound sand with the best of them.
But I can also bitch and moan.
Where is the beginning of joy and rectitude?
One might ask. Where is the promise?
O, come on! You know where the promise is . . .
Yes, just testing the waters and they are warm.
Every time I delay, I am warned. Just pray
And wait and listen close and tight to the hum
In the brain. I will follow. I will follow close.
Yes, I will. And flesh with its crude desire
Will no longer taint the years
With their distractions.
The mercy of Spirit will wipe my tears.
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May 20, 2026
Emily Dickinson’s “We lose – because we win”
Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

Emily Dickinson’s “We lose – because we win”

Emily Dickinson’s “We lose – because we win,” exemplifies a short, quirky observation, which makes a statement about human behavior that has become compulsive.

Introduction and Text of “We lose – because we win”

Emily Dickinson’s “We lose – because we win” features characteristics of a versanelle, a short, usually 20 lines or fewer, dramatic narration that comments on human nature or behavior and may employ any of the usual poetic devices. I coined this term to designate certain heretofore unclassifiable poems of Robert Frost, Stephen Crane, M. M. Sedam, and others.

The versanelle remains a natural, philosophical outlet for the poet who entertains a philosophical bent, as most poets do. From Walt Whitman to T. S. Eliot, many American poets from time to time are motivated to fashion a short observations regarding humankind into a poetic drama.

We lose – because we win

We lose – because we win –
Gamblers – recollecting which
Toss their dice again!

Commentary on “We lose – because we win”

Each line of a versanelle exudes thoughts whose meanings in the hand of a less masterful craftsman might take many lines to express.

First Line: A Puzzling Paradox

We lose – because we win –

The speaker in Dickinson’s three-line versanelle has observed that humankind can become addicted to certain acts. Thus she chooses the act of winning to state her perceived notion.

She states the introduction to her conclusion in a paradox. At first, the statement seems non-sensical because it seems to contradict itself. One is tempted to query, how can we lose if she has won? Are the two not mutually exclusive. At first blush, it seems that the speaker has placed the acts of losing and winning in the same time frame. And if that were the case, the statement would have been ludicrous.

For example, if you placed your bet and won $1,000, no one can dispute that you gambled and won. In order to remain a winner, however, you must walk away with your winnings.

Thus the paradox is elucidated by the remaining two lines, which broaden the time frame. The speaker is not only referring to the short period of time after winning, but she is also encompassing the many years, perhaps, that may follow that unfortunate win that leads to loss.

Second Line: Gamblers Remember

Gamblers – recollecting which

Thus”Gamblers” do not take their money and walk away. They become intoxicated by the win, and the memory of winning becomes implanted in their brains. The pleasure of winning that money has urged the “gambler” to make further choices that will again bring that pleasure.

Third Line: Lose After Winning

Toss their dice again!

In the attempt to regain the pleasurable feeling of having won that thousand dollars, the “gambler” must gamble again. And even if he wins, a second time, he will only strengthen the desire to keep winning.

But as those hooked on the notion of winning continue to “toss their dice,” they will invariably begin to lose. And it becomes abundantly clear that they will lose many more thousands than they have ever won. Just ask members of Gamblers Anonymous!

And not only will the continuation of gambling lead to financial ruin, the seriously addicted gambler may lose his job, family, and friends, along with his self-respect and possibly his life.

A Broader Application

While the Dickinson versanelle can be understood to refer to the literal “gambler,” there is no doubt that her speaker wishes to offer a far more wide-ranging application of this adage. Thus the observation can include any human activity that leads to habitual repetition of an act that leads to negative instead of positive outcomes.

Such activities might include those that lead to addiction to alcohol, those that lead to unhealthy eating, those that lead to unwholesome engagement in sex, and also those that lead to psychological malfunction.

The human mind and heart are capable of turning a heaven into a hell merely with thoughts that ultimately lead to depravity. Experiencing a delight in any unhealthy, unwholesome act must be rooted out before it can become habitual.

The mood junky can become like a gambler who continues to roll the dice, expecting to experience that happy win again, yet finds himself unable to climb out of his nasty mood because he has come to rely on it, perhaps using it as an excuse for failures that are simply the result of lack of effort.
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April 20, 2026
William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”
Image: William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”

William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” is a profound meditation on aging, art, and the quest for spiritual transcendence, despite his failure to clearly grasp the Eastern religious/philosophical concepts he strived to portray.

Introduction and Excerpt from “Sailing to Byzantium”

William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” is a profound meditation on aging, art, and the quest for spiritual transcendence. However, despite Yeats’ deep engagement with Eastern religion and philosophy, his interpretation and application of these concepts in his poetry often reveal a “Romantic misunderstanding,” as T.S. Eliot astutely observed.

This misunderstanding is clearly evident in “Sailing to Byzantium,” especially in its fourth stanza, where Yeats’ vision of eternal existence through art diverges significantly from Eastern religious/philosophical principles.

Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium” in 1926, at the age of 61, as a reflection on the aging process and the spiritual journey required to maintain vitality in the face of physical decline.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Commentary on “Sailing to Byzantium”

The poem “Sailing to Byzantium” uses a journey to Byzantium (Constantinople now Istanbul,) as a metaphor for a spiritual quest, with the speaker seeking to transcend the limitations of the mortal body and achieve a form of immortality through art.

First Stanza: Contrasting Vividly

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

The opening stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium” presents a vivid contrast between the vitality of youth and the poet’s sense of alienation from the natural world as he ages. Yeats paints a picture of a country teeming with life, where “The young / In one another’s arms, birds in the trees” and “the mackerel-crowded seas” represent the cyclical nature of life and death.

The phrase “Those dying generations” underscores the transient nature of all living things, a concept that aligns with Eastern philosophy’s emphasis on impermanence. However, Yeats’ reaction to this natural cycle reveals a departure from Eastern thought.

While Buddhism and Hinduism often advocate for acceptance of life’s impermanence, Yeats expresses a desire to escape it. His assertion that “all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect” suggests a privileging of human intellect and art over the natural world, a distinctly Western perspective that contradicts the Eastern emphasis on harmony with nature.

Second Stanza: Aging and the Quest for Renewal

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

In the second stanza, Yeats further develops the theme of aging and the quest for spiritual renewal. The image of an aged man as “a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick” vividly conveys the physical deterioration that comes with age. However, Yeats proposes that this decline can be transcended if the soul can “clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress.”

This concept of the soul triumphing over bodily decay echoes certain Eastern philosophical ideas, particularly the Hindu concept of the soul, which is the eternal self, transcending the physical body.

However, Yeats’ emphasis on the soul’s need to “sing” and study “Monuments of its own magnificence” reveals a more Western, ego-centric approach to spiritual transcendence. In contrast, many Eastern philosophies advocate for the dissolution of the ego and the realization of the soul’s unity with the Divine Reality.

Third Stanza: The Concept of Transformation

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

The third stanza introduces the “sages standing in God’s holy fire,” whom the speaker implores to be the “singing-masters of my soul.” This imagery draws on both Western and Eastern concepts, blending Christian imagery of holy fire with the Eastern idea of spiritual masters or gurus. The speaker’s desire to have his heart consumed away and to be gathered into “the artifice of eternity” reflects a yearning for spiritual transformation.

However, Yeats’ conception of this transformation as an “artifice” created by sages diverges from Eastern philosophical traditions. In many Eastern spiritual practices, enlightenment or liberation is seen not as an artificial state created by external forces, but as the realization of one’s true nature, of uniting the individual soul with the Oversoul, or God. Yeats’ portrayal suggests a more Western, interventionist approach to spiritual transformation.

Fourth Stanza: Romantic Misunderstanding

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

The final stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium” most clearly demonstrates Yeats’ “Romantic misunderstanding” of Eastern philosophy. Here, the speaker envisions his eternal form not as a dissolution into God-consciousness (self-realization), as many Eastern traditions insist, but as a golden artifact created by “Grecian goldsmiths.” This vision of immortality through art is fundamentally at odds with Eastern concepts of liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

Yeats’ desire to take a form “Of hammered gold and gold enamelling” to entertain “lords and ladies of Byzantium” reveals a distinctly Western preoccupation with individual identity and artistic legacy. This contrasts sharply with Eastern religious/philosophical concepts such as the Buddhist non-self upon entering nirvana or the Hindu idea of samadhi or liberation from cycles of death and rebirth.

Furthermore, the speaker’s intention to “sing / To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come” suggests a linear view of time that is more aligned with Western thought than with the cyclical time concepts expounded in Eastern religion/philosophy.

While “Sailing to Byzantium” is undoubtedly a masterpiece of poetic craft, it also reveals the limitations of Yeats’ understanding and application of Eastern philosophical concepts.

His vision of spiritual transcendence, particularly as expressed in the fourth stanza, remains rooted in Western ideas of individual immortality and artistic legacy, rather than the Eastern concepts of ego dissolution and unity with the Divine Creator.

This “Romantic misunderstanding” of Eastern philosophy, as Eliot termed it, is indeed on full display in this poem, showcasing both the brilliance of Yeats’ poetic vision and the cultural limitations that shaped his interpretation of Eastern thought.

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February 11, 2026
Robert Bly’s Perversion of Translation
Image a: Robert Bly

Robert Bly’s Perversion of Translation

While his poems littered the literary landscape, the late Robert Bly tainted the art of translation. The man was both plagiarist and poetaster.

The Exacting Art of Translation

Translation is an exacting art, requiring knowledge of the target language as well as the language into which the work is to be translated. A modern plagiaristic scourge is tainting that art, and poetaster Robert Bly has remained a leading perpetrator of that scourge. Another egregious example is that of Ursula K. Le Guin, who purported to treat Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching.

To be fair to Le Guin, she does not label her work a “translation” and even admits that she does not read Chinese. But publishers, promoters, and reviewers often claim that the Le Guin treatment is a translation.

About the literary acumen of poetaster Robert Bly, critic and translator Eliot Weinberger has opined, “Robert Bly is a windbag, a sentimentalist, a slob in the language.” Describing much of the output of Bly’s drivel, Weinberger writes,

Not since Disney put gloves on a mouse has nature been so human: objects have “an inner grief”; alfalfa is “brave,” a butterfly “joyful,” dusk “half-drunk”; a star is “a stubborn man”; bark “calls to the rain”; “snow water glances up at the new moon.” It is a festival of pathetic fallacy. [1]

Weinberger is especially annoyed, however, that so many college students who hanker after becoming poets tend to choose Bly as their model. And they do so because “a Bly poem is so easy to write.” Unrestrained by technique, Bly engages “pointless and rarely believable metaphor (who else would compare the sound of a cricket to a sailboat?)”

Weinberger detects in Bly a “lack of emotional subtlety” that also likely attracts the immature minds of students. He suggests that Bly’s ability to write English has been “warped by reading too many bad translations.”

One might add that not only reading bad translations has warped Bly’s facility with the English language, but also his unsuccessful attempts to “translate” those works has warped the imaginations of other readers for decades.

For a significant part of Robert Bly’s literary career, the man has been “translating” the works of poets who write in Spanish, German, Swedish, Persian, Sanskrit, and other languages.

Bly, however, does not read, write, or understand any of the languages he supposedly “translates.” So the result of his so-called “translations” is simply revisions of the translations of others. According to Robert Richman,

Bly sought to revolutionize the art of translating poetry . . . Knowing the language well wasn’t the most important factor in translating poetry, Bly insisted, since “[w]hat you are essentially doing is slipping for a moment into the mood of the other poet. . . into an emotion which you may possibly have experienced at some time.”

In truth, Bly’s ideas about translation merely allowed the translator, as James Dickey put it, to take “as many liberties as [he] wants to take with the original, it being understood that this enables [him] somehow to approach the ‘spirit’ of the poem [he] is translating. [2]

Robert Bly takes a translation by someone who actually knows both the target language and English, who has actually translated the poem, changes some words, and calls his product a translation. An extended example of Bly’s fraudulent translation scheme is his publication titled The Kabir Book [3].

The poetaster revised forty-four of the genuine translations from One Hundred Poems of Kabir [4], by Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nobel Laureate, and Evelyn Underhill, renowned spiritual writer and recipient of numerous honorary degrees. Bly would have his readers believe his revisions of the translations of these outstanding creative thinkers better represent Kabir. Bly’s folly leads him astray.

Image b: Rabindranath Tagore – Nobel Archive

Image c: Evelyn Underhill

Tagore-Underhill’s Translations “Hopeless”

In Bly’s introduction to The Kabir Book, he claims that the Tagore-Underhill translations are “hopeless.” He does not explain what he means by “hopeless.” But he does claim that his purpose for re-translating some of the poems is to modernize them, put them into contemporary language.

However, he has attempted to fix that which was not broken. His claim that the Tagore translations are “hopeless” reveals part of the problem with Bly. If he found them “hopeless,” then obviously there is no way he could understand them well enough to improve on Tagore’s translations. Instead of merely modernizing the language, he loosens the diction, causing it to descend into a talky, laid-back kind of style that is not appropriate for its purpose.

The profound spiritual significance that these works have for the yogi-saint Kabir and his followers has been transformed into a libertine, 1960s-style free-love fest instead of the divine union of soul and God, as is their purpose. Because the poet Kabir was a God-realized saint, his poems and songs reflect the deep spiritual significance of his state of consciousness.

Kabir’s poems essentially perform two functions: the first is to express and describe the Ineffable [5] in words as nearly as possible through the saint’s devotion to God, and the second is to inspire and instruct his followers.

According to yogic philosophy [6] and training, the yogi who has succeeded in uniting his own soul with God has risen above all earthly, physical desires. Such a saint has only two desires left, and those two desires correspond to the above purposes ascribed to Kabir’s songs: to continue to enjoy union with God and to share it with others.

Image d: T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot Recognized the “Romantic Misunderstanding”

Western thinkers, philosophers, and poets such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence have attempted to explain Eastern religion to the West. But T. S. Eliot noticed that he had great difficulty trying to understand Eastern philosophy. And Eliot admitted his difficulty and at the same time observed that what was passing as Eastern philosophical analysis was “romantic misunderstanding”:

And I came to the conclusion seeing also that the ‘influence’ of Brahmin and Buddhist thought upon Europe, as in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Deussen, had largely been through romantic misunderstanding . . . [7]

I suggest that this misunderstanding is evident in Bly’s version of the Tagore-Underhill translations. And because of the lack of understanding, Bly was unable to do what he claimed he was doing, making the poems more accessible to the modern reader.

Bly claims he had become fond of the “interiors” of the poems he chose to “translate,” but in reality his fondness rests on his own misunderstanding of what those “interiors” actually mean.

Image e: Robert Bly – Drawing by David Levine

Contrasting Bly and Tagore-Underhill Translations

Robert Bly’s folly becomes apparent with the following “translation” from The Kabir Book:

Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates;
the new love opens them.
The sound of the gates opening wakes
the beautiful woman asleep.
Kabir says: Fantastic! Don’t let a
chance like this go by!

From One Hundred Poems of Kabir, the Tagore-Underhill translation follows:

The lock of error shuts the gate, open
it with the key of love:
Thus, by opening the door, thou shalt
wake the Belovèd.
Kabir says: ‘O brother! Do not pass
by such a good fortune as this.’

Bly’s version has transformed the meaning from God-union to human sexual copulation. Yogic philosophy claims that intense love for God awakens the soul and aids it in its search for God-union. The Tagore-Underhill translation has retained this spiritual significance.

“The lock of error” signifies the human’s mistaken belief that he is separate from God. Therefore, “love” opens the “gate” of separation. By opening the gate, the devotee awakens the soul to the “Belovèd”—capitalized because it refers to God.

Because the yogi’s goal is to awaken his desire for God, Kabir as the yogi-guru admonished his followers not to pass by such good fortune as can be found by unlocking his heart of love to God.

In Bly’s version, the poem promotes a human sexual opportunity. Few readers can pass by “iron gates” without their calling to mind Andrew Marvell’s “Coy Mistress.” And there is little doubt about what Marvell’s speaker was seeking with his coy mistress.

More importantly, “Belovèd” of the Tagore-Underhill version becomes in Bly’s “the beautiful woman asleep.” This kind of misrepresentation is a prototypical example of what T. S. Eliot meant when he claimed that Eastern influence on the West had come through “romantic misunderstanding.”

After transforming the Supreme Being into a beautiful woman, Bly has the yogi-saint cry: “Fantastic! Don’t let a change like this go by!” This mind-numbing act is an abomination, revealing an ignorance that would be funny if it were not so utterly misleading.

Bly’s Translation Career Based on Plagiarism

What Bly has actually accomplished in his “translation” career amounts to a large body of plagiarism of the original translators’ works. In addition to plagiarism instead of actual translation, Bly has misrepresented, distorted, and vulgarized the works of poets and translators, whose works he obviously has not understood.

Bly once quipped that American readers “can’t tell when a man is counterfeiting and when he isn’t.” That Bly got away with his “counterfeiting” in the literary world is an disgrace and has damaged the art of literature in the minds and hearts of many readers for several decades. The poetaster’s counterfeiting of the art of translation may likely be his most egregious contribution to the bastardization of literary studies.

Nevertheless, Robert Bly continues to be lauded as a sacred cow of the literary world. Critics, scholars, and commentarians tend to shy away from offering any negative criticism of such individuals, lest their own reputation suffer. Therefore, the counterfeiting unfortunately continues long beyond its origin.

Sources

[1] Eliot Weinberger. “Gloves on a Mouse.” The Nation. Vol. 229, No. 16. November 17, 1979. Print. Also available on Enotes.

[2] Robert Richman. “The Poetry of Robert Bly.” The New Criterion. December 1986.

[3] Robert Bly. The Kabir Book. The Seventies Press. 1977. Print. Also available on Internet Archive.

[4] Rabindranath Tagore. One Hundred Poems of Kabir. Macmillan. London. 1970. Print. Also available on Internet Archive.

[5] Linda Sue Grimes. “Names for the Ineffable.” Linda’s Literary Home. November 10 2025.

[6] Paramahansa Yogananda. “Knowing God.” Self-Realization Fellowship. 2000.

[7] T. S. Eliot. After Strange Gods: A Primer on Modern Heresy. Farber. London. 1933. Print. Also available on Internet Archive.

Image f: Robert Bly Cartoon – New Age Pit Bull

Image g: Robert Bly is Struggling with Modernity
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February 9, 2026
Quotations
Image: Open AI created inspired by the lines “Noise blossoms in the mind / Bursting into a riot of sound color”

Quotations

Paramahansa Yogananda: People interested in developing their memory should avoid the regular use of stimulants such as coffee, tea, and tobacco, which contain caffeine, theine, and nicotine, respectively.* Strictly avoid using strong stimulants such as liquor and drugs. Such substances intoxicate, drug, and deteriorate the intelligence and memory cells of the brain, preventing them from recording noble ideas and sense impressions in general. Memory cells that are constantly anesthetized by intoxicants lose their retentive power, and become lazy and inert. Intoxication obliterates the functions of the conscious mind by harmful chemicals, hence injures the cerebral memory-organ. When the brain is affected the memory is impaired. — SRF Lesson 51: “Yoga Methods for Developing Memory” (*Editor’s Note: Some modern research indicates that light to moderate use of caffeine improves short-term memory for brief periods. Yogis, however, assert that continuous use over a long period erodes rather than enhances the capacity of this divine faculty.)

Paramahansa Yogananda: In the natural course of evolution through reincarnation, souls are automatically reincarnated by cosmic law in a higher form or species in each incarnation. The soul is never reborn in the same animal species: a dog is never a dog again. — SRF Lesson 78: “Conscious Evolution”

Paramahansa Yogananda: There is nothing more powerful than will. Everything in this universe is produced by will. Physiological changes may even be made to occur in the body by will power. There is no time element involved; place a thought in the mind and hold it there, and think that the thing is done and your whole body and mind will respond to it. Nor does it take time to acquire or discard a habit if you exercise sufficient will power. It is all in your mind. —SRF Lesson S-4 P-79

Paramahansa Yogananda: Remember that when you are unhappy it is generally because you do not visualize strongly enough the great things that you definitely want to accomplish in life, nor do you employ steadfastly enough your will power, your creative ability, and your patience until your dreams are materialized. —SRF Lessons and Spiritual Diary, April 22 – Will Power, Creative Ability, & Patience

Paramahansa Yogananda: The Sanskrit word for ‘musician’ is bhagavathar, “he who sings the praises of God.” —Autobiography of a Yogi

Sri Yukteswar: Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. —Autobiography of a Yogi

Sri Yukteswar: “How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavors escape them while they grovel in primal mud. All nice discriminations are lost to the man of elemental lusts.” —Autobiography of a Yogi

Sri Yukteswar: Sri Yukteswar’s interpretation of the Adam and Eve creation story in Genesis—from Autobiography of a Yogi, pages 169-171, Twelfth Edition, First quality paperback printing 1994:

Genesis is deeply symbolic, and cannot be grasped by a literal interpretation; its “tree of life” is the human body. The spinal cord is like an upturned tree, with man’s hair as its roots, and afferent and efferent nerves as branches. The tree of the nervous system bears many enjoyable fruits, or sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In these, man may rightfully indulge; but he was forbidden the experience of sex, the “apple” at the center of the body (“in the midst of the garden”). (my emphasis)

The “serpent” represents the coiled-up spinal energy that stimulates the sex nerves. “Adam” is reason, and “Eve” is feeling. When the emotion or Eve-consciousness in any human being is overpowered by the sex impulse, his reason or Adam also succumbs.

God created the human species by materializing the bodies of man and woman through the force of His will; He endowed the new species with the power to create children in a similar “immaculate” or divine manner. Because His manifestation in the individualized soul had hitherto been limited to animals, instinct-bound and lacking the potentialities of full reason, God made the first human bodies, symbolically called Adam and Eve. To these, for advantageous upward evolution, He transferred the souls or divine essence of two animals. In Adam or man, reason predominated; in Eve or woman, feeling was ascendant. Thus was expressed the duality or polarity that underlies the phenomenal worlds. Reason and feeling remain in the heaven of cooperative joy so long as the human mind is not tricked by the serpentine energy of animal propensities.

The human body was therefore not solely a result of evolution from beasts, but was produced through an act of special creation by God. The animal forms were too crude to express full divinity; man was uniquely given the potentially omniscient “thousand-petaled lotus” in the brain, as well as acutely awakened occult centers in the spine.

God, or the Divine Consciousness present within the first created pair, counseled them to enjoy all human sensibilities, with one exception: sex sensations. These were banned, lest humanity enmesh itself in the inferior animal method of propagation. (my emphasis) The warning not to revive subconsciously present bestial memories was unheeded. Resuming the way of brute procreation, Adam and Eve fell from the state of heavenly joy natural to the original perfect man. When “they knew they were naked,” their consciousness of immortality was lost, even as God had warned them; they had placed themselves under the physical law by which bodily birth must be followed by bodily death.

The knowledge of “good and evil,” promised Eve by the “serpent,” refers to the dualistic and oppositional experiences that mortals under maya must undergo. Falling into delusion through misuse of his feeling and reason, or Eve- and Adam-consciousness, man relinquishes his right to enter the heavenly garden of divine self-sufficiency. The personal responsibility of every human being is to restore his “parents” or dual nature to a unified harmony or Eden.

Alexander Pope: Hope springs eternal in the human breast. —An Essay on Man: “Epistle 1”

Alexander Pope: All are but parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. —An Essay on Man: “Epistle 1”

Alexander Pope: And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, / One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. —An Essay on Man: “Epistle 1”

Alexander Pope: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of mankind is man. —An Essay on Man: “Epistle 2”

Alexander Pope: What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone. —An Essay on Man: “Epistle 2”

T. S. Eliot: Man is man because he can recognize supernatural realities, not because he can invent them.

Evan Sayet: “The modern liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.”
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February 8, 2026