dennis scharnberg

“Must” is not at all pleasant, as words go.

Alex Twist, A Primer of Posturing.

“If we had wanted you to hold an opinion, Jane, we would have issued one to you.”

Delbert Arbogast, The Null Hypothesis and Other Stories.

Anything that has happened—whether 50 years or 50 hours ago—should be carried to its absolute limit now.  This is one way of the contemporary artist.  Find remnants of modernism, and then railroad them to some extreme (usually reductive) form.

Hunter Hogarth, Raised by Wolves.

—You must realize that Roderick is bitterly contemptuous of architects.  All architects.

                                         —A bit of an easy target, aren’t they?

—Well, yes.  Of course.

Philip Cavendish, Tilly’s Treasury of Colloquial Bits.

What Marx did not say: “Up till now, people have only talked about the weather; the point, however, is to do something about it.”

Sidney Simms, Horse Eats Hat.

A new equation:  poets being dishonest equals poetry.

Mills Verbruggen, The Isle of Dogs.

Is anything closer to nothing than contemporary art?  Is there merit in that?

Alex Twist, A Primer of Posturing.

The boundary separating X and Y cannot be defined with rigorous clarity.  Therefore, X and Y do not exist.

Nigel Swoone, Old Theories of Time.

Really, Ted, isn’t “wonderful” the only word that anyone would ever need?

Rhonda Carstairs, A Bad Case of the Whim-Whams and Other Stories.

“Multiple acentric spheres that expand to become concentric,” said Phillips in one of his many attempts to characterize polyphony.

Will Hewes, Little To Do.