What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external… - J. V. Cunningham

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What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure — it is much too broad and narrow —, Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride, And not in prowess, but pride undefined, Autonomous in its unthought demands, A bit of vanity, but mostly pride.

J. V. Cunningham

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About J. V. Cunningham

James Vincent Cunningham (August 23, 1911 – March 30, 1985) was an American poet, sometimes described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist.

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Ben Jonson Samuel Johnson Robert Graves W. H. Auden Robert Louis Stevenson

Additional quotes by J. V. Cunningham

With an a natural affinity for the epigram genre, I am, so to speak, a short breathed man and have an almost unthoughtout preference for brief definitive statements.

What is needed is a noticeable unnoticeable style,... a directness of speech that seems to one judging easily imitable, to one trying it nothing less so.

Plato, despair! We prove by norms How numbers bear Empiric forms, How random wrong Will average right If time be long And error slight, But in our hearts Hyperbole Curves and departs To infinity. Error is boundless. Nor hope nor doubt, Though both be groundless, Will average out.

What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure — it is much too broad and narrow —, Not sex, not fo… - J. V. Cunningham

About J. V. Cunningham

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