Tiger Riding for Beginners

Traveling Poet Philosopher & Occasional Wiseacre

FIVE WISE LINES [August 2026]

Posted on August 3, 2026 by B Gourley

Photograph taken in the desert outside of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

One can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge,
but one cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.
Michel de montaigne

Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and one must begin anew.
Julio Cortázar

Experience is not what happens to you,
it’s what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.s. Eliot

If we do not possess a ‘sense’ for a given energy -form,
we do not experience its existence.
Robert E. Ornstein in The psychology of consciousness [As quoted in the Bihar School edition of Hatha Yoga Pradipika]

A DAY

Posted on August 2, 2026 by B Gourley

Monsoon Carnival [Haiku]

Posted on July 30, 2026 by B Gourley

Photograph of an amusement park near Bai Tu Long Bay in Vietnam.

a ferris wheel
 stands still & unlit
  under rain clouds.

BOOKS: “Fine Clothes to the Jew” by Langston Hughes

Posted on July 30, 2026 by B Gourley

Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Available online – Lehigh University

This, Hughes’s second poetry collection, is different from the first in that it leans more heavily into blues music structure and into dialectal language use. It’s not that these didn’t feature in Weary Blues, but in this collection one can read most of the poems with a blues shuffle riff playing in one’s head (and, if you do, you will hear how Muddy Waters might have belted them out in a Blues club.)

While it’s fun to read, this collection is not nearly so deep or evocative as the collection that preceded. Still, if you like poetry and / or the Blues, you’ll definitely find this to be a worthwhile read.

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