Life & Wisdom Quote by David Antin

Antin is defending a mind that refuses the polite lie of “continuity.” The sentence starts with an almost bureaucratic self-description - “particular and concrete” - then immediately sabotages the expectation that concreteness equals linear argument. It’s a small act of aesthetic rebellion: the poet staking out a thinking style that moves by leaps, associations, and sudden landings rather than by thesis, proof, conclusion.

The intent is practical as much as philosophical. Antin was famous for his “talk poems,” improvised performances that treat thinking as a live event: memory, anecdote, observation, and argument braided in real time. In that context, “doesn’t follow a continuous path” isn’t an apology for being scattered; it’s a claim that the scatter is the method. The subtext: if you demand seamless narrative, you’re asking for a cleaned-up version of consciousness - a retrospectively edited self that flatters logic and hides the seams.

What makes the line work is its quiet precision. “Particular and concrete” signals allegiance to the palpable world, not airy abstraction, while “continuous path” invokes the cultural prestige of rational progress: the essay that marches, the lecture that climbs, the life story that “adds up.” Antin rejects that prestige without romanticizing chaos. He’s pointing to a more honest geometry of thought: not a straight road, but a network of turns where meaning appears in the gaps and pivots.

It lands as a critique of institutional language - the academy’s demand for coherence - and as an invitation to readers to follow intelligence in its native habitat: mid-stride, correcting itself, arriving sideways.