January 2011
56 posts
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I Would Like to Describe | Zbigniew Herbert
I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass...
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Richard Siken | The Problem
The problem (if there was one) was simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, and the problem is why. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after the other, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Be the tree, solve for bird. What does that mean? It’s a problem of focus, it’s a problem of...
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You Should Date An Illiterate Girl « Thought... →
This has been circulating like wildfire recently. I like it, and hate it at the same time for the same reasons. The author’s being ironic about his bitterness, and his pushiness is deliberate, so I’d defend him against those nay-sayers. It wasn’t written as an argument either.
I think of what I call ‘elitist woes’ when I read this. Not just him - the...
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The Sciences Sing a Lullabye | Albert Goldbarth
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You...
“I’m thirty-two years old…which means I’ve been reading for twenty-six years....”
– Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built. (Found in A Book Addict’s Treasury by Julie Rugg and Lynda Murphy.)
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late,...”
– Captain Wentworth, (Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
bunnymitford:
Men cannot know what it is to be together without otherwise knowing what it is to be apart. If all the world were love, then, how could love exist? This is why we turn away from each other on moments of great happiness and closeness. How can we know happiness and closeness without contrasting them, like lights?
Jack Kerouac - from a letter to Allen Ginsberg, September, 1948
“nobody tells this to people who are beginners; i wish someone told me. all of us...”
– ira glass (via wearebasiclight)
Rare (lost) Words →
tristifical - causing to be sad or mournful. eternitarian - one who believes in the eternity of the soul. cosmogyral - whirling round the universe. siagonology - study of jaw-bones. autexousious - exercising or possessing free will. nepheliad - cloud-nymph. gardeviance -chest for valuables; a travelling trunk. ictuate - to emphasize. senticous - prickly; thorny. interfation - act of interrupting...
