September 2011
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“‘Nightwood’ is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and...”
– Jeanette Winterson, from the Preface to Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
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“Anne Sexton sometimes seemed like a woman without skin. She felt everything so...”
– Erica Jong on the poet Anne Sexton (via cameliaoaks)
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“There, outside, was all that was wild and beloved and estranged, and all that...”
– Eudora Welty, “The Winds”
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The sense of loneliness is an error. We are and move in a great crowd of those who are now, were, and will be.
In that great river.
—Anna Kamienska, In that Great River: A Notebook (trans. by Clare Cavanagh)
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“I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the...”
– James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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“His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under...”
– James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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“He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of...”
– James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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“I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It’s the last meaning,...”
– Sam Savage, Poets & Writers Sept/Oct 2011 (via lesmotsjustes)
book recommendations
I am a major fan of historical fiction and was just wondering if any of you could recommend some really great books within that genre. I am open to anything. Any suggestions?
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“Look around you. Everyone seems to have one foot in the air. One would think...”
– Petr Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters Addressed to a Lady, 1829, trans. Nathaniel Knight (thanks, wood s lot)
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“It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not...”
– Marcel Proust (via ribbedatum)
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“What we love, shapely and pure,
is not to be held,
but to be...”
– Mary Oliver, from “Swans” in Evidence (via proustitute)
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“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever....”
– From Point Omega by Don DeLillo. (via bookoflead)
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The River by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things: we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross. It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers. The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause where we know there should be an end; then tell me you too imagined it this...
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“I went to the end of the paddock where the willows grew and bathed in the creek....”
– Katherine Mansfield, “The Woman at the Store” (via katherine-mansfield)
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The Modernism Lab →
The Modernism Lab is a virtual space dedicated to collaborative research into the roots of literary modernism. We hope, by a process of shared investigation, to describe the emergence of modernism out of a background of social, political, and existential ferment. The project begins with the period 1914-1926, from the outbreak of the first world war to the full-blown emergence of English...
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“Oh what a grind it is embodying all these ideas and having perpetually to expose...”
– Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated 18 March 1935 (via proustitute)
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“Before art can be human it must learn to be brutal.”
– J.M. Synge
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“Naipaul says he can tell
right away if a writer’s a woman
or a man—the...”
– from ‘Poem Composed While Waiting for the Gynecologist To Come In’, by Brook Sadler, in response to writer V.S. Naipaul’s comments about women being inferior writers to men. (via trenchantashell)
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“You’re a tooth I tongue and tongue,
tasting blood as you loosen,
...”
– Sandra Beasley, “The Story of My Family”
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“Such a deep silence surrounds me, that I think I hear moonbeams striking on the...”
– Lucian Blaga (via risky wiver)
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“Standing on the side
of the fountains in Paris where the water
blew onto me...”
– Linda Gregg, from “Looking for Each of Us”
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“One writes in order to communicate something to those who are absent.”
– Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context” (via senseofchampagnechic)
“Even while I write this we’re all moving,
Propelled and plunging like the days...”
– Jerry Quarry, from “Recovering of Sight” (via the-final-sentence)
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“She became aware of something about her. With an effort, she roused herself, to...”
– D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
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“Then he left her again, and joined the others. Soon they started home. Miriam...”
– D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
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Light From Another World by Mieczyslaw Jasztun
One life has passed I passed over what hurt the most in silence I forgot about the changes they grew pale like stars at dawn shining in leafless trees Light from another world embraced me A hyacinth’s keen scent And nothing- like a stone thrown into water nothing- like water turned to stone frozen by the morning cold One life has passed I passed over silence in silence I forgot on this planet...
“He smiles, says sometimes he flips his kayak deliberately over and over in the...”
– John Hodgen, from “High Tide” (via the-final-sentence)
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“It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment...”
– Mark Strand, “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter”
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“The book that blew me away
held all the problems
of the world
and those of...”
– Mary Ruefle, from “White Buttons” (via proustitute)
“among the paths
I orbit
the apple trees
white white spinning
stars around...”
– Margaret Atwood, Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age (via lademarche)
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“You were drawn to poetry by something nothing
satisfies but poetry…”
– Brenda Hillman, “In the Room of Glass Breasts”
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“So far uneventful but rest of of the day picked up that kind of richness in...”
– Joseph Cornell in journal entry dated January 24, 1947 (via senseofchampagnechic)
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“There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is...”
– Sylvia Plath, undated journal entry (c. 1950 - 1953)
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Help Bring "Three Women" by Sylvia Plath to the... →
weelittleactress:
What is Three Women?
Three Women is Sylvia Plath’s only play. Written as a radio play, it was originally broadcast in August of 1962, six months before Plath’s death and shortly before she would write the poems that would become Ariel. The New York Times calls it, “a forceful meditation on pregnancy and childbearing.” Its message is one of hope, strength, and love. The...
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“Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain...”
–
Adam Zagajewski, from “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”
(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)
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“Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric...”
– Doris Lessing, On Not Winning the Nobel Prize (via wood s lot)
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“When the snow covers your grave you have forgotten the snow.”
– Rune Christiansen, “Impromptu” (trans. by Agnes Scott Langeland) 