February 2012
11 posts
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“And the holy wilderness takes root, rich in promise.
So rich it burns. For we...”
– Friedrich Holderlin, from ‘The Titans’ [Die Titanen], translated by Richard Sieburth.
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Anne Carson's new book 'Antigonick' →
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Has anyone else done any of the Harvard Implicit Association Tests? I would have insisted I was neutral about most of their categories, but the results say something else …
January 2012
10 posts
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“I was born of writing, Before that, there was only a play of mirrors. With my...”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, cited in Paul John Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention
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“Dear friend,
I have not written to you for a long time, and meanwhile have been...”
–
Hölderlin, in a letter to Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorff, translated by Michael Hamburger, in Hölderlin: Selected Poems and Fragments
Me too, Friedrich, me too.
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“… But silver
On pure days
Is light. As a sign of love
Violet-blue the...”
–
Hölderlin, from a fragment of a hymn, translated from the German by Michael Hamburger. [Aber silbern / An reinen Tagen / Ist das Licht. Als Zeichen der Liebe / Veilchenblau die Erde]
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“Our mistakes are our leaps in the night. Error is not a lie: it is...”
– Hélène Cixous, from Stigmata.
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and yes, I’m back!
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“(The author or) The artist is the gardener of the thorn bush in spite of...”
– Hélène Cixous, from Stigmata.
November 2011
15 posts
“Yet, he said, it is often our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the...”
– W. G. Sebald, “Austerlitz.” (via redcolornewssoldier)
My plan? To get a copy of this book in French, and slowly read it at night on the Chemin de Compostelle. I did the same thing when I walked the Camino de Santiago two years ago, but with a Spanish edition, of course. Hmm. Does this count as a...
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“They feed back exactly what is given to them. Because they do not believe in...”
– Joan Didion, from the essay ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ (1967), in which she reported on the young people moving en masse to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, to drop out and ‘turn on’. It seems to me Didion, in her own haughty manner, is saying (almost) the...
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“What is my loftiest ambition? I’ve always wanted to throw an egg at an...”
– Oliver Herford.
I owe this quote to one of my students, who opened their writer’s journal with this, and a hand-drawn image of a merino sheep. I live for these moments of levity.
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Bygone Conclusion: A corolla of shining feathers →
garbandier:
There is a sudden haunting whiteness to the south. It seems to hover on the shining surface of the sea. Then it descends, and comes closer. It is a barn owl. He glows in the last sunlight, like burning snow, a white incandescence casting a black shadow. He flies quickly through the cooling dusk of…
Oh, J.A. Baker.
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It is so strange to think that I have now outlived Emily Brontë, who died at about 2pm on a winter’s afternoon in her 31st year.
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A review, in haiku (4)
Underworld
Is the gun loaded? Cicadas. The roof tar melts. No, he says. And smiles.
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“A single seraphic word. You can examine the word with a click, tracing its...”
– Don DeLillo, Underworld. Last lines.
October 2011
44 posts
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“What a great poem teaches you, and it’s not intellectual at all, is the...”
– W.S. Merwin in an interview in the L.A. Times.
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“We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street:
it is...”
– Paul Celan, from ‘Corona’, translated by Michael Hamburger
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“Language is the element of definition, the defining and descriptive incantation....”
– Charles Wright, from his interview in The Paris Review.
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“Below,
the Earth-pelt
dapples and flows
with slow bees
that spin
the thick,...”
– Jane Hirshfield, from ‘The November Angel’
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“And as far as comprehension goes, I find poetry actually has very little mystery...”
– Daniel Handler, ‘Happy, Snappy, Sappy’
This whole (brief) essay is delightful: the man you might know as Lemony Snicket in search of the perfect time and place to read poetry.
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“Then she said, so quietly that you could hardly hear her: “What was it that so...”
– W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (via sideproducts)
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“And every time I set eyes on Lake Bala, particularly when its surface was...”
– W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz