Throwing Down Flowers

from "In the Park"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:48:58 -0800

You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you’re a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
—you won’t know till you get there which to do.

Maxine Kumin

printedandbound: Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s desk on which he...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:16:18 -0800

printedandbound:

Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s desk on which he wrote The Little Prince. (image via Corbis)

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:16:00 -0800

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

Elizabeth Bishop

Anna Garforth at Environmental Graffiti (via J. Lowe)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:31:59 -0800

Anna Garforth at Environmental Graffiti (via J. Lowe)

"This is what I tell myself: [my mother] did everything she ever wanted to do. She never really..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:43:15 -0800

“This is what I tell myself: [my mother] did everything she ever wanted to do. She never really denied herself anything for me. See, I say, she had a wonderful life; she did what she wanted to do. And I have no right to change her fulfillment into my misery. I’m on my own broom now.”

- Liza Minnelli

"I lost count of the incidences of ‘We can imagine’ or ‘It is safe to..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:04:00 -0800

“I lost count of the incidences of ‘We can imagine’ or ‘It is safe to imagine’ or ‘We can speculate’ or ‘We can picture her’ or — most revealingly — ‘I like to imagine’: ‘Among all the letters that were destroyed, there was one, I like to imagine, that expressed Lucia’s gratitude to her father for persisting in his belief in her.’ And then again, perhaps there wasn’t.”

- from Hermione Lee’s review of Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake by Carol Loeb Schloss

printedandbound: “Whatever spark of gift I possess has been...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:17:16 -0800

printedandbound:

“Whatever spark of gift I possess has been transmitted to Lucia, and has kindled a fire in her brain.” - James Joyce

(image via Beinecke)

"His first poem came when he was only three: ‘Oh little birdie oh oh oh, With your toe toe..."

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:17:00 -0800

“His first poem came when he was only three: ‘Oh little birdie oh oh oh, With your toe toe toe.’”

- Wikipedia, E.E. Cummings

(via cities)

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:10:40 -0700

(via cities)

Vespers (7)

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:05:56 -0700

I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me
to love the world, making it impossible
to turn away completely, to shut it out completely ever again—
it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,
birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses:
you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth—
why would you wound me, why would you want me
desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope
I would refuse to see that finally
nothing was left to me, and would believe instead
in the end you were left to me.

Louise Glück

(via needful)

You Must Accept

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:40:31 -0700

You must accept that’s who he really is.
You must accept you cannot be his
unless he is yours. No compromise.
He is a canvas on which paint never dries;
a clay that never sets, steel that bends
in a breeze, a melody that when it ends
no one can whistle. He is not who
you thought. He’s not. He is a shoe
that walks away: “I will not go where you
want to go.” “Why, then, are you a shoe?”
“I’m not. I have the sole of a lover
but don’t know what love is.” “Discover
it, then.” “Will I have to go where you go?”
“Sometimes.” “Be patient with you?” “Yes.” “Then, no.”
You have to hear what he is telling you
and see what he is; how it is killing you.

Kate Light

"the body of the house shines around the house — and you my friend — were beyond..."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:06:58 -0700

“the body of the house shines
around the house — and you my friend —
were beyond —
you were ballast —
you were vast unto others —”

- from “You Were Vast Unto Others”, Jen Bervin

‘Call it Off,’ Tegan and SaraI still think it better...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:08:42 -0700

‘Call it Off,’ Tegan and Sara

I still think it better if
You take your time coming over here
I think that’s for the best

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan (1930 Newsreel Footage) (via...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:54:02 -0700

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan (1930 Newsreel Footage) (via transformingArt)

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. (Happy...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:54:12 -0700

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

(Happy birthday, Sylvia Plath.)

‘Roslin and Adama Reunited,’ Bear McCrearyfrom the...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:59:59 -0700

‘Roslin and Adama Reunited,’ Bear McCreary
from the Battlestar Galactica episode ‘The Hub,’ S4 E11

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:24:42 -0700

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

- from The Gospel of Thomas; in Nick Tosches’ article for Vanity fair, via powazek.com

from "Now that I Am Never Alone"

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:10:12 -0700

But I remember solitude—no other
presence and each thing what it was. Not this raw
fluttering I make of you as you have made of me
your watch-fire, your killing light.

Tess Gallagher

(via needful)

"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the..."

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:01:38 -0700

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances…and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”

- St. Augustine (via cleversimon)

(via maybethereishope)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:18:31 -0700

(via maybethereishope)