Saturday, May 29, 2010

"The Journey" by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver, "The Journey"

Friday, May 28, 2010

“Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice” Ogden Nash

Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spent in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

“he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere" Erin McNellis

he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere.
locate yourself on your neuron map and maybe
i will understand. i said: i could no sooner find
the moon in its reflection. maybe they will read
my impreciseness and see the reality, and drink it
with sugar and cream. he said: i like my truth black.

i wrote him fever-dream-perfect letters about his
faults. when i was drunk i would forget everything
but love.

i am: woman, barefoot, eyes lowered.
in my breast is a jar of fireflies.

every time i reach for the moon, it ripples.

- Erin McNellis, "he said: you talk a wide variety of nowhere"

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

“Variations on the Word Love” Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love , you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood, “Variations on the Word Love”

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"The Girl Sleeps As If" Vera Pavlova

the girl sleeps as if
someone special is dreaming
the woman sleeps as if
war will break out tomorrow
the old woman sleeps
as if it's enough to feign
death and death will pass by
on the other side of sleep

- Vera Pavlova, "The Girl Sleeps As If"

Monday, May 24, 2010

J.B., Archibald MacLeish

We can never know
He answered me like the stillness of a star
That silences us asking

We are and that is all our answer
We are and what we are can suffer
But...
                      what suffers loves.
                                    
 And love
Will live its suffering again,
Risk its own defeat again,
Endure the loss of everything again
And yet again and yet again
In doubt, in dread, in ignorance, unanswered,
Over and over, with the dark before,
The dark behind it... and still live... still love

- J.B., Archibald MacLeish

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

"But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit."

- Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Marilyn Manson; The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell

"People don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know. The only safe place for your thoughts is in your memory, which people can't take and read when you're not looking--at least not yet."

- Marilyn Manson; The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell

Saturday, May 22, 2010

William Blake, "A Divine Image"

Cruelty has a human heart
And jealousy a human face,
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

- William Blake, "A Divine Image"

Friday, May 21, 2010

A Widow For One Year by John Irving

"But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination."


- John Irving, A Widow For One Year

Thursday, May 20, 2010

e. e. cummings, "Humanity i love you"

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

- e. e. cummings, "Humanity i love you"

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

"I'm In Love" Charles Bukowski

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.

- Charles Bukowski, "I'm In Love"

Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

"Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hiding the truth. You have a God-given knack for committing a terrible sin. You have a natural gift for denial. A blessing.

If you could call it that.

All evening I clean, and I still feel dirty."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

SparkNotes, Antigone

"Unlike melodrama, tragedy is clean, restful, and flawless. In tragedy, everything is inevitable, hopeless, and known. All are bound to their parts."

- SparkNotes on Antigone

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Saul Bellow

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

- Saul Bellow,To Jerusalem and Back: A personal account

George Orwell

"Any life, when viewed from the inside, is simply a series of defeats."

- George Orwell

Monday, May 17, 2010

"Six Words" Lloyd Schwartz

yes
no
maybe
sometimes
always
never


Never?
Yes.
Always?
No.
Sometimes?
Maybe—

maybe
never
sometimes.
Yes—
no
always:

always
maybe.
No—
never
yes.
Sometimes,

sometimes
(always)
yes.
Maybe
never . . .
No,

no—
sometimes.
Never.
Always?
Maybe.
Yes—

yes no
maybe sometimes
always never.

- Lloyd Schwartz, "Six Words"