December 2011
4 posts
November 2011
11 posts
“I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where...”
– A Song in the Front Yard by Gwendolyn Brooks (from Kima via threeaddictions)
Watchvisitary:
“In Verse was developed through a series of conversations with Ted Genoways, the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, about why poetry isn’t more popular and relevant in our daily lives. The central premise of In Verse offers a possible solution: why not engage a poet as a reporter? Send him or her out on assignment and deliver the story through poetry.” - Lu Olkowski
August 2011
6 posts
“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get...”
– Woody Allen (via santosha65)
“He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of...”
– Annie Dillard
What Do Women Want?
Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old ...
You Are What You Read (And Listen To)
Personally, any day dedicated solely to reading and cooking dinner for your pops would be a good day, but I came across some engrossing, thought-stirring material that I very much want to share:
In the first segment of this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest podcast, Slate critics and writers discuss the movie The Help. It is the most thorough treatment of the movie that I’ve come across...
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
4 posts
May 2011
9 posts
It's easy to live when you're in love
Octavia Butler on flying
jonubian:
I’m learning to fly, to levitate myself. No one is teaching me. I’m just learning on my own, little by little, dream lesson by dream lesson. Not a very subtle image, but a persistent one. I’ve had many lessons, and I’m better at flying than I used to be. I trust my ability more now, but I’m still afraid. I can’t quite control my directions yet. - Parable of the Sower.
“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the...”
– John Steinbeck (via girlwithoutwings)
The Things She Taught Me
Momma never taught me how to scramble eggs or chop an onion. She never showed me the most efficient way to dice tomatoes or where the tenderest part of the pig is. She never taught me how to make bacon crispy and curly, how to clean the silver or handwash delicates. I never learned the old dances from my mama. She never taught me how to put on red lipstick so it doesn’t smear, or how to accent the...
April 2011
24 posts
Ten Most Beautiful Places in The World To Wake Up →
Check: Paris, Hong Kong, and Bali
Coming Up: Istanbul
“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you...”
– Siddhārtha Gautama (via kari-shma)
Mardi Gras Premortem
by Ann Townsend
The good times were drunk times, when your body loosened to a soft chair and you closed your eyes. Or when we’d rove bar to bar, clutching cold drinks, out onto the cobbled streets, our plastic neon go-cups shaking with ice. We jostled through a holiday crowd, mummers hurled beads at our feet, the women on the balconies lifted their shirts for a handful of coins or...
Sunday
by Timothy Liu
And when they sat down in the morning
to bowls of cold cereal, each in turn
would notice the blades of a ceiling fan
spinning at the bottom of their spoons,
small enough to swallow, yet no one
ever mentioned it, neither looking up
nor into each other’s eyes for fear
of feeding the hunger that held them there.
Why I Forgive My Younger Self Her Transgressions
by Ruth L. Schwartz
Maybe it’s the time I spend in high school classrooms with the desperate loveliness of all the young, the girls especially, their damp, curled morning hair, lips glossy and dark as rained on plums. I remember, at that age, dressing to be visible, penciling my eyes dark as a mockingbird’s. Everything was black, my nails, the velvet choker looped around my...
Motive
by Reginald Shepherd
I’m a penny from heaven’s corner pocket, anybody’s overcoat, pick me up and I’ll bring you all kinds of luck. I’m a fence burning down, love locked in a box, I’m a map of hand me down tomorrows, the last but one, or anywhere you never wanted to go, but now. I’m a clock without a face I’m blind like time, so lead me on: wear me...
you are sucha fool
by Ntozake Shange
you are sucha fool/ i haveta love you you decide to give me a poem/ intent on it/ actually you pull/ kiss me from 125th to 72nd street/ on the east side/ no less you are sucha fool/ you gonna give me/ the poet/ the poem insistin on proletarian images/ we buy okra/ 3 lbs for $1/ & a pair of 98 cent shoes we kiss we wrestle you make sure at east 110 street/ we have cognac no...
Bay Poem From Berkeley
by Sandra Cisneros
Mornings I still reach for you before opening my eyes. An antique habit from last summer when we pulled each other into the heat of groin and belly, slept with an arm around the other. The Texas sun was like that. Like a body asleep beside you.
But when I open my eyes to the flannel and down, mist at the window and blue light from the bay, I remember where i am. This weight...
