December 2010
3 tags
“I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse...”
– J.K. Rowling (via intellectualexhibitionism)
1 tag
backmasking
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the instinctive tendency to see someone as you knew them in their youth, a burned-in image of grass-stained knees, graffitied backpacks or handfuls of birthday cake superimposed on an adult with a degree, an illusion formed when someone opens the door to your emotional darkroom while the memory is still developing.
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“I have spent many years trying to recover a common language, one that can cross...”
– Robert Bly (via theparisreview)
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“So then I knew our time together was brief, but I was foolish enough to think he...”
– Her Ribbon
I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time.
(via nightmarebrunette)
1 tag
My limbs murmuring for black coffee.
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“When you write, you always want to capture the cruel radiance of what is.”
– Walker Evans (via perfectioinspiritu, aperfectcommotion, awritersruminations, allthenight-tide & libraryland) (via crashinglybeautiful)
4 tags
“Sleep, to whom Keats partly owes his “worthy rhymes,” has long been kin to...”
– Poetry Daily Prose Feature: Fragments of a Broken Poetics, by Jennifer Moxley (via writeaction)
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“My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only...”
– Karen Russell, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
(via estrellasenelmar)
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“Or, as Julia Lupton suggested, negative anthropology could be an account of...”
– Aaron Kunin, “Banish the World” (via unburyingthelead)
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Calexico/Iron and Wine: Always On My Mind (orig....
brentkeane asked: Congratulations on getting your short pieces published, Kathleen - and may I just say, I've enjoyed your own material over the last year or so. It's been a rough year for me emotionally, and I've found your poetry & prose to be a comfort. I'm glad to have found your Tumblr, and please keep showing us, your audience, what you have to offer; never *ever* doubt you are,...
“When you write, you always want to capture the cruel radiance of what is.”
– Walker Evans(via perfectioinspiritu, aperfectcommotion, awritersruminations, allthenight-tide & libraryland) (via crashinglybeautiful)
4 tags
“Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where...”
– Chris Hedges 2011: A Brave New Dystopia (via vruz)
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“The first responsibility of a human being is to be a better ancestor.”
– Cory Doctorow, from Content (ebook available)
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“But occasionally, when it’s quiet and I am alone, I feel a twinge, a yearning. I...”
– S.W. in Michigan, from The Sun October 2010 (via nightmarebrunette)
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The Problem, Richard Siken
The problem (if there was one) was simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, and the problem is why. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after the other, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Be the tree, solve for bird. What does that mean? It’s a problem of focus, it’s a problem of...
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I’ve had two pieces of micro-fiction published for Vibewire’s December Love anthology. Friends Who Were Lovers and A Stray Kiss. You may have read A Stray Kiss on my Tumblr previously - the tone of the piece has changed because I had to edit out the word “fuck”. The publication has strict publishing rules for their youth audience. I don’t mind compromising - the...
2 tags
Wave, Joanna Goodman
Tell the truth: no key appeared in your mouth, no sound like mum, which wouldn’t help anyway. Give me a word to get through the night. Something spontaneous, fluid: see the hand’s unintended imprint on the shore,
fireworks dissolving into the black sky—
Try now. Ripple. Yes. Put the two of us in a boat on the gray river; keep rowing in a circle while on the hazy banks clumps of grass swarm...
“I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the...”
– Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall 1928 (via oxfordhotties) (via tobia)
3 tags
“I didn’t think of Iraqis as humans.”
– Steven Green, a former 101st Airborne soldier, in his first interview since the 2006 killings. Green is serving five life terms for raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her parents and sister. (via thenoobyorker) (via susurrus)
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Across a Great Wilderness Without You, Keetje...
The deer come out in the evening. God bless them for not judging me, I’m drunk. I stand on the porch in my bathrobe and make strange noises at them— language, if language can be a kind of crying. The tin cans scattered in the meadow glow, each bullet hole suffused with moon, like the platinum thread beyond them where the river runs the length of the valley. That’s where the fish are. Tomorrow I’ll...
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“During these past weeks, rather than a nerd takeover, I saw the crumbling of the...”
– Zeynep Tufekci (via azspot)
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“Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas (stuff)...”
– William Rivers Pitt
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The Spirit of Giving
claytoncubitt:
iPod-to-watch conversion Kickstarter project asks for $15,000, receives $950,000, an amount which could have kept this low-income health clinic operating in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward for another 15 months. Instead, it will close on December 31.
Enjoy your iPod watches, though.
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“Therefore, he added,
we must prepare carefully,
out of the spotlight.”
– HaïkuLeaks / Cable is poetry (via writeaction)
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“The forum would be
shaped with the broader picture
in mind, not just oil.”
– HaïkuLeaks / Cable is poetry (via writeaction)
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“The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think...”
– Banksy (via therecipe) (via i-am-the-lighthouse)
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A Dream of Burial, James Wright
Nothing was left of me But my right foot And my left shoulder. They lay white as the skein of a spider floating In a field of snow toward a dark building Tilted and strained by wind. Inside the dream, I dreamed on. A parade of old women Sang softly above me, Faint mosquitoes near still water. So I waited, in my corridor. I listened for the sea To call me. I knew that, somewhere outside, the...
2 tags
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”
– Bertolt Brecht (via claytoncubitt)
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”
– Bertolt Brecht (via claytoncubitt)
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Cradling a bag of cherries like they’re diamonds. You blood thief, licking red evidence off your teeth.
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The weight of your love, the weight of your body; I have no means of escape. Fold my limbs into a white paper boat, a paper plane. Fold me into a fugitive.
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Watchcammackellar:
Oxfam’s amazing Refugee Realities project includes the track 353(one day to be free).
Refugee Realities is a project designed to educate the Australian public about the rights of people affected by crisis and conflict, and the experiences of refugees around the world. The project aims to creatively engage and inspire active citizens and communities on issues of refugee...
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To, Franz Wright
Before you were I loved you and when you were born and when you took your first step Although I did not know good luck I want to say lone penguin keep sturdily waddling in the direction of those frozen mountains sister of desolate sanctity I want to scream Although I did not know you I loved you later on as just a weedy thing a little skeleton I loved Both long pre-you a child myself and as a man...
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A Dream of Burial, James Wright
Nothing was left of me But my right foot And my left shoulder. They lay white as the skein of a spider floating In a field of snow toward a dark building Tilted and strained by wind. Inside the dream, I dreamed on. A parade of old women Sang softly above me, Faint mosquitoes near still water. So I waited, in my corridor. I listened for the sea To call me. I knew that, somewhere outside, the...
4 tags
To Plath, to Sexton, Jean Valentine
So what use was poetry to a white empty house?
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James Wright: in Memory, Jean Valentine
Look back at me from his death, from the feminine side, he asks me to touch him on his throat, his breastbone, to touch the spots that have the life in them. His voice is closer to me than I am to myself. Unknowable, beginning in joy, his voice is closer to me than I am to myself.
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“Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.”
– Germaine Greer
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Slow Dance, Matthew Dickman
More than putting another man on the moon, more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga, we need the opportunity to dance with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance between the couch and dining room table, at the end of the party, while the person we love has gone to bring the car around because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart if any part of us got wet. A slow dance to...