The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
(via batenjann)
Source: thegreatearth
RAG SMELL. FIRE
RAG SMELL. FIRE smell. Bed blacked. Bowl. The quiet come from living done. Shadow built the walls, holed and cribbed with light. Vine felt cracks and fingered in. Were sky inside and what the wind-holes left, a wind. Ay walk the last. What were floor heaves rock and root. Flame-eaten walls, rubs of wood, scraps the burn left lickednow licked with dirt.
Joan Houlihan
via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345
I frequently get asked by my students what I think the difference is between literary fiction and popular fiction. And I think the difference is this. Literary fiction is character driven—the plot that evolves in the book is driven by the characters who have been created by the author, and what they do and what happens to them is often as much a surprise to the author as it is to the reader. Popular fiction, on the other hand, is plot-driven, meaning that the plot drives the story and the characters are simply doing the job assigned to them by the author in order to get the plot accomplished.
City Lights Booksellers and Publishers (for any of you ignorant swine who don’t know what this joint is)
This is how I am summoned from nothingness:
in faded cut offs, moonlighting at Connie’s Bakerywhere I keep reading Rilke to Jenny, the pastry chef,
who rolls her eyes, & blows flour into my tired face.
Rick Hilles, from “Larry Levis in Provincetown”
via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick
If the world of written science fiction were ever to be translated into the language of visual art, Philip K. Dick would probably be Salvador Dali. His vision does not depend on Picassoesque transformations of the familiar into the grotesque so much as a jumbling of the familiar into sometimes deeply disturbing new combinations, whose disturbing aspect is not attenuated but rather accentuated by their very familiarity. This is the kind of landscape where heads sprout like mushrooms from blank desert sands or weird alien faces stare at each other nose-to-nose with an ethereal ballet dancer formed by the gaps between them. Nothing is what it seems. Nothing is real. Everything is real. http://www.sfsite.com/07a/pe155.htm
Source: allegorys
Ten Recent Books of Poetry You Should Read Right Now
Of late there’s been a strong sense in the national poetry community, and not entirely without warrant, that those with the largest megaphones for their opinions — including certain writers for The Huffington Post — have more commonly used their pulpit to bully contemporary poetry and poets than to effectively promote either one. There have been, from this media outlet as well as others,wild claims regarding the demise of poetry in America, each more haughty, vitriolic, and (dare we say) desperate than the last. Don’t believe it; the poetry scene in America is the largest, most diverse, and most vibrant it has ever been, and it’s time for poetry-lovers associated with online media to strike a solid blow against the seedy, nigh-incoherent malcontentism of certain contemporary poetry critics. The robust state of poetry in America is evidenced, in part, by this non-exhaustive, unranked list of superlative books from the past 15 years, all of which are must-reads for those looking to push back against the gloom-and-doom of poetry’s ambient naysayers:
1. The Disastrous Tale of Vera & Linus (2006), Jesse Ball and Thordis Bjornsdottir
2. Push the Mule (2001), John Godfrey
3. 100 Notes on Violence (2009), Julie Carr
4. The Little Red Door Slides Back (1996), Jeff Clark
5. The Last 4 Things (2009), Kate Greenstreet
6. The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (2010), Jennifer L. Knox
7. War Music (1997), Christopher Logue
8. Up Jump the Boogie (2010), John Murillo
9. Mule (2011), Shane McCrae
10. Poems 1959-2009 (2009), Frederick Seidel
