July

Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees

of summer—
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace

where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand. 

Linda Pastan

Those who fear the border
do not know they are walking on the sea. 




Luis Benitez, from The Pearl Fisherman 

until they forget

by Richard Siken

For Grace, After a Party by Frank O'Hara

Meditations in an Emergency, 1957

prufrock

I grow old... I grow old... 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 


Shall  part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 


I do not think they will sing to me. 


I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 


We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. 

T.S. Eliot (from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

to the harbormaster

I wanted to be sure to reach you; 

though my ship was on the way it got caught 

in some moorings. I am always tying up 

and then deciding to depart. In storms and 

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide 

around my fathomless arms, I am unable 

to understand the forms of my vanity 

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder 

in my hand and the sun sinking. To 

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage 

of my will. The terrible channels where 

the wind drives me against the brown lips 

of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet 

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and 

if it sinks, it may well be in answer 

to the reasoning of the eternal voices, 

the waves which have kept me from reaching you. 

To the Harbormaster by Frank O'Hara

monday links (unspoken truths, last christmas, naming novels)

Only a few days to go till Christmas. Today I traipsed down to a Christmas market to get some aniseed and finger all the handmade decorations. It was crowded but calm and cheerful and oh goodness I love this time of year, despite the dark and the wet and the still-no-snow.

On with the links, not all of which are Christmas-y, I swear.

The late, great Christopher Hitchens on illness and voice. 

For those of you who need a pick-me-up for the final days of hurry and worry, and really don't feel like listening to Christmas songs anymore, something entirely different. For those of you who adore slightly corny Christmas songs, here's Florence Welch singing Last Christmas.

Why Finnish is cooler than English. Why, thank you. 

Olivia Cole on Frank O'Hara's glorious love poem To the Harbormaster. And writer Shalom Auslander on naming novels.

comfort poems (in sickness and in health)

I'm suffering of a clogged nose, a raspy throat and a hacking cough. And an undue amount of worrying over everything I should have done and should be doing. So here I am, sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose all at the same time, and reading poetry.

Here's one by Laura Kasischke, called Love Poem.

The water glass. The rain. The scale

waiting for the weight. The car.

The key. The rag. The dust. Once 

I was a much younger woman

in a hallway, and I saw you: 

I said to myself

Here he comes.

My future's husband. 

And even before that. I was the pink

throbbing of the swim bladder

inside a fish in the River Styx. I was

the needle's eye. I was the air

around the wing of a fly, and you 

had no idea you were even alive. 

(found here)

monday links (christmas gifts, poetry, darkrooms, nostalgia)

Another Monday, another set of links. And what a cavalcade!

Things You're Left With After a Break Up by Ryan O'Connell of Thought Catalog. 

(He is somewhat brilliant, incidentally.) 

Some glamour for your Monday: Vanity Fair on the Barbizon Hotel's absurd history, including anecdotes about Grace Kelly, Joan Crawford and Sylvia Plath.

There's also Avi Steinberg's piece on airline safety cards. (The Pan Am safety card told passengers, in emergency landings, to "loosen your tie... but keep all your clothes on." Oh, the 60's.)

The 45 most powerful photographs of 2011. 

The latest from the dangerously spectacular and eerily insightful Sarah Kay.

The Guardian's gift guide this Christmas is stellar, with gift ideas for fans of Downton Abbey or the royal wedding, or gifts for anyone who wants to be more like Ryan Gosling. 

And finally, Ryan McGinley's photographs are beautiful and awe-inspiring and extremely very not safe for work.

great places

Congratulations!

Today is your day. 

You're off to Great Places! 

You're off and away! 

You have brains in your head. 

You have feet in your shoes. 

You can steer yourself 

any direction you choose. 

You're on your own. And you know what you know. 

And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go. 

Dr. Seuss: Oh, the Places You'll Go!

good night

(This was supposed to be a post with links in. 

But what do you know, I haven't found much to link to this past week. 

So have a gut-punching, spine-tingling, mercurial poem instead.)

I wanted to write "stay" 

on your sides, surround 

your bed with oceans 

of salt. 

I hope he folds you 

into a fox, loves you 

like a splintered arrow, 

brandishes the kill 

of your lips. 

May the bouquet 

of your hips wither. 

May the wolves 

forget your name. 

J. Bradley

monday links (street musicians, tears, line breaks, hogwarts)

I must say, my finds this week are spectacular. Honestly though. I'm so excited about all of these.

(Also: I'm on a huge book binge right now, after a self-imposed dry spell due to all that studying. Currently I'm halfway through Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and accompanying that with Vladimir Nabokov's lectures on the novel. Also on my bedside table are Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety and Chuck Palahniuk's Choke. I'm also rereading Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne because they are undoubtedly the greatest love letters ever written. )



And after this geeky display, on we go with the links.


Julie Lansom's photography is simply stunning.

The upcoming documentary about the  making of the final Harry Potter films seems set to make us all cry. 

An amazing article about a street musician, expanding into a meditation of what art really means these days and how it should be presented.

Weekend, a new film by Andrew Haigh.

(This. Just. You know?)

Sometimes a poem comes along that makes me physically ill, the words hitting my lungs like punches. 

So read this. At least for the truly excellent demonstration of a line break, 

so good it would make the most solid prosaist cry and dig out their hidden lyrical endeavours for a review. 

James Franco on Gus Van Sant, youth and death.

monday links (adventures, reading in the loo, long distance love)

I'm kicking off my stress-free November with things that make me happy. Like putting up fairy lights and trawling the internet for essays and poetry, truths and stories. Here is a selection of my favourites.


Adventures in Depression by Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half.

Damien Rice covering I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Amazingly good.

For all book-lovers out there, a tongue-in-cheek article on whether reading on the loo is bad for you.

You know how well-written essays reduce me into a flailing mess of admiration and happiness? 

Well, here's one: Will Self wrote a stunning, heartbreaking essay on illness, addiction and mortality.  

Another thing I can't get enough of is spoken word poetry. Sarah Kay on long distance relationships.

And finally, when I was born, I was the 5,524,617,285th person alive. And the 80,727,002,777th person ever to have lived. What about you?

monday links (poems, essays, soundtracks, magic)

Spoken word poetry: Taylor Mali on What Teachers Make. (This made me cry, shoo, off you go, watch it.) 

I recently stumbled upon an online quarterly called The Junket, defined by one of its contributors as 'a forum in which we can nudge each other into writing'. More than just that, it's a collection of well-crafted and often exquisitely beautiful essays. I especially recommend Picking the Lock by Susanna Hislop, about passwords, locks and memory, among other things. Or maybe On Knowing the Words, where Thomas Marks speaks about learning poems by heart. 

I'm also completely smitten by Downton Abbey. Not only is it the perfect period drama (involving the First World War, romance, exquisite costumes and clashes between social classes - what's not to love?), the soundtrack is perfect too, especially for cold October days like this. The sound of sloping lawns and tea. 

And last but never least, Marco Tempest's TED talk on The magic of truth and lies (and iPods).
Pure magic - truly.

happy saturday

(Reading Auden

[you shall love your crooked neighbour / with your crooked heart]

and listening to this song and writing this infernal personal statement.

Thank goodness I have no school next week. 

If I'm lucky I'll catch the coattails of an Indian summer.)

kisses are a better fate than wisdom

e.e. cummings

not even the rain

 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

(The final stanza of somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by e.e.cummings.)

(Painting by the wildly talented Casey O'Connell.)


(Apologies for the sappiness and romance. It's a sublime August and I'm not making much sense at all.)

on love #3

 

(Sometimes I need poetry. Need it with a heart-shaking fist-clenching urgency, buckets of words poured in through the eyes, they settle deep in the throat and wander to the safety of my ribcage and burn on a low flame, or run down my spine like drops of mercury.)

on poetry

A few weeks back someone asked me why poetry matters, why I seem to think that we all should read poetry, what is it poetry can give us that the everyday cannot. 

My answer rambled onwards without making much of an impression. And now I only wish I'd had Ben Okri to back me up.

 
"Heaven knows we need poetry now more than ever. We need the awkward truth of poetry. We need its indirect insistence on the magic of listening.

In a world of contending guns, the argument of bombs, and the madness of believing that only our side, our religion, our politics is right, a world fatally inclined towards war ‒ we need the voice that speaks to the highest in us.  

We need the voice that speaks to our joys, our childhoods, and to the Gordian knots of our private and national condition. A voice that speaks to our doubts, our fears, and to all the unsuspected dimensions that make us both human and beings touched by the whisperings of the stars."

Ben Okri: Poetry and Life (from his collection of essays, entitled A Time for New Dreams)

too far

(Excerpt from a poem by e.e. cummings.)