Amazing.

What has been slowing me down with this blog post business, is that I am trying to write a review of my first read and (consequently) favorite book of the new year. It has been a long time coming, so I decided to give you a little sneak peek. Here is a quote from David Nicholls' marvelous novel, One Day:

"Above the bed is a semi-ironic mirror, and they stare up at it through heavy eyelids, admiring themselves as they sprawl beneath, heads resting in laps, hands searching around for other hands, listening to the music, young and smart, attractive and successful, in the know and not in their right minds, all of them thinking how great they look and what good friends they're going to be from now on. There will be picnics on the Heath, and long lazy Sundays in the pub, and Dexter is enjoying himself once more. 'I think you're amazing,' someone says to someone else, but it doesn't matter who, because they're all amazing really. People are amazing."

Gap's Ad with the cast of Spring Awakening

Riddle Me This #8

Sorry for my lack of posting lately! No explanation. No, I wasn't off jet setting in some fabulous place; I was lazy.

But here you go! Riddle Number 8. Good luck!

I am addictive
I am blue
I am a film
Everyone hates me when I am new.
You'd be a nobody without me.
I'd be nothing without you.
Who am I?

Leave your guess in the comments!

We are all in the gutter...

If you know me well, you know it is no secret that I am in unrequited love with Oscar Wilde. Unrequited because:
1. He is dead.
2. He is dyed in the wool gay. (All the best ones, ladies)

Anyhoo, I thought I would post some of my favorite Oscar Wilde Quotes for us all to ponder and enjoy.

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much"

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." 

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

 

"I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly."

 "I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or poorly written, 

that is all." 

 

Image from Shoe String Artists

 "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"

Riddle Me This #7 Answered

I posted this one last Saturday and now 'tis time for the answer! Even though one Gabe Mustin already guessed it! Curses. I'll get you next time.

But here is Riddle #7 one more time:

I am used for leaving
Overnight
A Long Weekend
Permanently
If small, I am overhead
If heavy, I am below
I am necessary only when you need me
Sit on me if I grow
Who am I?

Image courtesy of truemarmalade

A Suitcase.

When she brings her melancholy close to me...

SELF-PORTRAIT

BY CHASE TWICHELL

I know I promised to stop

talking about her,

but I was talking to myself.

The truth is, she’s a child

who stopped growing,

so I’ve always allowed her

to tag along, and when she brings

her melancholy close to me

I comfort her. Naturally

you’re curious; you want to know

how she became a gnarled branch

veiled in diminutive blooms.

But I’ve told you all I know.

I was sure she had secrets,

but she had no secrets.

I had to tell her mine.

 

 
Chase Twichell, "Self Portrait" from Dog Language (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). www.coppercanyonpress.org

Riddle Me This #7

This is my first Riddle written for the new blog and my first in months [I repeat, months] which should explain it's crappiness. Here goes nothing and leave your guess in the comments : )

RIDDLE 7

I am used for leaving
Overnight
A Long Weekend
Permanently
If small, I am overhead
If heavy, I am below
I am necessary only when you need me
Sit on me if I grow.
Who am I?

Hmmmm, any guesses from my three faithful followers? ;)

I have not been as others were

"ALONE"

EDGAR ALLAN POE

 

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

 

Alone by Buaiansayapanomali

 

There is something so intriguing about the poetry of Poe, don't you agree? 

So much mystery surrounding his tortured mind.

I am thy fool in the morning

THE PARADOX

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

 

I am the mother of sorrows,

   I am the ender of grief;

I am the bud and the blossom,

   I am the late-falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet,

   I am thy serf and thy king;

I cure the tears of the heartsick,

   When I come near they shall sing.

White are my hands as the snowdrop;

   Swart are my fingers as clay;

Dark is my frown as the midnight,

   Fair is my brow as the day.

Battle and war are my minions,

   Doing my will as divine;

I am the calmer of passions,

   Peace is a nursling of mine.

Speak to me gently or curse me,

   Seek me or fly from my sight;

I am thy fool in the morning,

   Thou art my slave in the night.

Down to the grave will I take thee,

   Out from the noise of the strife;

Then shalt thou see me and know me—

   Death, then, no longer, but life.

Then shalt thou sing at my coming,

   Kiss me with passionate breath,

Clasp me and smile to have thought me

   Aught save the foeman of Death.

Come to me, brother, when weary,

   Come when thy lonely heart swells;

I’ll guide thy footsteps and lead thee

   Down where the Dream Woman dwells.

 

Image by Anti-conformity

 

The Captain's Verses

I went to Borders in search of the greatest works of Lorca and their one copy had been bought.  Here's the deal: when you are in the mood for bilingual poetry books by Hispanic poets, you are in the mood. There is no denying it, no ordering offline or coming back later. No. Quiero poemas. Ahora. Then mis ojos saw this...

I am one of those people that judges books by their covers and this is a beautiful one. Doesn't it just beg to be picked up? Why the lines? Why the font and the color blue? Why such a modern cover for the words of a poet from the earlier half of the twentieth century? And then, unable to not be the owner of such a work of art, I bought it. Now I am the owner of the art on the outside and the art on the inside. Success!

IF YOU FORGET ME

PABLO NERUDA

I want you to know one thing:
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch near the fire
the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, lights, metals,
were little boats that sail
towards those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly you forget me
do not look for me
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you  think it long and mad,
the wind of banners that passes through my life,
and you decide to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember that on that day, at that hour,
I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.

But if each day, each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Of The Thing Sung

THESE POEMS, SHE SAID
BY ROBERT BRINGHURST

These poems, these poems,
these poems, she said, are poems
with no love in them. These are the poems of a man
who would leave his wife and child because
they made noise in his study. These are the poems 
of a man who would murder his mother to claim
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not
comprehend but which nevertheless
offended me. These are the poems of a man
who would rather sleep with himself than with women,
she said. These are the poems of a man
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket's
hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant
as elm leaves, which if they love love only
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,
not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung,  not of the song or the singing.
These poems, she said...
                                         You are, he said,
beautiful.
                That is not love, she said, rightly.

Cuban Cigars and Russian Czars

"I can only respond as an artist, because that's what I am"

- Nilo Cruz

The 2003 Pulitzer Prize Winner: Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz

I am in this wonderful Theatre class where we analyze the shooty out of a play every week, and I made the mistake of thinking, "I will do [Anna] because I read it over the summer, and then I can blog about it, because I will already have some coherent thoughts!!!!"

Yeah. Now I don't really want to talk about it anymore, but I will muster every ounce of literary UMPH in me to write this and make it sound nice. Ready for this?

~---~

The play takes place in the summer of 1929 in a small, family run cigar factory on the coast of Florida. In those times, factory owners would hire men, or lectores, to educate and entertain the workers by reading them works of classic literature. The new lector, Juan Julian, decides to read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy in the scorching summer heat. The characters are inspired and moved by Anna, her lover Vronsky, and the devotion of Levin to Kitty. Their lives begin to echo Tolstoy's as they struggle to understand love in its many forms.

Photo Courtesy of Capitalrep.org

First things first, Anna is a lovely play. It is just exquisite. The plot, tone, characters and dialogue are solid. (Obviously you cannot win a Pulitzer Prize without a pretty tight little play) It is just a good read... or so I thought.

Mr. Cruz was clearly not satisfied with a tight little play. For my script analysis I started reading interviews with the Cruz, and in them he discusses the major theme of the play that I somehow completely missed. I understand the importance of culture and heritage for the Cuban immigrants, the helplessness they feel as Industrialism and the rise of machines steal a way of life and tradition from the lectores, and the delicate balance of power for a family in a business environment.

What I somehow missed, is the very concept that takes this play from a good read to a provocative Pulitzer Prize winner. It lies within Palomo; the forty-something husband of the daughter of the factory owner. In Anna in the Tropics it is Palomo who undergoes the most prominent change. He imposes his physical and emotional will over his wife, Conchita and takes a mistress to prove his masculinity. In reality, he is complete only when he surrenders to Conchita and asks her to show him what it means to love without his masculine identity. It is a play about finding yourself and your spouse through another's body and another's words, and ultimately the depth of physical and emotional understanding it brings.

Nilo Cruz, by Jennifer Reiley

"I find that writing is all about going into this female landscape: it’s about surrendering and letting the story take its own form and not manipulating it. Male sexuality is often a form of manipulation instead of a dance, but sexuality should be a dance, I think, between two people. This play allows for that dance."

- Nilo Cruz to Emily Mann from BOMB Magazine
October 8, 2003

The language is beautiful, the blend of Russia and Cuba is seamless, and the characters emerge through clouds of smoke to create the most complete image of love I have encountered in a play.

Read It...
Por Favor

Tell me,

THE SUMMER DAY
BY MARY OLIVER

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing
around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she
snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have
been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't 
everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? 

Elegance

SETSUKO: True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time

Ozu's The Munekata Sisters

 Photo courtesy of Tatielle

The City of Light

SOMEWHERE TO PARIS 

BY RICHARD BLANCO

by Alphonse Liébert

The sole cause of a man's unhappiness
is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
PASCAL, Pensées

The vias of Italy turn to memory with each turn

and clack of the train’s wheels, with every stitch

of track we leave behind, the duomos return again

to my imagination, already imagining Paris—

a fantasy of lights and marble that may end

when the train stops at Gare de l’Est and I step

into the daylight. In this space between cities,

between the dreamed and the dreaming, there is

no map—no legend, no ancient street names

or arrows to follow, no red dot assuring me:

you are here—and no place else. If I don’t know

where I am, then I am only these heartbeats,

my breaths, the mountains rising and falling

like a wave scrolling across the train’s window.

I am alone with the moon on its path, staring

like a blank page, shear and white as the snow

on the peaks echoing back its light. I am this

solitude, never more beautiful, the arc of space

I travel through for a few hours, touching

nothing and keeping nothing, with nothing

to deny the night, the dark pines pointing

to the stars, this life, always moving and still.

From Directions to the Beach of the Dead. Copyright © 2005 by Richard Blanco. Published by The University of Arizona Press.

Elegance

"Within the safety of my own mind, 

There is no challenge I cannot accept.

I may be indigent in name, position, and appearance,

But in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess."

Might I suggest writing this on a post-it and placing it on your bathroom mirror? : )

E.D.

Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied
By: EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

I am a part of all that I have met,
~ Anna

Elegance

"When we do something involuntarily,

This is the most visible sign of our conscious will;

For our will, when opposed by emotion,

Makes use all of its wiles to attain its ends."

Picture courtesy of Sherri Dupree Bemis Eisley

They are the elect...

Happy New YEAR!!!!!! This is my first post of the New Year, and it's only fitting that I give the presumed honor to a man who found himself in a gutter, but looking at the stars.

The whole of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a beautiful quote in and of itself, and that is just not conducive to a blog post. I present in its stead,

THE PREFACE

 

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim...

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all...
The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies... No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language of to the artist instruments of art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art...
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors...
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE.