Albert Bierstadt - Cloudy Study, Moonlight (ca. 1860)
the shroud of moon lit sky
abides with darkness laying aside
the chaotic past with festive harvest
Start your Mother’s Day celebrations early with a tasty cocktail based on Mardi Jo Link’s upcoming memoir, BOOTSTRAPPER.
For more of this morning’s roundup, click here.
my object in living is to unite
my avocation and my vocation
as my eyes make one in sight
- Frost, Two tramps in Mud Time
The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become.—Wallace Stevens, opening lines to “The Sun This March” from The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and Play (Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)
Musing about the sun that moves across the office
while sweat dries from the early ride—
a chatter of voices from the hall,
yesterday’s work imports a dense reminder
of all that is undone by the mind
reporting the need to muse where it went.
Happy Earth Day y’all. Here’s Wendell Berry reading “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” for our podcast production of “The Poetry of Creatures.” Share and reblog with your friends!
I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.
Literary Birthday - 23 April
William Shakespeare, born 23 April 1564, died 23 April 1616
10 Famous William Shakespeare Quotes
- To be, or not to be: that is the question.
- Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
- Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.
- If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- ‘Tis better to be brief than tedious.
- If music be the food of love, play on.
- Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.
- Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better.
- The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright. He wrote more than 30 plays, which are usually divided into four categories: histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances. His best known works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Antony and Cleopatra. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and is known as ‘Bard of Avon’. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write
(via amandaonwriting:)
“Sweet are the uses of adversity”
Literary Birthday - 15 April
Henry James, born 15 April 1843, died 28 February 1916
13 Henry James Quotes
- Life is a predicament which precedes death.
- Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
- Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.
- We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
- I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
- The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
- Ideas are, in truth, force.
- There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
- I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
- It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
- In art economy is always beauty.
- I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.
- Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
James was an American-born writer who became one of his generation’s most well-known writers for works like The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw. James’ imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue, and unreliable narrators in his own novels brought a depth and interest to realistic fiction. Having lived in England for 40 years, James became a British subject in 1915, the year before his death.
by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write
(via amandaonwriting:)
Certainly thoughts worth musing
Christian Wiman on the Anxiety of Interpretation and the Sanity of a Strange, Ancient Thing
a few quotes from C Wiman’s new book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
