eat the meatball

From XKCD

2009-10-24T17:26:28Z

William Blake

2009-10-22T23:20:39Z

For you illustrators & artists:

"I curse and bless Engraving alternately because it takes so much time and is so untractable, though capable of such beauty and perfection."

William Blake

For those of you in New York, the Morgan has a terrific William Blake exhibit.
For those of you not in New York, how about the terrific online exhibit?

Of Mud and Tubs, or Two Stories

2009-07-28T01:23:26Z

"Beneath the flowers, the mud world rises, seeping from below. An extra twist in the way my thoughts turn."

From "Sympathy Bouquet" by my friend Justin Howe(justinhowe) available for download at Ruthless Peoples Magazine.

"All I want is the other half of my brain back, the half that's sealed up in this plastic tub. A blank spot in my cognition, like a severed limb, an absent spouse."

From "Starlings" by my friend Michael J. DeLuca(boonofdoom) available to read at Abyss & Apex.

Okay, they're really about more than mud and tubs.
You'll see. Go check 'em out for yourself. They're well worth your time.

Douglas Sirk on Thinking of the Heart

2009-07-21T15:28:42Z

"There's a thinking of the heart, too. At the same time as you can be an intellectual; you can be very sophisticated. I think the great artists, especially in literature, have always thought with the heart."

--Douglas Sirk, filmmaker, in an interview with Peter Lehman 1980, courtesy of senses of cinema

Easy to say, harder to do.
Recently watched All That Heaven Allows--lovely film although certainly sentimental in ways, and a bit of a melodramatic bodice-ripper--but that was one of the styles in which Sirk worked. The sentimentality is cut by any promise of happiness coming at a cost.
And his interview was fascinating. Fascinating man, fascinating filmmaker.

Shimmer Shimmer Shimmer & Shimmering Clouds

2009-07-21T14:58:28Z

I've mentioned it elsewhere and many of you already know, but I sold my story "No Place Like Home, or Building the Yellow Brick Road" to Shimmer a few months ago. I'm thrilled about the sale. Not only do I love Shimmer, but it's the perfect home for this particular story.
The story originated out of a Codex sound prompt and contest, and was the first non-flash story I wrote after Odyssey.

I was on the road (playing Elmire in Tartuffe) and so sent the contracts in from out and about.
Marvelous to return home, for many reasons, among them a lovely note from Shimmer's Editor-in-Chief Beth Wodzinski, accompanying my copy of the signed contracts.

Also, courtesy of Elizabeth Hand and theinferior4 some fascinating? beautiful? worrisome? shimmering clouds, as reported by Wired.

Books, Breasts, and Team Dragon

2009-06-23T03:21:28Z

James Maxey, author of the terrific Dragon Age fantasy series Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed, is giving away signed copies of Dragonseed to the first 50 folks who contribute to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation. Clicking here will take you to his personal fundraising page, and you can find more info at his blog.

Great cause, great series, and you get to be part of Team Dragon.

Frank Chimero Poster

2009-05-03T19:08:42Z

Many other cool posters, and more info about Frank Chimero here.
I have some memory of having seen this posted elsewhere too--forgive me for not recalling--but at least I must give credit to my ever-more-current-than-I-am-friend-but-who-is-wonderfully-luckily-kind-to-me-nonetheless Mike Arauz.

For all you artists--Katherine Anne Porter Quote

2009-05-01T18:14:37Z

"In the face of such shape and weight of present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and societies, even the very civilizations that produced them. (The arts) cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. And even the smallest and most incomplete offering at this time can be a proud act in defense of that faith."

Katherine Anne Porter

courtesy of my amazing friend Michiko, who found it via NPR

Ursula Le Guin & Alan Lightman reading

2009-04-28T15:17:30Z

I woke up yesterday to a pleasant surprise--an email in my inbox informing me I'd won two free tickets to the Ursula K. Le Guin and Alan Lightman reading at the 92nd St Y! Luckily the_slow_train could join me, help me take advantage of the unexpected bounty, and it was a great night.

Mr. Lightman read excerpts from his current WIP and also Einstein's Dreams. Ms. Le Guin read a poem, and excerpts from Lavinia.
The readings were terrific and in the Q&A afterwards, both authors were funny and articulate.

"First to create difference -- to establish strangeness -- then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as almost no other." Ursula K. Le Guin
"It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope." Ursula K. Le Guin
"Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case." Alan LIghtman, Einstein's Dream

April is the cruelest month...but cruel ain't always so bad

2009-04-13T01:07:55Z

oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself
how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as
god's own ribs

An excerpt from my favorite new poem I've discovered so far this April:

corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell

And speaking of cruelty and favorite things I've run across recently...in case you missed it, check out

tinaconnolly 's terrific, fresh, dark & vivid story Turning the Apples at Strange Horizons.

Stormchaser, Stormshaper

2009-04-09T15:41:36Z

If you want to read a terrific, beautifully written story today, check out Erin Hoffman's Stormchaser, Stormshaper at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Meet Me in St. Louis

2009-01-15T01:18:34Z

Although that's the city, rather than the show.

Yep, out and about.
In St. Louis for a production of Miracle Worker, playing Helen Keller's mother, Kate Adams Keller.
Profoundly inspiring story and it's been fascinating to reacquaint myself with the historical facts of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan's life. Absolutely extraordinary individuals.

To date, what's most caught my imagination is how deeply intimate her relationship to language was.
Of course, more radically than for most, language was her entry to the world.

For all you writers out there, two quotes from Helen Keller's first book (she wrote four!), The Story of My Life. Fascinating read, by the way.
Here, Helen's trying to explain how an early unintentional plagiarism came about,("The Frost King" incident.) She was only 11 at the time (!), but horrified when she found out. Unintentional plagiarism aside...
I think what she says here speaks beautifully to the glorious problem of writing:

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read become the very substance and texture of my mind...It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to acknowledge defeat.

In the second, Annie Sullivan (in a letter) describes one of their lessons. Again, Helen was only 11 at the time.
Clearly, Annie was not a materialist, you philosophers. But still. I think you writers will appreciate what Helen said:

At another time she asked, "What is the soul?"
"No one knows what the soul is like,"I replied; "but we know that it is not the body, and it is that part of us which thinks and loves and hopes..."
I explained to her that the soul, too, is invisible...
"But if I write what my soul thinks," she said, 'then it will be visible, and the words will be its body."

Oh and holler if you want to meet me in St. Louis. ;)

Toasted ravioli anyone?

Happy 2009! A poem in honor of new year's revelry, perhaps.

2009-01-02T05:06:38Z

Be Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire Translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

From Mr. Richard Powers

2008-11-21T02:12:14Z

‘“What is it that you need from these books? What can you learn from them?”

How can you tell him? On every urgent page, in every book born of human need, however flaccid, puerile, slight, or wrong, there is at least one sentence, one where the author is bigger than the writer, one that sheds the weight of its dead fixations and throws off the lead of its prose, one sentence that remembers the prisoner in his cell, locked away nowhere, victim of the world’s shared failure, begging for something to read.”

Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark

A little Obama Watching, for those of you in the mood

2008-11-04T19:16:04Z

from Josh Marshall's TPM:
Lotta Fun

If you want to get charged up, take a look.

Obama in Manassas last night ...

kristajhl @ 2008-10-31T11:57:00

2008-10-31T15:57:32Z

Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a non-same-sex marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by those who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." ~Abraham Lincoln

Princess Bride meme

2008-10-16T14:59:16Z

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

***
INIGO
You seem a decent fellow ... I hate to kill you.

THE MAN IN BLACK
You seem a decent fellow ... I hate to die.

Something to Make You Smile

2008-10-08T17:33:23Z

Mary Robinette Kowal posted a charming song that made me smile, from Deanna Hoak, who was encouraging people to post something to make others smile.
So. While I don't have a song or video to offer, I do have Bigfoot. Voila.

SELF IMPROVE:
Bigfoot got get more perfect.
Refine Bigfootocity. Pull together.
Think outside box. Lose ten pound.
Learn speak the French. Ballroom dance.
Demonstrate superior knowledge of
fine wine at dinner party in charming
non-pretentious manner.
Be Oscar Wilde of woods.
It so hard.
Brain size of apricot. So, so hard
think good...

Excerpt from:

Bigfoot: I Not Dead

Art via Drawn, Cartoon and Illustration blog

These are hysterical books for anyone who doesn't know them and needs a laugh.
Mr. Graham Roumieu everyone.
More info at Graham’s website.

Minerva poem at Podium

2008-10-02T13:34:54Z

I've told a couple of you I would have a poem up on-line in a few weeks, and voila, here it is!

I had the privilege of studying with Rachel Hadas this last summer at the 92nd St Y. The class was terrific, with a strong focus on form, and so when asked to contribute, I wanted to choose a poem that reflected that. This particular Minerva poem is in syllabic form.

Check it out, if you want: Minerva: daily upsweep

John Crowley at the 92nd St. Y

2008-09-26T22:26:41Z

Mr. Crowley gave a dishy, gritty reading last night from his next novel--very enjoyable. He read with Marilynne Robinson, who has--rightly IMO-- become a literary superstar since Gilead. Both readings were equally--although differently--delightful, and I thought the pairing made for a rich night of literature.

One of my favorite moments included the Q&A afterwards.
The emcee asked Mr. Crowley something along the lines of, what's the difference between writing historical fiction and writing fantastic fiction?
His answer (forgive the paraphrase, his real answer was cogent & charming & clear):
The challenge is to have historical fiction convey a sense of the fantastic, and for fantastic fiction to convey a sense of history.

For those days when you're feeling as dark as Strindberg, but want to laugh about it

2008-08-25T19:42:38Z

http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/

PLOT

2008-08-25T17:07:09Z

From Elizabeth Bowen's essay "Notes on Writing a Novel" at Narrative Magazine.

My favorite: "...it must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie."

"Plot.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.

He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.

Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.

Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie."

Go Ms. Bowen.

Read the whole essay here: https://narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2006/notes-writing-novel

For those of us who find ourselves employed in ways that sometimes feel stupid

2008-04-29T15:27:35Z

Stupid University Job
by Sharon Mesmer

Your loveliest of sway-backs;
of mine I was once ashamed,
and my uni-brow and crooked teeth,
and red hair my mother never let me wash
all winter,
afraid I'd catch a draft.
She wouldn't let me bathe, either,
which made gym class a horror.
I thought I had it bad
until I met that handsome Scottish man
whose parents tried to make him spontaneously combust
by feeding him haggis laced with gunpowder
and making him sleep in the stove.
Instead of an ear, he had a shiny, snail-shaped ridge.
I guess we all have our tragic flaw.
Mine is like that of the naked man
who holds up a sign that says "I'm naked"
and runs screaming through the park.
My handlers say I'm difficult,
but don't you believe it.
My soul still radiates a luminous intensity
despite this stupid university job.

from The Virgin Formica, just published by Hanging Loose Press.
(via Academy of American Poets, poem-a-day-in-April-program)

God's Silence by Franz Wright

2008-04-03T13:11:26Z

An excellent collection, I recommend whole-heartedly. Knopf says it's just been released in paperback too.
One for all you writers out there.

Publication Date

One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one's book in the hands of a kindhearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can't remember what the others
are right now.
I just noticed that it is my own private

National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever). The forecast calls
for a cold night in Boston all morning

and all afternoon. They say
tomorrow will be just like today,
only different. I'm in the cemetery now
at the edge of town, how did I get here?

A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying
I am Federico García Lorca
risen from the dead—
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.

--Franz Wright

April is National Poetry Month

2008-04-01T00:42:15Z

Not sure how I feel about the attempt to organize poetry
into a national month, but that being said,
more poetry is rarely a bad thing!

So. For anyone who wants a poem a day for the next 30 days, here's a link:

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/poemaday/

It's a pretty great line-up and it's free, so check it out.

A poem to start--the following an example of an ars poetica, I believe, which seems only right, from this month's issue of Poetry:

To Put It Differently

by Nathan Zach

Poetry chooses choice things, carefully selecting
select words, arranging,
fabulously, things arranged. To put it differently
is hard, if not out of the question.

Poetry's like a clay plate. It's broken easily
under the weight of all those poems. In the hands
of the poet, it sings. In those of others, not only
doesn't it sing, it's out of the question.

Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole