73 [n.d.; 1929?] The clock over there in the back, in the house deserted because everyone is asleep, slowly drops the clear, quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning. I haven’t gone to sleep yet, nor do I expect to sleep. Unless something catches my attention, in which case I will not sleep, or [...]
Archive for July, 2009
streetlights * burning * down
Posted in Quotes, Short Prose, tagged Quotes on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Telescope :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky. You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning. You’re not a creature [...]
The Evening Star :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Tonight, for the first time in many years, there appeared to me again a vision of the earth’s splendor: in the evening sky the first star seemed to increase in brilliance as the earth darkened until at last it could grow no darker. And the light, which was the light of death, seemed to restore [...]
Echoes :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
1. Once I could imagine my soul I could imagine my death. When I imagined my death my soul died. This I remember clearly. My body persisted. Not thrived, but persisted. Why I do not know. 2. When I was still very young my parents moved to a small valley surrounded by mountains in what [...]
A Myth of Devotion :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »
When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness. Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce [...]
Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In all things, we are the victims of The Misconception From Afar. There is the idea of a city, and the city itself, too great to be held in the mind. And it is in this gap (between the conceptual and the real) that aggression begins. No place works any different from any other place, [...]
the comfort of being small and being able to think about being happy
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
May all the Gods preserve me, until the moment in which this aspect of myself ceases, the clear and solar notion of external reality, the sense of my unimportance, the comfort of being small and being able to think about being happy. – Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa), The Book of Disquiet
Thrush :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Snow began falling, over the surface of the whole earth. That can’t be true. And yet it felt true, falling more and more thickly over everything I could see. The pines turned brittle with ice. This is the place I told you about, where I used to come at night to see the red-winged blackbirds, [...]
Archaic Fragment :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I was trying to love matter. I taped a sign over the mirror: You cannot hate matter and love form. It was a beautiful day, though cold. This was, for me, an extravagantly emotional gesture. . . . . . . . . your poem: tried, could not. I taped a sign over the first [...]
Crater Lake :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There was a war between good and evil. We decided to call the body good. That made death evil. It turned the soul against death completely. Like a foot soldier wanting to serve a great warrior, the soul wanted to side with the body. It turned against the dark, against the forms of death it [...]
Here’s a disappointed lepidopterist’s ditty:
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It’s a long climb Up the rock face At the wrong time To the right place. – Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions
I think we are climates above which pause threats of storms that take place elsewhere
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I think we are climates above which pause threats of storms that take place elsewhere. The empty immensity of things, the grand oblivion in heaven and earth… – Bernando Soares (Fernando Pessoa), The Book of Disquiet
Strictly speaking, history does not repeat itself, but . . .
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Strictly speaking, history does not repeat itself, but since the illusions man is capable of are limited in number, they always return in another disguise, thereby giving some ultradecrepit filth a look of novelty and a tragic glaze. – E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
Omens :: Louise Glück
Posted in Poetry, tagged Poetry on July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I rode to meet you: dreams like living beings swarmed around me and the moon on my right side followed me, burning. I rode back: everything changed. My soul in love was sad and the moon on my left side trailed me without hope. To such endless impressions we poets give ourselves absolutely, making, in [...]
The Grammy/man-briefly-involved-with-a-Ding-Dong/penisless-man Coalition
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
in persuasion nation 1 A man and a woman sit in a field of daisies. “Forever?” he says. “Forever,” she says, and they kiss. A giant Twinkie runs past, trailed by perhaps two hundred young women. The woman leaps to her feet and runs to catch up to the Twinkie. “The sweetest thing in the [...]
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