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LANA DEL REY INTERVENES WHEN SHE NOTICES I’VE STOPPED WRITING ABOUT MY EX

books poetry lit March 28, 2015 Leave a comment

It’s good that he’s gone,
but don’t let him be too gone.
He’s got to be candle blown out
in the other room gone.
Or exhaust pipe
huffing down the block gone.
Not closure-gone. Not someone-else’s-
baby-gone. Not cut your hair gone.
He can’t ever be too far
away to hurt you, honey.
You can pedal away but make sure it’s a polaroid
of him clicking in your bicycle wheel down the boulevard.
Put a suitcase in a trunk and every state in between you
if you want, but when you turn on the radio,
search for his song.
Don’t get me wrong, you can love.
read more
Megan Falley
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Poetry: Ghost Walk

books poetry lit March 26, 2015 Leave a comment

We used to overturn rocks on the shore
and expose them to the belly of the sun.
I knew that some rocks should not be moved
but you picked them up to skip pebbles
and slice fountains in the sea
where they were lost
and you were satisfied
because yours had skipped the farthest
and the deepest
while mine grew steam in my palm.

Your hand in mine was sandpaper.
When you closed your fingers I was a bottled neck
with no wings flapping but the heartbeat
of one chipped stone against another.

Peter Quince at the Clavier

books poetry lit March 17, 2015 Leave a comment

The Blue Dress, Ken Howard

UST as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.

-from Peter Quince at the Clavier, Wallace Stevens

She Walks in Beauty

books poetry lit March 15, 2015 Leave a comment

At the Shrine, John William Waterhouse

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

-Lord Byron

Poetry: You Said Is

books poetry lit March 14, 2015 Leave a comment

Romantica 1, Raffaella Blanc

you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body, to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing, I said, except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.

-e.e cummings

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

books poetry lit March 7, 2015 Leave a comment

Tell me it was for the hunger

& nothing less. For hunger is to give

the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand

to your chest.

You, drowning

between my arms —

stay.

You, pushing your body

into the river

only to be left

with yourself —

stay.

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after

backhanding

mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel

in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.

And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing

to surrender.

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.

Say autumn despite the green

in your eyes. Beauty despite

daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn

mounting in your throat.

My thrashing beneath you

like a sparrow stunned

with falling.

by Ocean Vuong, read the rest at Poetry Magazine

All Hallow’s Eve, Sheldon Vanauken

books poetry lit March 6, 2015 Leave a comment

Tonight, while weighing wild winged hope with fears

Of loss, again the girl’s voice crying gay

And sweet – O playmate of lost pagan years! –

Comes ringing in the glory of the May.

O singing beauty! Singing though there nears

The moment of all finding and all loss:

Together in our laughter and our tears,

Wind-driven to the centre where ways cross.

Rose garden in blue night, where souls embraced

In holy silence, timeless ecstasy:

Truth grew between us, final beauty laced

The stars, and awed we knew eternity.

A secret sharing passed from eye to eye:

In death the singing beauty does not die.

-Sheldon Vanauken

La Figlia Che Piange(The Weeping Girl)

books poetry lit March 5, 2015 Leave a comment

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair –
Lean on a garden urn –
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair –
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise –
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon’s repose.

— T. S. Eliot

Ode to Pippi Longstocking

books poetry lit March 4, 2015 Leave a comment

Way out at the end of a tiny little town was an old overgrown garden, and in the garden was an old house, and in the house lived Pippi Longstocking. She was nine years old, and she lived there all alone. She had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun, and no one who could make her take cod liver oil when she much preferred caramel candy.

Pippi Longstocking. A forever classic and a book that, along with Brian Jacques’ Redwall and Roald Dahl’s Matilda, encapsulates childhood for me, and even thousands of others. The rollicking, carefree, care-filled, complex elasticity of childhood where there aren’t any lines or boundaries, where everything is immensely fluid, adventure lasts forever, umbrellas, apples, rain, chocolate, Caribbean islands, forgotten gardens, and old cupboards are equally magical and the most ordinary thing can turn into pure gold. Pippi is purest adventure in its purest form, in the same way Redwall is warmth, Matilda is cleverness, and The Secret Garden is magic.

Unstoppable, redheaded Pippi Longstocking lives alone in a tiny town, eats whatever she likes without ever getting a stomachache, and teams up with the children next door to go on wild adventures that include pirates and islands and everything a child, or adult’s heart, could dream. Own this book my loves. Go buy it on Amazon for 6 bucks (edition pictured above because this girl did). And if you haven’t read it yet, buy it, read on a long winter day after another day of office work, or on a slow humid summer day when the island seems to fall out of the pages of the book into your lap. Read, and love.

The Thorn of Emberlain Book Cover

books poetry lit March 4, 2015 Comments: 2

The official cover for Scott Lynch’s new book has been released! The Gentleman Bastard series varies a lot in quality; the first two (The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies) were swiftly-paced, funny, and very, very entertaining, while the third, The Republic of Thieves, meanders so much that after a month I have still not been able to get past the first few chapters. But this fantasy series about a trickster thief and con artist and sometimes his band of scheming cohorts is one of the better reads in the genre out there, so I’m excited at the announcement of this book, particularly since war could be just what the series needs to inject a blast of energy and urgency. Book is projected to release in spring 2015. P.S. If you don’t follow Scott Lynch on Tumblr yet, you should.

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