“ Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window. ”
William Faulkner (via anastasiabooks)
I always find this kind of re-printed facsimile stuff a little bit weird, but I couldn’t pass up this gem.
“ Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. ”
“Little Gidding” : Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot.
Today I listened to Michal Ignatieff’s “Rise Up!” speech and cried.
This can only mean one of three things:
1) I believe very strongly in the Liberal Party of Canada
2) I am confident that the Canadian people will remove the contempted Conservative Party from power on May 2nd.
3) I am utterly horrified that Canadians are either too misinformed, too ignorant or too apathetic to save public health care and human rights.
(For your info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBPOK9PIw-0&feature=related.)
There are certain points in the year when your heart stops.
These times are quiet,
And as a flicker behind your lashes,
I can see the broken parts of something
tiny and delicate—a shell,
or the snapped links of a silver necklace.
These time, instead of speaking, you are silent
but allow me to witness,
not entirely without the fear of voyeurism,
the specter of you as a child, bent over these pieces
trying with new fingers to make them rejoin.
When I speak to you, what leaves my mouth
is more sound than language.
If neither of us recalls the individual syllables,
it is my way of offering an extra, spectral hand.
Hesitant, I am afraid
that mine is not as strong as yours,
nor ultimately will it reach the circumference of the image.
The gift, then, is the aching millimetric stretch
of muscle, bone and tissue
through which I might offer to cover you both.
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion
