“Life originally came from miles of dead parties, decomposing cardboard, sequins, noise makers and sadness.“
Remembering Steven Jesse Bernstein on his birthday.
7 likes
“Life originally came from miles of dead parties, decomposing cardboard, sequins, noise makers and sadness.“
Remembering Steven Jesse Bernstein on his birthday.
“You, too, with all
the instrangedness in you,
instrange yourself,
deeper“
Remembering Paul Celan on his birthday.
“I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.“
Remembering Ted Berrigan on his birthday.
“A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.“
Remembering Anne Sexton on her birthday.
“We name us and then we are lost, tamed
I choose words, more words, to cure the tameness, not the wildness.“
A happy birthday today to one of my favourite poets and visionaries,, Alice Notley.
“Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.“
Remembering Sylvia Plath on her birthday.
“I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.”
Remembering Arthur Rimbaud on his birthday.
“Come to the lights my sisters and take what you need
Doesn't matter, my brothers, your Sunday creed
'Cause each one's a lover to this winter night star
A pilgrim, a pioneer, that's who you are.“
Remembering Laura Nyro on her birthday.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.“
Remembering Oscar Wilde on his birthday.
“this is not a spell
it is an act of desperation
the poem dictated to me by another will
a kind of being writing is
opposite myself i recognize these hands
smash the keys in
the necessary assertion of reality“
Remembering bpNichol on his birthday
“The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.“
Remembering Ken Kesey on his birthday.
“Words can strip the power from a memory or an event. Words can cut the ropes of an experience. Breaking silence about an experience can break the chains of the code of silence. Describing the once indescribable can dismantle the power of taboo.“
Remembering David Wojnarowicz on his birthday.
“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.“
Remembering Antonin Artaud on his birthday.
“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn. “
Remembering Dorothy Parker on her birthday.
pickA stranger appears, found sleeping on a church pew, and is taken in by the insular religious community there. In an effort to uncover who our recalictrant protagonist is, the community members reveal themselves, oftentimes inadvertently. What begins as welcoming turns to suspicion and mistrust as the community prepares for a festival. Lacey writes her story with a gathering menace that recalls the work of Shirley Jackson. A compelling read.
“I am nothing to put to rest. I am nothing but a fireball. Take it.
Take it and something will erupt.
Tomorrow, no noisy mournings. Tomorrow, a collection of regrets.
We'd wanted them for so long. They can ruin our lives.
We'll read about them in our biographies when we're dead, dead, stone-cold dead.
A paragraph about what we never once mentioned,
A paragraph describing how we managed a secret.“
Remembering Lydia Tomkiw on her birthday.
pickReading Christopher Moore is like watching a juggler deftly toss some flaming torches, razor sharp knives, and adorable gerbils mid-air and keep them aflight. This compulsively readable slice of noir features drag kings, a bartender turned P.I., a corrupt vice squad, an ancient Chinese dragon, and a moonman, among other indelible characters, all propelled into a twisty plot. Irreverent and bawdy; an utterly delightful page turner.
“The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of
people moving and standing.
Those standing resemble stories, like stones, coal from the
death of plants, bricks in the shape of teeth.
I begin now to write down all the places I have not been—
starting with the most distant.
I build houses that I will not inhabit.“
Sad to hear of Keith Waldrop's passing. A poet, translator, and founder of Burning Deck Press, his work means so much.
“All who want me would like to eat me up, But I am too expansive and am open to all sides, desire this here and that there.“
Remembering the audacious and inimitable Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven on her birthday.
Photo by Man Ray.
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.“
Remembering my favourite neurasthenic, Marcel Proust, on his birthday.
“Instead I have told my story over and over
at parties, on the edge of meetings, my life
clenched in my fist, my eyes brittle as glass.
Ashamed, people turned their faces away
from the woman ranting, asking: Justice,
stretch out your hand. Come down, glittering,
from where you have hidden yourself away.“
Sad to learn of the passing of Minnie Bruce Pratt. May her poems continue to be read and cherished. RIP.
“I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews. I would roll like frenetic blood on the slow current of the eye of words turned into mad horses into fresh children into clots into curfew into vestiges of temples into precious stones remote enough to discourage miners. Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger.”
Remembering Aimé Césaire on his birthday.
“And yet we are determined to speak across borders,
even if borders pass through every word.”
Remembering Ingeborg Bachmann on her birthday.
“When I write, I solemnly visit myself.“
“Be plural, like the universe!“
Remembering Fernando Pessoa and his protean plurality on his birthday.
“Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of
the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.“
Remembering Lorca's birthday.
“The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much and laugh at the inevitable.“
Remembering Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, the Divine Marquis, on his birthday.
“I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a
miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd
from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.“
Remembering Walt Whitman on his birthday.
“We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.”
Remembering Angela Carter on her birthday.
This hefty and stunning book looks at the performance collective Blacklips, where Antony Hegarty performed as Fiona Blue before he formed the chamberpop ensemble Antony & the Johnsons. Here those years, 1992 through 1995, come alive through interivews, essays, and photographs as well as scripts of some of the weekly plays that were performed at the Pyramid Club in New York City. Captures a vital moment where underground art flourished.
“People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.”
Remembering the inimitable Mary MacLane on her birthday.
“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.“
A happy birthday today to the inimitable John Waters.
“'Even freaks need homes, countries, language, communication.
“'The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in. Anywhere. It is for you, freaks my loves, I am writing and it is about you. Since humans enjoy moralizing, over and over again they attack us.
“Language presupposes community. Therefore without you, nothing I say has any meaning. Without love or language, I do not exist.“
Remembering Kathy Acker on her b-day.
“And we're all poetry because we're compressed and lyrical
Or vast I'm full of their endless lines they're full of my care“
So excited to find that Alice Notley has published a new book. The Speak Angel Series is a hefty 600+ page epic. Eager to dive into this and see where Notley's extraordinary and visionary imagination will take us next. I love the peculiar music of her poetry and the dedication she has to her singular vision.
“She looked, and saw the black, domed sky arching over her head. And her heart dilated; she felt the great black dome in her heart. She sat under the stars, worshiping them. Her heart opened and grew vast, until the whole sky with all its stars began to pour into her, a mysterious flood of star-strung darkness. She wanted to receive the night sky into her heart.”
Remembering Anna Kavan on her birthday.
“I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure for them.”
Remembering Violette Leduc on her birthday.
“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.”
Remembering Leonora Carrington on her birthday.
“A family of toads has taken up residence in my left armpit, and when one of them moves, it tickles me. Mind one does not escape and come scratching with its mouth at the interior of your ear: for it would then be able to enter your brain.“
Remembering Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, the Comte de Lautreamont, on his birthday.
“I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.“
Remembering Octavio Paz on his birthday.
So excited to add this to my Acker collection. This gorgeous art book offers several essays on Kathy and her work as well as an interview with her and a comprehensive bibliography. Nearly every page of the book offers a glimpse into her writing notebooks (with to-scale photos of the pages) where she drafted her novels by hand. Such a thrill to get to see how these novels came together and how Kathy worked. A handsome testament to a unique writer.
“To / you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.“ - from “To The Harbormaster“
Remembering Frank O'Hara on his birthday.
“The possibility of what might have been sinks away. Into what is left.“
Remembering Ann Quin on her birthday.
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life“
Remembering Jack Kerouac on his birthday.
“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.“
Remembering Douglas Adams on his birthday.
“We're related to people we love who can't say -
I love you Black Sheep daughter
I love you Black Sheep son -
I love you outcast, I love you outsider
But tonight we love each other -
That's why we're here -
to be around others like ourselves -
So it doesn't hurt quite so much -“
A happy birthday today to Karen Finley.
“How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?”
Remembering Carson McCullers on her birthday.
“The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing“
Remembering Elizabeth Bishop on her birthday.
“Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”
Remembering Sarah Kane today on her birthday.
“Put something down.
Put something down some day.
Put something down some day in.
Put something down some day in my.
In my hand.
In my hand right.
In my hand writing.
Put something down some day in my hand writing. “
Remembering Gertrude Stein on her birthday.
“There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.“
Remembering James Joyce on his birthday.
“Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: 'It‘s four o‘clock … At five I have my abyss.'“
Remembering Colette on her birthday.
