November 2009
43 posts
poetbabble:
And I think that Southern artists have peculiarities unique as well: they certainly have an obsession with place. But, as well, they have an obsession with family, death, the past – and they’re uniquely susceptible to myth and mystery. They have a willingness to experiment with doses of romanticism that would be fatal to other, non-Southern artists.
- Sally Mann
Mann says of...
Thanksgiving Fact: My mother discovered sweet tea-flavored vodka tonight and filled her entire diet snapple iced tea bottle with it. “I can’t even tell the difference!” she exclaimed. This does not augur well.
Thanksgiving Fact: Larry King seems to be singing “Wind Beneath My Wings,” on the television right now, somewhat drunkenly, and definitely off-key.
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O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air— fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat— plough through it, turning it on either side of your path.
-H.D., Heat
Count the adjectives
“It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality.”
– William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Or, "The Texture of Time" →
An online annotation of V. Nabakov’s Ada, or Ardor. Not to be confused with Vivian Darkbloom’s annotations.
“Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her...”
– Vladimir Nabakov, Ada, or Ardor
“There are codes and there are codes, aren’t there? I see somebody who was...”
– David Simon on the character of Omar from The Wire.
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Reverse Chronological Causation →
The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, “you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them.”
via fatmanatee’s reading list
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“When he was in school, Werner never learned anything. He never read the books he...”
– -Werner Herzog’s mom (!), from Herzog on Herzog
I found this to be an incredibly profound description on the variety of how we apprehend the world individually, how we take in information, and what we do with it. As a teacher, I get sort of unnaturally obsessed with this notion: I am far more...
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“That’s all crap. The fact that’s it’s a bleak and bloody story...”
– Cormac McCarthy on whether or not ““Blood Meridian” is unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.
(via walkwhilereading and epistolized)
“Before there was Lil’ Wayne, there was William Blake.”
– Me, while teaching a lesson on poetry today that dealt with what makes a poem work on multiple levels.
807 Esplanade
angeliska:
New post on Angeliska Gazette: 807 Esplanade
One of my favorite human beings (as well as neighbor) from ye old Crumblydown Manor has compiled a wondrous history and documentation of 807 Esplanade, New Orleans. It still makes my heart feel funny to look at it.
Her words and memories are beautiful, of liminal spaces and ghosts. Read it! I was reminded of how, whenever I slept...
Smog :: Bathysphere
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Okkervil River :: Omie Wise
I once wrote an...
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“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will...”
– Margaret Atwood
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“First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will...”
– Charles Murray in an arresting piece on America’s absurd, outmoded, socioeconomically cruel university system (thanks dad!). While at Bard I’d not have understood his points; my time at LSU illustrated his thesis: for many students, the B.A. is an artificial goal, often unattainable and usually...
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“Monaghan set out to create eight prototype homes based in classic New Orleans...”
– -Wayne Curtis, Houses of the Future
Having lived in a New Orleans mansion that was, quite literally, sinking, and having a fierce and protective love of the city in general, I found this portion of the essay somewhat heartening. The architecture of New Orleans is so intrinsic to who it is. My...
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A List of Some Great Words From the First Ten...
by Nabakov.
tesselated
granoblastically
halcyon climate
ectoplasmic
athwart
parvis breeze
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We Are Surrounded by a Halo of Absences →
An experiment in narrative neurology
When life hands you an Elvira wig at 6:00pm on Halloween you chop it off and go as cocaine-era Liza Minnelli. Which is what I did.
