miscellany: Archive

“At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant,
my fingernails chewed to half-moons.
I took off my clothes in a late March
field. I had secret car wrecks,
secret hysteria. I opened my mouth
to swallow stars.”

I can currently be found overdosing on fine poems. It’s all to do with the fact that I have to write around 30 new poems in the next month or so. Yep.

Sep 29, 2008

“What I meant about N was, I hope to know him in other times. He remembers to hold the door open for others. He rises from his chair when his wife enters. He collects broken things and fixes them. He makes soup from bones.”

Diagram– fast becoming my online literary journal of choice. An RSS feed wouldn’t hurt though, would it?

Sep 29, 2008

Play

Sep 29, 2008

Ta, much...

http://lazarusdodge.wordpress.com/

http://nicholasbate.typepad.com

http://carolineanne.tumblr.com

Thanks for the mentions and follows, guys…

Sep 28, 2008

Stunning collection of images captured by a teacher at Riverside School. These were taken in the years just after my birth– just before my time, but close enough for me to be able to feel an affinity…

Sep 28, 2008

“Rick Moody writes every day, but what about? How to keep the projects going and finish one on Friday and start on something, deep, slow, serious, worthy, fabulous, the very next day? This is called genius. Good writers have a plan.” — Word After Word » What I Learned from Teaching Writing This Week

Sep 28, 2008

Sep 22, 2008

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

- Ray Bradbury.

Sep 21, 2008

“Two things: First, from Yusef Komunyakaa: ‘Don’t write what you know. Write what you’re willing to discover.’ Second, from a tall blonde woman: ‘Get over yourself. You’re not so special.’” — Two pieces of advice from Adam Sol

Sep 21, 20081 note

Sep 15, 2008

“I like to be listening to music as I write, though it’s not a requirement. I’ll start with anything: a snippet of overheard conversation, a particularly resonant lyric, an image from my surroundings or memory, a line from a book I’m reading. I assume that if I write something down it will lead to something else.” —MountainWord » Blog Archive » BOOK REVIEW: ‘After West’ by James Harms

Sep 13, 2008

Constellations, by Susan Settlemyre Williams

Back-lit, the shot-up window blizzards out
like a freeze-frame of first light hurtling
to make the universe.
Beautiful as the fireworks a bullet
might set off in the brain, so the instant
of dying is the instant of suns
bursting open. Beautiful as, in some lights,
your scan may be beautiful, dark and starred
with bright particles. Even my migraine
pyrotechnics, the dancing light etched
on my retina through a sleepless night
while I tossed and pictured you, pale
and silenced in the radiology room—glitter
triggered again by the shattered glass
at the church where I have gone
tonight to light candles for your body
slowly being eaten by its stars.
My eyes burn and blur in the dazzle
of so much breaking apart.

http://thediagram.com/3_3/williams.html

Sep 12, 2008

Sep 12, 200842 notes

“I don’t understand how the body can be burnt
into nothing, this little plume I let go.” —

DIAGRAM :: Susan Settlemyre Williams

Read this poem. Feel free to thank me for bringing it to your attention when you’re done.

Sep 12, 2008

Oliver De La Paz writes that Reginald Shepherd has passed. Sad day.

Sep 11, 2008

“Whenever I get the slightest inclination to actually fill out an application (or for that matter, send out a journal submission), I drop whatever else I’m doing and honor the impulse. Even if I’m at work. Even if I’m on deadline. You always have to prioritize the poetry, because no one will do it for you. …” —Work-in-Progress: Put the Stamps on the Envelopes

Sep 10, 2008

“Before you can break a creative block, you need to be consciously aware of why they happen. Here are some of the reasons that I found, below.
- Stress.
- Health.
- Financial concerns.
- Preoccupation with non-work related issues.
- Lack of knowledge of a topic, or concern that you don’t know enough.
- Unclear on what you really want to say
- Directionless: no plan for a specific piece of work.”

Amen, and hallelujah.

Sep 10, 2008

Sep 8, 2008

“You can predict where you’ll be in ten years just by looking at your to-do lists. If it’s only taking care of business or survival items, in ten years, you’ll be right where you are…” —Where Are You Going? Use Your Actions And Projects To Reverse Engineer Your Goals | Matthew Cornell - Personal Productivity Specialist

Sep 7, 2008

miscellany

September 2008

27 posts