“Creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity.”
– Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
*Eileen Agar, ‘Photograph of Mary Oliver raising a glass at her home, 1960s
RIP Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
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Monthly Archives: January 2019
Happy Birthday, Mr. Grant!
“He was a dream, as all works of art are. All works of art are the physical manifestation of a desire, a hope, and you can’t hope for something more beautiful and entertaining and nice than Cary Grant.” – Katharine Hepburn on Cary Grant
Happy Birthday, Mr. Grant.
Because I am worth so much more – Sarah Doughty
Because I am worth so much more – Sarah Doughty
From Anthology Volume I: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective, available on Amazon
https://suddendenouement.com/2019/01/11/because-i-am-worth-so-much-more-sarah-doughty/
Sarah Doughty is the tingling wonder-voice behind Heartstring Eulogies. She’s also the author of The Silence Between Moonbeams, her poetry chapbook, and the acclaimed novels and novellas of the Earthen Witch Universe. Good news, they’re all offered for free, right here! To learn more about how awesome Sarah is, check out her website, stalk her on Goodreads, or both.
Happiness
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller
Art by James Tissot.
The hardest questions
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver, from The Summer Day
Sow your wild oats?
Build a castle with every moment you’ve got love in your heart?
Feel and dream in colours?
Drink coffee in the morning and hang fairy lights in the evening?
Sow kindness in barren cruel soil?
Decorate the moon room?
….
– Iulia Halatz
Art – Brad Kunkle – The moon room.
The Snowman
“ ‘But what are they?’ asked the Snow Man.
‘They are lovers,’ replied the yard dog. ‘They will go and live in the same kennel by-and-by, and gnaw at the same bone…’ ”
From “The Snowman,” Hans Christian Andersen, 1861.
Illustrated by Rie Cramer, 1925.
Lotus eaters
“Poets are the dreams of gods, and in each and every age someone hath sung unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotus-gardens beyond the sunset.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, Poetry and the Gods
I am no lotus eater, just a word eater. I gulp them ethereally and stubbornly, and innocently agree with their meanings. They tremble and describe another day in the garden beyond the sunset.
Art by Thomas Edwin Mostyn.
Lines in the Sand (part 1): Jimmi Campkin & Basilike Pappa
Serenity and artistry as Lines in the Sand by Jimmi Campkin & Basilike Pappa
“To call you love would twist my tongue.
But from the moment you said my name, sanity performed a pagan dance, silver jewels gleaming naked.”
Photography by Jimmi Campkin.
Jimmi Campkin is a “Writer, photographer, creator of SANCTUARY. 16bit child, INFP with clinical nostalgia and red wine for blood.” You can enjoy more of his work at jimmi campkin.com.
What do you want for 2019?
A rather late and overrated question… Following in the “footwords” of one wise wizard (Gandalf), I do things precisely when I mean to, not when they are supposed to happen, neither late nor early.
Write down all the things that make you so goddamn glad you’re alive. It can be simple things like: watering plants, the sunlight that seeps on your bed at 10:00 a.m., dancing in the rain or playing in the snow, watching the sunrise or sunset, decorating your room with fairy lights, googling for surrealistic paintings, lighting too many candles in mid-days, eating pizza while watching your favorite show, searching for how many people have the same name as you in the world—how wonderful is that? What do you want more than these?
More ways and words to say: “I love you”…
Armors for moments when I feel depleted and drenched of kindness. I dissolve this by writing. This is my predicament, situations, and people that make me forget who I am, how kind I am, and who make my heart turn to stone, but who never, ever were permitted to steal the real me.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” – Kurt Vonnegut
Building is King but maintenance is King Kong (inspired by Seth Godin’s words, “Content is king”, but distribution is King Kong)….
Maybe Happiness is in the building… One event creates the architecture of everything falling in the right place with light and joy and windows and mirrors as walls transparently maintaining the gift of the gab.
Art by Andrew Wyeth.
The Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath
The Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness—
the face of the effigy gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering,
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.
Art by Caspar David Friedrich.
“The work is full of threatening silences. It is beautiful and severe and very cold. It is surrealistic, with surrealism’s menace and refusal to explain itself.” – Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes