“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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Category Archives: Wordsmith
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.
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.
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
Courage
Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage not weakness.
— Katherine Henson
Art by Rafal Olbiński.
BASILIKE PAPPA SHARES HER FAVORITE INDIE BOOKS OF 2018
Basilike Pappa lives in Greece. She likes her coffee black, her walls painted green and blue, her books old or new. She despises yellow curtains and red tape. She can’t live without chocolate, flowers and her dog. Places she can be found are: kitchen, office, living room. If she’s not at home, I don’t know where she is. You can find Basilike up late with a notebook in the Silent Hour.
Title: Anthology Volume I – Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: Composition of a Woman
Author: Christine Ray
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: For You, Rowena
Author: Kindra Marie Austin
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: Leonard the Liar
Author: Nicholas Gagnier
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
https://indieblu.net/2019/01/02/basilike-pappa-shares-her-favorite-indie-books-of-2018/
I am delighted that five of my poems were included in the Sudden Denouement Anthology Volume I. The anthology is now available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
We write
We tell each other stories in order to survive and sur-thrive.
Storytelling is a magic realm. We are lucky to spend here a large chunk of our time.
What kind of letters do we write from the land of storytelling?
Life stories strangled in magnanimous stanzas build on love, fear, equanimity, and on the wizardry of sundowns and sunups.
Cover letters that tell stories of passion, dedication, failure and success, web content and presentations about a world of our own choosing built around something that we ourselves have created.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the treasure of our lives.” – Toni Morrison
Art by Franz von Stuck.
‘The Myths Of Girlhood’ – Christine Ray
Invincible artistry in Christine’s second book of poetry, ‘The Myths Of Girlhood’
The Myths of Girlhood – Christine Ray
“we were spoiled
for reality
by milk chocolate-coated fairy tales
force fed us as girls
made to swallow
not spit
myths about beauty
love…
drink a brief taste of the pink champagne dream
before the clock struck midnight
and we turned back
into pumpkins…”
Christine E. Ray is an indie author and freelance editor who lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You can read more of her work on her blog Brave and Reckless. Her first book of poetry, Composition of a Woman, is available through Amazon and other major online book retailers.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday tribute
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Art – The Forest of Lothlorien in Spring by J.R.R. Tolkien.
