Category: bookish life
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Evening All Afternoon
XIII It was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs. Excerpt from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, Wallace Stevens Snowy weather always makes me think of this poem. It’s been snowing a lot and it’s going to keep snowing. The blackbirds here are really striking with…
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All That the Rain Promises
For some reason ThriftBooks recommended this to me and obviously I could not resist the siren song of the cover photo.
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Altar
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself. * I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field. We had very strongly…
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When I Was Alive
When I was alive, I believed—as you do—that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and Monday as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day…
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Pet Peeve
Few things annoy me more than booksellers putting god awful impossible to remove stickers on books.
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Girl on Heaven’s Pier
One could imagine an escape from ordinary life, but not from a dream; in dreams everything happened fatefully, unconditionally, there was no alternative. A dream was absolute like some scary, beautiful tale, prewritten, hence so frightening. Eeva-Liisa Manner translated by Terhi Kuusisto, Girl on Heaven’s Pier The bad thing named The Ordinary that was lurking…
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The Last Lover
When she was still young, Lisa came to think of herself as vulgar, and she didn’t intend to change this part of herself. She wore colorful, gaudy clothes, spoke coarsely, and sometimes got drunk. Can Xue translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, The Last Lover Vincent felt a few things inside him swiftly die, but at…
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The Pleiades Give a White Yawn
What presses close is the feel of a grassfield.The Pleiades give a white yawn.From a marker two cedars rise, faintly extending to the Pleiades. Miyazawa Kenji translated by Hiroaki Sato, “Winter Sketches”, Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist