poetry loves

the-dream-of-perpetual-romance: So, get this. Many scholars believe that the best written...

Fri, 03 May 2013 03:30:49 -0400

So, get this.

Many scholars believe that the best written description of the orgasm exists in Mrs. Dalloway, the novel by Virginia Woolf. Here it is:

“Only for a moment; but it was enough. It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush when one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over — the moment.”

If this is wrong then I don’t wanna be right.

"When the artist depersonalizes the model by focusing solely on the aesthetics of her body, he proves..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 03:23:24 -0400

“When the artist depersonalizes the model by focusing solely on the aesthetics of her body, he proves to have a pornographic mind. When, on the other hand, he interprets her external beauty in conjunction with her personal qualities, he is then an artist/lover for whom the aesthetics of his art reveals woman not as sexual object but as an objet d’art. He sees her as subject matter, as a person out of whom art is made.”

- Smaro Kamboureli, “Discourse and Intercourse”

"The sexual act in erotica is not an end in itself; it is only one of the forms that eroticism takes."

Fri, 03 May 2013 03:03:46 -0400

“The sexual act in erotica is not an end in itself; it is only one of the forms that eroticism takes.”

- Smaro Kamboureli, “Discourse and Intercourse”

"I must be a mermaid…I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:04:59 -0400

“I must be a mermaid…I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”

- Anais Nin

"These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways)."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:27:41 -0400

“These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).”

- From “I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke

"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful,..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:20:51 -0400

“

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

”

- Sylvia Plath, “The Rival”

"Love is not just a function of the eyes. Beautiful objects will, of course, inspire possessive urges..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:17:32 -0400

“Love is not just a function of the eyes.
Beautiful objects will, of course, inspire
possessive urges - you need not despise
your taste. But when insatiable desire
inflames you for a girl who’s out of fashion,
lacking in glamour - plain, in fact - that fire
is genuine. That’s the authentic passion.
Beauty, though, any critic can admire.”

- Marcus Argentarius

commovente: “Just a few days after Nabokov’s death, there was...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:52:14 -0400

commovente:

“Just a few days after Nabokov’s death, there was an invasion of butterflies out in Springs, Long Island. It probably happens every year. But the reason I noticed the butterflies this time was the presence—or the absence—of Nabokov.

“While I was riding my bicycle, in fact, I had the pleasure of traveling with one of them: a monarch, one of those orange-and-black butterflies that migrate from Canada down to Mexico. It was right beside me, we were moving at the same speed, and the butterfly was at the same height as my head. The proximity of the butterfly transformed me into an airborne head, a cherub or a seraph, one of Raphael’s angels composed solely of a head and wings.”

—Saul Steinberg, from “Port rait s and Landscapes”

"Who carved Love and placed him by this fountain, thinking he could control such fire with water?"

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:27:16 -0400

“Who carved Love
and placed him by
this fountain,
thinking
he could control
such fire
with water?”

- “A statue of Eros” by Zenodotos

"Take courage, lover! Could you endure such grief At any hand but hers?"

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:12:26 -0400

“Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such grief
At any hand but hers?”

- From “Symptoms of Love” by Robert Graves

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Strawberry” I. I suck on strawberries when I miss you Pink flesh,..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:00:36 -0400

“

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Strawberry”

I.
I suck on strawberries when I miss you
Pink flesh, sweet and
Soft.

II.
Strawberries are all seeds like a
Gangly twelve-year-old is all legs
Trying so hard to blossom.

III.
If strawberry fields are forever
why did you go?

IV.
They tell you to rinse your berries
Before eating
But I came from dirt, too
And I don’t clean up for no one.

V.
I believed in strawberry trees
until you told me they came from bushes.
I wish you had let me believe
in strawberry trees or
us.

VI.
Summer is a marathon.
I’m looking for my second wind
and your face
in the crowd
behind the caution tape,
but all I can find are long nights
and fresh strawberries.

VII.
Strawberries have a season.
Sometimes they leave you
soggy-tongued and disappointed
and sometimes they’re like bee nectar.
Like you.

VIII.
I spilled a pale dish of strawberries
Staining heart-shaped half-moon kisses
on my sheets.
They remind me of the kind you used to leave
on the pale of my neck.

IX
The center of a strawberry is a cavern
I wish we were all
so lucky.

X.
The elderberry spoke of the strawberry’s
naivety.
Her taut, vibrant skin.
The way she withered so easily.

XI.
Strawberry stems,
so bitter.
I guess nobody likes
to be
ripped
from their roots.

XII.
I like my strawberries sour,
like most things.

XIII.
I suck on strawberries when I miss you.
Wait for that fuzzy feeling like t.v. static
like limbs falling asleep
like picking strawberry pulp out of our teeth
while we laugh all June long.

”

- - Elizabeth Hernandez, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Strawberry”

inspired by Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
(via hushedsoliloquies)

Poem Swap: Peter Quince at the Claviar

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:59:24 -0400

Poem Swap: Peter Quince at the Claviar:

poemswap:

BY WALLACE STEVENS

I

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your…

She Dreamed of Paradise.: Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:58:53 -0400

She Dreamed of Paradise.: Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens:

katherineofvalois:

1

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens…

"I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:54:23 -0400

“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”

- from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens (via bearsthatdance)

Poem Swap: Peter Quince at the Claviar

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:52:34 -0400

Poem Swap: Peter Quince at the Claviar:

poemswap:

BY WALLACE STEVENS

I

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your…

"Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:47:24 -0400

““Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.””

- Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel (via itsfromabook)

From Wallace Stevens' THINGS OF AUGUST

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:46:39 -0400

bigmamablogs:

The thinker as reader reads what has been written.
He wears the words he reads to look upon
Within his being,

A crown within him of crispest diamonds,
A reddened garment falling to his feet,
A hand of light to turn the page,

A finger with a ring to guide his eye,
From line to line, as we lie on the grass and listen
To that which has no speech,

The voluble intentions of the symbols,
The ghostly celebrations of the picnic,
The secretions of insight.

"It is necessary that heteroglossia wash over a culture’s awareness of itself and its language,..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:09:25 -0400

““It is necessary that heteroglossia wash over a culture’s awareness of itself and its language, penetrate to its core, relativize the primary language system underlying its ideology and literature and deprive it of its naïve absence of conflict””

- Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”

"All forms involving a narrator or a posited author signify to one degree or another by their..."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:37:34 -0400

“All forms involving a narrator or a posited author signify to one degree or another by their presence the author’s freedom from a unitary and singular language, a freedom connected with the relativity of literature and language systems; such forms open up the possibility of never having to define oneself in language, the possibility of translating one’s own intentions from one linguistic system to another, of fusing “the language of truth” with “the language of the everyday,” of saying “I am me” in someone else’s language, and in my own language, “I am other.””

- Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”

"Living well is no grand gesture. It is waking up. Trying to be reasonable and kind. It is making a..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 01:12:50 -0500

“Living well is no grand gesture. It is waking up. Trying to be reasonable and kind. It is making a phone call, a loaf of bread, a visit, a bowl of soup. It’s going easy on yourself so you can go easy on everyone else. It’s having faith because really we have no other option in this life. There is little we can control, and so we must let go and live with faith that somehow, come what may, we’ll make it.”

- Beth, Local Milk Blog