April 2012
76 posts
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Don't Make the World Worse
I know that I’m supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I’m going to lower the bar here: Just don’t use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. And if you really want to cause social mayhem, it helps to have an Ivy League degree. You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the...
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Don't Model Your Life After A Circus Animal
“Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don’t let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you...
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A Ghost Story
“What the man left behind was the last shot left on an old roll of film that I had in my camera, taken on our way over on the ferry, when we were smiling and the sun was beaming on our heads. I’m the one who’s braless, wearing the indecent peasant smock: a yard of see-through cotton with elephants embroidered on the yoke. He’s got his arm around me, he’s wearing his...
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Why I Am Not A Buddhist
I love desire, the state of want and thought of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul requires desire. I love the things I’ve sought- you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll from my billfold- and love what I want: clothes, houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute desire for nut gateau...
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“I can’t think of anything more apt to set the imagination stirring,...”
– Patricia Highsmith, Observer Magazine (1990)
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“No, I’m more of an existentialist than [T.S. Eliot] is. I think everyone...”
– Stephen Dunn
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We're Hiring: Junior Digital Designer and... →
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“As a novelist, I can say…the dictionary is the most entertaining book I...”
– Patricia Highsmith, from her journal, June 1971
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#OWS: Michael Lewis interviews Michael Lewis //... →
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“The bad-taste bastard breaks the...
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The Welcoming
Distance was the house from which I welcomed you. Time, time was the house, and to welcome you I strung garlands of eggshells and rubies.
Thirsty I welcomed you, you the salt sucked from the tips of braids after running from the ocean of someone else’s childhood.
I turned the skeleton key. I welcomed you from the narthex of invisible churches.
There at the marble bar at the...
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“Humanity has suffered enough from grossly inaccurate history told by mistaken...”
– E.O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth
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Upcoming Poetry Releases from Norton
APRIL Our Lady of the Ruins, Traci Brimhall - Winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize. The powerful, hypnotic poems in Our Lady of the Ruins make up a myth in verse that tracks a group of women through their pilgrimage in a mid-apocalyptic world.
MAY Engine Empire, Cathy Park Hong - An inventive trilogy of poems from the author of Dance Dance Revolution. “A brainy, glinting...
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Poet Marie Howe Reflects On The 'Living' After... →
nprfreshair:
A few years after her younger brother John died from AIDS-related complications in 1989, poet Marie Howe wrote him a poem in the form of a letter. Called “What the Living Do,” the poem is an elegiac description of loss, and of living beyond loss.
“When he died, it was a terrible loss to all of us,” she tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “As you know, as everybody knows, you think, ‘My...
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A New Enlightenment
“A good first step toward the liberation of humanity from the oppressive forms of tribalism would be to repudiate, respectfully, the claims of those in power who say they speak for God, are a special representative of God, or have exclusive knowledge of God’s divine will. Included among those purveyors of theological narcissism are would-be prophets, the founders of religious cults,...
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“Not only does she describe disorientation fully, she locates it squarely in...”
– Susan Salter Reynolds on the novels and stories of 2012 Guggenheim Fellow Lydia Millet
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“Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of...”
– John Dufresne, Love Warps the Mind a Little
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“Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch...”
– Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (via shakespearneverdidthis)
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“The first business of Style is to make work interesting: the second business of...”
– Ford Madox Ford, Developing the Theory of Impressionism with [Joseph] Conrad
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“It occurs to me,” he said, looking at his friend, who, according to his...”
– - H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O’Brian
how…. sweet, stephen.
(via gatheringbones)
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Patricia Highsmith, what did you expect to do with...
Don Swaim: What did you study at Barnard?
Patricia Highsmith: English Literature and Composition. I have simply a B.A. in Liberal Arts.
Don Swaim: What did you expect to do with your B.A. in Liberal Arts?
Patricia Highsmith: Nothing. I wanted to avoid learning anything useful.
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96 Vandam
I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets; I am going to push it across three dark highways or coast along under 600,000 faint stars. I want to have it with me so I don’t have to beg for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends. I want to be as close as possible to my pillow in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by....
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