June 2013
34 posts
“We need to make space for “creative reading” as much as “creative writing” – at least if we understand “creative reading” to be something like “ways of reading that are not only rigorous, careful, attentive to historical context, different connotations and nuances of meaning and so on, but also inventive, surprising, willing to take risks, to be experimental, to deform and transform.”
—Nicholas Royle on “composition and decomposition.” Pair with Francine Prose on how to read like a writer and Virginia Woolf on how to read a book, then follow up with this 1936 to acquiring knowledge, of which critical reading is a centerpiece. (via explore-blog)
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer
“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”
—Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944, Russian)
What is Divinity
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens
“I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love.”
—Everyone needs a little Anna Akhmatova (via likeafieldmouse)
“All evil and good is petty before Nature. … We take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.”
—
Vernor Vinge, echoing Ptolemy, in A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought).
(↬ projectMONA)
May 2013
44 posts
“When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere, in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable but fascinating — then it start to get interesting.”
—Lynda Barry adds to history’s finest definitions of art. (via explore-blog)
“Culture is the rule, art is the exception”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b.1930, French)
Joe Hill's Thrills: Papa Do Preach →
joehillsthrills.tumblr.com
HEMINGWAY, as critiqued by a writer
emiliomurillo asks: Say, what are your thoughts on Hemingway?
I suppose I take the fairly conventional view that after Twain, he’s the most important figure in the history of American fiction. He roughly - heartlessly - divorced the novel from 19th century storytelling values, wrote…
