Elizabeth Bishop

I spent a lot of my last semester of my Master's degree working with Elizabeth Bishop poems. So I want to post one of my favorites here. This probably won't be the last of her poems I put here. She's that good.

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.


I had forgotten until just now that this poem existed. I forgot how good it is.

Emily Bronte

Writing about Jane Eyre, which I should have mentioned was by Charlotte Bronte, got me thinking about Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte which I like even more than I liked Jane Eyre.
And I love this quote, especially the end about Heathcliff and Catherine's souls. It's such a beautiful idea. I am going against everything I learned in literature classes by admitting to liking things for the ideas and not the language and the deeper meaning but who cares.

"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

Jane Eyre

I loved Jane Eyre. I read it quite a long time ago and for class and I didn't have that high of expectations. But, I loved it. And I still do.
I am not sure what made me think of it, maybe the bad weather, I think of Victorian literature and I think of rain. Even if the stories don't involve great scenes of rain my mind always pictures the great love scenes or climaxes happening in the rain. Maybe I just like the idea.
But, anyway, Jane Eyre. I just really love the idea that Jane and Mr. Rochester overcame so many obstacles to find each other.
Although, I know this is not the most feminist standpoint and I know that many women's studies advocates would argue that his treatment of his wife, and even of Jane make Mr. Rochester a bad guy and that he doesn't come back to Jane until he's been crippled and cannot function the way he had been. But, I don't care.
I am sure if we read into everything then nothing could be taken at face value, and of course in my class I had to analyze all parts of the novel, so here I don't think I have to and I don't have to defend feminism and I can just say that I really loved the story and leave it at that.
And with this, "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."
So good.

The Modern Library has a list of the 100 greatest novels written in the 20th century. When it first came out I tried to read off that list, but sometimes a girl wants to read something a little lighter, so I haven't completely abandoned my goal I haven't gotten very far.
Here's the list, I'll star which one's I've read.
1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2.THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
3.A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4.LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov*
5.BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6.THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7.CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8.DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9.SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence*
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell*
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow*
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell*
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding*
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49.WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50.TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51.THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52.PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth*
53.PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac*
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett*
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton*
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger*
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad*
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79.A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy*
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

So I realize there's a curse in this so I apologize if it's offensive, but I just find it so funny that I had to share it here:


marriedtothesea.com

more of my own writing...

Naked Video Games

There’s me and you. But you’re with her.
And I’m here pushing another one away.
Cold hands in yours so warm, not mine
not tonight. But once they were. And where
was she the night you held onto me?
But now you and she are there, and I’m here.

So loyal to her yet I am this pull on you.
I should walk away, not wait.
Maybe you would come, with nothing broken,
unlike the breaks in me, she can only bend you.
And then we could be.

We keep scaling mountains.
It’s hard not to get left behind. It’s too cold here
frost bites the flowers, and they die before their time.
Upon re-warming, there is no re-awakening.
The petals unfreeze, fall, forgotten.
I freeze and fall and wait for you.

The peak will be even colder, I am
exposed, except one useless glove
the other lost somewhere; I imagine it still with him.
Wouldn’t keep me. He can keep the glove,
buried in the closet under stuffed bears—
ghosts of relationships past.
I won’t be there to take it back.

I needed gloves with him, the way I don’t with you
But you have travelled into love where I cannot go.
This hurting never hurts any less.
I can get over anything, except
it seems, maybe, you.
So I continue this climb.

You and I should be one, but three will never do.
I cannot say I loved him.
So I won’t let myself love you. But if I did love him,
I can see myself falling into loving you.

If I hang on to you, the something I can’t have
Then there will never be another him,
No pain for me, no more mountain climb.

Grammar

toothpastefordinner.com


This comic sort of reminds me of my current job. Of course I don't write in iambic pentameter. But because writing a decent email is a hard thing to do and people seem to lack the skill. Although I also find it interesting that because it is known that I have various English degrees I am listened to and read more closely so that my language can be picked apart on the off chance I make a mistake. I rarely attack people's usage and grammar, I don't like playing grammar police, and only do so if I've been asked to edit something. But, the more it gets done to me the more I want to do it to other people and honestly, once I started here I might never stop.
And, I work in a library.
This doesn't have anything to do with what I've read, but since it's about writing I think it somehow fits into the overall theme of my blog.
And, if it's not grammatically correct I don't really care.

Valentine's Day

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."


This is a Neil Gaiman quote that I like a lot because it reminds me of someone I like (love) a lot. I also really like Neil Gaiman, American G-ds and Neverwhere are really amazing. He might be considered a sci-fi writer but his work is more fantasy than sci-fi, I don't think I need to explain the difference here, but his books just always take me to these other places that I think I'd like to live in.

Villanelle

A villanelle is a form I tried to write after reading Elizabeth Bishop's amazing, "One Art" mine does not compare to hers, however, I kinda like it.


Had you loved me, you would not have let me fall.
In Eden, Adam slept while Eve was baited.
There was no answer to my call.

Eve’s sin was not small.
She cried out to Adam, but he hesitated.
Had you loved me, you would not have let me fall.

That serpent was up to no good at all.
As the Tempter, he believed that the fall was fated.
There was no answer to my call.

The fruit was so high and she is not tall.
I could not see the harm, Adam stated.
Had you loved me, you would not have let me fall.

The snake seemed weak, moving at a crawl
but the Lord could not be placated,
There was no answer to my call.

Eve lamented, why did you have to stall?
This is the disaster we have created,
had you loved me, you would not have let me fall.
There was no answer to my call.

Movie vs. the book

I saw Pride and Prejudice, the one with Kiera Knightly, a few weeks ago. The novel is one of my favorite books ever. I love all of Jane Austen's novels. But that one especially held my interest and made me want to read it more than once. I think that's a novel many people feel that way about. But it is also the reason I didn't want to see the movie because I thought I would be sad if they ruined the book. However, I really liked the movie, and I figure that's because the novel is just sooo good it would be hard to ruin.
Although, they managed to ruin The Human Stain, which as a novel is easily in my top 3, I couldn't make it through the whole movie. Then again, when I read that novel I didn't really see the need to see it on screen there were so many subtleties that casting must have been hard and that is why it seemed so bad in the end.
I think I might be a book snob. But I think it's ok. And, at least thanks to Pride and Prejudice I can say there is one movie adaptation that I liked. It wasn't better than the book but it was still pretty good.

just finished reading...

I had jury duty recently and decided to use the time to catch up on some reading. I took a nature literature class for my MA, in the fall of 2005, where we read Dawn, by Ocatvia Butler, this is the first novel in her Xenogenesis series. I am normally not that big of a sci-fi fan, however I was fascinated by this novel and intended to finish the trilogy. I came across Adulthood Rites, the second in the trilogy, last summer and did not read it until the late fall. However, I was still fascinated by the world and stories she had created. So I finally decided that jury duty would be a good time to finish the series and read Imago.

I was not disapointed.
The entire trilogy was interesting from start to finish. I am not sure why it took me two years to read.
The series imagines a future, after a catastrophic war, where the human race is saved by aliens that mix their species with humans to create a new, more stable life form. It's a little freaky but really interesting.
I don't want to give anything away so I will stop here. but i'd definitely recommend it.

I thought I'd take a quiz to see if it could tell me what kind of books I like to read- it's kinda accurate, I do like classics much more than the current pop fiction offerings. Here are my results:

You scored as the classics. you love a good classic,and a good tale, you love those timeless books that never grow old, and last from generation to generation. the classics 100% mystery/suspence 75% fairy tale 69% non - fiction/biography 31% horror 6% what kind of books do you like? created with QuizFarm.com

First Post

Since I have an MA in English Literature and plan to work in libraries for a long time, I sometimes feel like all I've ever done is read. So I thought why not write about what I know best?
I titled this blog, "somewhere i have never travelled," after my favorite e. e. cummings poem of the same name. It may well be my favorite poem ever.
I will repost it here in case it's not as well known to other people. Hopefully I'm not breaking any copywrite laws.

"somewhere i have never travelled"
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

For my methodology class for my MA I used this poem to write the semester long paper on different research methods. I analyzed this poem every possible way and researched everything pertaining to it's publication. I thought by the end of the semester I would never want to read it again, but whenever I read it I get the same feeling I got the first time.