“I’ve never comprehended this idea of spoilers, the folks who line up to get the last Harry Potter, and turn right to the last page of the book as soon as it’s in their hands. My favorite time as a kid was not Christmas morning. It was the night before Christmas, and the sense of expectation. Nothing is ever as good as your imagination. That’s how it works."
-Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad-
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What is sometimes called a tongue of flame or an arm extended burning is only the long red and orange branch of a green maple in early September reaching into the greenest field out of the green woods at the edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered tired of sustaining delicacy all through the hot summer re- minding everyone (in our family) of a Russian song a story by Chekhov or my father on his own lawn standing beside his own wood in the United States of America saying (in Russian) this birch is a lovely tree but among the others somehow superficial Grace Paley, “Autumn” from Long Walks and Intimate Talks by Grace Paley and Vera B. Williams. Copyright © 1991 by Grace Paley. Reprinted with the permission of The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, www.feministpress.org.
Source: Begin Again: The Collected Poems of Grace Paley (1999) "I know I am august
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all) I exist as I am, that is enough." -Walt Whitman- "Art may not make anything better, but there is some power in recognizing that someone else has felt as you do, that your interiority, which seems especially in grief so unreachable, may in fact share a space with the inner life of another." - Mark Doty
Today, each year, so many of us reflect and think about where we were when we first heard about or saw the unbelievable historical event that has undoubtedly changed our country forever. Ultimately, I think it matters less where we were, what we were doing, how much we remember. What matters more is what followed. How we moved forward. Where we are today. In that spirit, an article about the place of art in times of tragedy. Poetry matters, people. It does. Can Poetry Console a Grieving Public? by Mark Doty |
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BA in English Archives
January 2021
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