dig

Category: language

  • AG2023_1550017a or through that opening

    AG2023_1550017a

    Touch me, he said.

    •

    And through that opening

    I did.

    Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned by Solmaz Sharif

  • AG2023_1550017a or a memory holder

    AG2023_1550017a

    Place can be a memory holder for paradise or pain. (Pádraig Ó. Tuama, Poetry Unbound)

  • This is still life

    “I think I’m in hell, therefore I am. It’s the catechism come true. I’m the slave of my baptism. Parents, you’ve created my tortures and yours.—Poor nitwit! Hell can’t wield power over pagans.— This is still life!”

    Arthur Rimbaud, Hellish Night, translated by Bertrand Mathieu

    AG2023IMG_20231011_125108_HDRa

  • AG2023_1140103b

    AG2023_1140103b

    “Inside, I harbor the ache of what is no longer possible.”

    Charles Rafferty, Insomnolence.

  • AG2023_1034232a or out of this … enchantment

    AG2023_1034232a

                                                   out
                                                   of
                                                   this
                                                   hole—
                                                     —
                                                   slips
                                                   moon   —

               out
               of
               this
                              cloudhole

    Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Enchantment

  • AG2023_1140723ac

    AG2023_1140723ac

    “The gut of silence … was louder than sound itself” (P. Djèlí Clark, The Haunting of Tram Car 015)

    “When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, 
      Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
    And think that I may never live to trace 
      Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;”

    John Keats, When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

    Popova on Eric Berne–self, game, spontaneity, intimacy, awareness.

  • Hold on

    I always think of Pauline going
    down the stairs I always hold
    on     thinking how going down
    she must have tripped she
    was always going fast after
    all we called her the Flash
    and when her husband
    found her it didn’t matter
    that he was an ER doc he
    might as well have been a post-
    doc in art history he might as
    well have been a window
    washer or mortician there
    she was at the bottom
    of the stairs with that busted
    sack of onions sweet onions
    she’d have sliced and cried
    over and eaten raw with a little
    salt and she’d have handed
    you a slice like a sliver
    of moon and if you
    were in a dark
    time she’d have
    said hey friend hold
    on

    Andrea Cohen, Onions via nybooks

    Andrew Durbin on Isa Genzken, also in nybooks.

    Isa Genzken
    “Nofretete – Das Original”, 2012
    Nefertiti plaster bust with sunglasses on wooden base, wooden plinth and colour photograph in aluminium frame
    184 x 50.5 x 40 cm
    Privatsammlung Rheinland
    Courtesy Galerie Buchholz/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 / Photo: Sascha Fuis
    via 75/75 at Neue Nationalgalerie

  • AG2023_1077719a or your wind-tossed travels

    AG2023_1077719a

    “No handshakes. No goodbyes. But
    separated in the crowd, and each with a little wave,”

    Lloyd Schwartz, In Flight

    “Strange black and princely pirates of the skies,
       Would that your wind-tossed travels I could know!
    Would that my soul could see, and, seeing, rise
       To unrestricted life where ebb and flow
       Of Nature’s pulse would constitute a wider life below!

    Could I but live just here in Freedom’s arms,
       A kingly life without a sovereign’s care!”

    Emily Pauline Johnson, The Flight of the Crows