Art Np2

Liam O'Flaherty (1896-1984) wrote perceptive novels and short stories about the Irish peoples' struggles with life. In addition to 52 Poems and Short Stories this post is also for Irish Short Stories hosted by  The Reading Life .   The story can be found in  Classic Irish Short Stories Edited by Frank O'Conner. " Going to Exile" is set in the late 19th or early 20th century on the Irish island of Inverara.  Micheal and Mary Feeny are forced by poverty to leave their island home and emigrate to Boston, Massachusetts where they plan to work to improve their financial situation. The day before the Feeney siblings leave home friends and neighbors gather together for an all night party.  Their parents are heartbroken because they don't know if they will ever see their grandchildren or their children again.  Michael and Mary are young,  afraid, and excited to be leaving their family, friends, and the only home they have ever known.  I can't help but wo...

I didn't know I had this poems.  These poems are from two books on my shelves:  Flat Footed Truths: Telling Black Woman's Lives by Patricia Bell-Scott and Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry  Edited by Charlotte Watson Sherman. "IF YOU LOSE YOUR PEN"  Ruth Forman and all you find is a broken pencil on the floor and the pencil has no sharpener and the sharpener is in the store and your pocket has no money and if you look again
 and all you find is a black Bic and the Bic you need is green and if it appears beneath the mattress of your couch but the couch is dirty and suddenly you want to clean beneath the pillows but you have no vacuum and the vacuum is in the store and your pocket has no money it is not your pen you are looking for it is your tongue and those who speak with it your grandmothers and doves and ebony spiders hovering in the corners of your throat it is your tongue and if you cannot find your tongue do not go looking for the cat you know you w...

  Alexis at  Reflections of a Bookaholic  posed an excellent question a few weeks ago.  She asked her readers if they had a favorite book boyfriend.  Actually I do.  Just one.  It"s the attorney  Gabriel John Utterson from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Utterson is Jekyll's friend and attorney.  He knows there is something going on with Jekyll, but he   thinks Jekyll is being blackmailed by Hyde.  Utterson  continually helps people who are in trouble.  He seems to genuinely like being helpful and he gets a somewhat salacious thrill hearing about the naughty predicaments people get themselves into. I think Utterson may have been in some kind of sinful trouble in the past. Utterson changed his ways, but he misses his old life.   He does   have strong sense of duty.  Every Sunday he takes a walk with his relative Enfield not because he likes it, but because it is the right thi...

"Militarists say that to gain peace we must prepare for war. I think we get what we prepare for. If we want a world where peace is valued, we must teach ourselves to believe that peace is not a "utopian vision" but a real responsibility that must be worked for each day and every day in small and large ways. Any one of us can contribute to building a world where peace and justice prevail.   Jody Williams  Activist, writer, teacher, Nobel laureate.   More information on Jody Williams. Lafayette Clayworks  is located in New Jersey.

Today is Robert Frost's birthday.  He was born March 26,1874 and died January 29, 1963.  If he was alive he'd be 138 years old.  I think he was the first serious poet I was exposed to. Garrison Keillor has some information about Robert Frost on The  Writer's Almanac. "Mending Wall" Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And so...

I found some of this information on the internet and some I already knew. Michael Crichton wrote for Playboy .   To read an essay cilck here.   He was full of shit. Michael Crichton was 6'9".  That's a lot of leg. Michael Crichton was married 5 times. Michael Crichton climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Michael graduated from Harvard and Harvard medical school.  He and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were both doctors. Dr. Crichton was a smoker who died of lung cancer in 2008.  He was born in 1942. Michael Crichton has a son who was born 3 months after he died. Michael Crichton wrote of my favorite books A Case of Need using the pseudonym Jeffrey Hudson. Michael Crichton directed at least 8 movies. Michael Crichton wrote 17 books and 2 screenplays. He co-wrote the screenplays for Twister , Jurassic Park , Rising Sun .  (I didn't know about Twister .)

"The Quiet Knight" by Mohja Kahf The quiet knight forgets to swagger for the ladies but the woman he loves becomes a queen in the throne room of his chest and arms and he never leaves all the laundry or birth control to her The quiet knight is the friend of her body in bed and knows its secrets and out of bed, he is her friend and keeps her secrets The quiet knight has no bellow or bravado He has seen the innocents thrown in the mud under the hooves of the galloping gallants He has given them a ride to the shelter The quiet knight does not insist on leading battle But it is the quiet knight who holds the ground and sticks around, when the flashbulbs have dimmed, to help the wounded home, after bringing to them, in his cupped hands, a drink of his courage and nobility

Jackson Bliss is a writer of short stories who has been published in numerous journals. http://jacksonbliss.blogspot.com/ I think I found his story "The Molestation of Skinny Boys"  while searching for something else.  What does it matter?  He is a new writer to read and enjoy. Actually Jackson Bliss is not new.  He looks as if he is in his early thirties.  At this time Bliss is working on his Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.  To read more about Jackson Bliss's educational pursuits  click here. I think people learn many important lessons through life experience.  "The Molestation of Skinny Boys" is a late better than never coming of age story. Twenty eight year old Jean-Boy (that is what I said) takes a trip from New York to Dakar, Senegal to visit his father's family.  His French mother suggested he go even though interaction with family can be difficult. When Jean-Boy arrives ...

Much of the sensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experience of other people."  Jane Addams, Social Reformer 1860-1935 Water Carriers, Haiti 1985 by Lois Maliou -Jones (November 3, 1905 – June 9, 1998.) Acrylic, 25 ¼ x 19 ¾ in. 

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - March 30, 2012 Closing Reception: Wednesday March 28 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 25 Women Artists 25 Years of Women's History Month Guest Curator: Dolores Mercado, National Museum of Mexican Art Artists: Pilar Acevedo Lynn Basa Jennifer Cronin Jessica Freudenberg-Segal Esperanza Gama Paula Henderson Juliette Herwitt Laura Kina Vera Klement Sarah Krepp Judy Ledgerwood K. A. Letts Bernell Loeb Sioban Lombardi Rosanna Mark-Andreu Renee McGinnis Betty Ann Mocek Elsa Munoz Martina Nehrling Joyce Owens Miriam Socoloff Sue Sommers Erin Waser Maureen Warren Kathleen Waterloo Contact: Jeff Stevenson, Gallery Director, Visual Arts Gallery, Governors State University www.govst.edu/gallery

Warsaw, Poland 1996

"The Laughter of Women" By Lisel Muller The laughter of women sets fire to the Halls of Injustice and the false evidence burns to a beautiful white lightness It rattles the Chambers of Congress and forces the windows wide open so the fatuous speeches can fly out The laughter of women wipes the mist from the spectacles of the old; it infects them with a happy flu and they laugh as if they were young again Prisoners held in underground cells imagine that they see daylight when they remember the laughter of women It runs across water that divides, and reconciles two unfriendly shores like flares that signal the news to each other What a language it is, the laughter of women, high-flying and subversive. Long before law and scripture we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

"good times" by Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) my daddy has paid the rent and the insurance man is gone and the lights is back on and my uncle brud has hit for one dollar straight and they is good times good times good times my mama has made bread and grampaw has come and everybody is drunk and dancing in the kitchen and singing in the kitchen of these is good times good times good times oh children think about the good times

The World is Too Much With Us   by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Raymond Carver (1938-1988) Raymond Carver was the son a sawmill worker and a waitress. He attended several colleges before graduating with a B.A. from Humboldt State College in 1962.  Carver was an alcoholic, went bankrupt twice, and through it all continued to write.  Married twice, he had two children from his first marriage.  Carver died from lung cancer at the age of fifty. Cathedral  was published in 1983, but is still very applicable today considering the present economy and our humanity.   Carver, best known for writing concise, deceptively simple, powerful prose, was also an accomplished poet. "The short story Preservation" is a part of the collection  Cathedral . To preserve is the act of stopping something valuable and perishable from spoiling, going bad, deteriorating, or becoming worthless. As human beings some of what we try to preserve is our food, health, our families, ourselves, and our culture. In "Preservatio...

5.   Snow White, Blood Red Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling.  Ever since I read Coover's " The Dead Queen ",  I've been interested in different variations of Snow White.  I've read "Snow Drop" by Tanith Lee in which Snow White is a caricature used by others in whatever way they see fit.  The story is set in the future.  There are darker versions of many other fairy tales in this compilation.  The stories include Little Red , The Princess in the Tower , Troll Bridge , The Snow Queen , and Breadcrumbs and Stones .  Some of the authors are Patricia A. Mckillip, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, and Harvey Jacobs.  I thought these stories would be scary, instead they are interestingly wicked. 6. How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston is in some parts extremely funny.  Actually the book is not about just being black.  It's seems to be about being human.  I can relate to his stories about how people mispronounce his name. ...

My Papa's Waltz The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.  Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

I'm not getting much done this month.  I am reading ten books and have no idea when I'll finish them.  Wait a minute.  It actually might be eleven or twelve books.  You see it's like this. Jake has a mass in his salivary gland and that had me worried.  It turned out to be something that has to be monitored every few months.  I am truly thankful. Bub moved out again at the beginning of the month.  I'm ambivalent; I'm glad he's gone but at the same time I miss him.  This time he's only twenty-five minutes away instead of three states. It has been unseasonably warm for March.  Today people had shorts on and it's warm enough to wear them.  This weather doesn't make sense to me.  Like what does it mean? So all of these things may be the reason I can't stick to one book.  It could be that I need to develop some discipline.  I'll think about that. These are the books I'm reading: 1.   The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. ...

Langston Hughes wrote this poem in response to seeing the Waldorf-Astoria open during the depression.  People were sleeping on the street. Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria by Langston Hughes (1902-1967) Fine living . . . a la carte? Come to the Waldorf-Astoria! LISTEN HUNGRY ONES! Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the new Waldorf-Astoria: "All the luxuries of private home. . . ." Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house has turned you down this winter? Furthermore: "It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa- mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting. Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished background for society. So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags-- (Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good enough?) ROOMERS Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-ou...

"Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go."   Margaret Walker Daniel by D aniela Rosenhouse   Watercolor 24.5x30cm  

A Study of Reading Habits  Philip Larkin (1922-1985) When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues. Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME. by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,     Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day     To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,     The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run,     And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first,     When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst     Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time,     And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime     You may for ever tarry.

"Siren Song" This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls the song nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead, and the others can't remember. Shall I tell you the secret and if I do, will you get me out of this bird suit? I don't enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical with these two feathery maniacs, I don't enjoy singing this trio, fatal and valuable. I will tell the secret to you, to you, only to you. Come closer. This song is a cry for help: Help me! Only you, only you can, you are unique at last. Alas it is a boring song but it works every time. Margaret Atwood

"Hidden Meanings" Both Hansel and Jack hated their mothers: Jack sold the old cow so she threw his seeds away; Hansel let his feel his fingers a lot and then stuffed her in the oven. Their fathers were troublesome, too: one was a wimp willing to sacrifice his children; the other was so big he had to be cut down, stalk first. We know nothing about Rumplestiltskin's parents, but he played by himself in the woods and when he couldn't get a baby by proxy stuck his wooden leg through the floor. The two boys finally got rich, like Cinderella, but beyond that the ends are obscure. Maybe they entered life, and found it to be its own magic fable, as consequential as any Snow White Blood Red, and on the surface, true. by Dabney Stuart (b.1937) More on this poem.

Bloghop prompt  Question for  March 8-11 from  The Blue Bookcase How do you find time to read, what's your reading style and where do you think reading literature should rank in society's priorities? My answer:      There is always a book with me when I have to sit in a waiting room.  When I worked I always read when I had a break.  These days two or three times a week I read from 7-9 P.M.      I read several books at one time s-l-o-w-l-y.  Then I need to think about them.  I write notes in the margins so I can see what I thought the last time I read the book.  I love to re-read.  Every time I read I book I notice or understand something I did not before.   Article on slow reading on The Daily Beast.      For example, I just re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God  by Zora Neale Hurston.   I had a better understanding of the relationship between Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods...

"Reapers" B lack reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the homes In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds. His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade. Jean Toomer  (1894-1967) Excellent Information on meaning of Reapers.

February Prompt From November's Autumn: Character November's Autumn This a picture of a young Lena Horne.  It is how Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God looks in my mind's eye.  Halle Barry played Janie in the TV movie.  I found that movie immensely disappointing.  It had much more sex and violence than the book. The topic is character.  I am fulfilling Level 3 which is : Try writing a short (four sentences +) note or letter as the character, addressed to you, another character, the author, anyone. Dear Janie, This is your nanny.  Isn't it funny I know how to read and write now? I can see that I made a mistake by forcing you to marry Logan Killicks.  At the time I thought I was doing the right thing.  He had land and was older so I thought you would be safe.  I can see now that he was too old, plain, and dull for a pretty young girl.  You see, I was born during slavery and never expected too much out of life.  I always thought ...

The Hound Life the hound Equivocal Comes at a bound Either to rend me Or to befriend me. I cannot tell The hound's intent Till he has sprung At my bare hand With teeth or tongue. Meanwhile I stand And wait the event. Robert Francis (1901 -1987)

Lori Greene Mosaic Artist Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. Khalil Gibran

"Do not stand at my grave and weep" Do not stand at my grave and weep,  I am not there, I do not sleep.  I am in a thousand winds that blow,  I am the softly falling snow.  I am the gentle showers of rain,  I am the fields of ripening grain.  I am in the morning hush,  I am in the graceful rush  Of beautiful birds in circling flight,  I am the starshine of the night.  I am in the flowers that bloom,  I am in a quiet room.  I am in the birds that sing,  I am in each lovely thing .  Do not stand at my grave and cry,  I am not there. I do not die. Mary Elizabeth Frye