- New from Earthgirl. That's Stanley (named after Elkin) on the left, Rosie (named after Tremain) on the right. You can see more of her work here. Mocomofos, she has a show this coming April. Details TBA.
- Tremain, as opposed to Trelane.
- Who the hell does sillyass Star Trek jokes and allusions?
- See blog header.
- Language of resistance: Such slander campaigns could make the secret police in totalitarian regimes look like literary workshops. For what they do is create characters; they make people up and release them into the world. When, years after the collapse of communism, Müller gained access to her secret police file, she discovered that in the archives she was not one, but two distinct people. “One is called Cristina, an enemy of the state, who must be taken on.” Except for the name, this character looked familiar to Müller, a version of herself as reconstructed by the regime’s spies and scribes. The second character was pure fiction. To compromise the real one, the secret police created a fake Müller, Cristina’s “double.” This literary product had all “the ingredients that would be most damaging to me—hardened Communist, ruthless agent, party member.” Working for the Party—or for its “Shield and Sword,” as the secret police was endearingly called—was often seen as a dirty job, something that could rob you of social respectability. Apparently the inner Party knew this better than anyone else.
- Easy Make Totalitarian Salads!
- Today's healthy dose of duh.
- Bartleby, the president.
- LitCrit Wars, via Melville.
- [He Lived - Childhood Summers]
- Short films of Diana Rigg?
- Bleggalgazing and a request for blogs. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
- The Librarian.
- Bleggalgazing: yes, I'm over myself, at least for today, thanks.
- Lordy, downloaded this album last night, holyfuck:
HOME AFTER THREE MONTHS AWAY
Robert Lowell
Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze--
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.
Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair--
they tell me nothing's gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child's play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush. . . .
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.
Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen; no no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year's snowballing enervation.
I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.
