“Fatten your animal for sacrifice, poet,  but keep your muse slender. —” Καλλίμαχος/Callimachus 310/305–240 BC Scholar at the Library of Alexandria

Orion Dead H.D. 1886-1961 [Artemis speaks] The cornel-trees uplift from the furrows, the roots at their bases strike lower through the barley-sprays. So arise and face me. I am poisoned with the rage of song. I once pierced the flesh of the wild-deer, now am I afraid to touch the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths? […]

Eating Poetry by Mark Strand   Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.   The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress.   The poems are gone. The light is […]

“I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret, shared it in secret and longed, aw longed to show it—to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. […]

The Song of Wandering Aengus William Butler Yeats I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in […]

Wherever You Woke by Dermot Bolger There only ever was one street      One back garden, one bedroom: Wherever you woke you woke beneath      The ceiling where you were born, For the briefest unconscious second      An eyelid’s flutter from home. I found this in a compilation called Soho Square Six […]

“a girl has got to be a daughter first. She have to learn that. And if she never learns how to be a daughter, she can’t never learn how to be a woman. I mean a real woman: a woman good enough for a child; good enough for a man – good enough even for […]

At some point, as a strange child who decided to write the Great American Novel (whatever the hell that even means), I stumbled across the concept of a “Commonplace Book.”  And I started sort of keeping one.  The things I would include in my Commonplace book pop up in my journals, in notebooks, on slips […]