Welcome to Litsy!

Lot of these tapestries were from the New Testament & The Hunt was also a big one. Most famously The Hunt of the Unicorn. Which was about policing gender. They used a young virgin with braided hair to trap the pansexual unicorn. I can‘t even stand to look at those tapestries. It hurts.

I‘ve been gone from your life for 7 years. But believe me—I am keeping an eye on things. I notice a chapter on your list called The Dog‘s Journey. I read it & think: I can help. I know I‘m the dog being referred to AND I‘m a pit bull. We love to work so I will help you get the thing up & running & on its way around the world. Afterglow is totally a book with legs (4 if I can be dumb) so it will go a lot further than your Eileen-based fictions.

Dog wanted to have a conversation with man and the dogs within us. And the fish, frankly, needed to speak. You know how Dog accomplished all this. He pictured it. He pictured an earth covered with water and he pictured it dry, listen to me, and the fish going up on shore and discovering feet. Dog is lonely, we can see that lonely in every dog‘s eyes and that loneliness is love. It causes us to do good things.

In adulthood we must relearn the wisdom of the young who feels her inside while she is being taught she is wrong. To abide in the totalitarian, to survive one must look straight into the face of the nun or whoever and muse. Yet this brought so much upon me. Warily I learned not to absorb their enmity.

The dog stands between the darkness and the light, the dog only knows. An earlier poet Rilke said this. What the Rilke did not know because there were not cell phones yet and so the union of the picture and the sound was not yet complete (except in churches) is the fact that yes a dog was looking at death but in this photograph I share she is also looking beyond it at the light. […]
That is the procession of the universe, a system of stripes […]

[Aphra lesbian poetry] journal ran for only 8 issues. I think it‘s because they named it wrong. Because aphra means dust. To be fair, a snowflake is dust with a little activity going on. Yet foam (aphros) is code for a deeper knowing. Like magazines. And even books are not about the work, but an experience or a place. I can already imagine you getting mad when you hear this. Good! My purpose is this.
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I have always hated Ovid because it is just rape. I hate reading myths. I liked them when I was a kid because I didn‘t know what sex was. And I hate history. Iceland is essentially populated by the descendants of raped women. Probably all of us are, right.

Mike Kelley actually said in an interview around 2004 that despite people always asking him about feminism and its affects on him it was really beside the point because when he does craft he is being IRONIC whereas when a woman does it she is being natural.

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While I‘m not against the kindle, any of the new forms our friend Mr Booky is travelling in, I‘m definitely opposed to the glowing screens in libraries that want to lead me to their files, their stacks. I like the card. I like the ancient smell of the library and its pace. It‘s home. I can stay in those files for a while. They are the used bookstore inside the library.

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I was reading some paperbacks from the pile I got at the library sale. And while I‘m sitting here let me pass on this small bit of advice to the reader. No one wants to hear from anyone at any time anywhere that they have just purchased your book at the library sale. It‘s like saying hey I plucked your book out from under a forklift just before it was heading to the dump.

One of the best reading buddies I've ever had is now gone. After 12 years of reading with this guy curled up at my side it seems almost impossible to do it without him. His big lug of a brother is still here to snuggle, but I sense an epic reading slump coming on.
Rest easy little man 💙

If anyone has a reading suggestion (similar to Tiny Beautiful Things) that might be good for a broken heart, I'd love to hear it

I unintentionally took a reading break while preparing for a family trip and finally picked up a book instead of checking out while watching something. Feels really good. This coffee and chicory ice cream helps, too. 😏

Started Eileen Myles' Afterglow (a dog memoir) last night. And ate too many cookies. 🙊

A lovely win from @GroveAtlantic books memoirs history books a wonderful selection 😍📚

My fourth and final event of the day is next. Earlier today, in the memoir event, Myles called nonfiction and memoir a "molten form. Nobody knows what it is." Someone at a poetry event asked about which feelings are easiest to write about and Myles said, "Feeling is the landscape Im navigating when I'm writing." I'm looking forward to more bon mots from Myles tonight.

The table of books for sale... it's all part of the excitement waiting for the next Writers festival event. 😊

I'm going to 4 events today. Eileen Myles will be at three of them. Do you think I'm a fan?

#bookmail I wish this had a cover.