Quote for the Day: September 18th, 2021

Conrad Veidt in a still from Robert Wiene’s *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari* (1920)

We queens are not free to answer the calls of our hearts.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920); directed by Robert Wiene

Revolutionary at the time were its sharp lines and angles, its use of shadows and light to heighten the viewer’s anxiety. Caligari quite literally helped to develop the language of cinema.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is a masterpiece of German Expressionist filmcraft. Perhaps no other film in the history of cinema has received as much scholarly attention because it paved the way for so many films that succeeded it. Revolutionary at the time were its sharp lines and angles, its use of shadows and light to heighten the viewer’s anxiety. Caligari quite literally helped to develop the language of cinema. Without it, there would be no film noir. None of the great horror films made by Universal from the 1930s to the 1950s would exist.

It would be my contention, in fact, that you can draw a direct line that starts with Caligari and goes all the way to films like The Wolf House (2018), Us (2019), and Midsommar (2019). I could talk about it all day, but it’s really something you need to see for yourself to truly appreciate. What are you waiting for?

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: September 17th, 2021

I’m nobody’s fragment.
Sandra Milo, in an interview on the Criterion Collection DVD release of 8 1/2 (1963); directed by Federico Fellini

Poem for the Day: September 17th, 2021

won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me 
what i have shaped into 
a kind of life? i had no model. 
born in babylon 
both nonwhite and woman 
what did i see to be except myself? 
i made it up 
here on this bridge between 
starshine and clay, 
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate 
with me that everyday 
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Lucille Clifton was born exactly 64 days after my paternal grandmother, on June 27th, 1936. She was discovered by Langston Hughes, who was shown her poetry by Ishmael Reed, himself an acclaimed Black poet and novelist. Clifton was extremely prolific during her writing career, having more than thirty works published, including poetry collections, children’s books, and memoirs. In addition to many other accolades and awards, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007. The Book of Light, the collection from which today’s poem was taken, is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Poem for the Day: September 16th, 2021

Mercy Invincibility by Vidyan Ravinthiran

“How often
have our lives known that brief
immunity – the crisis which emits
a stretch of ardent unreflective life?”

We’re playing Super Mario. This level’s
designed for one player and not two.
The quick-collapsing platforms mean one always falls.
But when he hits the spikes he starts to flash.
The plumber turns invincible as a firewalker.
A chance to extricate oneself. How often
have our lives known that brief
immunity – the crisis which emits
a stretch of ardent unreflective life?
It’s afterwards that hurts. Time salts all wounds.
You come to realise: that really happened.
But first there’s a quick flick of the stick
as you leap my glimmering sprite between the spikes
and urge me onwards through a wall of fire.

© 2018 Vidyan Ravinthiran. Mercy Invincibility was first published in the Summer 2018 issue of The Poetry Review. Vidyan Ravinthiran is the author of Grun-tu-molani, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize; Elizabeth Bishop’s Prosaic, which won both the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism; and The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here, which won a Northern Writers Award as well as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection and the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize.

200 Posts

This morning, I made my 200th blog post. That doesn’t even seem real. I can’t remember what my life was like before The Voracious Bibliophile so I want to thank everyone who has given this blog a chance. I am over the moon with joy right now. Here’s to the next two hundred!

All Aboard the ARC: Beneath the Trees: The Autumn of Mr. Grumpf by DAV

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Mr. Grumpf is a lovable curmudgeon. When we first meet him, Mr. Grumpf is busy trying to sweep away the last of the leaves from his doorstep in preparation for the fast-approaching winter. He is a badger that doesn’t want to be bothered. His neighbors, however, must have missed the memo because he is constantly being interrupted.

Despite his ill-tempered disposition, Mr. Grumpf always helps his neighbors when they ask and sometimes even when they don’t. Whether it’s helping a mouse retrieve his kite that’s stuck in a tree (and then repairing it when it turns out to be broken) or delivering nuts to a beleaguered father squirrel who has fallen behind in gathering nuts for winter, Mr. Grumpf is always of service to his neighbors…though never with a smile.

When Mr. Grumpf finally makes it home, he finds all the neighbors he’s helped helping him with his pre-winter chores. The smallest of smiles breaks through his grumpy veneer when the same mouse whose kite he saved presents him with his once-broken broom—repaired and ready to go.

I loved the illustrations in this book. The author uses a minimal of dialogue and narration to tell the story. It is image-driven, so children must interpret what’s happening most often by following the sequence of images on the page and reading the characters’ facial expressions.

All in all, I loved Beneath the Trees and I’m looking forward to the next books in the series.

Beneath the Trees: The Autumn of Mr. Grumpf is due to be released on October 12th, 2021 by Magnetic Press and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: September 16th, 2021

People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

There’s a lot of pain, yes, but there’s also so much joy. The Color Purple is so radiant it practically glows in the dark.

The Color Purple is one of my favorite books of all time. Because there are so many books I want to read, there are only a few books I’ll reread; The Color Purple is one of them. I get more from it each time I read it. More than just a great novel, it is a blueprint for expressing love through careful attention, through putting oneself in a place of openness and willingness to accept the love we feel we don’t deserve. There’s a lot of pain, yes, but there’s also so much joy. The Color Purple is so radiant it practically glows in the dark.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: September 15th, 2021

Someone Somewhere is Googling “Stonewall,” Inauguration Day 2013 by Stephen S. Mills

A screen is filling with black and white images:
police officers, drag queens, and a few actual 
stone walls. There are links to history pages, 
organizations that have taken the name,
and the website for the bar where it all began. 
A bar that now makes its money off of tourists 
paying homage to the riots, raising a gin 
and tonic to a movement that’s still not over,
but has changed direction. Today, people talk 
of marriage. Of becoming like everyone else. 
It’s cold outside and inside our Harlem 
apartment. A place that knows something 
about fighting, about surviving, about deciding 
how to be equal. Here on this day our computer 
screen is filled with a president taking a second 
term. A president we’ve fought to keep. 
A president willing to acknowledge our fight. 
We’ve learned to adapt, you and I. To find 
our own meaning. Our own way into love, 
sex, happiness. In the coming years, we’ll make 
choices, and yes, one day, we’ll probably be
legally tied to each other. Protected under 
the law. Written down in the history books. 
Two men. Two names. Two bodies. 
But that act, no matter how simple or elegant,
will never capture our lives, or our history,
or our desire to be undefined.

© 2013 Stephen S. Mills. Someone Somewhere is Googling “Stonewall,” Inauguration Day 2013 first appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of Referential Magazine. Stephen S. Mills is the author of He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices, which won the 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry; A History of the Unmarried, which in 2015 was named to the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow List; and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution, which in 2019 was named to the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow List. You can read more about Stephen and his work at his website.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: September 15th, 2021

I hope you do more than just survive. I hope you act boldly without apologizing for who you are or the things you love. I hope you make art and listen to songs that make you sing out loud. I hope you discover new places and hidden coffee shops. I hope you fall in love with stories and dance in snowflakes and raindrops. I hope you achieve all your dreams and find the courage to love yourself. I hope you live.
Courtney Peppernell, Pillow Thoughts III

Poem for the Day: September 14th, 2021

Note Home by Chloe Honum

Mother, you have never seen such snow, such emphasis on 
setting. So it is accurate to say my heart broke in the snow. 
One patient here is a Vietnam vet. His torso is hard like an 
old-fashioned suitcase. Kick my dog, he says, referring to his 
beloved animal over ten years dead, and I’ll kick your ass. The 
light is fluorescent. Everything hums. It is so important to go
on naming, even if all I said to you this winter was snow, snow,
snow.

Then Winter: Poems by Chloe Honum is available to order from Bull City Press.

Update

I had trouble getting today’s poem to format the way the author originally intended, so for clarity’s sake and to preserve the integrity of the line breaks, I am including an image of the poem taken by @ChelsDingman on Twitter, to whom I am indebted. Thank you, Chelsea!

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.