Quote for the Day: September 14th, 2021

Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence? Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling, like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake.
Sally Rooney, Normal People: A Novel

Almost to 3K!!!

I am so overwhelmed with the way this blog has been received. Being able to share my work with the world and talk about books on a platform where I have the final say is a privilege I’ll never take for granted. Thank you so very much!

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 13th, 2021

Katrina by Patricia Smith

Weather is nothing until it reaches skin,
freezes dust, spits its little swords.
Kept to oceans, feeding only on salted water,
I was a rudderless woman in full tantrum,
throwing my body against worlds I wanted.
I never saw harm in lending that aches.
All I ever wanted to be
was a wet, gorgeous mistake,
a reason to crave shelter.

Her words are alchemical, an accelerant to the fire already burning inside my chest.

I love the way Patricia Smith uses the imagery of a hurricane as a metaphor for the ways in which she herself has embodied fury, longing, and destruction. I’ve never read any of her work that wasn’t breathtaking and even that seems too cheap a word to describe the effect her poetry has on me. Her words are alchemical, an accelerant to the fire already burning inside my chest. If you’ve not yet read any of her collections, today is the perfect day to start.

From the Gram

I can’t remember if I mentioned this yet or not, but I created a special Instagram page to post complementary content for this blog. I really enjoy doing amateur graphic design work so being able to churn out simple, sleek, and stylish graphics with relative ease is a definite mood booster. I probably won’t cross-post everything I put on there because I want it to be complementary, not identical, but I couldn’t help but share the one below. Enjoy.

Quote for the Day: September 13th, 2021

Where do these stories come from? They emanate from Louise, in a continual flood, without her even thinking about it, without her making the slightest effort of memory or imagination. But in what black lake, in what deep forest has she found these cruel tales where the heroes die at the end, after first saving the world?
Leïla Slimani, The Perfect Nanny: A Novel

Poem for the Day: September 12th, 2021

Of The Empire by Mary Oliver

We will be known as a culture that feared death 
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity 
for the few and cared little for the penury of the 
many. We will be known as a culture that taught 
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke 
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a 
commodity. And they will say that this structure 
was held together politically, which it was, and 
they will say also that our politics was no more 
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of 
the heart, and that the heart, in those days, 
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

No one saw the world as clearly as did Mary Oliver, and no one loved it as fiercely as she did. She would hate what we’re continuing to do to our planet and to each other. What is wrong with a world in which people care more about lining their pockets with more money than they’ll ever need than they do about their fellow humans who are poor and hungry? What beats strangely in our hearts, that makes them so small, and hard, and full of meanness?

I think blind optimism is worse than cruel indifference. It sustains objections to the worst forms of suffering with a simpleton’s simper and the decontextualized murmurings of a seasoned gaslighter.

I won’t pretend to know the answers to these questions. I think blind optimism is worse than cruel indifference. It sustains objections to the worst forms of suffering with a simpleton’s simper and the decontextualized murmurings of a seasoned gaslighter. We are not without hope, but that hope must be doused with passion, and seasoned with care.

Quote for the Day: September 12th, 2021

You have so much potential within you. So many
gifts, it will blow your mind
So stop landfilling your soul. Stop overcrowding
your genius
Get naked with yourself. Look at your nakedness in
the mirror
This is it
Be naked. Live naked. Thrive naked. Fly naked.
Jessica Semaan, Child of the Moon

Poem for the Day: September 11th, 2021

Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.


III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.


IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Quote for the Day: September 11th, 2021

She [Lucy] loved Christ for his suffering, for what they had in common. With all his strength, even Christ had asked if this burden could be lifted from him. The idea that pain was not a random thing, but a punishment of the evil upon the good, the powerful upon the weak, gave her something to rage against. After all, what is the point of being angry at nature when nature could care less? If you cried against barbarism, then at least you were standing up to a consciousness that could hypothetically be shaped. When Lucy believed that there were actually things in the world that were worse than what had happened to her, she could pull herself up on this knowledge like a rope. When she lost sight of it, she sank.
Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty: [A Friendship]

Eternal Summer

Eternal Summer by Fred Slusher

they only know what they have been given, which is a land maligned, a land deprived of its beasts of change.

sometimes i can just feel it:
warmth & all the other things 
i’ve never asked for seeping
into me, a violation to the x 
degree. what is wrong in a
world where one can’t shed 
the shackles of summer & 
sink into the blissful autumn 
like a child into a mountain of 
leaves? these children don’t
know the seasons. they only 
know what they have been 
given, which is a land maligned,
a land deprived of its beasts of 
change. if i had been told i’d 
be forced to live in an eternal 
summer, i would have remained 
in embryo, in ectoplasm, in
a dream had right before waking. 
when i see someone wearing a 
coat it pisses me off. i want to 
ask them what it is that chills 
them in a world on fire? i want to 
slap their smug self-satisfied grins 
until their ears ring. is speaking 
the truth now an act of unspeakable 
violence?

Haiku season is (temporarily) over, so I’m back to posting original non-haiku poetry on here. I wrote Eternal Summer in a fit of rage. I was sitting in my living room reading reports of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida alongside reports about record-breaking temperatures on the West Coast and the increasing likelihood of more wildfires. We are seeing the first waves of the effects of climate change on our ecosystems, and some days I can’t help but feel a sense of utter despair over it.

We are seeing the first waves of the effects of climate change on our ecosystems, and some days I can’t help but feel a sense of utter despair over it.

Rather than acting expeditiously to help the world reach net zero carbon emissions, most governments, municipalities, and MNCs seem content to pay lip service to sustainability and clean energy initiatives while acting as if they have decades to figure this out—they don’t. Others seem to be banking on nascent carbon capture technologies to act as their get out of jail free card when what we really need is aggressive action now. Not tomorrow. Not in the next decade. Now. Our lives quite literally depend on it.

Wow, so this post is a prime example of how my ADHD brain works. I started off sharing a poem and ended on an urgent call-to-action on curbing the effects of climate change. All in a day’s work, my reader-friends.