Quote for the Day: November 19th, 2021

When the first glimmer-pop of firefly light appears on a summer night, I always want to call my mother just to say hello. The bibliography of the firefly is a tender and electric dress, a small flame sputtering in the ditches along a highway, and the elytra covering the hind wings of the firefly lift like a light leather, suppler than any other beetle’s. In flight, it is like a loud laugh, the kind that only appears in summer, with the stink of meats sizzling somewhere down the street, and the mouths of neighborhood children stained with popsicle juice and hinging open with the excitement of a ball game or tag.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

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Poem for the Day: November 18th, 2021

This Is Not a Small Voice by Sonia Sanchez

This is not a small voice
you hear               this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters
navigating the hallways
of our schools spilling out
on the corners of our cities and
no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love
you hear               this is a large
love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,
folds them inside our history where they
toast more than the flesh
where they suck the bones of the alphabet
and spit out closed vowels.
This is a love colored with iron and lace.
This is a love initialed Black Genius.

This is not a small voice
you hear.

Quote for the Day: November 18th, 2021

*Snitch (Audible Original)* by Olivia Gatwood

Well, sometimes you become what you came from, and sometimes you make a vow against it.
Olivia Gatwood, Snitch (Audible Original)

Poem for the Day: November 17th, 2021

*A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems* by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Golden Gate Park That Day… by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Golden Gate Park that day
                           a man and his wife were coming along   
         thru the enormous meadow
                           which was the meadow of the world   
He was wearing green suspenders
                              and carrying an old beat-up flute
                                                                        in one hand   
      while his wife had a bunch of grapes
                                  which she kept handing out
                                                                         individually   
                                                      to various squirrels
                                                                           as if each   
                                                             were a little joke

      And then the two of them came on
                                                thru the enormous meadow   
which was the meadow of the world
                                                 and then
            at a very still spot where the trees dreamed
         and seemed to have been waiting thru all time
                                                                            for them   
             they sat down together on the grass
                                              without looking at each other   
                and ate oranges
                                    without looking at each other
                                                            and put the peels   
             in a basket which they seemed
                                       to have brought for that purpose   
                  without looking at each other

      And then
                  he took his shirt and undershirt off   
       but kept his hat on
                                    sideways
                                                and without saying anything   
             fell asleep under it
                                           And his wife just sat there looking   
at the birds which flew about
   calling to each other
                           in the stilly air
      as if they were questioning existence
                   or trying to recall something forgotten

But then finally
                   she too lay down flat
                                                and just lay there looking up   
                                                                               at nothing   
                        yet fingering the old flute
                                                                which nobody played
                            and finally looking over
                                                                at him
                  without any particular expression
                                                               except a certain awful look   
                        of terrible depression

© 1958 Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “In Golden Gate Park That Day…” first appeared in Ferlinghetti’s collection A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems, which was published in 1958 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Quote for the Day: November 17th, 2021

*The Human Comedy* (1943); directed by Clarence Brown

Sing me a song, boy. Protect me from the murder of age and time. Protect me with your songs and your young dreams.
The Human Comedy (1943); directed by Clarence Brown

Poem for the Day: November 16th, 2021

Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons   
          walking their dogs
                      in Central Park West
    (or their cats on leashes—
       the cats themselves old highwire artists)   
The ballerinas
                leap and pirouette
                           through Columbus Circle   
         while winos on park benches
               (laid back like drunken Goudonovs)   
            hear the taxis trumpet together
               like horsemen of the apocalypse   
                               in the dusk of the gods   
It is the final witching hour
                when swains are full of swan songs   
    And all return through the dark dusk   
                to their bright cells
                                  in glass highrises
      or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes   
                              in the Russian Tea Room   
    or climb four flights to back rooms
                                 in Westside brownstones   
               where faded playbill photos
                        fall peeling from their frames   
                            like last year’s autumn leaves

© 1981 Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West” appears in Ferlinghetti’s collection These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems, which was published in 1993 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Quote for the Day: November 16th, 2021

*The Woman in Red* (1935); directed by Robert Florey

I’d like to find one of those authors who write about how wonderful it is to be in love. I’d shoot ‘em just for the fun of it.
The Woman in Red (1935); directed by Robert Florey

I think it’s safe to say that Barbara Stanwyck had some of the sauciest lines in cinematic history and while The Woman in Red is lesser-known among the films she starred in during her long career, it is a gem well worth watching. If you haven’t seen it yet and choose to, do yourself a favor and keep a pen and notebook nearby to save some of the barbs to use the next time someone pisses you off.

Poem for the Day: November 15th, 2021

[you fit into me] by Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

© 1971 Margaret Atwood. “you fit into me” originally appeared in Atwood’s collection Power Politics, which was published in 1971 by House of Anansi Books. Margaret Atwood (1939-) is one of the world’s most beloved writers with more than seventy published works to her credit. You can find a full bibliography of her works here.

Quote for the Day: November 15th, 2021

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poem for the Day: November 14th, 2021

Lines Written Near San Francisco by Louis Simpson

I wake and feel the city trembling.
Yes, there is something unsettled in the air   
And the earth is uncertain.

And so it was for the tenor Caruso.
He couldn’t sleep—you know how the ovation   
Rings in your ears, and you re-sing your part.

And then the ceiling trembled
And the floor moved. He ran into the street.   
Never had Naples given him such a reception!

The air was darker than Vesuvius.   
“O mamma mia,”
He cried, “I’ve lost my voice!”

At that moment the hideous voice of Culture,   
Hysterical woman, thrashing her arms and legs,   
Shrieked from the ruins.

At that moment everyone became a performer.   
Otello and Don Giovanni   
And Figaro strode on the midmost stage.

In the high window of a burning castle   
Lucia raved. Black horses
Plunged through fire, dragging the wild bells.

The curtains were wrapped in smoke. Tin swords   
Were melting; masks and ruffs
Burned—and the costumes of the peasants’ chorus.

Night fell. The white moon rose   
And sank in the Pacific. The tremors   
Passed under the waves. And Death rested.


2
Now, as we stand idle,
Watching the silent, bowler-hatted man,
The engineer, who writes in the smoking field;

Now as he hands the paper to a boy,
Who takes it and runs to a group of waiting men,   
And they disperse and move toward their wagons,

Mules bray and the wagons move—
Wait! Before you start
(Already the wheels are rattling on the stones)

Say, did your fathers cross the dry Sierras   
To build another London?
Do Americans always have to be second-rate?

Wait! For there are spirits
In the earth itself, or the air, or sea.   
Where are the aboriginal American devils?

Cloud shadows, pine shadows
Falling across the bright Pacific bay ...   
(Already they have nailed rough boards together)

Wait only for the wind
That rustles in the eucalyptus tree.   
Wait only for the light

That trembles on the petals of a rose.
(The mortar sets—banks are the first to stand)   
Wait for a rose, and you may wait forever.

The silent man mops his head and drinks   
Cold lemonade. “San Francisco   
Is a city second only to Paris.”


3
Every night, at the end of America
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.   
How sad it is, the end of America!

While we were waiting for the land   
They’d finished it—with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys

Where lives are mean and wretched.   
But the banks thrive and the realtors   
Rejoice—they have their America.

Still, there is something unsettled in the air.   
Out there on the Pacific   
There’s no America but the Marines.

Whitman was wrong about the People,
But right about himself. The land is within.
At the end of the open road we come to ourselves.

Though mad Columbus follows the sun   
Into the sea, we cannot follow.
We must remain, to serve the returning sun,

And to set tables for death.
For we are the colonists of Death—
Not, as some think, of the English.

And we are preparing thrones for him to sit,   
Poems to read, and beds   
In which it may please him to rest.

This is the land
The pioneers looked for, shading their eyes   
Against the sun—a murmur of serious life.

© 1988 Louis Simpson. “Lines Written Near San Francisco” first appeared in Simpson’s Collected Poems, which was published in 1988 by Paragon House. Louis Simpson (1923-2012) was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to the United States when he was 17 years old to study at Columbia University. Though his studies were briefly interrupted by military service, he eventually returned to New York and worked for a time as an editor before earning his Ph.D. A contemporary of poets like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, Simpson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964 for his collection At the End of the Open Road.

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