Quote for the Day: October 5th, 2021

They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.
Lemony Snicket

Self Care Pinterest Board

As someone who lives with multiple mental health issues, I know how daunting it can be at times to perform even the most rudimentary acts of self-care. In that vein, I’ve been curating a Pinterest board full of positive messages and self care tips for people who want to take better care of themselves but don’t really know where or how to begin. I’ve also got a couple of designs that I made myself that I’ve not yet pinned, but more on that later.

For now, if you’d like to check out my Pinterest board dedicated to self care, check out the code below.

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.

Poem for the Day: October 4th, 2021

For the young who want to by Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Today’s poem is taken from the collection Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy, which was published in 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf.

I love love love Marge Piercy. I was first introduced to her work as a high school junior via her poem “Barbie Doll” and since then I’ve been delighted with each new discovery. I hope you love “For the young who want to” as much as I do.

Quote for the Day: October 4th, 2021

Compete with no one but yourself.
Dionne Alexander

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly measuring yourself against people you know in real life or people you follow online?

In a world where success is measured by the number of likes or followers you have, it’s easy to turn a numbers game into a measurement of self-worth, and it’s not.

It’s a toxic practice that seems unavoidable most of the time. In a world where success is measured by the number of likes or followers you have, it’s easy to turn a numbers game into a measurement of self-worth, and it’s not. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about for years now but that I’m just now starting to internalize is the fact that value is inherent. I’m going to repeat that: VALUE IS INHERENT. You cannot, as a human being, become more or less valuable based on your characteristics or actions. It’s just not possible.

I’m going to add to Maggie’s quote and say that nothing you can say or do can fuck up the space for God. That connection, like our inherent value, is irrevocable and impregnable.

When you really think about it, it’s incredibly freeing. It reminds me of another quote I feel like I’ve shared on here (not entirely sure, my apologies) by Maggie Nelson. In her book The Argonauts, she says, “Nothing you can say can fuck up the space for God.” That’s a slow burn, isn’t it? I’m going to add to Maggie’s quote and say that nothing you can say or do can fuck up the space for God. That connection, like our inherent value, is irrevocable and impregnable.

We believe the things we repeat, so repeat good things about yourself to yourself.

There’s an exercise I’d like for all of you to try with me. Every day when you wake up, I want you to find a mirror (the front-facing camera on your phone will work just fine) and repeat these words: “I do not have to earn my value.” The first few times you do this might me awkward and embarrassing, but eventually you’ll come to believe the words you can hear yourself saying. We believe the things we repeat, so repeat good things about yourself to yourself.

Poem for the Day: October 3rd, 2021

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Quote for the Day: October 3rd, 2021

All the reading she had done had given her a view of life they had never seen.
Roald Dahl, Matilda

Bonus Poem: Colors passing through us by Marge Piercy

Colors passing through us by Marge Piercy

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

I know I usually only share one poem a day, but I’ve had a rough week and I’m sure a lot of you can probably say the same. I believe to my core that you can never have too much poetry. I believe poetry acts as a salve when the flames of a world never not on fire manage to singe us. Love and light to all of you. Walk in power.

Poem for the Day: October 2nd, 2021

Song by Muriel Rukeyser

Make and be eaten, the poet says,
Lie in the arms of nightlong fire,
To celebrate the waking, wake.
Burn in the daylong light; and praise
Even the mother unappeased,
Even the fathers of desire.

Blind go the days, but joy will see 
Agreements of music; they will wind 
The shaking of your dance; no more 
Will the ambiguous arm-waves spell 
Confusion of the blessing given. 

Only and finally declare 
Among the purest shapes of grace 
The waking of the face of fire, 
The body of waking and the skill 
To make your body such a shape 
That all the eyes of hope shall stare. 

That all the cries of fear shall know, 
Staring in their bird-pierced song; 
Lines of such penetration make 
That shall bind our loves at last. 
Then from the mountains of the lost, 
All the fantasies shall wake, 
Strong and real and speaking turn 
Wherever flickers your unreal. 

And my strong ghosts shall fade and pass 
My love start fiery as grass 
Wherever burn my fantasies, 
Wherever burn my fantasies.

April 1955

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) paved the way for and mentored many of the twentieth-century’s greatest writers, among them Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, and Anne Sexton, just to name a few. It is indeed a shame then that her own name has all but faded into obscurity, known only by a handful of milquetoast academics and the odd literature student lucky enough to come across her verse.

In both works, we see the personal melding with the political, illuminating the human costs of state-sponsored violence.

In addition to her poetry, Rukeyser was also a noted playwright, biographer, children’s book author, and liberal political activist. One can of a surety draw a direct line between Rukeyser’s poetics of resistance and anti-war sentiment in Theory of Flight (1935) all the way to Solmaz Sharif’s Look: Poems, which was composed using language found in a Defense Department dictionary. In both works, we see the personal melding with the political, illuminating the human costs of state-sponsored violence. In both works, lived experiences make the authors both participants and viewers in conflict(s) both interpersonal and global in scale.

For Further Reading

The Paris Review: Muriel Rukeyser, Mother of Everyone by Sam Huber (May 30th, 2018)

Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive (website)

Kenyon Review: On The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser by J.L. Wall

Quote for the Day: October 2nd, 2021

If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.
Beverly Cleary

Poem for the Day: October 1st, 2021

A Toast for Men Yun-Ch’ing by Du Fu and Florence Ayscough (Translator)

Illimitable happiness, 
But grief for our white heads. 
We love the long watches of the night, the red candle. 
It would be difficult to have too much of meeting,
Let us not be in hurry to talk of separation. 
But because the Heaven River will sink, 
We had better empty the wine-cups. 
To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us. 
We brush away our tears, 
We go—East and West.

Today’s poem was taken from Fir-flower Tablets: Poems Translated from the Chinese, which was published in 1921 by Houghton Mifflin. This collection can be read and/or downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg, a website that makes public domain works readily available to anyone with access to the Internet. Simply click on the link provided here and it will take you to the book’s page, where you can either read it in your web browser or download it for offline reading on your e-reader, tablet, or other mobile device.

Considered one of the foremost poets of the Tang Dynasty, Du Fu (712-770) was born in Henan Province to a civil servant. His mother passed away when he was still very young, so one of his aunts assisted in raising him. His initial aspiration was to become a civil servant like his father, but after failing the test he became somewhat of a drifter, traveling from place to place and writing of his experiences.

Later on, Du Fu made an official petition to the Chinese government for a position in service to the state, and was made registrar in the palace of the crown prince. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Du Fu was unable to begin his post as registrar because of the turmoil unleashed by the start of the An Lushan Rebellion, which began in 755 and continued for several years.

Personal and political turmoil no doubt colored Du Fu’s worldview, but you can also see in his poetry an appreciation of the world’s beauty pushing against the pain we suffer in our short human lives.

Once again forced to live a nomadic lifestyle, Du Fu wrote about the things he witnessed and experienced during his journeys, most of which were extremely painful. Personal and political turmoil no doubt colored Du Fu’s worldview, but you can also see in his poetry an appreciation of the world’s beauty pushing against the pain we suffer in our short human lives.