alyseatleast

[alyseatleast]

The best books I read in 2023

It is such an odd experience to look back at books I read in the beginning of the year and think, That was this year?! Why does it feel so long ago? I thought this year went by quickly, but this sensation makes me think otherwise. So much happens in a year, I suppose. Looking at pictures of my nieces a year ago makes me wonder how they can grow and change so much in one year. Thinking back on…

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 21)

When I make blackout poems, I usually try not to read the page I’m working from, at least not until I’m done making a poem, because I don’t want to be influenced by the actual meaning of the writing in making what I hope will be something new. That did not go so well with Seneca’s Dialogues and Essays— the writing was too compelling for me not to read each page I turned to, so I’m afraid that my…

[alyseatleast]

On self-annihilation and redemption

Three years ago, I watched a movie called Another Earth that struck me deeper than any other movie has. I tried writing about it at the time, but I just couldn’t express how much it resonated. Then last week, my husband and I watched another movie called Oslo, August 31st. Set in Norway, based on the novel Will O’ the Wisp by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and with a male protagonist rather than a…

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 20)

It has been two and a half years since I last posted some blackout poetry. How has it been that long?! Now that I’m back at the blogging game, I thought I would inaugurate it with some blackout poems, this batch coming from Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Because this was his autobiography, it is full of dreams and psychoanalysis (as the title suggests) as he plumbed the depths of his…

[alyseatleast]

The best books I read in 2022

The best books I read in 2022

I’ve had to keep my head down and push forward this year, not coming up for air in any meaningful ways, yet despite this year being the most intense year of my adult life, professionally- and scholastically-speaking, I was still able to sustain my first and most abiding love of reading (even if I had to supplement it with more audiobooks and less handheld books than I prefer). I am just now…

[alyseatleast]

The best books I read in 2021

The best books I read in 2021

This has been quite a year. I started a graduate program, I got married, I moved, I started a new job, and I now live in the same town as my grandparents, parents, two sisters (and brother-in-law), and 2-year-old niece. I have had very little free time to do anything, but I have still managed to squeeze some books in (thanks in large part to audiobooks). Below are the ones I liked best, listed in…

[alyseatleast]

Seeking in the desert (a poem)

You will never fully get the sand out of your hair when you live in the desert. You will never have enough water. You will smell, because you will be dirty. But you won’t leave. You are looking for something; you are waiting. This is all you get; this is your inheritance: dust and illusions. You came for something more? Ah, but that is not  for you to find. Not unless you let go of any you that…

[alyseatleast]

The best books I read in 2020

It’s that time of year again where I compile a list of all the best books I’ve read since January and share them for anyone in need of a recommendation. I list them in the order I read them, so they aren’t ranked from best to worst or listed alphabetically or even by publication date. They are just here. Why I chose to read these books over others this year, I can’t say. My method of choosing…

[alyseatleast]

The timeliness of Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard speech

The timeliness of Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard speech

For months, I have inwardly debated writing something about the times we are living in and have— until now— come out on the side of keeping my thoughts to myself. But I just read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s commencement addressto Harvard in 1978, and the prescience and relevance to our own era is too uncanny not to comment on. He could give the same speech today, and we would have no idea it was…

[alyseatleast]

Silence (a poem)

Silence is not the same as absence.

 I thought truth could be spoken, 

but it turns out it can’t. 

It hides in words, 

can only be approached by 

metaphor, paradox, 

what can’t be explained. 

 ‘What is truth?’ Pilate asked Jesus, 

but Jesus said nothing. 

 Even Pilate was surprised.

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 19)

Back at it with Swann’s Way by Proust, I made some more poems from the tome. (The first series of Swann’s Way blackout poems are posted here— it will be quite a while before I run out of material to use from this book.) Still at a loss for anything to write about in prose form, I am sticking with poetry at the moment. (And what a weird moment it is. Who can make sense of what is going on in the…

[alyseatleast]

What I make poem

[The first line is from the poem “Love Poem: Centaur” by Donika Kelly.]

What I make, stands undone.

Seams unfinished, paint dripping

off the canvas, a poem always

erasing itself. My completion

rebukes me, tells me it’s not

enough, I must start again.

This boulder I roll up a hill

each day threatens to remain

at the top, but I call its bluff.

We both know we must go

back to where we…

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 18)

February is very possibly my least favorite month of the year. The weather depresses me, and, well, I guess everything that makes it terrible has to do with that: the greyness, the cold, the ice and snow, the painful wind, the snot, the difficulty getting anywhere. I rarely feel inspired to photograph anything in February; I don’t often feel very open to the Muses at all in February. I find…

[alyseatleast]

The best books I read in 2019

The best books I read in 2019

This has been quite the year: I became an aunt, I visited Europe twice, I moved, and I got engaged. I have not been as diligent about posting my thoughts or reflections on my blog this year, though, so after a several-month-long hiatus, I am finally surfacing to post my annual list of my favorite books from the year. The books I read are not chosen for their publication year or genre, so this…

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 17)

My summer was spent welcoming my first niece into the world, moving apartments, and adjusting to all the change, so any processing through writing I’ve done has not made it into the public. This post hardly makes up for the months I’ve been MIA, but it’s something. So here are some poems I made from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (which are admittedly already poems).

[alyseatleast]

Black-out Poetry (Part 16)

I dug into Seneca’s Dialogues and Essays to make some blackout poems, and these are what I came out with. They tend to follow the Stoic philosophy (surprise), but I tried to break out of that in a couple of these for a fresh take on the words on the pages.

[alyseatleast]

Land of the Unknowing

Land of the Unknowing

“In fact, there is no way to ‘return to the faith of your childhood,’ not really, not unless you’ve just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma. Faith is not some half-remembered country into which you come like a long-exiled king, dispensing the old wisdom, casting out the radical, insurrectionist aspects of yourself by which you’d been betrayed. No. Life is not an error, even…