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Maybe // Langston Hughes

I asked you, baby, If you understood— You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.

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Waking in the Blue // Robert Lowell

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore, rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head propped on The Meaning of Meaning. He catwalks down our corridor. Azure day makes my agonized blue window bleaker. Crows maunder on the petrified fairway. Absence! My heart grows tense as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill. (This is the house for the ‘mentally ill.’)

What use is my sense of humor? I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties, once a Harvard all-American fullback, (if such were possible!) still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties, as he soaks, a ramrod with the muscle of a seal in his long tub, vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing. A kingly granite profile in a crimson golf-cap, worn all day, all night, he thinks only of his figure, of slimming on sherbet and ginger ale’ more cut off from words than a seal.

This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean’s; the hooded night lights bring out ‘Bobbie,’ Porcellian ’29, a replica of Louis XVI without the wig’ redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale, as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit and horses at chairs. These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.

In between the limits of day, hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle of the Roman Catholic attendants. (There are no Mayflower screwballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast, I weigh two hundred pounds this morning. Cock of the walk, I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey before the metal shaving mirrors, and see the shaky future grow familiar in the pinched, indigenous faces of these thoroughbred mental cases, twice my age and half my weight. We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.

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Why Not Smile // Michael Stipe

The concrete broke your fall To hear you speak of it I'd have done anything I would do anything I feel like a cartoon brick wall To hear you speak of it

You've been so sad It makes me worry Why not smile? You've been sad for a while Why not smile?

I would do anything To hear you speak of it Why not smile?

You've been sad for a while You've been sad for a while

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Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

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I'm getting poems published! Again! Yippeeeeee! They're in Swedish but if anyone sees this and is curioussss I'll say when it gets published

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At A Waterfall, Reykjavik // Eileen Myles

I still feel like the world is a piece of bread

I’m holding out half to you.

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At North Farm // John Ashbery

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,  At incredible speed, traveling day and night, Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes. But will he know where to find you, Recognize you when he sees you, Give you the thing he has for you? Hardly anything grows here, Yet the granaries are bursting with meal, The sacks of meal piled to the rafters. The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish; Birds darken the sky. Is it enough That the dish of milk is set out at night, That we think of him sometimes, Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

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✨ New on the blog: If your heart is in the humanities, you may be discouraged in the face of other academic fields–but the humanities remain critical. Through a journey of loss, literature, and scholarly accounts, learn how the humanities are vital to human understanding. Read the blog post. Image: Charles Le Brun and William Hebert. A man whose profile expresses compassion. n.d. Wellcome Collection.

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Archive.org: "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall

were you aware that the short story that got Isabel Fall bullied all the way off the internet and into fucking inpatient was truly brilliant? I was too grossed out by the twitter shitshow to read it when it came out and thus managed to only read it now. it was a Hugo finalist for a reason. I hope she can find it in herself to write again bc she's got really interesting and creative stuff to say. would recommend it if you haven't read it yet. 7726 words.

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The Hunger Games, Actual Teen style!

On the left, 15-year-old Josh Hutcherson.

On the right, 16-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.

Think how much creepier it would be to see them killing other kids when they look so squishy-cheeked and little.

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English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!

Young people, especially, are choosing to read in English even if it is not their first language because they want the covers, and the titles, to match what they see on TikTok and other social media.

by  Claire Moses and Elizabeth A. Harris

When the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan was in the Netherlands a few years ago promoting her most recent novel, “The Candy House,” she noticed something unexpected. Most of the people who asked her to sign books at author events were not presenting her with copies in Dutch.

“The majority of the books I was selling were in English,” Egan said.

Her impression was right. In the Netherlands, according to her Dutch publisher, De Arbeiderspers, roughly 65 percent of sales for “The Candy House” were in English.

“There was even a sense of a slight apology when people were asking me to sign the Dutch version,” Egan said. “And I was like, ‘No! This is what I’m here to do.’”

Some in the book world worry as they see sales in English accelerate, especially among the young. “We neglect our language,” said Peter Hoomans, a bookseller at Scheltema, in Amsterdam.

As English fluency has increased in Europe, more readers have started buying American and British books in the original language, forgoing the translated versions that are published locally. This is especially true in Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and, increasingly, Germany, which is one of the largest book markets in the world.

Publishers in those countries, as well as agents in the United States and Britain, worry this could undercut the market for translated books, which will mean less money for authors and fewer opportunities for them to publish abroad.

READ MORE

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hiiii mdms (moby dick mutuals) do you guys know about power moby dick (funny name). it’s an online annotation of moby dick that provides explanations for allusions and definitions for outdated terms/whaling jargon. it is so fun i am clicking around and exploring and learning a lot of new old-timey maritime words <3

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from now on your tumblr nickname is whatever you get from this sexual identity generator  ☆

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How to Respond to Criticism

Stop doing everything. Don’t say anything or be anything. Get as small as you possibly can without disappearing. Don’t exist. Or keep existing, but differently than before.

Remember: criticism is the same thing as wholesale condemnation and also murder, so react accordingly.

Apologize, but don’t really mean it, and plant a seed of secret resentment so deep in your own heart that years later you can’t even remember that you’re the one who nurtured it and made it grow, it seems that much like a native part of you.

Sink into a hole so deep that no one can ever find you.

No. No. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO. NO.

JUST DIE. JUST GET SICK AND DIE AND THEN YOU’LL FEEL TERRIBLE YOU EVER SAID THOSE THINGS BECAUSE I’LL BE DEAD AND YOU’LL BE SO SO SO SORRY AND YOU’LL WISH YOU COULD BRING ME BACK BUT YOU CAN’T.

Give up on all of your goals immediately.

Tell everyone you know about the criticism, but in a way that makes it clear that you expect them to publicly find it ridiculous and assure you there’s not a shred of truth to it. Do this repeatedly, first while sober, then later after several glasses of wine on a Wednesday afternoon when no one else is really drinking except for you. “Can you believe it?” Ask them that repeatedly. “Can you believe that? About me?” Ask until no one will meet your eyes.

Remember that life is a rich tapestry.

Become so rich and strong and tall that you’re a giant made out of gold and nobody can hurt you and everything you do is perfect and you can use your laser diamond eyes to melt the lungs of your enemies.

Dwell on it.

You can either be perfect or the biggest piece of shit who ever existed but not both, so if the criticism is right, you are the biggest piece of shit who ever existed. If it is not right, you are perfect and everyone else is wrong.

Fall in love with whoever criticized you. Don’t walk away until you’ve ruined their marriage.

Whisper their criticism every night to yourself until you have it memorized, word for word. Remember it forever. Have the words stitched into the shroud that covers your body before you’re lowered into the tomb so you and your criticism can embrace one another for eternity.

Do not rise above it. Never rise above anything. The sky is no place for a human.

Be sure not to separate the tone of the criticism from the content. If it was said ungracefully, it cannot be true. If it was said reasonably, it cannot be false.

Send an email explaining why you don’t deserve to be criticized, then another six emails after that, each one explaining the last, like a set of Russian nesting dolls that don’t think it’s your fault.

Set fire to something that was once beautiful.

Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there’s a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say “Are you okay?” and you say “I think so” and they say “oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle” and you say “it’s okay” and they say “you’re so brave” and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says “oh wow” and “you poor beautiful thing” and “I’m so sorry we let you run into the cave but I’m so glad we found you” and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything’s their fault and also they named the cave after you and you’re prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.

Remember that there are only two kinds of people in the world: fans and haters. No true fan would ever express a criticism of you or your work; conversely no hater could ever seek to engage in a good-faith debate about something you said or did they disagree with. Dismiss everything everyone has to say about you.

Move away.

If it’s a close friend, say “Thank you for being so honest with me,” and then never talk to them again.

Do something with your feelings right away. It doesn’t matter what. Lash out, make a sculpture, whatever.

Log into YouTube and call someone “living Hitler” and “a waste of skin” until you feel better about yourself.

Remember, if someone doesn’t like your work, that means they don’t like you, and they wish that you had never been born, so just lay down in the road and die.

Daniel Lavery, The Toast

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One thing I didn't expect from my new worldbuilding book is the author, roughly my dad's age, including his opinions on furries