#american literature

[juneacademia]

existence is a grand aspiration.

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

H.P. Lovecraft, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”

[intopermanence]

I cannot bear the little loves, and yet I cannot claim all of yours, and every day I see you now, immense, complete, and I but a fragment, wandering…

Anaïs Nin, from “A Spy in the House of Love”

[sevnsevn]

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d

Leaves of Grass (1891-92)

—Walt Whitman

[feral-ballad]

Kate Baer, from And Yet: Poems; “Idea”

[Text ID: “I will enjoy this life. I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue over my chin. I will not worry about clichés or uninvited guests peering in my windows. I will love and be loved. Save and be saved a thousand times. I will let the want into my body, bless the heat under my skin. My life, I will not waste it. I will enjoy this life.”]

[flowerytale]

Janet Fitch, from White Oleander

[newvision]

— Bob Dylan from When the Deal Goes Down on Modern Times (2006)

[theoptia]

Marie Howe, from Magdalene: Poems; "The Teacher"

Text ID: So, I thought I had to become more than / I was, more than I'd been. / but that wasn't it. It seemed rather that / something had to go. Something had to / be let go of.

[daweyt]

Louise Glück, from “Poems: 1962-2012; Persephone The Wanderer", published c. 2012.

[megairea]

I think houses live their own lives along a time-stream that’s different from the ones upon which their owners float, one that’s slower. In a house, especially an old one, the past is closer.

Stephen King, Bag of Bones, 1998

[illustration-alcove]

Angie Hoffmeister’s illustration for Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

[cheesy-bagels]

this image haunted me until i made it real

[feral-ballad]

Kate Baer, from And Yet: Poems; “40”

[Text ID: “because sometimes it is easier to / write yourself out of the play / than to face another breakfast.”]

[flowerytale]

James Baldwin, from Giovanni’s Room

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"Some long-forgot, enchanted, strange, Sweet garden of a thousand years ago,"

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay, from "Interim"

via southerncrossreview.org

[theoptia]

Marie Howe, from Magdalene: Poems; "The Teacher"

Text ID: Can we love without greed? Without wanting to be first?