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rabbits-of-negative-euphoria · 2 months

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Goodreads has suspended all ratings and reviews of Hillbilly Elegy, so I'm just going to post mine here:

4 of 5 stars

“By the time I was in seventh grade, many of my neighborhood friends were already smoking weed. Mamaw found out and forbade me to see any of them. I recognize that most kids ignore instructions like these, but most kids don’t receive them from the likes of Bonnie Vance. She promised that if she saw me in the presence of any person on the banned list, she would run him over with her car. ‘No one would ever find out,’ she whispered menacingly.”

Before I worked for CPS, I would’ve said the solution to the underclass was to abolish welfare. After working for CPS, I can tell you the only thing that will fix the pathologies of America’s low-income communities is true religion. They have religion, but it’s a superstitious, prosperity-gospel, liberation theology that requires no repentance and no devotion. It’s something you’re born into, and the mode of salvation is one-hundred percent customizable.

Does this mean their irreligiosity is what caused their economic plight? Not at all. Plenty of people are terribly poor despite their richness of faith. But the social problems that have increasingly plagued the lower classes since men in suits tried to finesse fate in the 60s—broken families, drug abuse, alcoholism, suicidality, sexual promiscuity, domestic violence, recidivism, and job insecurity—cannot be stuffed back into Pandora's Box by anything short of a spiritual, cultural revival. Not even the best psychologists and policy makers can solve issues that stem from the heart.

J.D. Vance reaches many of the same conclusions in Hillbilly Elegy. Certainly, there are strategies we can implement to alleviate suffering where possible. There are countless ways in which the current welfare state could be reformed (without being expanded) to alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable (e.g. Section 8 not housing all its recipients together; instead, dispersing them among the middle class where attitudes of self-reliance are more necessary). And I still think eliminating the welfare system altogether, at least at the federal level, is a worthy long-term goal. But to give an escape car to a man who never learned to drive is to merely clutter up his garage at best and cause a fatal highway pileup at worst.

The core of conservatism is the knowledge that mankind is fundamentally wicked, yet many conservatives talk about the poor the same way liberals do. If only their circumstances changed, they would, too. For the liberals, the circumstance is lack of resources. For the conservatives, it’s dependence on the state. Both circumstances are deleterious, but neither is the root cause of our bloated prisons, foster care system, or failing schools.

Working for CPS made me realize that I wasn’t really conservative; I was a libertarian who believed she was conservative. I am still learning what real conservatism is. In many ways, I think J.D. Vance is also a libertarian who believes he is a conservative, but in this particular respect, he is far more conservative than most who claim to be.

I worry sometimes that regular people read books like this or watch movies like its adaptation and merely see a cast of zany characters who represent a tiny minority of people in a faraway region of the country who don’t affect you. But these people exist in your community. You just don’t notice them. They’re at the Applebee’s, the Walmart, the movie theater. They’ve driven 40 minutes to be at the psychologist’s office under the parking garage downtown.

With the rise of social media transcending all barriers, including class, I have observed middle-class teenagers and young adults behaving like these previously invisible people. Adopting the same selfish habits and hard-done-by worldviews. In my job, I saw daughters of wealthy, Christian couples end up in a trailer park, addicted to meth with two baby-daddies. If things continue this way, the underclass will ever expand.

Rather than escapees such as J.D. Vance ascending to a higher quality of life, those ignorant or resentful of their privilege and advantages will descend to this humiliated, chaotic rot that sinks its claws in and doesn’t let go except by divine providence.

#analysis #J.D. Vance #respublica #economics #x #Christianity

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book51ut · 1 year

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Review of Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

oof i have a lot of opinions on this. let me start by saying i picked up this book from the library because it was on my list of books recommended to me over various years. i don't even know who suggested it. i'm quite glad that i got it from the library, because about halfway through the book i got the vibe that Vance was someone who i differed with greatly politically and would not have wanted to support financially in any capacity. after a google search, i was right.

that being said, the book itself really resonated with me. i come from a blue collar neighborhood in new york city, mostly italian and irish american. we are white people, but we aren't WASPs. my parents were some of the only parents i grew up with who went to college. they were the only parents i grew up with who went to graduate school. my parents had me at 33, basically ancient by the standards of my neighborhood. the neighborhood has strong mob affiliations. we are white trash. in this way, the "hillbilly elegy" is very resonant with me. i saw the people around me growing up blame everyone else for their problems. i saw them report no income on their taxes, and take benefits that could have gone to those less fortunate than themselves while driving porches. i see their inherent distrust in the elite. when i was growing up, i resented my background and my accent. i tried my hardest to lose it, to turn a cold shoulder to those who raised me. i saw my parents feel the same way. my parents scorned our own people the same way that Mamaw did. i also saw how generational the mindset of the people in my town was. how generational MY mindset is. my only goal in life is to make my grandparents proud by achieving more than they could. i also feel like i don't see enough conversations around this specific group of people.

that is why this author is so disappointing and ironic to me. he criticizes people for blaming others for their problems, but he does the same. he abandoned all of his ethics and his values to personally get ahead. it seems damning to me. no matter how hard you try to get away, that hunger to benefit yourself at the expense of others comes back. it stays in your bones long after you've treated the infection. i worry that it hides out in me too.

#book review #bookblr #hillbilly elegy #jd vance

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cyarskaren52 · 1 year

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There really is no one like Ice Cube.

The rapper/actor/labelhead/producer/screenwriter/director/pitchman/league commissioner has done just about everything one can do in the world of entertainment. And to think, it all started with a kid from South Central joining a group his friend was starting from the neighborhood. N.W.A. changed everything, but when Cube made the decision to split from Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, MC Ren and DJ Yella, he set in motion one of Hip-Hop's most storied careers.

As a solo artist, Ice Cube's social and political voice was even sharper than what had been hinted at in his old group; and over the course of his three-decade career, he's delivered scathing commentary, party anthems, movie theme songs and straight up gangsta shit. He has albums like AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Death Certificate that are among the most revered rap classics ever made; and he's dropped club bangers with the best of them. We wanted to salute the variety of that body of work, so we picked the 25 Dopest Ice Cube Songs (Note: No N.W.A. or Westside Connection or Mt. Westmore songs were included.)

#26

"THE BONNIE & CLYDE THEME" - YO-YO FEAT. ICE CUBE [BONUS SONG]

Our BONUS SONG pick is a celebrated classic guest spot! Yo-Yo and Cube team up against for this banger from her third album, YOU BETTER ASK SOMEBODY.

#25

"PUSHIN' WEIGHT" FEAT. SHORT KHOP

"The Don Mega" and Short Khop teamed up for one of Cube's biggest chart singles in 1997. This N.O. Joe-produced hit raced all the way to No. 26 on Billboard and topped the Rap Singles Charts.

#24

"GANGSTA RAP MADE ME DO IT"

On this standout single from RAW FOOTAGE, Cube blasts the laziness of politicians and watchdogs using gangsta rap as the punching bag for moral handwringing. As true in the 2000s as it had been a generation earlier.

#23

"WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN"

One of Cube's most overtly spiritual songs, it was released when Cube had made his much-publicized conversion to Islam. The track finds him taking aim at Christianity, admonishing it as a tool of oppression in America.

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#22

"AIN'T GOT NO HATERS" FEAT. TOO $HORT

What can you say about icons who have earned a victory lap or two? These two West Coast icons revel in the good life on this breezy track from EVERYTHANG'S CORRUPT.

#21

"DEAD HOMIEZ"

Ice Cube was only 20 years old when he wrote this elegy to friends lost to violence. He couldn't have known how groundbreaking it was at the time, but the South Central native's tribute is one of the earliest examples of a so-called "gangsta rapper" examining the emotional toll of the streets.

#20

"MY SUMMER VACATION"

"Snowfall" in the form of a classic rap song. Cube's gift for storytelling and his razor sharp social commentary are both on full display here; as he breaks down how the crack epidemic in America spread from Los Angeles out to the Midwest and beyond.

#19

"YOU CAN DO IT" FEAT. MACK 10 AND TOYA

As far as singles, Cube definitely had a straight-up party phase, and one of his biggest hits as the Y2K era was set to dawn was this hit theme song for NEXT FRIDAY.

#18

"HELLO" FEAT. DR. DRE AND MC REN

The N.W.A. reunion that fans had been clamoring for finally happened (with the notable absence of the late Eazy-E) on this monstrous single. Even decades later, it feels good to see the Niggaz With Attitudes rolling as a unit like old times.

#17

"FRIDAY"

The movie that made Chris Tucker a star and showed everybody that even a gangsta could make you laugh. Cube's first comedy turned out to be a cult classic, and the soundtrack featured this anthem for the hood.

#16

"GO TO CHURCH"

Lil Jon was virtually everywhere in the early 2000s, and Cube wasn't averse to trying on a new style. The rap vet fired a shot for West Coast/Dirty South collaboration with this crunk hit.

#15

"REALLY DOE"

The sinister opening track for Cube's fourth album LETHAL INJECTION is one of that project's strongest. Cube is in full G'd up mode, and longtime affiliate Lay Law comes strong on this one with the production.

#14

"WHY WE THUGS"

Cube's sociopolitical lens has never left him; and he offered one of his most on-target critiques of American hypocrisy on this epic from 2006s LAUGH NOW CRY LATER.

#13

"JACKIN' FOR BEATS"

One of the most inventive rap tracks ever made, this classic from Cube's KILL AT WILL EP is also one of the most emulated. Cube kicks one of his most aggressive performances over "stolen" tracks; jackin' everybody from Public Enemy to Digital Underground.

#12

"A BIRD IN THE HAND"

One of the greatest story raps of all-time. Ice Cube delivers a stellar performance as he breaks down the struggles of a newly-released felon, in a system that never really wanted to give anyone a second chance.

#11

"SMOKE SOME WEED"

He might not be as well known for chronic anthems as his homies who were on Death Row, but Cube delivered one of the all-time great marijuana songs on this woozy banger from LAUGH NOW, CRY LATER.

#10

"WICKED"

A song that channels the anger of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in sound and spirit; Cube unleashes his fury on this thunderous track. The video famously featured Flea and Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Cube spits rage at the system following the Rodney King verdict.

"CHECK YO SELF" (REMIX) FEAT. DAS EFX

One of Cube's most famous, and famously controversial, songs, the remix became a monster hit in 1993, with an instant-classic hook from none other than Das EFX, fresh off their own breakthrough a few months earlier.

"WHO'S THE MACK?"

Cube's first solo single features the young rapper examining the game from all angles. As he breaks down everyone from pimps to street hustlers to politicians, Cube makes it clear he's going to a more insightful place than we'd seen in N.W.A.

"THE NIGGA YA LOVE TO HATE"

If Ice Cube has an anthem, it's most definitely this track. Cube gives a breathless performance, highlighting why he's forever going to be controversial—even at this early stage in his career, he knew he'd ruffle feathers.

"TRUE 2 DA GAME"

Cube bodyslams sellouts of all kinds on this classic single from 1991's DEATH CERTIFICATE. There's a pointed MC Hammer reference, an admonishment of Black men who chase white women as status trophies; and a final thumbs down to Black folks overly invested in the politics of respectability.

"ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE PROJECTS"

Even though it's early in his discography, it's the song that sets the standard for Ice Cube's storytelling. A frustrated and flustered Cube recounts a tale about trying to meet up with a girl who lives in the housing projects, only to find himself in the middle of a drug bust.

"YOU KNOW HOW WE DO IT"

Cube's first album was Bomb Squad bombast and his second outing was looser, but still hard. After enjoying mainstream success with singles like "It Was A Good Day" and "Check Yo' Self," Cube dropped his most obviously G-Funk-leaning single in this West Coast classic.

"NO VASELINE"

On the short list of greatest diss songs ever, you will find Ice Cube's incendiary firebomb. With his targets set squarely on his former bandmates in N.W.A., Ice Cube unleashes and unloads, aiming and firing at everyone in the group, saving his most scathing indictments for former friend Eazy-E and former manager Jerry Heller.

"STEADY MOBBIN'"

Before his most famous track (more on that in a sec), Cube delivered this bouncy dedication to riding around the 'hood. His storytelling is forever on-point, as he chops it up with the homies, tries to get laid, and, in one of the great rap overshares of all time, apparently takes one helluva dump.

"IT WAS A GOOD DAY"

There is no other correct No. 1. There just isn't. It's timeless. It's a standard. It's one of the most well-known and beloved songs in the history of Hip-Hop. Cube's ode to a breezy day in South Central, L.A. is the kind of song it seems like everyone can rap word-for-word. That's a rarity, in any genre.

Sent from my iPhone

#hip hop 50 #today in hip hop history #todayinhiphophistory #hiphop #hip-hop #hip hop #hip hop music #hip hop history #hip hop culture #music #history #music history #television #rap #rapper #emcee #mc

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sumpix · 1 year

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Sidereal. Debra Allbery

Consider this an elegy with silo and fever. Call it barn and gravel and gone. Grasses’ obeisance

in the wake of a pick-up, sun searing the leaves green to gold in the season’s time-elapse.

Where does it go, the Sunday angle of sunlight once only yours, wide and open as a window?

Here’s what I remember: the flaking mural on the brick wall of neighborhood grocery, saying

Food for the Revolution for twenty-five years. Stacked landscapes in my rearview, blank as a calendar

until a bend in the road brought the Blue Ridge; the pocked metronome of tennis balls outside

while I harnessed what I had lost and missed in minor-key pentameter. So what, my mentor

talked back to his tercets in draft after draft: so what so what so what. “This essay is accurate

but never ignited,” the Derridean scrawled in red ink when I was writing about Bishop writing,

I can scarcely wait for the day of my imprisonment. Her keen eye ever cast on the homely unheimlich.

Call this a road story about the slow burn of foliage, about containment, what conspires against arrival.

Astonish us, Diaghilev said to Cocteau, but all I ever wanted was to consider

its roots in the auguries of our shifting stars.

#poetry #sidereal #debra allbury

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yepthatsacowalright · 11 months

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"What's Poetry Like?" by Bianca Stone Poets play the winter tarantella, making love in the midnight hours on a white iron bed like a dog skeleton distinguishing the essential and unessential moment, shared between ordinary lunatics and screaming over a bird in an apple tree until an elegy has to be written to resuscitate the relation—those who look toward the depleted wildlife of neighborhoods with tragic relish, to see somehow ourselves disappearing about ourselves.

Once, in New York City, years ago, the Internet technician finally arrived. His teen-age apprentice stood in my living room over a Tranströmer book. He said it looked kind of cool, and he wanted to know what it was. “Poetry,” I said. “What’s poetry like?” he asked. And the treacherous inadequacy with which one finds oneself explaining in a few loose deficient words something with lungs and no face, the immortal freak of language you haunt and hunt which is the original state of language you’re trying to get back to from within— poetry, whose rare geniuses come as bittersweet suicidal explosions on the tongue, randomly felt during long, tedious meals; award-winning and already forgotten. All the emoting of the unanalyzable fragments. All the surrender and detonations of precision and reckless insight and reference to hidden wisdom and Coke cans— conversations across time, and slips into truth, and obscurity of thought altogether blissful, the form itself at its best strings of dreams in the waking life, overlaid like unobserved clothing: the words that sing stillness, the silence craved by perpetual auctioneers—that which is not the tale of event but itself an event—

“You know what? Just take the book,” I said finally, pushing it into his hands—

“THANKS!” he said, and took it away, grinning a little.

But later, with snow in my head and a thunder in my right eyelid . . . I was worried, as I was so dangerously then, about dark, yet-unspoken things —it frightened me: that shiny black and white book wafting around New York City in the back of a Time Warner Cable van, waiting to be opened, waiting to torment him, thinking of it changing his life.

[x]

#living rent free in my mind atm #what's poetry like?#bianca stone #the new yorker

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abellinthecupboard · 1 year

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Elegy For The Monastery Barn

As though an aged person were to wear Too gay a dress And walk about the neighborhood Announcing the hour of her death, So now, one summer day's end, At suppertime, when wheels are still, The long barn suddenly puts on the traitor, beauty, And hails us with a dangerous cry, For: "Look!" she calls to the country, "Look how fast I dress myself in fire!" Had we half guessed how long her spacious shadows Harbored a woman's vanity We would be less surprised to see her now So loved, and so attended, and so feared. She, in whose airless heart We burst our veins to fill her full of hay, Now stands apart. She will not have us near her. Terribly, Sweet Christ, how terribly her beauty burns us now! And yet she has another legacy, More delicate, to leave us, and more rare. Who knew her solitude? Who heard the peace downstairs While flames ran whispering among the rafters? Who felt the silence, there, The long, hushed gallery Clean and resigned and waiting for the fire? Look! They have all come back to speak their summary: Fifty invisible cattle, the past years Assume their solemn places one by one. This is the little minute of their destiny. Here is their meaning found. Here is their end. Laved in the flame as in a Sacrament The brilliant walls are holy In their first-last hour of joy. Fly from within the barn! Fly from the silence Of this creature sanctified by fire! Let no man stay inside to look upon the Lord! Let no man wait within and see the Holy One sitting in the presence of disaster Thinking upon this barn His gentle doom!

— Thomas Merton

#Elegy For The Monastery Barn #Thomas Merton #poetry #writing #literature #poets on tumblr

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loosejournal · 1 year

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What's Poetry Like? by Bianca Stone

Poets play the winter tarantella, making love in the midnight hours on a white iron bed like a dog skeleton distinguishing the essential and unessential moment, shared between ordinary lunatics and screaming over a bird in an apple tree until an elegy has to be written to resuscitate the relation—those who look toward the depleted wildlife of neighborhoods with tragic relish, to see somehow ourselves disappearing about ourselves.

“You know what? Just take the book,” I said finally, pushing it into his hands—

“THANKS!” he said, and took it away, grinning a little.

#poetry #poem #bianca stone

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sublimepizzastarfish · 1 year

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In Memoriam: The Humble Obituary

With heavy hearts and a touch of irony, we gather today to bid farewell to the unsung hero of remembrance and tribute – the humble obituary. After a long and distinguished career chronicling the lives of the departed, the obituary itself has passed away, leaving behind a legacy etched in ink and digital archives.

Born of necessity and journalistic tradition, the obituary served as a bridge between the living and the departed, offering a glimpse into the lives, achievements, quirks, and passions of those who had moved on to the great beyond. From celebrated leaders to neighborhood pioneers, the obituary eloquently painted portraits of individuals who had left their mark on this world.

The obituary was known for its versatility, gracefully adapting to changing times. It transitioned from newspapers to online platforms, embracing the digital age with open arms, sharing life stories through multimedia and interactive features. It provided a space for grief, healing, and reflection, inviting readers to pause and honor lives well-lived.

In its prime, the obituary had an uncanny ability to elicit emotions – from smiles to tears – often within the same paragraph. Its knack for encapsulating a person's essence in a few well-chosen words created an art form in itself, one that celebrated uniqueness and the shared human experience.

But as society evolved, so did our means of commemoration. Social media platforms became the modern town square for sharing memories and condolences. Hashtags and heartfelt posts replaced formal prose, giving birth to a new era of remembrance that was more immediate and interactive.

With a mixture of nostalgia and gratitude, we bid farewell to the obituary, recognizing the role it played in honoring those who have left us. Let us remember its legacy as we navigate the evolving landscape of remembrance, cherishing the stories of those who have touched our lives and finding new ways to pay tribute.

In lieu of flowers, the family of the obituary requests that you take a moment to share a fond memory of a loved one online, encapsulating their essence in the digital equivalent of an elegy. Let us raise a virtual toast to the art of remembrance and bid adieu to the formalities of yesterday, embracing the ever-changing tapestry of how we honor those who have departed.

Rest in peace, dear obituary. May your ink never fade and your digital footprints continue to inspire generations to come.

#obituary

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brokenstrangetown · 3 years

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Reflections

This is less emotional than the decision to cease play in Drama Acres or to abandon the Genderswapped Uberhood after completing the Conquering Nose, but I wouldn’t have been playing and documenting had I not been attached to this neighborhood. So what will I miss most?

I have some couples I’m exceedingly fond of, which are unlikely to repeat in later iterations and even if they did, wouldn’t be the same. Vidcund/Monica and Lola/Gunnar in particular are huge ships that were so serendipitous that I can’t see attempting them again. Vidcund and Monica were a perfect storm of prickly responsibility takers and as for Lola and Gunnar - ! Gunnar all tenderness and repeatedly choosing to interact with her over her triple-bolt sister, obsessively work-driven, self-effacing Lola relaxing into pillowfights and talking about books - I heard them talking to each other as clearly as I ever used to hear Ernest and Sage Ann, and that’s the gold standard.

The two up-and-coming relationships I mourn the most are Anthea/Euclid and Kriemhild/Tycho. I love it when they pair themselves up. Quite apart from Euclid and Tycho being the children of my favorite, Vidcund, both these relationships had a lot of spontaneity and the self-propelling energy of couples made up of equally strong personalities that complement each other. Kriemhild would dominate most partners to the point of annihilation; but not Tycho, who was all set to be the guy who didn’t see all the girls hurling themselves at his head because his eyes were already full of the one for him. Anthea and Euclid have a more domestic potential, the domesticity of hard work and shared goals. He had a City Planner LTW; she was yet another Hand of Poseidon wannabe - what would Research Beach have ultimately become under their influence?

Good lord, Research Beach! It was a great idea and I really wanted to see it grow past the single apartment and two community lots, but such is life.

I had been looking forward to moving everyone into their new homes. Delilah was supposed to propose to Buck during the Singles round and then he would have moved into the smallest trailer in the Manufactured Homes and married her into it on Monday. Jill and Sharla wouldn’t have had many rounds to be roommates in before Gallagher and Gabriella graduated and moved in, but then they’d be waiting for Juan to graduate, at which time Sharla would abruptly be one person too many - but Isaiah would be graduated by then. Ripp, Ophelia, and Creon would move into the third trailer and start the second kid there. It would’ve been nice to see how that little community played out. I had some really cute houses set up for Kristen and Lyla (no General, no military housing!), David and Tank and Isherwood, Gavin and Tina and Gary, and the Love family to move into, but I’ll never play them now.

Kelly was supposed to move into the fourth apartment in Tech Center Flats; but would she and Meredith really have married, and would it have worked, with Kendall so fixated on Meredith? I’ll never know, now. And would Elroy Holloway and Emily’s baby (Thomasina? Emil? Lee?) have had time to interact enough to be friends before they finally moved into single-family residences?

Would Will Wrightley, Creon Nigmos, and Pippin Williamson have made a posse? Would I have been able to play Creon and Pippin as nonbinary, as they were shaping up in my head? Would Mitchie and Edward have worked out? Would Jared ever have gotten that first kiss? What would Gary Newson and Moon Williamson and Elroy Holloway have looked like? What would Mary Gavigan’s third child and Eric and Marla’s and Emily’s firsts have been? Would I have really gone through with Nathan/Zoe and how would that have worked out? Would there ever have been fallout from Eve’s true parentage? How would the new teen cliques have formed up? Would Matthew ever have gotten his act together? Would Isaiah and Juan ever forgive each other for existing? Would the Non-Sleazy Game Shack ever have reached Level 1?

But there is no place to stop playing a sims neighborhood at which such questions do not remain. That’s the beauty of the game, isn’t it? Always some new thing to try, some storyline to resolve and three others to set up, births and deaths and birthdays and graduations and weddings counting down toward. Sooner or later, the player has to stop playing, but - like the best books - we can see how the story would proceed, how life goes on without us in some nebulous plane where the boy and his bear are still playing.

The End

#Sims 2 #elegy for a neighborhood

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marcus-tullius-cicerhoe · 3 years

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Can we all just admit some themes of elegiac poetry were extremely cringe especially paraklausithyron??? If one day a crying guy showed up at my door asking me to live with him in the countryside after having locked him outside I would probably throw a bucket of water on him too

#Elegy #Elegiac poetry #Roman poetry #Ovid #propertius #Tibullus #Wth would u expect me to do ask you to watch a TV series together #Not to count the fact that it would be extremely embarrassing imagine the neighborhood #classics

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luxthestrange · 2 years

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Lux news!

Hey guys You have no idea how much it makes me feel when you guys like and interact with me the first time i saw creators i followed liking my gremlin content...i screamed so hard a kid in the neighborhood screamed saying"somebody kill that turkey"...ok kudos who get this reference,But ok jokes aside Thank you to my followers really and the ones who inspired me to create content

@obeythebutler @harunayuuka2060 @lemonandlime22 @yaboihack @ravenrose00 @asmobrim @asmos-pet @obeyme-life @obeythedemons @littledemo0n @onlyluxalo @smalldicklorax @everlasting-elegy @ninjnerd-anaklusmos @yn-for-president @mammonswhore @mamsprize @mammonsbby @mamma-mia-mammon @alwayshornyandsupportive @property-of-diavolo @belphe-whore @kpop-otome-yandere-here

Thank you for inspiring me to get the courage to just make silly content and even posting my own ideas and fanart

Now the real reason aside of thanking you all is...This May The 14 is the day I spawned,When i was adopted as some uncles and brothers say tbh(assholes)and even if no one in rl knows about what i do here it feels good to make others laugh

So my content may be slow till this sunday!given im going on a trip to celebrate my b-day with family

Toodles!

#obey me #obey me!#obey me news #obey me lux #obey me incorrect quotes #obey me memes #obey me cake series

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rustbeltjessie · 2 years

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Dear Editor, Who Wrote “Though Your Poem Dublin Is Very Accomplished, and You Should Have No Trouble Placing It Elswhere, but Not with Us.”

I could go on and on about Joyce and The Dead and the martyrs of 1916, but really all that matters is what someone from North Dublin would do with your pissy tone? They’d throw a pint in your smug face. Not for us. Not in this neighborhood, not your kind need apply. I could go on like this, but there is a Dublin I carry in my chest, one of ruby’d sessions and contraband guns, of women selling trinkets made in China along the River Liffey, one of centuries of blood and whiskey. One of harps and hunger. Hearth and rhyme. Quarantines and Guinness pies. I ask you who is us, across oceans sailing? Across ditches digging? The blackened faces of children in the factories and coal mines? The indentured Union dead? Who but us is belting out the Parting Glass, waiting to be served in Hell’s Kitchen? Who but us is memorizing Yeats before leaving to drive a taxi through Dorchester? Who of us is waiting to open a letter from the Department of Historical Reparations? We crossed the equator. We laid the tracks, we fought your wars. You tell them to go home. But home we’ve made right here. It’s in the blood. When I was born, I was born an expatriate from every country my ancestors spoke their beautiful vowels. In my heart, there is always a letter from them waiting to be written, waiting to be read.

—Sean Thomas Dougherty, from All My People Are Elegies

#poetry #prose poetry #sean thomas dougherty #all my people are elegies #dublin #ancestry #dear you

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finishinglinepress · 2 years

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NEW FROM FINISHING LINE PRESS: Palace of Twigs by Diana Deering

PREORDER NOW: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/palace-of-twigs-by-diana-deering/

Diana Deering lives in the Pacific Northwest and works as a hospice nurse.

Her chapbook, Flame Shoulder Moth, was published by Finishing Line Press.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Palace of Twigs by Diana Deerin

Diana Deering’s exquisitely crafted lyric poems unfurl entire universes inside small moments of time. The poet-speaker time-travels throughout the collection, revisiting early childhood and adolescence and moving through various ages as an adult, often standing at the threshold between the living and dead. To say Deering is a religious poet is not to say she professes any dogma or specific faith but that she is a poet who is ‘in this world but not of it’ entirely. Everything Deering observes in these poems—her ‘devotions’ rendered in meticulous, gorgeous images—even amidst elegy, becomes a way to bind the outer and inner selves, the material to the spiritual. These are ‘luminous’ poems, brimming with insight and feeling as they fearlessly ‘gaze into the next world.’

–Shara McCallum

Acknowledging the dignified reserve of twilight moments—birth, death, childhood discoveries—these poems’ crystalline language moves without fanfare, but with quiet luminescence. Deering’s work speaks of a profound inwardness, never solipsistic, always inviting. She taps the unseen seams of what keeps it altogether, mushroom colonies or people in our rural neighborhoods. This is the infinite life we have, this poetry states, right here and now, on this “wide answering earth.” I have waited for this book for years.

–Lorraine Healy, author of “Mostly Luck” and “The Habit of Buenos Aires”

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“While sharing the same cultural world as men, women faced important differences in access and presentation. Thus, in conversation pieces—the group portraiture that presented relationships—men took the more prominent roles and commissioned the paintings. Performance, moreover, was dominated by men. Orchestras were male, and, in London, instrumental music was largely an all-male profession, although there were women pianists. Although there was gradual change, women faced major difficulties. Indeed, it has been argued that assertive women outside their “proper” roles aroused concern. There was certainly a degree of typecasting and condescension, as in Tobias Smollett’s popular novel The Adventure of Roderick Random (1748), in which Narcissa is presented as an unsuccessful writer “without consistency or capacity” to bring her work to completion but also, extraordinarily, writing not of love, but rather tragedies that did not cover it.

There were certainly differences in plots between male and female writers: many male writers posed a choice between duty or love, but female counterparts were apt to unite the two. At the same time, it would be misleading simply to see a contrast in subject or approach. Like their male counterparts, but often more so, many female writers are obscure. Moreover, writers prominent in their day, such as Jane West (1758–1852), have frequently slipped from attention. This is possibly because the canon of major and second-rank works emphasizes male writers, but much more was involved. West, an industrious writer who was typical in producing across different genres, with novels, plays, and poems, also had a somewhat leaden style. More significantly in terms of taste, West was an insistent moralist who was opposed to what she saw as the troubling radicalism of writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft.

West’s politics were illustrated by her Elegy on Edmund Burke (1793) and her moralism by her novel The Advantages of Education: or The History of Maria Williams (1793). Neither will ever challenge Austen’s reputation. Male writers with this style also tend to be forgotten. The canon was, is, and will continue to be fluid—possibly more so than over the last century. Hannah More, another critic of Wollstonecraft, wrote Percy (1777), one of the most successful plays of the period, as well as books that at the time greatly outsold Austen’s. She was then long overlooked but has recently made a return to the spotlight with the first modern biography and the first to make full use of a correspondence much more extensive than that of Austen. More saw herself as a conservative and (not but) also envisaged women playing a prominent role. The implication of her call for female patriotism was that politics in its broadest sense had to involve women, who were responsible for protecting the morality of the country.

Morality, indeed, was presented as a patriotic guarantee of the nation. Novels were very much associated with female writers and readers, not least due to the epistolary form that was so important in many novels and much female socializing, notably so as marriage or other factors led female friends to live apart. In Austen’s circle, commenting on novels was also prominent in correspondence. Indeed, novels, like letter writing, in many respects could be seen as an important part of the world of women’s activity. However insincere, the promise to write could be a plot enabler. When she leaves the neighborhood, the totally insincere Caroline Bingley presses Jane Bennet for a “very frequent and most unreserved correspondence.” That Caroline does so makes the idea of such a relationship between the two itself suspect.

For Austen, letter writers were significant to the plot and revealed their character through correspondence, as Lucy Steele did in Sense and Sensibility. Letters, in reality, were definitely a form of conversation, which was an important aspect of the leisure of the period, especially for women. At the same time, of course, many epistolary novels were written by men, notably the genre-setter Pamela, as well as Sir Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet (1824). Less instrumental than correspondence, and personal rather than social, novels could also be presented as a drug. This was done satirically in Sheridan’s play The Rivals: “Madam, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It blossoms through the year! And depend on it, Mrs Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.”

At the same time, novels dealt with issues of concern. Most were about courtship or used it as an important plot device. They therefore offered women models of desirable partners and wooing that were different from whatever might be sanctioned by parents and guardians. This was troubling to the latter but proved particularly attractive to many female readers and thus sustained the feminization of the genre. On the whole, marriage for love was very much endorsed in fiction. However, in accordance with conventions of sensibility and practicality, marriage for love was constrained by an emphasis on propriety and filial duty, notably to fathers. These were all aspects of Austen’s fictional offering, as when the consent of the unpleasant and manipulative General Tilney has to be sought at the close of Northanger Abbey.

Such marriage was often the concluding episode of a story essentially about growing up into society, with a young woman, frequently very young, as with Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, usually serving as the protagonist and her trajectory as the dynamic course and chronology of the plot. Adaptation to others and to social conventions was a key theme. In Fanny Burney’s first novel, Evelina: Or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778), a novel written in the form of letters, Evelina is shown being brought into the world at the age of seventeen, a course that closes when she marries one of her guides, the sage Lord Orville, a kind of Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility. This process of maturation provided opportunity for exciting, but predictable, sensibility.

In the preface, Burney explains her plan as “to draw characters from nature, though not from life, and to mark the manners of the times.” A far less benign upbringing, with malevolent guardians, a melodramatic descent to insanity, and a touch of the gothic, was offered in Burney’s second novel, Cecilia, or an Heiress (1782). The third novel, Camilla, A Picture of Youth (1796), was less unsettling and more conventional. Burney presented it to George III and Queen Charlotte, and Austen, who greatly admired Burney’s work, was on the subscription list for the novel. The challenges in Camilla were more marked than those in Evelina. Several of the characters have faults. Edgar Mandlebert, the wealthy hero, is also judgmental, difficult, and overly concerned with appearances. There are elements later seen with Darcy, but there are clear differences.

Eugenia, the heroine’s younger sister, is crippled as a result of an accident, and she previously suffered from smallpox. Her personality, however, is a demonstration of true beauty. The heroine’s older brother, Lionel, is highly mischievous and selfish, and another instance of selfishness is provided by her beautiful, flirtatious cousin, Indiana. Her brother Clermont is harsh to the servants and a bully. Camilla’s father, a positive figure, is a cleric. The plot includes Alphonso Bellamy, a fortune hunter, kidnapping Eugenia. She is forced into marriage only for her captor to kill himself accidentally. This provides a gothic dimension. While not a successful dramatist, Burney was an important and much recognized female novelist at the time Austen developed her style. Alongside the theme of adaptation in Burney’s work were the pressures to which women were subject, including violence. As a result, Burney has been depicted as a writer of contradictions, indeed anger.

Yet Burney, like Austen later, in part eludes ideological fixing, which qualifies the depiction of Austen as a Tory writer. Moreover, the character of Burney’s writing varied by individual novel much more than that of Austen. Men were also readers, and Austen’s father, George, bought novels, which helped ensure their availability to his daughters. In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney, who was not opposed to fiction, responded to the suggestion that “young men despised novels amazingly”: “It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do—for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas.” So also with Sir Edward Denham in Sanditon. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland herself was “left to the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened imagination over the pages of Udolpho [Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho], lost from all worldly concerns of dressing and dinner.”

However, she discovers that the titular abbey is not a setting from the pages of gothic fiction. Yet, ironically, in Northanger Abbey, real life turns out unpleasant, as Catherine is exposed to the ire of the avaricious General Tilney. He bullies his children, creating an atmosphere that is differently unpleasant, and more real and emotionally menacing, than the imagined perils of gothic fiction. The tendency of women in sentimental novels to lack self-restraint, or what was depicted as self-restraint, was presented as a sign of heightened nerves and emotions. This could also be seen as a lack of maturity. In Wollstonecraft’s novel Wrongs of Woman: or Maria (1798), overwhelmingly a tale of male cruelty and the oppression of women, there is also a reference to the interacting dangers of female sensibility and fiction. A novel, Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Heloise, plays a role in an unfortunate love affair.

Heightened nerves were also a commonplace in sentimental plays. The audience was given clear clues. This process was mocked in Sheridan’s The Critic: “When a heroine goes mad she always goes into white satin” (act 3, scene 1). Novelists could work with these conventions, question them in order to make a point, or both. Often, in characterization or plotting, concerns about female sensibility were heightened, and women were sometimes, as in conduct literature, treated as minors. More positively and realistically, women were also presented as the key figures in family life and its culture of sociability, especially music making. Austen repeatedly makes successful fun of the conventions of sentimental fiction.

Meanwhile, children were treated, increasingly, as a distinctive part of society, with products being designed particularly for them. These included types of children’s literature, a massive publishing phenomenon, and a genre in which women writers played an important role. Much of this literature was didactic. Thomas Day’s best-selling History of Sandford and Merton (1783– 89), an exemplary tale for children, presented the meritorious Harry Sandford, the son of a farmer, and Tommy Merton, the lazy son of an affluent gentleman. Morality through comparison, the theme in most novels, looks back to sermons, and secular equivalents such as William Hogarth’s 1747 series of engravings “Industry and Idleness” were to the fore in this novel and in the genre as a whole.

Yet the depiction of children also became more informal. As in other respects, the conventions changed rapidly. Austen does not devote an enormous amount of attention to children, particularly if young, but her discussion of them—for example, of the young Price children in Mansfield Park—is perceptive and successful. This was also the age of the English Enlightenment. Reason was a goal as well as a method and a system. Contemporaries believed it necessary to use reason to appreciate mankind, society, and the universe and thus improve human circumstances, an objective combining religious faith, utilitarianism, and the search for human happiness. Reason and moderation (rather than the logical sense of reason) were believed to be the distinguishing marks of mankind; correspondingly, the insane were usually regarded as monstrous.

Reason was presented as the characteristic of human development and social organization while the savage mind was held to be obsessed by a world of terror in which monstrous anxieties were projected onto nature. In Emma, Mr. Knightley, with reference to Frank Churchill, provides an account of maturity in terms of fighting off fears: “I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he ought to have roused himself and shaken off all that was unworthy in their authority.” As part of the Enlightenment, notions of causation changed greatly, at least for some.

In this context, a displacing of providence was particularly apparent in the case of the weather. Instead of demonstrating immediate divine purpose, the weather was increasingly understood as a natural process. Equipment to that end was offered in the form of barometers and thermometers. Moreover, data led to classification. Thus, Luke Howard, in his On the Modifications of Clouds (1803), established and named three major categories of clouds: cumulus (heap), stratus (layer), and cirrus (rainy). Knowledge was displayed and enjoyed in the furnishing of houses with clocklike cased barometers. Geography as furniture was also seen with the display of globes and maps as part of a more general use of geographical information to assert and display social and intellectual status.

In this context, Fanny Price’s complete lack of such knowledge served, unfairly, to castigate her in the eyes of her better-educated cousins. Knowledge conveyed status in this account, a view that would have surprised Sir Walter Elliot with his emphasis on lineage, which certainly does not guarantee any quality on his part. Indeed, Sir Walter underlined the extent to which, with their foibles, the casts of characters in novels were scarcely a display case for the English Enlightenment. Thus, Austen’s characters do not really engage with the provincial aspects of the scientific revolution, such as being a member of a literary and philosophical society, attending scientific lessons, or observing the workings of an orrery, a clockwork machine that showed the workings of the solar system.

The topic of one of the best paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97), A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (1766), displayed Enlightenment values and knowledge, although another, his painting of An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), shows a girl distressed at the death of a bird as a result of an experiment. This highlighted an Enlightenment dilemma: how medical knowledge could be reconciled with sentimentalism over animals. The vogue for geology, linked to interest in the workings of providence, history, the underpinning of physical geography, and tourism, does not feature in Austen’s novels other than in the interest in landscape.

The work of James Hutton (1726–97), the key figure in the development of geology, was made more readable by John Playfair (1748–1819), notably with his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802). Geology was displayed in William Smith’s Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales with Part of Scotland (1815). This depiction was linked to the evolution of minerology, another aspect of accessible and useful knowledge. The Enlightenment was not only about science, knowledge, and discovery. It also drew on, but reconceptualized, a general worthiness, and Austen certainly engaged with this.

Religion was a major (but today often underappreciated) influence on this worthiness, as in the campaign against the slave trade. Major abolitionist texts were by clerics, such as Considerations on the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Upon Grounds of Natural, Religious, and Political Duty (1789) by Thomas Burgess, a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral. In Pride and Prejudice, the arrogant, foolish, and selfish Caroline Bingley suggests that balls were “insufferably tedious. . . . It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.” What is being satirized here are not Enlightened views but, instead, her ridiculous attempt to manipulate her way into Darcy’s notice by throwing words like rational around.

She is not enlightened at all: she just imagines that opposing balls in the name of rationality is going to attract Darcy, who, as she knows, has a big library and does not like dancing. Indeed, in contrast to Caroline’s intentions and methods, actual enlightened attitudes are promoted by the novel. Crucially, Elizabeth has to learn to judge Darcy and Wickham on the evidence instead of going by her initial, irrational impressions. Austen, however, does show a degree of skepticism about new intellectual developments, not least concerning their social context.

In Emma, this skepticism leads to reflections on education: “Mrs Goddard was the mistress of a school—not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems—and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price.”

As with politics, there are tensions within intellectual and cultural tendencies, and these tensions affect socializing. This is seen in Emma with contrasting ideas of how to enjoy the visit to Mr. Knightley’s organized around strawberry collecting. Mrs. Elton proposes: “A sort of gipsy party.—We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and under trees,—and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out of door—a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?”

This proposal earns a rejoinder from a more practical Knightley that acts as a clear qualification to enthusiasm: “My idea of the simple and natural will be to have the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house.” Like sentiment, reason and the natural could look in different directions. Knightley is also proposing English moderation.

A more pointed critique of the Enlightenment, and of false values in general, comes in Sanditon when Mr. Parker, disparaging the rival bathing resort of Brinshore and noting that Mr. Heywood has not heard of it, remarks: “We may apply to Brinshore, the line of the poet William Cowper in his description of the religious cottager, as opposed to Voltaire—‘She, never heard of half a mile from home.’” In practice, Parker misunderstands Cowper’s Truth (1782) in which the pious cottager is contrasted with Voltaire: “His the mere tinsel, hers the rich rewards.” Austen praised Cowper (1731–1800), the son of a rector. Cowper became an evangelical and was also a prominent hymnodist and an opponent of slavery. Austen had Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price approve of him. The cottager understands true value, as far as Austen was concerned. Mr. Parker does not.”

- Jeremy Black, “Culture, Arts, and the Enlightenment.” in England in the Age of Austen

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