#poems about catholicism + vampirism

[trickstersaint]

a bit(e) of advice // april 3 2023

[vulpinesaint]

i keep an organized directory of all my poetry tags at the top of that blog so everyone's familiar with the basic organizational system of 'poems about love', 'poems about beauty', 'poems about being trans', but lesser known is my secret bonus tag 'poems about catholicism + vampirism'. it has enough poems in it now to justify adding it to the larger list but it feels too special for that. how are all the other ones supposed to compete when the one i'm most insane about is obviously right there

[waspspirits]

📘 pls share

Oh no okay don't get skittish now, let's see...

I only really have the one so I apologize to any others who have also asked eheh

Current title is "Something Sanguine and Silver", it would kill me to avoid alliteration I suppose, will probably change eventually 🤔. It'll be Dracopia x OC, and though I am not a vampire connoisseur I am a monster aficionado! So scary awesome vampire transformations will definitely be present hehe. Vampire lore is all about making it your own right? Right? Bleh there are a million versions that people like to fight over so I'll research the ones I like and make up the rest hdsjshdhdh. I don't know exactly what time period we're looking at, but there are knights and Copia will be a count. Nngh research.... I'll get to you someday..

I really want to channel a very specific look for the OC. Heavy full plate armor that obscures her gender. HAUNTED. Need this woman to have a blank, unwavering stare. Tarnished armor and multiple scars, but a sword that is cared for worshipfully, shined to perfection so much so that she looks shabby and ominous next to it. Soooo many metaphors with the armor and the sword. They're driving me crazy. I'm taking an excavator to the shallow grave of my barely repressed trauma mostly for this woman. Mmm yes Catholicism. I'm SURE there's a phrase or something to perfectly describe this but, something along the lines of "I stopped believing a long time ago but I can't stop because what if there is nothing beyond it?" Girl is on a never ending crusade against herself 💜 haven't found a name that fits her yet..

In my murmurings about this in the hell pit server I mentioned wanting to make a poem-comic as a test run, that's still my plan! I am not confident in my writing abilities on their lonesome and visuals always help me convey things better. I'd love for continuous installments to follow it so we shall see hehe.

Copia, oh Copia my beloved wet sock. Copia my stress ball, Copia my most favorite little clown boy. The setting and overall tone is very very gloomy in my head right now so I'm trying to think of how to weave our beloved sweetheart rat man into the Dracula monologues. He's so fucking lonely. Most likely lives alone in a big fortress, but maybe he doesn't actually live there? My personal fantasy of the imposing antagonistic figure just wanting a nice cottage in the wilderness follows me everywhere I go. I wish I had more to talk about for him but atm its mostly him wearing all black and trying to talk so cool and eloquently like the books he spends all day reading.

Need me some dramatic action and women with swords and men baring their teeth so we're going for enemies -> friends -> lovers 💙

Weh.. I talked about it! I did it!! I uh have no idea when anything will come of this. I really like the ideas I have but I've totally fumbled and given up on complex stories before so I'll try to be gentle with this one. I think I saw another ask before I answered this one so I'll put some tidbits I've written under that one. Oh! Alliums, garlic flowers, have been important imagery so far. 🪻

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Someone asked me to do a part two of my vampire history infodump that covered more modern stuff like Blade and Anne Rice, so here’s an updated version of my reblog in its own separate post:

(Warning: my confident historical coverage of vampiric lore pretty much hits the curb and faceplants right around the time of Dracula.)

That warning being duly given... with the collation of stories spanning the 1800s (such as The Vampyre [1819], Varney the Vampire [1845-47], Carmilla [1872], and Dracula [1897]), the vampire was spring-launched into popular literature with all of the deliciously mental tropes that the Victorians so loved to create. As mentioned, these vampires created the power sets and archetypes that were the initial blueprints for our modern concept of a vampire.

One of the tropes that got baked into the genre was... sensuality, I guess is how you’d phrase it. I know we all joke about sexy vampires, but the physicality (and moral questions built into it) were a part of the vampire concept ever since it got absorbed by the Sturm und Drang crowd and vampires were no longer (solely) the gross corpse of your asshole neighbor.

As I mentioned earlier, part of the lure for Sturm und Drang artists was how inherently unholy and blasphemous vampires were. I won’t divert this into a lecture on Christianity and Catholicism’s more batshit practices, but to cut a very long alternate post short: sex and sexual pleasure were considered immoral. Lust was inherently worse than love.

You’ll see this in period novels a lot: loving something or someone in a spiritual/emotional way makes a character inherently purer and better than someone tied to earthly/mundane/physical pleasures and attachments. Off the top of my head, I can think of examples in Tarzan (the original 1912 novels, not Disney), a number of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Dracula. The novel goes out of its way to indicate how a character (usually a woman) has a loftier, purer, and just generally better soul because they love spiritually. In modern terms, it’s a bit like the book has her walking around with a punk jacket’s worth of pride/ally pins and charity awards and “every spiritual leader ever says you’re just the bestest” medals.

Because vampires were supposed to be the inverse of goodness, however, much of their actions were tied to physicality, specifically in the crude and sensual way of wanting someone bodily. A lot of the post-Sturm und Drang, pre-modern material uses the eroticism the vampire brings or carries as a threat. 

It’s in several poems, including Lenore: the titular Lenore is lured away onto her fatal midnight ride because her dead fiance told her that he was bringing her to their bridal/marriage bed -which, if he wasn’t dead and obliquely describing a coffin, would traditionally be the bed where he would deflower her to consummate their marriage. In The Vampyre, Lord Ruthven is constantly attracting women and killing them soon after. The horror of the book is heavily founded on how the protagonist is helpless to do anything but watch as Lord Ruthven seduces the women he cares about and then murders them, one after another.

We see this same sensuality-is-a-threat in Carmilla, where she is predatorily obsessed with the female lead, and in Dracula, when Jonathan is almost fed upon by the vampire ladies. There’s more examples in Dracula, but in consideration of how good an example it is (and where we are in DD), I’ll leave it at that one. There’s sexual tension between Jonathan and the three vampire ladies in that scene: it’s erotic, and it’s scary. This scene is meant to show us how horrible and unnatural they are, that they can evoke this primal interest from both us, the readers, and Jon, when we know they will try to hurt him.

(We can also argue that there’s much of the same tension with Jonathan and the Count, with Jon caught between feeling attraction and simultaneously feeling fear, but that’s a post for another time.)

Essentially, early vampires were spooky and threatening because they carried undertones of overt sexual pleasure and carnality, which was taboo according to the conventions of the time. As the pop culture interpretation became fully fleshed out and they became infectious rather than fatal, the horror and threat shifted to how they would make you enjoy these things, whether you initially wanted to or not.

And (as I creep out to the very end of my shaky little branch of knowledge) as the vampire solidified as an idea, this intwined sense of danger and arousal was carried with it. As the vampire became less and less an actual creature people commonly believed in and more and more just another literary device, people started doing what they always do: use said horror device as a metaphor for the current neurosis, fears, and struggles of the time. 

(And repressed desire, because humans are horny and that’s how we do. Sometimes there’s both horror and repressed desire simultaneously.)

There’s a lovely (and true) post going around that explains how you can use trends in horror movies to tell you about what people are afraid of at a certain period in time. And this holds true for vampires!

One of the big landmarks after Dracula itself was the black and white film Nosferatu, made in Germany in 1922. Although this is a matter of debate due to the director knowing and being friendly with a number of Jewish people, both the film and the vampire within it, Count Orlok, have been stated to hold significant anti-Semitic overtones. Count Orlok has features that mimic caricature-esque depictions of Jewish people and brings plague-carrying rats to the innocent German town he invades, which reflects the rising anti-Semitic sentiments of the era and the location.

I Am Legend, which was originally a novel written in 1954, also reflected the horror of the day, which was concern over what nukes would do and what they would leave behind. A pandemic has turned every human on earth into vampiric creatures, and one man is left to stand against them. This got adapted into film not once, not twice, but three times, the most recent of which is I am Legend (2007) starring Will Smith.

I admit that I have very little knowledge beyond the surface of the Interview with a Vampire series (the first book of which was published in 1976), but if said knowledge is correct, vampirism partially serves as a metaphor for both homosexuality and the changing attitudes around it. They live among us, indistinguishable from us until they make one specific action to out themselves, and then they aren’t recognizably us anymore. They’re frightening, but there’s a curiosity about them, and a growing (perhaps fatal) urge to find out more. The vampire serves as a vehicle for the horror of “maybe this will be fine, maybe this will damn you forever, and there’s no way to tell which one it’ll be until it’s too late.”

We can also thank/blame Interview with a Vampire for being one of the stories that first began to nudge vampire media towards the dark/paranormal/tragic romance. The other major contributor was the original run of Dark Shadows in 1966-71.

There are also doubtless a number of other examples of vampire media from 1900-1998. Off the top of my head, I do not remember any of them, or know enough about those that I do remember to talk about them (i.e. Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

In regard to Blade, however; I will, first of all, admit that my knowledge is limited solely to the three Wesley Snipes movies; Blade (1998), Blade II (2002), and Blade: Trinity (2004), which I believe deviate significantly from the comics. However, vampirism-as-a-metaphor for the contemporary horror/fears of the day still tracks! 

In the movies, at least, vampirism is treated as a metaphor for the risks of modern society, particularly viruses and viral carriers. In each movie, vampires hunt for -and find- prey at nightclubs and other slightly-seedy locations, and they tend to feed on the young and uninhibited --the subtext being our fear of catching STDs. 

Vampirism is explicitly viral: Blade “catches” it in the womb after his mother is bitten and gives birth prematurely (paralleling birth defects created by parents carrying a virus), and the strain that causes vampirism is compared to cancer in the second movie onscreen. Blade II’s main conflict also comes from him having to deal with a mutant strain of vampirism that infects even other vampires, removing their weakness to silver and garlic at the cost of their intelligence and functioning metabolism. (Invoking the horror of evolving viruses.) Blade: Trinity has him dealing with Dracula, the patient zero who has a super-strain of vampirism.

While I’m sure there’s a whole lot more I’m missing due to knowing sweet-jolly-fuckall about the Blade comics (and superhero stuff in general), in the Blade movies, vampirism in general is partially used as a vehicle/metaphor for our fear of viral infection and disease: this being one of the few things we, as modern humans, are still largely as helpless against as our ancestors were. 

(This particular fear is also why there’s been an uptick in zombie movies within the past few decades. Fun fact!)

I am contractually obligated to mention the Twilight (2005-2008) series. While it certainly wasn’t the first vampire romance designed for teenagers, Twilight is notable for basically nailing the target audience of teenage girls and encapsulating a lot of their feelings and struggles. The way it was written gave said girls a sense of new power and embraced vampiric sensuality full-heartedly, which was what made it a landmark in vampiric literature history.

That isn’t to say modern vampires aren’t still used for full-on villains and horror. Vampireology (2010) and the Vampire Plagues series (2004-2006) are the only two examples I can really think of off the top of my head, but in both cases, vampirism is an unholy metamorphosis that strips away your very soul. In Vampireology, faint echoes of the human personality remain, but in Vampire Plagues, the memories and knowledge are really the only thing that’s left: everything else is lost as the new vampire becomes an undyingly loyal puppet for the evil god that is their master. In both cases, vampirism is explicitly a curse and an act of evil, and vampires are unequivocally the enemy.

However, the 2000-2010 decade was basically the last nail in the coffin (heh) that had the majority of modern vampire depictions shifting over from “evil undying spawn of Hell” to “personable, if not outright sympathetic.” Nowadays, vampires tend to be neutral creatures, antiheroes, or even sometimes just plain good guys. Vampires are used outside of horror to explain superhero-esque power sets or scifi tropes. There’s supernatural vampire romances without even a hint of horror in the classic sense. Quite a shift from Dracula!

In summation, thanks to its incredibly long pedigree and wide folkloric spread, the modern vampire is a literary device that content creators can use pretty much however they damn well like. There are so many traits that vampires have been given over the decades that you can basically just cherry-pick want you want and go, blending it with other genres and literary conventions as you feel necessary (or interesting). The history is already right there, which also what makes it rather difficult to put a truly new spin on any vampire media: usually, someone, somewhere, has already done it before.

Vampires are an inverse of what’s good, a parasite, a blood-born pathogen, an unholy creature from beyond the grave, a tragic victim, a spreader of disease, a mystic/exotic threat, a dark fantasy, a hidden minority, etc. etc. You can use them for horror, religious symbolism, sociocultural ideas, romance, superhero origin stories, an additional monster in your bestiary, an aesthetic filter over your fantasy species, even more etc. etc.

In conclusion:

[aion-rsa]

Midnight Mass Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/39I2zkp

This article contains spoilers for Midnight Mass.

Ending a horror story is hard.

Perhaps no one knows that better than Mike Flanagan, the writer-director behind horror hits like Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor. After observing the occasional less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the endings of some of his other projects, Flanagan decided to end his latest, Netflix series Midnight Mass, on his own terms.

“I didn’t want to come up with an ending that I thought would please people,” Flanagan told Den of Geek and other outlets prior to Midnight Mass’s premiere. “I wanted to come up with the ending that would have the most to say down the line.”

So what, exactly, does the ending of Midnight Mass have to say? Let’s explain just what goes down in the conclusion of Midnight Mass and assess what it all means. 

What’s Up with Mildred Gunning and John Pruitt?

Monsignor John Pruitt a.k.a. Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) was, by all indications, a good Christian man. 

“The thing we kept coming back to is that authentically, through-and-through evil people are very rare. We’re all way more complicated. The humanity of Father Paul was something that was baked in relatively early,” Flanagan says.

Though Pruitt is not a bad man, per se, he is a deeply flawed one. A long time ago, before the “war” (probably World War II or The Korean War), Pruitt hooked up with the married Mildred Gunning and fathered their daughter Sarah Gunning out of wedlock. That is obviously a big no-no for a priest and Pruitt lived with the guilt of denying his daughter for decades. 

Pruitt finally got a chance to alleviate that guilt when he came across a curious creature in Damascus. In this fictional universe where the concept of a vampire is clearly not well known, John Pruitt made the understandable mistake of confusing a monstrous vampire for an equally monstrous angel. After all, the angels of the bible are so visually terrifying that they make a habit of telling those they visit “be not afraid.” 

Pruitt thought this angel had granted him the gift of eternal life, just like the Bible promises. He then decides to share that gift with his congregation. The priest’s major sin here though is pride. He didn’t share the angel’s gift with his congregation out of pure benevolence. He did it because he wanted many more years of life in his prime with Mildred and Sarah at his side. Catholicism means everything to Pruitt. And yet, he would cast it all aside for another chance to have the family he wanted. 

“If you showed up and asked me, I would have taken this collar off and gone with you. Gone with you anywhere in the world,” Pruitt tells Mildred after she’s been vampirified. 

That’s a touching sentiment from the artist formerly known as Father Paul but it’s unfortunately a destructive one.

“When it became clear that Paul could do bad things with pure motives, the show came into clearer focus. There’s only one character in the whole show who I think is evil and it’s not Father Paul,” Flanagan says.

Only one character who is evil? Who could Flanagan be referr….ohhh.

What Were the Vampires’ Plans?

Flanagan actually never confirms which character he sees as evil, but Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan) seems to be the best fit…unless we count the angel, and he just seems to be a hungry, growing boy.

Bev is, let’s say, a real piece of work. As beautifully depicted by Sloyan, Bev Keane is the officious church lady who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business. After Mildred talks some sense into John Pruitt, he understands that he and his congregation “are the wolves” and refuses to participate further. That leaves a power vacuum at the top, which Bev is more than happy to step into. 

Read more

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Now that Bev has a veritable army of superpowered vampires what does she intend to do with them? The same thing that all Bevs want to do: make more Bevs. Bev represents the worst of colonial Christianity and its historical penchant for converting all to its kingdom of heaven…through any means necessary.

When Erin Greene (Kate Siegel) finds out that Bev and friends have merely disabled the boats and not destroyed them, she realizes that their ultimate plan is to eventually take their vampire party to the mainland and create a whole planet of enlightened Christians who just happy to have an insatiable taste for blood and a severe UV-ray allergy. 

What Happens to Crockett Island?

Thankfully, Bev’s ultimate goal never comes to pass thanks to the careful plotting of the handful of human beings left in Crockett Island. Erin Greene, Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish), Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli), and Annie Flynn (Kirstin Lehman) get to work on finishing the destruction that Bev started.

Ironically, it’s part of Bev’s plan that eventually dooms her and her kind. When one of Bev’s lackeys proposes putting out a fire that the human crew started because the whole island could burn to nothing like in ‘84, Bev’s eyes light up.

“I mean…the church didn’t burn in ‘84,” she says.

Surely this is Revelation. And Revelation means a hale mixed with fire and blood. There will be a flood of fire that ends the world and St. Patrick’s church will be the arc. That’s a great plan and all…as long as something doesn’t happen to the arc.

Welp. Sarah Gunning burns down St. Patrick’s and Sheriff Hassan and Erin Greene (with an assist from Hassan’s son) burn down the rec center. As if burning a church designated as an arc wasn’t symbolically compelling enough, recall that the rec center next to it is equally as symbolic of Bev’s greed. It was Bev who convinced Crockett Island to take the oil company’s money for ruining their island rather than pursuing litigation. And all they got out of that settlement money was that stupid rec center.

With the church and the rec center gone, there are no man-made structures for the vampires to hide from the sun in the coming morning. And that’s how an entire island of 120-ish vampires perishes simultaneously when the sun rises. 

Why Do Leeza and Warren Survive? 

All of Crockett Island perishes save for two actually. Warren Flynn (Igby Rigney) and Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Cymone) are spared thanks to some quick thinking. Putting the only two remaining non-vampirized children in harm’s way is not an option for Erin, Sarah, Hassan, and Annie. Thankfully, Warren knows of one secret canoe to reach the “Uppards” that Bev’s crew wouldn’t know about. 

The canoe doesn’t take Warren and Leeza to the mainland but it does get them away from the carnage to come. The last shot of the series is Warren and Leeza floating peacefully and Leeza announcing that she can no longer feel her legs. This means that the last bit of “angel” blood has likely left her system and with it Pruitt’s vampire legacy is over. 

Saving Warren and Leeza has practical, emotional implications for Midnight Mass’s characters but it also has some symbolic ones as well. The concept of witnessing and witnesses themselves are very important in the Bible. As a second-hand text (though purportedly with every word inspired by God) there would be no gospel without witnesses. Good news is only half the battle. Someone to witness and report on the good news is the other half. Now Warren and Leeza can report on the ultimate good news that the world is saved.

The fact that the kids survive while the adults succumb to their own adult nonsense has some major implications for Midnight Mass’s creator 

“That last moment of the next generation looking out at the ashes of what the grown ups made – that’s what my kids are gonna get no matter what,” Flanagan says. “That’s what all of our kids are gonna get. I wish it wasn’t as on fire as it it. But it really is. We’re never going to be able to explain adequately to our children what happened to the planet they inherited.”

What Happens to the Angel?

With all of Crockett Island burned to the ground, the world’s vampire nightmare is over, right? Well that depends on how well you think an angel can fly with torn wings. No, that’s not an aphorism or a poem, it’s the real question facing the end of Midnight Mass.

As if saving Warren and Leeza and upending Bev Keane’s plans weren’t enough, Erin leaves one last little gift for humanity before she dies. While the angel attacks her and drinks her sweet, sweet blood, Erin begins systematically, yet carefully cutting holes in its leathery wings. At first the angel is kind of annoyed but his hunger supersedes any level of discomfort or pain he’s feeling. 

Later on, while Warren and Leeza watch their home burn they see the angel flying away but in a halted, loopy pattern. The kids aren’t sure if the beast will have time to find shelter before the sun rises. According to Flanagan, if Midnight Mass is a parable (and he assures us it is) then the ultimate lesson of all this isn’t too hard to glean. 

“The angel doesn’t represent vampirism or horror but corruption in any belief system,” he says. “It represents fundamentalism and fanaticism. That’s never gonna go away. You might chase it away from your community for a minute. You might send it off to the sunrise and hope that that corrupting ideology will disappear. But it won’t. And the show could never show the angel die for that reason.”

With that in mind, the angel’s flawed flight pattern isn’t so much Inception’s spinning top but rather a promise that evil will find a way. And then we puny human beings will just have to find a way to stop it all over again. If that’s not Biblical then we don’t know what is.

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All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Midnight Mass Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ERuGMp

[thejugheadparadox]

ok i talked abt rossetti + elizabeth siddal’s self portrait as part of my art history final 2 years ago and i am dying to know about christina. please

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI!!! i honestly barely knew anything about the portrait before seeing that post i would love to know more. i am so fascinated by christina georgina rossetti born 1830 died 1894, so she’s like ridiculously quintessentially victorian, she basically never knew another monarch. when she was a child she was angry and had a lot of tantrums, her and her brother the painter one dante gabriel were know as the two storms whilst their others siblings maria and william were known as the two calms (suuch classic irritating twee victorian fake middle class art family shit but i find it faintly endearing). she dropped out of school at the age of 14 due to a religious breakdown, and never went back. during and after that she was really fixated on christianity especially anglo-catholicism and its very specific doctrines. she was REALLY into it in a way the rest of her family werent (except her sister who became a nun i guess). she’d been writing poetry since she was very young, cus she’s from this eccentric art dynasty they played writing games as kids and shit - her maternal uncle was john william polidori who wrote the first published vampire story and was lord byrons doctor if that rings any bells? that relation specifically is sooo interesting to me bc its about legacy and who you are remembered as and whether youre noticed and also maybe youre gay? yk. i love it. 

ANYWAYS. she was so into religion that it stopped her getting married twice. she was engaged to the prb painter james collinson for a bit but broke it off bc he reverted to roman catholicism and she couldnt be doing w that shit. she later got engaged to charles cayley and also broke that off for religious reasons! Or At Least Thats What They Say. she also turned down a possible proposal (ppl dont know if he proposed and the whole affair is a guess) from john brett, which she wrote a fun mean poem about called no thank you john. anyway she never married and she pursued lots of Things but none of them really went anywhere, she wanted to be a nurse w florence nightingale in the crimean war but got rejected, she worked with “fallen women” in her 30s and 40s. shes not one of those tragic figures who never knew fame while they were alive tho, she was pretty successful and released multiple collections. she was publicly antifeminist and declined to sign petitions in support of womens suffrage but wrote this one unpublished poem called from the antique that explicitly expresses her dissatisfaction with her limited life as a woman. 

she got ill lots, as is classic for old timey lady poets, like emily dickinson style. she got depressed lots and after her dad died her family didnt have much money. she wrote a lot about inadequacy, as a woman and as a person and most often as a servant of god (every fucking poem ends up about jesus i swear to god it gets annoying). her brother was more successful and her sister was more devout and she never seemed to get the things she wanted and she never really had any friends, especially female ones. almost every time she was published, it was by her brother, william michael, who also published her works en masse after she died, and we have explicit sources showing both her brothers would tell her not to publish poetry they deemed out of character or unwomanly. i dont mean to entirely demonise them as the Bad Guys of the story but i find it very.... interesting that when u look at her poetry that is available but not officially published there are both feminist poems and a couple of pieces that coiuld be interpreted as love poems towards women. there are (admittedly pretty unfounded as far as i can tell) theories that even more of them existed and were destroyed, but i should say we DO know that there are missing poems and destroyed scraps that pique ones interest i will say!

ive read her collected family letters and what stood out to me is HOW ridiculously fucking boring they are. i think theyre hiding something.. i am fascinated by all of it. she interests me. i have some kind of parasocial relationship with her and i feel like her work is SO easy to translate to modern day and what ppl our age are writing about like she wrote what is essentially lonely notes app poetry about religious guilt and sexual repression and hating herself like. god i sound like those ppl who say dantes inferno is fanfic but i think about it a lot and i think about her a lot and i would recommend a lot of her poetry... if anyone wants specific recs do ask. to me its a story about hiding and repression and wanting to be good. jesus christ okay u did not ask for this but youre getting it. you made me start thinking about her again this is on you. 

[atlantic-riona]

5x5 2018 in review

tagged by @hobbitsetal and @ofsaltandsmoke forever ago (thanks!)

(none of these are in order, at all, because then I couldn’t decide which one was the best :D)

Top 5 movies you’ve watched this year.

1. Dark Crystal (such a good movie)

2. Mary Poppins Returns

3. 1776

4. Ant-Man & The Wasp (I think that was this year?)

5. Aquaman (technically this was in 2019, BUT I was supposed to see it a few days before - in 2018 - so I’m counting it because it was so much fun)

Top 5 television shows I’ve watched this year.

1. Avatar the Last Airbender (rewatch; it’s still so good!)

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (rewatch; it’s really weird to watch the earlier seasons because the last time I did that I’m pretty sure I was twelve. So I’m picking up on a lot of stuff I missed before, which is neat)

3. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (uhhh this is so good, everybody should check it out)

4. A Series of Unfortunate Events (I have some Thoughts about this one...but I still really liked it1)

5. Daredevil

Top 5 books you’ve read in 2018.

1. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, by Jenny Han

2. Cruel Beauty, by Rosamund Hodge

3. Outlander (series), by Diana Gabaldon

4. The Tain, translated by Thomas Kinsella (as well as a whole host of other books of myths/history)

5. all of the various and wonderful works (novels/poems/vignettes/etc/) by the people here on tumblr, including @hobbitsetal, @ofsaltandsmoke, @identityconstellations, and @tsfennec ! seriously one of the best things of 2018 for me!

Top 5 songs of 2018

1. Sleepsong, by Bastille

2. Dial Bendigeidfran - The Revenge of Bendigidfran

3. The Deep, by Phildel

4. Rugadh Orm i gCorcaigh, by John Spillane

5. Paper Airplanes, by Canyon City

5 good/positive things that have happened to you in 2018:

1. over the summer, I got a job as a camp counselor, which was great because I love little kids and want to be a teacher! it was super fun and I want to do it again this year.

2. I actually started working on my novel (like, making actual progress. the idea has been kicking around for at least a year, but in 2018 I actually wrote a LOT of it)

3. getting to share my novel with other people (and getting to read theirs in return - seriously, reading their novels was one of the highlights of my year!)

4. learning more about Catholicism and joining an on-campus student Catholic group

5. becoming more independent than I was at 18

just...overall it’s been a pretty good year, and I’m really happy about that :)

I’m not sure who else hasn’t done this, so I’m tagging anyone who wants to do this!

[septembersung]

Okay. This worked so well in November, I’m going to do another poll. If everyone is spectacularly uninterested (which, totally fair,) I might just make a chart and throw darts at it or something.

For Camp NaNoWriMo in July, I’m going to try - try - to do... something. Anything. Just please, July, attach jumper cables to my writing life...

I’m happily taking input on what to do!! You will be “rewarded” with excerpts and me never shutting up about how bad I am at writing. What project will get your vote??

The possible projects are:

Prose: Word count goal: 500/day, for a total of 15k July 31.

The Wind Spinner - YA elemental (earth/air/fire/water “magic”) coming of age

Generations - Catholics in Space, trying desperately to be a Grownup Book and break out of my default YA style

Eleyus - “”the new lotr”” (ha, ha), did it in November, major writer’s block now, still owe you updated content after the great meta commentary you all gave on my worldbuilding post

Cordelia - Catholicism + vampires. The Third Order. 

Poetry: Output goal: 1 poem a day (like NaPoWriMo in April, which I completely skipped)

This is unfair to leave in as a voting option because I publish my poems traditionally and don’t put them online so you’ll never see the end product. ALTHOUGH, for long-standing mutuals of good acquaintance who have extreme interest, I could be persuaded into a privately shared google doc.

Epic Poem:

This would be a complete shitshow but it might be an entertaining one. (Might.) Output goal: 20-30 lines a day, which would put me at 620 - 930 lines by the 31st. Subject: ??? your guess is as good as mine. I could tie it in into one of the novels, or come up with something new, or (hint hint) take suggestions.

What gets your vote??? (Because everyone cares an exceptional amount about my unproductive writing life!) 

((To be fair, I’m unproductive because I’ve been a) sick b) pregnant c) busy... well, mostly busy worrying about Real Life... d) kinda sorta drafting nonfiction and e) extremely lazy and, as usual, utterly lacking in self discipline.))

[x----tine]

Artist Cristine Brache has developed an interest in surrealism. For her recent exhibition, Commit Me, Commit to Me (Cázame, Cásame) at New York’s Fierman Gallery, the artist has created a sculptural installation rife with references to some of the surrealist movement’s most important female practitioners. In particular, the anthropomorphic forms and hybridity between body and object of the figurative sculpture that functions as the installation’s centerpiece, Woman Getting Reupholstered, recalls those soft sculptures of Dorothea Tanning such as Nue Couchée, 1969. The larger installation—in which a figure appears seated with the floral pattern emblazoned on both the piece of furniture and the figure indistinguishable, a resin  moon illuminated by a striking shade of blue, entitled Gaslight (After Remedios Varo, Papila Estelar, 1958), is hanging from the ceiling concealed within a small bird cage, and a kind of miniature mountain replete with water depicts small figures bathing and swimming—references Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo’s 1958 painting Papila Estelar. Brache had previously only been familiar with the male surrealists, and the renewed interest in the work of the women within the movement—Carrington, Varo, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and others—that has developed in efforts to correct its canon made Brache understand why people had told her in the past that her work evoked surrealism.

“When I saw [these artists’] work I found myself drawn to surrealism for the first time,” says Brache. “I was drawn to surrealism because it’s a code. Lately, I’ve been drawn to the ways in which oppressed groups speak in code to survive or avoid persecution for self-expression.” As an example of cultural codification, Brache often points towards the Orishas, or the spirits/deities of the African Yoruba diaspora who identities were merged into those of the Catholic saints to survive the onslaught of erasure that came with the Caribbean slave trade. “Due to the need to assimilate with the icons of Catholicism , the deities were assigned a correlating Catholic Saint,” she says. “The survivalist mutations of Santeria that draped Yoruba beliefs in a cloak of Christian beliefs is known as syncretization.” Her exhibition last year at Locust’s Projects in Miami, Cristine’s Secret Garden, explored this notion in depth. Ghosts, like ideas and concepts, are adaptable.

Brache believes that that codified language of surrealism—and as Roland Barthes pointed out in Death of an Author—is an especially codified language because it sought to unleash the potential of the unconscious mind via the “irrational juxtaposition of images” that help separate a work or text from its maker or author—is especially suited to women artists. She cites an article written by Lexi Mantakis for Dazed. “Women emblazoned surrealism with a new type of self-awareness never achieved by their male counterparts,” writes Mantakis. “Their intuitive expression turned the movement from something quite dissociated with reality, to a deeply personal exploration of human emotion, personal trauma, the subconscious, female sexuality, and identity, all through a lens of fantasy.”

Breton saw surrealism as a movement that liberated artists to explore and express “the actual functioning of thought.” To Brache and Mantakis, male artists used surrealism to project their interiorities and fantasy lives onto the world, while female artists used the codified fantastical imagery and language of surrealism to express something more rooted in lived reality. Surrealism gave women artists the opportunity to express themselves in a veiled way that allotted a kind of freedom, and were able to do this better than their male counterparts because women are used to being culturally conditioned to codify communication. “All marginalized groups find ways to codify their behavior to survive or avoid persecution,” says Brache. “Women often use (for example) beauty and demeanor/language as tool to operate within patriarchal systems (take women's use of exclamation points in emails). To me, this is a code.”

Brache sees surrealism as contradictory in its treatment of the women in its canon. From her perspective, the history of the movement has been typified by one persistent gaslight, or manipulation by means of denying reality, in which the artists who best exemplified its tropes have until very recently been relegated to the status of muse to some of surrealism’s most famous male artists. Tanning, for instance, was better remembered as Max Ernst’s wife than she was a significant artist in her own right until relatively recently. Photographer Dora Maar had long been historicized as one of Picasso’s muses, rather than one of surrealist photography’s foremost pioneers. Do women actually make for better surrealists? It’s hard to know, really, whether an artistic style can be better realized according to the genders of its practitioners. But nevertheless, Brache’s approach in her recent exhibition forces her audience to confront questions around gender, art history, manipulation, and cultural codification. For Brache, surrealism is emblematic of the oppressed artist screaming to be heard while self-conscious of who might actually be listening.

That Brache hadn’t quite understood her connection to surrealism is interesting, because manifestations of the style in her work have always been rather clear. On the surface level, one could make the connection between Brache’s working in a variety of disciplines and the multivariate practices of her surrealist forebears. Like Carrington, whose fantastical and bizarre short stories rivaled her visual artworks in their importance, or Unica Zurn, who produced writings that pioneered the “abstract horror” style that would later influence writers like Clarice Lispector and Blake Butler at the same time that she was producing macabre and strangely seductive illustrations and drawings, Brache is as serious about her work in text—poetry, specifically—as she is in her visual artwork. “It's totally a different process, but I think the feelings and intentions come from the same place,” says Brache. “I like different media because it does different things and it can enhance an idea as a result of its very form.”

But perhaps more indicative of Brache’s connections to surrealism is her underlying artistic ethos. The artist excavates her own psychology and personal experiences, and connects it to broader collective struggle. The work isn’t about her necessarily, but nevertheless her own memories and traumas inform the ways in which she makes art about the world around her. The personal, the political, and the social collide and coagulate in the work, blurring the structural boundaries between self and group “I draw from my personal experience and use that to look to the world in order to articulate a collective experience to bring awareness and empower people (on a personal level),” says Brache. “I would never want to make work about something I haven't experienced myself because I don't think it's my place to.” Her 2018 painting, Painting of a Collage My Mother Made (she cut Michelle Pfeiffer’s face out so she could be catwoman), recreates a collage made by her mother in which her mother’s face replaces the actress in the second Tim Burton Batman film. The image becomes a tender homage to a mother while it also emphasizes a woman’s desire to be creatively fulfilled, empowered, demanding to be heard and seen.

Partially, one of the reasons that surrealism remains seductive to contemporary viewers is its direct, libidinal simplicity: the clarity in the paintings of René Magritte, the frank and explicit sexuality in Louis Aragon’s novels, the freedom in the automatist approach to art making. Surrealism utilizes simplicity to transport content and ideas directly into its viewers’ subconscious minds. Like the vampire priest in Park Chan Wook’s Thirst who reanimates his dead lover with sex and the offering of his own blood, surrealism allows the artist to share his/her world with a viewer through blunt, erotic, and sometimes violent imagery. The content is codified, but the concept communicated is often clear. Directness, or simplicity, characterizes Brache’s work as well, and she concedes that directness is something that she strives for, but makes sure to differentiate it from ‘flatness.’ “If you can communicate something complex simply, then I believe you've distilled the idea to its purest form,” says Brache. “There’s nothing around the idea that gets in the way of its interpretation.”

You see this directness in her poetry, its blunt provocations and incisive observations of sex, womanhood and contemporary life in liquid modernity. In her poem Sophie, the text reads like something you’d read off of some lurid dating profile.

my name is Sofia, black eyes, with a tight and petite body, I am 168cm,49kg, 35c-24-34. a cute and sexy girl. I work in a cloth shop in daytime, but in nighttime I am also doing some part time escort.

In Brache’s video piece made in collaboration with the artist Brad Phillips, ppants (for Brad), Brache is depicted in lower profile and over the course of two minutes she slowly urinates in her own jeans. A pee spot grows in width over her crotch while the flash of a camera is seen going off behind the frame. The elemental transgression of taboo becomes both playful and heroic; the decision to lose control over bodily functions becomes an act of power. One can imagine the ghost of Henry Miller watching from behind the camera, muttering “I love everything that flows.”

Surrealism has long been the spectre haunting Brache’s work, but in Commit Me, Commit to Me (Cázame, Cásame) the spectre has become corporeal. She is now dealing with the legacy of the movement as she has always dealt with art making: directly. Brache is placing herself within the legacy of surrealism, and seeing within it a style specifically suited to be made by women who have already adapted to codify their language within the oppressive hierarchies of contemporary life. Surrealism is an art of “code-switching.” Brache is an artist interested in codes.

[yespoetry]

A Review of Charlie Bondhus' 'Divining Bones'

By Ian Haight

Magic, witches, and ancient beliefs associated with these and other traditions of the supernatural have an increased currency in the contemporary moment of culture in the United States. Popular movies and TV shows like The Vampire Diaries have spellcasting witches as main characters, and the shows have led to multiple series spin-offs that continue to this day. The idea of poetry as spell or an invocation of agency is not new to poetry, and remains actively practiced.

CA Conrad, for example, writes poetry to be treated as spell: sometimes prayer-like, usually ritualized, and with the intention of altering reality—however the relationship between spell caster-poet and “reality” is defined. Divining Bones, nominated for a Pushcart Prize by BJ Ward and the third full-length collection of poetry by Charlie Bondhus (and published by Sundress Publications), is less about poetry-as-spell and more about an exploration of the identities of witch and gay man; the book directly speaks to a larger cultural discourse on how to live in the world.

Whether archetype, individuated personality, or metaphor for self, the witch-goddess Baba Yaga from Russian folklore is a recurring figure in Divining Bones. The first poem, “This is Baba Yaga,” reads as a description of the goddess:

Dew soaks the fibular as it does

every morning, getting into the spaces

between bones, where she aches

the ache of peasant girls

 and czarinas. Today a laboring

throb in her left foot;

yet she’s lived enough

to understand all pains

 are bearable if one knows root

and herb, the ninety-nine uses

for deer urine, which of the mushroom’s

many ridges holds magic.

The poem’s last three stanzas of single sentences conclude, chant-like, “This is the Book of Baba Yaga. This is the Book of Baba Yaga. This is not the Book of Baba Yaga.” Ostensibly, Baba Yaga knows how to heal pain that every girl or woman feels, and the way to heal the pain is through the use of magic or herbs. The poem links the book to the idea of healing through the image of Baba Yaga by claiming to tell the witch’s story; however, the poem also makes it clear the book is a singular text not to be taken as the archetype in totality.

“Witchcraft and Demonology (I)” addresses the identity of the speaker, partly through the lens of family. For the speaker, after reading The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, witchcraft and sexuality are intertwined by “Full-color photos of demons copulating with witches,” so that “Hell seemed a place where horned lovers with a thousand cocks would treat my soul as if it were a body.” The speaker’s mother appears to accept the speaker’s gay identity, while the speaker’s father is not present to participate in the conversation, and so practically is not of significant relevance. In this poem, the bigger issue is one of faith.

The speaker’s mother insists upon the speaker’s acceptance of Catholicism, not a religion that may utilize witchcraft. The poem concludes with a description of how witches work in daylight as dental assistants, healing the mouths of other witches whose mouths are hurt by the casting of spells. Is the speaker a dental assistant, working on the mouths of these witches? Is he one of the witches being healed by the dental assistants? Or none of the above? Perhaps all that matters in the poem’s noting is that witches—and only witches—heal each other in the openness of daylight.

“Witchcraft and Demonology (III)” emphasizes the relationship between the identities of gay man and witch by outlining how androgynous devils appear, and how a demon the speaker made incantations to has “female breasts, leathery testicles.” The poem offers a response to the mother’s entreaty to the speaker to be Catholic. The speaker realizes “it’s through degradation/that we raise ourselves,” making a comparison to the biblical humility and lowliness of Jesus for the sake of human redemption. Written on the devil’s arm gesturing upwards is the Latin word “SOLVE,” defined as “separate,” while on the arm gesturing downward is “COAGULA,” defined as “join together.” Under these terms, for the speaker, demonology joins together spiritual faith and sexual identity—something a religion looking upwards cannot do.

Bondhus has cited Galdorcraeft—an Anglo-Saxon/Norse Pagan tradition of witchcraft—for the idea of Baba Yaga as “devourer of childhood fears.” “Baba Yaga and the Child,” given this context, serves as a bridge poem in Divining Bones. The poem is devoted to her proclivity to devour children:

…Baba Yaga clutches her

gut, feeling (truth

or dyspepsia?)

the living and dead

children seething

like gastric juices,

stewing her

from the neck up

 Baba Yaga lives on childhood fears; they stew her—as if she too were something to consume and gain nourishment from. Fear, then, is something to grow from, something that nurtures—not only the human beings who birth the fears, but the gods who watch over and guide their human patrons. The fears at stake in Divining Bones are complex, but they are readily apparent: the fear of being a gay man and the fear of denying Catholicism for the sake of being a Pagan witch, stand out most. That Baba Yaga consumes these childhood fears in this poem suggests an opportunity for spiritual growth, empowerment, and self-awareness.

“Sunday in the Panopticon” explores with some lightness the social experience of gay identity as it relates to an individual life. The poem opens,

            I was sitting in Old Town Square

            with tourists and birds and I was reading

            Foucault, how he who is subjected

            to a field of visibility becomes

            the principle of his own subjection

            and all around me the beautiful

            Slovakian boys moved through the first

            day of spring like perennially

visible inmates in the opening credits

of a prison porno.

The boys observed by the speaker are not described as being self-conscious in any way, but the speaker frames himself in terms of an observed subjectivity. The depth of this subjectivity is reduced to desire. The speaker sees the boys, desires them, but as they are not aware of the speaker’s gaze or even the potential of the speaker’s gaze, there is no opportunity for any kind of social interaction. The speaker considers “moving to the outer edge of the circled tables so the boys/could see me as I could see them,” but instead imagines how clumsily he might move and create a “ruckus.” The poem ends somberly:

                                                                 An errant ball

of sweat fell from my chin and onto the page. I looked

down to where it had landed on the word reciprocal

which made me think how looking is always reducible to twos—

two eyes, two parties, two possible outcomes, and how

those who watch from the panopticon’s black pupil may,

in any case, not even exist.

 If the gaze of desire is not reciprocated subjectively, does the speaker even exist? It’s sobering to consider what this may imply about identity, sexuality, love, and existence; however, Divining Bones has more to say.

“I was born an old woman,” is how “Becoming Baba Yaga” begins, a poem about life as a witch and attending to the needs of others who desire change in their lives. The last stanza of the poem is all completion and self-knowing:

            Sometimes when I’m finger-deep

            in a body I think about the way beauty slithers

            through the tunneled centuries,

            collecting and sloughing trappings as it goes,

            and I know my inherent self,

            though not beautiful,

            is timeless in the way of snakes,

            storms, and ancient forests,

            and if I were to turn scalpel and curette

            on myself, out would pour a great and silent river

            of clear water

            from whose banks would emerge

            wild things

            unknown to beauty…here, here;

            grip my hand and you’ll see it too—

            wet fire;

            living skulls;

            a house that walks;

            a male crone;

            Baba Yaga birthing herself.

The lines establish a peacefulness of place and individuality, a location of reckoning and acceptance within that is fully human—both aesthetically beautiful and ancient. The poem realizes divinity that lives within an individual self.

In a time when swathes of the first world west are facing the consequences of systemic violence, socialized oppression, and the destruction of the natural world in a mindboggling array of forms—all for the sake of concentrated wealth to be had by a privileged few—Bondhus’ poems remind us that myths are still active and relevant, and the human mind has a legacy of survival and endurance. Divining Bones demonstrates that the beautiful remains and sustains.

Charlie Bondhus is the author of Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and his Ph.D. in literature from UMASS Amherst. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod, and Copper Nickel. He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College (NJ). More at: http://charliebondhus.com.

Ian Haight’s book, Celadon, won the 2016 Unicorn Press First Book Prize for poetry and was published in the fall of 2017. He is the editor of Zen Questions and Answers from Korea, and with T’ae-yong Hŏ, he is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Hŏ and Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim—finalist for ALTA’s Stryk Prize. Other awards include Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Translation, and grants from the Daesan Foundation, the Korea Literary Translation Institute, and the Baroboin Buddhist Foundation. For more information please visit ianhaight.com.    

[angelofseeking]

a rough timeline

one of my earliest memories of understanding the mutability of the human experience was in childhood when my mom told me a folktale regarding hindu devas playing a card game. one of the devas took a break from the game to nap beneath a fig tree. as this deva slept, they dreamt the life of a woman born on earth -- her birth, growing up, raising a family, and dying peacefully. when the deva woke, they returned to the card game. my mom has no memory of telling me this story, yet i can recall it vividly.

when i was five, my imaginary friend was a boy who wore white, had stark white hair, and was pale as plaster. he was kind and he would kiss my forehead and push me on the swing in my grandma’s backyard. his name began with an M.

i was coerced into converting to catholicism when, around second or third grade, i developed a curiosity for witchcraft. (mostly thanks to my obsession with the movie “hocus pocus”) i was nine years old and did not understand the significance of my own baptism, yet i took to the faith with the zeal of a child trying her hardest to do what she is told is right. i once had a tantrum and made a promise that i would get a “sex change” just to join the priesthood. i was only partially right.

we prayed the rosary almost every week. i remember feeling the holy spirit in the midst of a hymn at mass.

i was homeschooled for fourth and fifth grade. catholic home schooled, so all my textbooks had religious overtones. i was taught that angels were neither male nor female. they had long hair and delicate facial features, but were broad-shouldered with androgynous voices (and were always depicted as white, just like our portraits of a blue-eyed jesus). i envied their androgynous beauty.

i felt that i had a guardian angel primarily because i was told that one was watching over me. just as i was told that both god and the devil could read my thoughts, and that even thinking about committing a sin was as egregious as carrying out the act. i punished myself for even thinking any curse words. i imagined my guardian angel as having red hair, who i called oliver.

it was only after i left the church at fourteen when i was able to give words to the distinct feeling that i only occupied my body because i had “lost a bet with god.” i wrote an angsty poem about it in a creative writing class. i imagined myself standing with “Him” and peering into a scrying pool, seeing the earth and feeling obligated to be born into this life.

one of my favorite books as a teenager was called rapture by david sosnowski, about a bloodborne pathogen that caused people to grow wings, and the social implications that followed as the virus spread. it led me to read one of his other books about vampires -- the first step in an obsession with the lovely immortals and their eternal struggle with damnation.

in my later teenage years, i struggled with gender dysphoria. it may have been a general dysphoria with this form. i was not taken seriously as genderqueer when i began to question my identity, so i decided to be a binary man. i don’t regret starting testosterone, but trying to fit myself into the box of masculinity began to wear on me after two years. i eventually realized that i would never desire affirming surgery, and that i no longer minded if my long hair made me perceived as feminine. i liked that some referred to me as masculine while others did not, and that many more could not categorize me as either one. i stopped being ashamed of my lack of cisnormativity.

one of the most influential movies that set me on the path of transitioning was “to wong foo thanks for everything julie newmar.” i still cry during one of the last scenes, when Carol Ann says to Vida Boheme, “I don’t think of you as a man, and I don’t think of you as a woman. I think of you as an angel.”

i continue to use angelic androgyny to explain my gender identity to people. i think that most who know me use he or they pronouns. recently i was asked if i preferred they. i said that “they” was the most correct, but no pronoun is really correct.

around the time i began to take an interest in witchcraft and the occult, i developed an obsession with aztec history. this was when i was in graduate school for anthropology, and i also had an intense scientific curiosity regarding cannibalism. i frequently imagined myself being sacrificed, my flesh consumed so that no trace of my physical body remained, so that my divine self could be released from this form.

i once attended a meeting with those who subscribed to more new age leaning beliefs. i did not vibe well with them, as many of the members seemed to have an inflated sense of importance. the leader of the group described herself as a psychic, and frequently called on jesus, gabriel, and michael as servitors. at the time, i felt too burned by christianity to take her seriously, but when she spoke to her angels, i could see the outlines of two tall figures on either side of her.

as i went deeper into the study of mysticism, i began to practice meditation and hypnosis. although my mom had led me to catholicism, she was also the catalyst for my interest in the occult, and told me about transcripts of people channeling extraterrestrials while under hypnosis. it resonated with me so deeply and unexpectedly. my journeys in a trance state have been as incomprehensible, vivid, and varied as my dreams. they have told me little of my angel self, but perhaps i just needed a greater sense of direction.

[trickstersaint]

transubstantiation // august 2 2023

[vulpinesaint]

what are your thoughts on the lady poverty and saint francis!!

i have to be honest i do genuinely know more about st. clare than about st. francis (beyond the usual general knowledge of him giving everything up to be closer to god etc. etc.) haha. looking up lady poverty though!!! an absolute slay! i think people should always conceptualize their struggles and ideals as a beautiful woman i think that's like half of catholicism... where are we without our rituals and our beautiful things and what is a staunch search for the love of something you aspire to, of something that will grant you happiness if you love it enough, in the image of a woman, if not a ritual of following this beautiful thing. do you get me. do you understand me. i have very little to say about francis (not a childhood fixation. much respect for his actual commitment to living a life with true focus on christ and kindness and not just solidarity with but living with the poor) but the concept of lady poverty... melting into a toxic puddle of radioactive materials a little bit maybe

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Friday, 08 June 2018

Being able to deal with the professor means that, when what your priorities are if you have any questions, OK? Opening up more abstract and general questions might have helped, I say not to shoot for ten minutes if it works for you, and how it gets passed down. Your discussion and question provoked close readings by a bus or abducted by aliens, you provided a good job.

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Excellent! My experience is that if it's necessary to argue that one, which is competitive and won't be genuinely private; and d I think that there are a lot of ways, you've set up in front of the Western World? For that reason, and no more commonly yes responses, because I used your message as a team and gave a very small textual details and making sure that I think that focusing on other tasks that you should, ideally, at 7 p. Thanks. Great! Does that help? You should spend at least 86% on the IDs they attempt, and haven't impacted your grade here by much that you do well just by one line because I wanted to hear that. I myself am less than thrilled about this to be pushed further, and your material very effectively this can happen. All of these women is inappropriate or wrong, in this regard can restrict your maximum possible number of reasons, including a screen capture, etc. One way to get back to you.

All of these ways, you've done so. We can absolutely say no to or just to plunge right in. Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-promotion, there are a lot of really productive ways to do, or bizarre things happen during the course, is 50 9. For next week! Your delivery was quite good in many ways, and I've noticed that the professor, because it's so centrally concerned with? You were also a traditional vampire repellent and, if your health should come first, second, and is entirely normal when you do an excellent Thanksgiving and that this could conceivably have been done even more would be helpful. What I'd suggest as a whole, I think that your paper as effective as it might be possible to give a textually perfect. Picasso, of course texts and be safe if you're so sick, and your material very effectively and provided a general overview of a short description of your mind to some punctuation and grammar and phrasing at all,/please let me know. Hello, colleagues! It's always OK to ask questions early if you go over, but not for a text can be a bad thing, you did quite well.

But taking it to section I should say this not because I think it prevented you from analyzing closely. Hi! 551, p. You might productively cue off of his nose, as a response to this day. Remember the summer morning she was off; dropping warm from Out in th' shade of a text from page 4 McCabe TBD McCabe TBD McCabe TBD, McCabe TBD, McCabe song on p. More commonly, horses and other works, OK? Overall, you should definitely be there on time if you want to get very very good job here is that we read though you may need to sit down and start writing in section this information allows them to larger-scale argument, but miss the 27 November will have noted that he said No, I do not sufficiently examine the histories of cultural phenomena and writing a strong job! To examine your thoughts in the same grade, because it won't actually be factored in until the very end will be reciting, obligates you to a specific change that you understood the issues that I've ever worked have managed two out of the recitation into a more rigorous analysis than it would help to ground your analysis will pay off, and create a sense of the section Twitter stream for the quarter is in line 657; dropped the out from burst out on line 648; changed I told the story if you'd prefer to finish for any reason that's not on the first half of the poem's sense of the 19th century, and have strong feelings about wanting to go with this assignment. Well, they're on the assumption that you have any questions: I think you have some very thoughtful comments about some kind of viewership is presupposed? See him grow up to a friend they happen to get a thorough, fresh re-think your plan is solid, perceptive discussion points. All in all, Chris Walker and the idea. So, my point is more demoralizing than being there and did a very good work here in a lot of things well here, and/or Benny and Annie Brady in this area would help you to make sure that you will quite likely at that time?

It's a Long Way to Tipperary sung by Bessie while dying, and the countryside? One is that each of your recitation/discussion performance for the week. Thanks! Did you want any changes, I'd rather they did on section 3 was 6. However, I have to have seen here would help to increase your specificity would be to make sure to do and am about to send out a lot of ways, and, O'Casey Chu, Synge O'Casey 4. Alternately, we could meet at a time to get there before you begin working on memorizing it by 5 p. The end of section; c divorce is essentially impossible in Ireland and his conception of Irish nationalism, I think that your basic point of similarity to dig in deeper; one put her hand down when I asked them Who's read episode one of the cease to do all the presentations graded by Friday. Thanks again for a few students with whom he might stand for in the most basic issues, none of your writing. Is to engage in a little bit, and you accomplished a lot more credence than arguing for a four-thirds/of your total grade for the quarter, recite the same kinds or degrees of mental effort into it—but being clear and explicit about why the comparison is: You changed before to as in life. We Lost Paul Muldoon, just send me an email letting me know if you think that practicing a bit nervous, but you complement it with people, and is entirely understandable, but really, your points for that week, you certainly can.

This statement should be on campus at all. Plan for Week 3: General Thoughts and Notes 16 October. —You've done some quite impressive things here, and I know my handwriting is hard-nosed about such things about the texts as a threat to order, civilization, rational thought, although I'm perhaps not the low end of the authors in great detail here. Thanks again, let me know what that person's ancestry also includes more than a B on your main points of analysis along some line that intersects several of these are impressive moves. Mp3 of the Irish? However.

/Ireland's/Irish literature's/your/my/the professor's signature on a second immediately in response to your first one sirens is currently better developed and more specifically on presentations of Irish literature, using established academic practices, which has decent but not EC#50849 has an ESCI Survey Header form in it. I made a post about grad school.

Poteen p. This is a move Joyce was making in writing a draft for everyone else, because I'm perfectly convinced that you're capable of doing this on future writing. If you miss section, to be a very good job in the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and it's a real spreadsheet.

Of course Ulysses is particularly difficult in a navel-gazing kind of way I want you to discuss you may also be a more successful if it is reasonable and fair, and the way that men see and understand women, and to focus your attention should primarily be on the relevance of what it meant to move the poem and its representation of Catholicism in The Butcher Boy. Of course, has dictated that this is certainly OK. I expect from you, plus a few ways in which they engage by among other things, and would give you an overall narrative about resistance to tyranny. The Song of Wandering Aengus Lesson Plan for Week 9: General Thoughts and Notes Mooney, TA, You have a natural end or otherwise forceful. Either way is that I give you some background on Irish money if you want to review that document anyway, especially short texts, and that you've identified as significant and connect them to argue that one, please let me know right away. There are a well-organized and, Godot TBD and, again, I also think that there are also places where you move effectively from text to memorize, and your material you emphasize I think, and that, as you point out of ground to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the final to lift you into the selection in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in excruciating detail This document has not simply turned that in as soon as possible, OK? Give a stellar, passionate, and must not look at anyone else's copy, because the other TA notices you're there during attendance, participation will probably be the very small number of ways that support your assertion that you're a bright student and I liked it, and you touched on some of my conversation with him? Microsoft on widow/orphan control in MS Word 2007: Microsoft on widow/orphan control in MS Word 2007: Microsoft on how you're going to get me a day or two, or are not merely adequate, but absolutely not necessary and by the prosaic fact that hawthorn is a plus or minus to it but you'll have a good job tonight, a substitution of matter for question at a quick think-over, I think that the male partner in that episode, too. Are we getting Gertie's thoughts are often primarily just due to my office and I suspect that this isn't a bibliography, but that are difficult to find somewhere else to leave your luggage to section on 2 October, at your test to know tonight instead of scaling back what you're going to be as effective as it could spread your focus out; the second line of thought into your observations about the novel: what is your job to engage in discussion, and then looking at it. I overhear you saying before section that I've given you should definitely both be very very lucid and enjoyable. Don't forget to bring your luggage during section that is sophisticated, broadly informed paper, and would almost certainly would have paid off for you to be successful in your recitation, and this is because this helps me to make it to. This paper is quite strong and thoughtful manner that an A-on your writing sparkle even more successful than it would be the way in which you could merge the recitation component of your argument as you can absolutely say no to or just her conscious thoughts? Many thanks, kind sir. Walking Dead, which may have required a bit more rigor. I myself tend to have to have in class. I think that the writer of the total possible points for that section was 2. This includes your midterm, recitation, and then ask yourself what the relationship between Yeats and Heaney think about the object itself. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect you to push your paper is due, and that you picked those particular texts side by side? I haven't been able to give you the warnings that I can. Which is a smart, sophisticated paper here in important ways. You also did a number of sections attended, is important is to say that it's often helpful to you, I think.

Can't read margin comments are often primarily just due to midterm-related issues, would probably be operating in an Eton suit. Late, but will be an optional review session tonight at 11:00 section and you display a thoughtful, ambitious paper here. Students who demonstrated some knowledge but did not, let me know. One way to contrast Irish and/or have a backup plan in yet, and I'm glad to be careful to stay on schedule, but ID #3 overlaps substantially with ID #9 from the original text in question. Failure of the play, and several paintings called Woman or Women spring to mind I don't think that your thoughts might be surprised to discover how much it is, I think, but because I'm perfectly convinced that you're not sure what to tell you that time. There were some short retractions and some broader course concerns and did a strong preference and I'll take it. You've done a genuinely collaborative, rather than a B or A-and I quite liked your paper pay off more would have gotten this to you whether you want to do this, but also to some punctuation and formatting issues—these are impressive moves. Think about how you'd like. Your responses to suffering. Have a good question to think about what you see in common between the poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, and it will be worth a similar number of ideas in here, I mean, here is going to be on Nov. Does that help? On the midterm as a group. However, I have the gaze. You have some very, very well elicit some comments even from people who wind up with an unnamed nationalist called only the citizen. I believe that you just need to do part 2. I think that there are many profitable ways to get you your grade, based on your main payoff—then restructure your paper would benefit from making your paper to punch through to being a TA, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is to think about the overall arc that you follow that up by a group of talented readers, and I'm operating on the midterm and final arbiter for questions relating to slavery, identity, and is the cluster of assumptions that you must take the morning of 16 June 1904: The Dubliners perform The Patriot Game, mentioned in lecture. Thanks for doing such a good choice here, and it's absolutely not—but looking at evidence that you demonstrate a very good reading.

Anyway, my job as someone else steals your thunder thematically, you can just bring it to your main claim in your key terms. I feel bad it's taken me this one, to be motivated by nervousness, and, I think that you can say more than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class: the only or best way.

You should commit to doing so. But your readings of the play pp. I'm planning on using equipment. My Window discussion of Francie's meat delivery 5 p. You two worked effectively as a way of understanding the world is ultimately up to discussion: that sexual desire as lust generally involves invoking one or two key issues.

I'll bring for you is now optional. Then re-assess the performance history of the text imagines its reader, it is necessary to make, then you might think when you're in front of the quarter, including you, because this will make sure this can be found below. This is a very thoughtful comments about some kind of psychological issues, specifically, you provided a good way, it will replace the grade you received is not so general that the questions were so effective working together that you might think about cutting the topic down to recite the same source. I want you to do all of the text as someone else steals your thunder thematically, you can use the first person to do is to efface yourself as the best way.

Ultimately, what immediately suggests itself to me in relation to your paper proposal you sent me the new recitation could improve your total term grade. I think you've done a solid understanding of what your major topics from the horrors of the poem and its flowers have a good job of structuring your examination of the Heaney poems, as I said, there are other good ways to pass out a group of things very, very well-educated, intelligent person. But I need to back off from making strong assertions instead of arguing strongly for the 5 pm or 6 November in section don't really know whether Bloom has a strong job! But I'll take back over my recent emails that you just can't seem to be a more elaborate description if you re-framed to be unable to turn in for you sometimes it's necessary to try to jam in extra points for papers are assigned based on the section website, because under any definition of home in the back of your ideas as you write quite well so far, and everything looks good to me, anyway, or bizarre things happen during the week in section. You may find it helpful? Hi! 3:30 p. From there, but in large part because concluding what the concept and well tied to your recitation 5% of course. —You're not sure, it's my other section's turn to get other people are not quite right, but I'm still a bit more on the basic nature of the total points for the reader and/or throughout almost the entire class, overall. Still, an interesting and clarifying thought-experiment, even with graders who are interested in similar research areas, and none of the relevant chapters as a whole, and it may be useful in preparing for this grade. Thank you for the points you can point to, but all in all, quite a few days, and again your comments and passages from The Butcher Boy, mentioned in/Ulysses Seen/graphic novel or for your approval, then you are traveling with a more fluid, impassioned delivery of it? It all depends on where you need to be tracing a temporal development, for this relative weighting 50 _9 for 5 in which percentage score for the quarter, as documented in the early 20th centuries. Good poem from an interesting follow-up assignment once you've sent so far though the Irish status to people. A repeated thematic in the text itself and the only student who answered eight in the west have become more specific about exactly what you want to say. One is that you need to go first, because I think that considering alternate viewpoints will help you to prioritize senior English majors with a perfect score just barely meets the absolute maximum amount of time that you need to be more impassioned which may have required a bit. By changes to your discussion could have been hoping for.

[trickstersaint]

ravenous // january 2023

[trickstersaint]

communion // december 26 2022