Wendell Berry - The Country of Marriage

The Country of Marriage

               by Wendell Berry

I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

Amazon link

Amazon Blurb

First published in 1971, The Country of Marriage is Wendell Berry's fifth volume of poetry. What he calls "an expansive metaphor" is "a farmer's relationship to his land as the basic and central relation of humanity to creation." "Similarly, marriage is the basic and central community tie; it begins and stands for the relation we have to family and to the larger circles of human association. And these relationships are in turn basic to, and may stand for, our relationship to God and to the sustaining mysteries and powers of creation."

Writing Tips for the Amateur Writer

50 Tips on How to Write Good

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/50-tips-on-how-to-write-good/

by Mark Nichol

The contents of this post are an alphabetical arrangement of two lists that have been circulating among writers and editors for many years. In case you have missed out all this time, I’m sharing here the wit and wisdom of the lateNew York Times language maven William Safire and advertising executive and copywriter Frank LaPosta Visco.

1. A writer must not shift your point of view.
2. Always pick on the correct idiom.
3. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
4. Always be sure to finish what
5. Avoid alliteration. Always.
6. Avoid archaeic spellings.
7. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
8. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
9. Be more or less specific.
10. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary.
12. Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
13. Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
14. Don’t never use no double negatives.
15. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
16. Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
17. Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
18. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
19. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
20. Employ the vernacular.
21. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
22. Eschew obfuscation.
23. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
24. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
25. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
26. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
29. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
30. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
31. It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
32. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
33. Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
34. No sentence fragments.
35. One should never generalize.
36. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
37. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
38. Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
39. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten or more words, to their antecedents.
40. Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
41. Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
42. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
43. Profanity sucks.
44. Subject and verb always has to agree.
45. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
46. The adverb always follows the verb.
47. The passive voice is to be avoided.
48. Understatement is always best.
49. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
50. Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
51. Who needs rhetorical questions?
52. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

Oh, and let me add one tip: If your article consists of a list and the title refers to the number of items in the list, count the number of items in the list carefully.

  

* * * * * * * * * * *

How to Write Good http://www.workableweb.com/_pages/tips_how_to_write_good.htm

Want to learn how to really write good? Want to learn "The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism" and the "Tricks Of The Trade"? Then this insightful satirical essay from the early 1970's is for you. by Michael O'Donoghue "If I could not earn a penny from my writing, I would earn my livelihood at something else and continue to write at night." - Irving Wallace  "Financial success is not the only reward of good writing. It brings to the writer rich inner satisfaction as well."- Eliot Foster, Director of Admissions Famous Writers School Introduction  A long time ago, when I was just starting out, I had the good fortune to meet the great Willa Cather. With all the audacity of youth, I asked her what advice she would give the would-be-writer and she replied: "My advice to the would-be-writer is that he start slowly, writing short undemanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books, crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he's ready, move up to the more challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays, pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes, broadsides, and papal bulls. "And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier than the plow-share. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I'm concerned, that gives them the edge right there." She went on to tell me many things, both wonderful and wise, probing the secrets of her craft, showing how to weave a net of words and capture the fleeting stuff of life. Unfortunately, I've forgotten every bit of it. I do recall, however, her answer when I asked "If you could only give me one rule to follow, what would it be?" She paused, looked down for a moment and finally said, "Never wear brown shoes with a blue suit." There's very little I could add to that except to say "Go to it and good luck!" Lesson 1 - The Grabber The "grabber" is the initial sentence of a novel or short story designed to jolt the reader out of his complacency and arouse his curiosity, forcing him to press onward. For example: "It's no good, Alex," she rejoined, "Even if I did love you, my father would never let me marry an alligator." The reader is immediately bombarded with questions, questions such as "Why won't her father let her marry an alligator?" "How come she doesn't love him?" and "Can she learn to love him in time?" The reader's interest has been "grabbed"! Just so there'll be no misunderstanding about grabbers, I've listed a few more below: "I'm afraid you're too late," sneered Zoltan. "The fireplace has already flown south for the winter!" Sylvia lay sick among the silverware... Chinese vegetables mean more to me than you do, my dear," Charles remarked to his wife, adding injury to insult by lodging a grapefruit knife in her neck. "I have in my hands," Professor Willobee exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning for that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished historian bursting into my State Department office at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that Abraham Lincoln was a homo!" These are just a handful of the possible grabbers. Needless to say, there are thousands of others, but if you fail to think of them, feel free to use any or all of these. Lesson 2 - The Ending All too often, the budding author finds that his tale has run its course and yet he sees no way to satisfactorily end it, or, in literary parlance, "wrap it up." Observe how easily I resolve this problem: Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck. -the end- If the story happens to be set in England, use the same ending, slightly modified: Suddenly, everyone was run over by a lorry. -the end- If set in France: Soudainement, tout le monde etait écrasé par un camion. -finis- You'll be surprised at how many different settings and situations this ending applies to. For instance, if you were writing a story about ants, it would end "Suddenly, everyone was run over by a centipede." In fact, this is the only ending you ever need use.* *Warning - if you are writing a story about trucks, do not have the trucks run over by a truck. Have the trucks run over by a mammoth truck. Lesson 3 - Choosing A Title A friend of mine recently had a bunch of articles rejected by the Reader's Digest and, unable to understand why, he turned to me for advice. I spotted the problem at a glance. His titles were all wrong. By calling his pieces such things as "Unwed Mothers - A Head Start on Life," "Cancer - The Incurable Disease," "A Leading Psychologist Explains Why There Should Be More Violence on Television," "Dognappers I Have Known and Loved," "My Baby Was Born Dead and I Couldn't Care Less" and "Pleasantville - Last of the Wide-Open Towns," he had seriously misjudged his market. To steer him straight, I drew up this list of all-purpose surefire titles: ________ at the Crossroads The Case for ________ The Role of ________ Coping with Changing ________ A Realistic Look at ________ The ________ Experience Bridging the ________ Gap A ________ for All Seasons Simply fill in the blanks with the topic of your choice and, if that doesn't work you can always resort to the one title that never fails: "South America, the Sleeping Giant on our Doorstep" Lesson 4 - Exposition Perhaps the most difficult technique for the fledgling writer to master is proper treatment of exposition. Yet watch the sly, subtle way I "set the scene" of my smash play, The Last to Know, with a minimum of words and effort. (The curtain opens on a tastefully appointed dining room, the table ringed by men in tuxedos and women in costly gowns. There is a knock at the door.) LORD OVERBROOKE: Oh, come in, Lydia. Allow me to introduce my dinner guests to you. This is Cheryl Heatherton, the madcap soybean heiress whose zany antics actually mask a heart broken by her inability to meaningfully communicate with her father, E. J. Heatherton, seated to her left, who is too caught up in the heady world of high finance to sit down and have a quiet chat with his own daughter, unwanted to begin with, disposing of his paternal obligations by giving her everything, everything but love, that is. Next to them sits Geoffrey Drake, a seemingly successful merchant banker trapped in an unfortunate marriage with a woman half his age, who wistfully looks back upon his days as the raffish Group Captain of an R.A.F. bomber squadron that flew eighty-one missions over Berlin, his tortured psyche refusing to admit, despite frequent nightmares in which, dripping with sweat, he wakes screaming, "Pull it up! Pull it up, I say! I can't hold her any longer! We're losing altitude! We're going down! Jerry at three o'clock Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggh!", that his cowardice and his cowardice alone was responsible for the loss of his crew and "Digger," the little Manchester terrier who was their mascot. The empty chair to his right was vacated just five minutes ago by Geoffrey's stunning wife, twenty-three- year-old, golden-tressed Edwina Drake, who, claiming a severe migraine, begged to be excused that she might return home and rest, whereas, in reality, she is, at this moment, speeding to the arms of another man, convinced that if she can steal a little happiness now, it doesn't matter who she hurts later on. The elderly servant preparing the Caviar en Socle is Andrew who's been with my family for over forty years although he hasn't received a salary for the last two, even going on so far as to loan me his life's savings to cover my spiraling gambling debts but it's only a matter of time before I am exposed as a penniless fraud and high society turns its back on me. The dark woman opposite me is Yvonne de Zenobia, the fading Mexican film star, who speaks of her last movie as though it was shot only yesterday, unwilling to face the fact that she hasn't been before the cameras in nearly fifteen years; unwilling to confess that her life has been little more than a tarnished dream. As for her companion, Desmond Trelawney, he is an unmitigated scoundrel about whom the less said, the better. And, of course, you know your father, the ruthless war profiteer, and your hopelessly alcoholic mother, who never quite escaped her checkered past, realizing, all too late, that despite her jewels and limousines, she was still just a taxi-dancer who belonged to any man for a drink and a few cigarettes. Please take a seat. We were just talking about you. This example demonstrates everything you'll ever need to know about exposition. Study it carefully. Lesson 5 - Finding the Raw Material As any professional writer will tell you, the richest source of material is one's relatives, one's neighbors and, more often than not, total strangers. A day doesn't go by without at least one person, upon learning that I'm a professional writer, offering me some terrific idea for a story. And I'm sure it will come as no shock when I say that most of the ideas are pretty damn good! Only last week, a pipe-fitter of my acquaintance came up with a surprise ending guaranteed to unnerve the most jaded reader. What you do is tell this really weird story that keeps on getting weirder and weirder until, just when the reader is muttering, "How in the heck is he going to get himself out of this one? He's really painted himself into a corner!" you spring the "mindblower": "But then he woke up. It had all been a dream!" (which I, professional writer that I am, honed down to: "But then the alarm clock rang. It had all been a dream!"). And this came from a common, run-of-the-mill pipe-fitter! For free! Cabdrivers, another great wealth of material, will often remark, "Boy, lemme tell ya! Some of the characters I get in this cab would fill a book! Real kooks, ya know what I mean?" And then, without my having to coax even the slightest, they tell me about them, and they would fill a book. Perhaps two or three books. In addition, if you're at all interested in social science, cabdrivers are able to provide countless examples of the failures of the welfare state. To illustrate just how valid these unsolicited suggestions can be, I shall print a few lines from a newly completed play inspired by my aunt, who had the idea as far back as when she was attending grade school. It's called "If an Old House Could Talk, What Tales It Would Tell". The Floor: Do you remember the time the middle-aged lady who always wore the stilletto heels tripped over an extension cord while running to answer the phone and spilled the Ovaltine all over me and they spent the next 20 minutes mopping it up? The Wall: No. Of course, I can't print too much here because I don't want to spoil the ending (although I will give you a "hint": it involves a truck...). I just wanted to show you how much the world would have missed had I rejected my aunt's suggestion out of hand simply because she is not a professional writer like myself. Lesson 6 - Quoting Other Authors If placed in a situation where you must quote another author, always write "[sic]" after any word that may be misspelled or looks the least bit questionable in any way. If there are no misspellings or curious words, toss in a few "[sic]"s just to break up the flow. By doing this, you will appear to be knowledgeable and "on your toes," while the one quoted will seem suspect and vaguely discredited. Two examples will suffice: "O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod, Unto us lowiest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship [sic], lend a myth to God" - Hart Crane "Beauty is but a flowre [sic], Which wrinckles [sic] will devoure [sic] Brightnesse [sic] falls from the ayre [sic] Queenes [sic] have died yong [sic] and faire [sic] Dust hath closde [sic] Helens [sic] eye [sic] I am sick [sic], I must dye [sic]: Lord, have mercy on us." - Thomas Nashe Note how only one small "[sic]" makes Crane's entire stanza trivial and worthless, which, in his case, takes less doing that Nashe, on the other hand, has been rendered virtually unreadable. Anyone having to choose between you and Nashe would pick you every time! And, when it's all said and done, isn't that the name of the game? Lesson 7 - Making The Reader Feel Inadequate Without question, the surest way to make a reader feel inadequate is through casual erudition, and there is no better way to achieve casual erudition than by putting the punchline of an anecdote in a little foreign language. Here's a sample: One crisp October morning, while taking my usual stroll down the Kurfurstenstrasse, I spied my old friend Casimir Malevitch, the renowned Suprematist painter, sitting on a bench.  Noting that he had a banana in his ear, I said to him, "Excuse me, Casimir, but I believe you have a banana in your ear." "What?" he asked. Moving closer and speaking quite distinctly, I repeated my previous observation, saying, "I said 'You have a banana in your ear!' " "What's that you say?" came the reply. By now I was a trifle piqued at this awkward situation and, seeking to make myself plain, once and for all, I fairly screamed, "I SAID THAT YOU HAVE A BANANA IN YOUR EAR, YOU DOLT!!!" Imagine my chagrin when Casimir looked at me blankly and quipped, "Meh soon kahi sakta - meree kaan meh kayla heh!" Oh, what a laugh we had over that one. With one stroke, the reader has been made to feel not only that his education was second-rate, but that you are getting far more out of life than he. This is precisely why this device is best used in memoirs, whose sole purpose is to make the reader feel that you have lived life to the fullest, while his existence, in comparison, has been meaningless and shabby.... Lesson 8 - Covering The News Have you ever wondered how reporters are able to turn out a dozen or so news articles day after day, year after year, and still keep their copy so fresh, so vital, so alive? It's because they know The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism, key constructions with which one can express every known human emotion! As one might suppose, The Phrases, discovered only after centuries of trial and error, are a closely guarded secret, available to no one but accredited members of the press. However, at the risk of being cashiered from the Newspaper Guild, I am now going to reveal them to you: The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism "violence flared" "limped into port" "according to informed sources" "wholesale destruction" "no immediate comment" "student unrest" "riot-torn" "flatly denied" "gutted by fire" "roving bands of Negro youths" Let's try putting The Phrases to work in a sample news story: NEWARK, NJ, Aug. 22 (UPI) - Violence flared yesterday when roving bands of Negro youths broke windows and looted shops in riot-torn Newark. Mayor Kenneth Gibson had no immediate comment but, according to informed sources, he flatly denied saying that student unrest was behind the wholesale destruction that resulted in scores of buildings being gutted by fire, and added, "If this city were a Liberian freighter,* we just may have limped into port." *Whenever needed, "Norwegian Tanker" can always be substituted for "Liberian freighter." Consider them interchangeable. Proof positive that The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism can express every known human emotion and then some! Lesson 9 - Tricks Of The Trade Just as homemakers have their hints (e.g. a ball of cotton, dipped in vanilla extract and placed in the refrigerator, will absorb food odors), writers have their own bag of tricks, a bag of tricks, I might hasten to point out, you won't learn at any Bread Loaf Conference. Most writers, ivory tower idealists that they are, prefer to play up the mystique of their "art" (visitations from the Muse, l'ecriture automatique, talking in tongues, et cetera, et cetera), and sweep the hard-nosed practicalities under the rug. Keeping in mind, however, that a good workman doesn't curse his tools, I am now going to make public these long suppressed tricks of the trade. Suppose you've written a dreadful chapter (we'll dub it Chapter Six for our purposes here), utterly without merit, tedious and boring beyond belief, and you just can't find the energy to re-write it. Since it's obvious that the reader, once he realizes how dull and shoddy Chapter Six really is, will refuse to read any further, you must provide some strong ulterior motive for completing the chapter. I've always found lust effective: Artfully concealed within the next chapter is the astounding secret of an ancient Bhutanese love cult that will increase your sexual satisfaction by at least 60% and possibly more-- (Print Chapter Six.) Pretty wild, huh? Bet you can hardly wait to try it! And don't show your appreciation by reading Chapter Seven!* *This ensures that the reader reads Chapter Six not once but several times. Possibly, he may even read Chapter Seven. Fear also works: Dear Reader, This message is printed on Chinese poison paper which is made from deadly herbs that are instantly absorbed by the fingertips so it won't do any good to wash your hands because you will die a horrible and lingering death in about an hour unless you take the special antidote which is revealed in Chapter Six and you'll be saved. Sincerely, (Your name) Or even: Dear Reader, You are obviously one of those rare people who are immune to Chinese paper so this message is printed on Bavarian poison paper which is about a thousand times more powerful and even if you're wearing gloves you're dead for sure unless you read Chapter Six very carefully and find the special antidote. Sincerely, (Your name) Appealing to vanity, greed, sloth and whatever, you can keep this up, chapter by chapter, until they finish the book. In fact, the number of appeals is limited only by human frailty itself... LESSON 10 - MORE WRITING HINTS There are many more writing hints I could share with you, but suddenly I am run over by a truck. -the end- © Copyright by Michael O'Donoghue. All Rights Reserved. Michael O'Donoghue was a writer and editor -- as well as an author, playwright, radio writer, filmmaker, satirist, scribe, essayist and commentator. He was an editor and writer at the original National Lampoon, and a writer on Saturday Night Live in its early years. We feel compelled to tell you that you can get books, CDs and radio shows by Michael O'Donoghue (who had nothing to do with this website).

Langston Hughes - I Dream a World

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue". - Wikipedia

Langston Hughes 113th Birthday
(February 1, 2015)

"I Dream a World"

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn,

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind

Of such I dream, my world.

- Langston Hughes

Wikipedia Link

Yale Review  Link

51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature

For original editorial credits and source link go to BuzzFeed's link crediting its readers

1.

“At the still point, there the dance is.” 

- T. S. Eliot

2.

“In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.”

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

3.

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there

leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

- J. D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew

4.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

6.

“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”

- Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

7.

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

8.

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

10.

“‘Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’”

- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

11.

“The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

12.

“A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down,

but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

14.

“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts

and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:

a) Anything can happen to anyone, and

b) It is best to be prepared.”

- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

15.

“If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.”

- W. H. Auden, The More Loving One

16.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

18.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

19.

“America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.”

- Allen Ginsburg, America

20.

“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat,

but it was a defeat better than many victories.”

- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

22.

“At the still point, there the dance is.”

- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

23.

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question

he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

24.

“In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.”

- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

26.

“The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.”

- Toni Morrison, Beloved

27.

“How wild it was, to let it be.”

- Cheryl Strayed, Wild

28.

“Do I dare / Disturb the universe?”

- T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

30.

“She was lost in her longing to understand.”

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

31.

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which

we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

- Kate Chopin, The Awakening

32.

“We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us,

with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke,

and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”

- Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead

34.

“The half life of love is forever.”

- Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

35.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

36.

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights,

and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

- Bram Stroker, Dracula

37.

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”

- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

38.

“I could hear the human noise we sat there making,

not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”

- Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

39.

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

- Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

41.

“I have spread my dreams under your feet; 

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”

- W. B. Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

42.

“It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.”

- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

43.

“For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.”

- Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

45.

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded;

not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things,

packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

46.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

47.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting.”

- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

49.

“It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live. Remember that.”

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

50.

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

51.

“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them,

for words have the power to change us.”

- Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices

R.E. Slater - An Old Friend (a poem)

An Old Friend

by R.E. Slater

I sat behind my writing desk

as an old friend would

to discuss the day’s events,

ideas, or people I've met,

 or odd assortment of complaints,

in whichever mood of tiredness,

happiness, torment,

or humor I bore

to its warm wooden surface

so thoughtful and reflective

of my many tempers

blessed or disturbed.

Daily it seems we converse

of this or that,

or that and this,

brooding upon the many items

that had befallen my wandering path

through the courses of the day

so that after a little while,

when tempers are tucked away,

and distilling moods inlaid in script,

I wearily leave its good-natured ear
to re-enter a madding world

deaf to my abandonment.

More reassured of my purposes,

having settled mine own responses

made surer in my heart

when none other had provided

the listening comfort

my weary soul sorely needed

during that hour of the day

when feeling overwhelmed

to life's desperate inquisitions

so harsh and unfeeling

to a hopeful heart wishing

only peace and contentedness.

- R.E. Slater

January 14, 2015
rev Jan. 29, 2015

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved