In youth I knew nothing of the taste of sorrow
I liked to climb high towers
I liked to climbed high towers
To conjure up a bit of sorrow to make new verse.Now I know only too well the taste of sorrow
I start to speak yet pause
I start to speak yet pause
And say instead, “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”
-辛棄疾 Xin Qiji (1140-1207)
Seeking respite from lies and obfuscation so #everynightapoem. Tonight: the 12thc warrior-poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, during whose lifetime China was occupied. Xin fought the Jurchens, but was then sidelined during peacetime by a court that believed in appeasement. For most of the remainder of his life, Xin drifted through a series of minor official posts in remote lands - and so he wrote. This ci lyric is one of his best known pieces- poetry, then, as what is left unsaid.
#everynightapoem #poems #wordsmatter #chinesepoetry #xinqiji #ci #辛棄疾 #詞 #宋代 #chineseliterature #bookstagram #書摘
(One More Time)
for the people in the back
I become unafraid (again) to be ugly.I decide (again) (unagain)
to post up in bad shorts, in the grit,
by the Greyhound payphone, & u must pay me to
step out of the way.
Who will u call to from ur well-fitting clothes?
Too bad, it’s me again,
(again) on the other end
of the string + tin can.
And (again) I (again)
have flown in to ask u
to stop asking w/e it is
that ur asking me.
I’m glad you’ve got such a shiny treehouse.
I’m ~ so glad ~~
if u fall,
Mother World Order will turn
ur grass stains into a Tide™ commercial.
But the rest of us have no say
in the matter—we’re already back
(again) on the bus, heading (again) (again)
toward a home.
Ours.There’s dirt here.
It’s like Shrek’s swamp, except
all the fairy tale creatures are gross
fucking slugs, just your neighborhood
queers. And (again) (again) (again)
we’ve got all our safest memes.
Remember the agenda??
If u feel uninvited:
(try again)
You’re welcome
A haiku from the article: Reed Morano on Directing the First Three Episodes of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
Anonymous asked: Hi Allan! Your poetry is amazing. I'm an incoming freshman to MIT - I committed this week, actually. However, I can't help but feel panicked and I keep thinking about if I actually made the correct decision or not. It's a sinking sensation in my stomach, and this unhappiness is pervading multiple areas of my life. Do you think I should wait to see if this feeling goes away, or try to change where I enroll?
yikes i check my inbox very sporadically so i’m very sorry for how impossibly late this reply is
i think it’s natural to feel a little squiggy about committing to mit! i strongly believe that if mit decided to accept you, then you will fit in here. i also believe that mit has a tendency to change people in good and interesting ways. but change is always scary. i hope you feel better soon about this time of transition, and i hope to see you on campus in the fall!
Did I explain that those days were the days when the people wrote on machines that connected to machines that connected to machines that connected to people who wrote on machines?
Those were the days when we believed in information.
And I was a person in those days, but I did not believe in information. I liked to imagine the interfaces that would make the public private and make the private okay.
Privacy was not an effect, exactly, of confession, which in those days was buying stock in the public company. Those were the days of crude luxury and genteel sorrow. Those were the days I loved to delete.
“We’re hanging out for the first time today.”
“What are you discussing?”
“Words, and how hard they are. Communicating without words is easier than putting together all those strange sounds.”
“Connecting with people is more wordless than anything, and I don’t think we give that enough credit. There’s intimacy in silence.”
“Are you nervous about what you might say to each other?”
“There’s a nervousness using words, but I think there’s just as much nervousness not using them. I think it’s something we don’t know how to do anymore. We’ve long since stopped relying on reading body language, being in someone else’s presence, and just enjoying taking in the scenery together. It seems like watching TV or movies is the only way you can do that anymore and still feel safe doing it. So maybe there’s nervousness forming words, but there’s a boldness to not speaking.”
“A close friend of mine and I can sit together for hours and not say anything. It’s kind of sad that you can’t do that with everybody—you can’t just be in a room. We use words like a script. You always have to have some automated response. It would be nice if you could go to a restaurant, give the staff a hug, sit down, and somehow they would know what you want.”Northampton, MA
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