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1000 results for “NearerAndFarther”
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Fields are going crazy with this temperate weather plus decent rain, both the grass/brush and the corn.
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Fields are going crazy with this temperate weather plus decent rain, both the grass/brush and the corn.
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Also, just as I love a lost-in-the-snow story, I also love a good story driven by a stranger appearing.
We're never told a stranger has appeared unless that stranger's appearance is going to set something in motion.
Here, the stranger is announced in the first paragraph: "When [Weir] returned to the farm and went into the house, he saw a stranger sitting at his table."
You don't even need the next line to know we're going places.
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Story no. 4 -- Love of My Days
When a stranger shows up on Jake Weir's farm, claiming its house as his own, it sets off a chain of events that leads to murder, a horse-and-buggy chase, and hints of relationships from the not-so-distant past.This one was a page-turner. The sort of story that an author might have been tempted to write as a longer novel, but it feels just right as a story: it works because we don't know every nook and cranny of the characters' back stories, but rather just enough to make us wonder.
Love the opening lines here:
"This happened on the table-flat plains before most farms had telephones. So these incidents came about because news traveled slow."
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Two great stories back to back in the *Python's Kiss* volume from Erdrich.
Story no. 3 -- The Hollow Children
Ivek, a farmer and part-time teacher who also drives a schoolbus, gets caught in a terrible and completely unexpected whiteout after picking up children during the mid-morning route. He struggles to keep it together while making sure the children are safe and calm. I'm a sucker for a good lost-in-the-snow story -- see Kafka, "Country Doctor," or Tolstoy's "Snowstorm" -- and this one comes complete with an eerie moment. Is the title a play on "The Hollow Men"? Probably? Maybe? but I think only insofar as Ivek has a sort of vision of death that resonates with the poem.Also, this is framed as coming to us secondhand, as "the men" at a local bar are doing some "history farming, trading stories of their antecedents' exploits and agonies. [...] The men talked about old plagues, old equipment, old swaps of ownership, crops, land, and dire weather."
Love that phrase, "history farming"
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Ugh, I think we are going to need to set up a Facebook account for our farm BC the farmers market we're attending communicates almost entirely via FB.
Was hoping to avoid that... Need to think this through.
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Weather be damned, we're transplanting some tomatoes today!
We're planting some corn today!
We're mulching more beds today!
We're doing it all today!
(Not really, bc we have a meeting at 1 pm, and we're expecting more rain, but we're doing what we can today!)
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"The edge of the sharpest and most cunning word is dull in comparison to a knife of wind."
*The Ice-Shirt*, p. 182
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"So, too, Freydis's selfish cruelties were not originally hers by nature, but came about simply because her stepmother Thjodhild would not own her in her heart -- or so it is incumbent upon a historian to believe in this age of compassionate first causes, for how could we hope, if people could be born wicked?"
-- *The Ice-Shirt*, p. 162
(Another line on history, worth adding to the other two.)
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Heard this via the New Yorker Poetry podcast, where Ferrell reads this alongside Lucie Brock-Broido's "Carrowmore" and absolutely loved it.
Made me think of the poem I posted just a few days ago, from Gbenga Adesina. Very different poems but fun to read alongside each other.
She's got a new volume out that is discussed on the podcast, *The Future*. Looks really good - just ordered a copy!
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With the same fevers and pus
Though they probably let you die of colon cancer
Without making you defecate first
Into a box lab techs will scan for polypsAnd if you looked nothing at all like me
They probably left you alone at the lunch counter
With “Meditations in an Emergency” by O’Hara
The cook in his white apron nods gravely
Both of you know it’s serious2/2
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"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell
They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steelNearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living roomAnd if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely newThey never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch isAnd have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too1/2
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"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell
They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steelNearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living roomAnd if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely newThey never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch isAnd have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too1/2
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"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell
They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steelNearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living roomAnd if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely newThey never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch isAnd have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too1/2
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"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell
They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steelNearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living roomAnd if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely newThey never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch isAnd have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too1/2
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"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell
They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steelNearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living roomAnd if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely newThey never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch isAnd have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too1/2
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New Avalanches? Yes please!!!
But honestly, might wait for the album instead of listening to the single.
That means this #NewMusicFriday for me is starting with...
new Jeff Parker/ETA Quartet
new Kevin Morby -
Good moment to note Erdrich collaborated with her (mother?), Aza Erdrich Abe, who drew/printed the artwork.
It's wonderful!
There's a frontispiece for each story. They're lovely and add a nice dimension to the physical book.
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Story no 2: "Wedding Dresses"
When Dora loses four wedding dresses to a flood in her basement, she is pressed by her visiting niece, Martha, for the stories behind each of those dresses, the marriage and portion of life and divorce each represented. We readers hear not only what she told Martha, however, but also some of what she didn't confess. The telling, combined with figuring out what to do with four ruined dresses, becomes a means of revisiting and working through her past relationships, the good and the bad.
I really liked the idea of using each dress to tell a story. Could imagine as a short film in that way. As much of the story here is in the omissions: why doesn't Dora tell everything to her 11-year-old niece? Why does she keep back what she keeps back?
But ultimately this one was just ok.
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One of Erdrich's skills is penning memorable scenes that are almost mini-stories in themselves, scenes that have a lot of chaos and unpredictability to them.
In *The Beet Queen*, for instance, there is a scene in which several members of the novel's central family attend the grand opening of a snooty family member's new restaurant only to find that literally everything has gone wrong and they themselves are drafted into the kitchen. (Or something like that.) It's a simple premise from which Erdrich wrings out surprise and laughter and depth.
Without giving much away, the school assembly w/exotic animals is that scene here. It's short but perfect.
I liked this story a lot.
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Thought I would jot just a quick sentence or two per story, at least as long as I'm moved to...
"Python's Kiss": A narrator tells two related tales from a period when she was 8 and stayed with her grandparents for a few weeks: the story of Nero, a guard dog who continually breaks out of his elaborate enclosure to see a cockerspaniel on the other side of town; and the story of her uncle Jurgen, who plans to marry that cockerspaniel's owner but has to first conquer her overprotective father. A third reminiscence of a school event featuring exotic animals, such as snakes, brings the story together.
As much a story about coming to terms with the more-than-human world:
"As I looked into his eyes, which were the same brownish-gold as mine, I had my first sensation of self-awareness. I realized that my human body, my human life, was arbitrary. I could have been a dog."
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."
--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"
(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)
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For no other reason than that it is here, here is an excerpt from his letter on May 14, 1921, to Wilbur Underwood:
"Yes--- I keep on reading the *Dial*. Occasionally, also, the *Freeman*. The new New Orleans attempt called the *Double-Dealer* has some good poems in it this month by Padraic Colum. Has a copy of Carlos Williams' *Contact* strayed into Washington yet? They started printing it on the multigraph but now, I hear, have graduated to the printers,---and are also giving reproductions of paintings etc. Some really good things in it. Address G.P.O 89. N.Y.C. $.25 per copy."
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Only just noting that Crane's entire output is about just around 150 pages, including the unpublished stuff.
By comparison, the "selected letters" in the Library of America Crane volume take up 550+ pages!
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Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,-- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,-- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.I can remember much forgetfulness.
-- Hart Crane, "Forgetfulness" (1918)
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Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,-- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,-- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.I can remember much forgetfulness.
-- Hart Crane, "Forgetfulness" (1918)