Emily M. Danforth's Blog, page 37
September 7, 2013
September 6, 2013
lovelyarc:
I drew a portrait of one of my very favorite poets,...
I drew a portrait of one of my very favorite poets, James Tate. His work means so much to me. In fact, here’s a little known fact about The Lovely Arc, a blog on which I’ve been posting consistently now for almost ten years: It got its name from a James Tate poem from Memoir of the Hawk.
THE LOVELY ARC OF A METEOR IN THE NIGHT SKY
At the party there were those sage souls
who swam along the bottom like those huge white
fish who live for hundreds of years but have no
fun. They are nearly blind and need the cold.
William was a stingray guarding his cave. Only
those prepared for mortal battle came close to
him. Closer to the surface the smaller fish
played, swimming in mixed patterns only a god
could decipher. They gossiped and fed and sparred
and consumed, and some no doubt even spawned.
It’s a life filled with agitation, thrills,
melodrama and twittery, but too soon it’s over.
And nothing’s revealed because it was never known.
…
Almost ten years of this blog, and still nothing’s revealed.
"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so..."
- William Faulkner (via likeafieldmouse)
September 4, 2013
hermionejg:
abinky:
thelyonrampant:
How To Tell If A Toy Is...
How To Tell If A Toy Is For Boys or Girls
holy shit this is the best
OH MY GOD
"The truth is that, in worldly terms, someone is always doing better than you are. Someone is always..."
The truth is that, in worldly terms, someone is always doing better than you are. Someone is always winning more of the prizes or making more of the money or getting more famous. When you open the newspaper, someone else’s picture is likely to be splashed across the book page. In the vanity fair, you are always going to lose out to somebody else. And when no one else seems to care what you do, you will have to find your own consolation. You will have to care for yourself. That takes time and energy. In this way, a literary problem converts itself into a spiritual one. Perhaps you will have to invite the demons into the house of the spirit and put them to work. Only in that way will you understand what it means to be human. You must make an arrangement with yourself for the sake of leaving a record of what happened, of what was thought and felt and noticed, what it was like to be human when you were alive. This is incredibly hard to do. It requires a slight contempt for the dumbshows of the world and a great respect for the inner life. You may become a bohemian, someone who looks like a bum. You may end up selling dogs with fake pedigrees to the suckers. But if you appear faithfully at your desk, pledging yourself to the work, eventually the spirit will descend on you and you will write without any sense that time is passing, and when that happens, no one on earth is doing better than you are.
Congratulations to you all, winners and losers both.
- Charles Baxter (via mttbll)
twbasketcase:
looks-thatkill:
ooddles:
titlefightclub:
iu2:
...
September 3, 2013
September 2, 2013
My Price of Salt, Cate Blanchett/Rooney Mara Dream
Hey, remember that time I had the most wonderful dream that my most favorite classic lesbian novel ever—
(You know, the one that the divine Patricia Highsmith published under the pen name Claire Morgan to, according to her own afterword to the 1989 reissue, attempt to avoid the label “lesbian-book-writer,” because the novel’s just so strange and tense and sexy and brilliantly lesborific that publishers seemed to think that 1952 audiences just couldn’t handle it? Even though they did handle it. Plenty)
(Yeah, that one.)
—was being made into a movie by Todd Haynes, the brilliant gay director with an impeccable ability to convey time and place?
Otherwise known as the director who gave us this gem:
and this gem:
and this gem:
(an adaptation that was so astoundingly loyal to James M. Cain’s compulsively readable novel upon which it was based:
that Haynes just went ahead and made it a 5-hour HBO miniseries comprised predominately of scenes featuring dialogue taken almost entirely, word-for-word, from said novel?)
So, in other words: the dude can more than effectively manage to make awesome movies of awesome novels while staying impeccably loyal to the original material.
And in this dream of mine, they of course decide to cast Cate Blanchett
(who’s clearly just as stunning w/without makeup and professional hair)
as Carol Aird, a thirty-something, rich, married woman of incomparable beauty and poise. Remembering that in the novel, Highsmith’s soon-to-be-lover describes Carol as someone whose beauty could strike you “like a glimpse of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.” (Hello. Try that compliment on for size next time you’re looking for one.)
And Rooney Mara:
as Therese Belivet, the young and hopeful stage designer stuck working in a department store (and someone who’s wholly smitten with Carol from their very first chance meeting on).
”I think you are magnificent,” Therese said with the courage of the second drink, not caring how it might sound, because she knew the woman knew anyway. (PoS.)
And it was the best, best dream and I went on and on about it for days and I was obsessed and also heartbroken, because it was only, alas, a dream.
You remember that? That dream of mine?
Well guess what? I woke up. And it’s happening, friends. It’s fracking happening:
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/08/29/casting-net-mara-mullally/
The gods of lesbian drama have been most kind to us this year. Let us offer them thanks and praise. (I’m talking lesbian drama with actors and scripts, the kind available, eventually, on Netflix. I’m not talking the lesbian drama of your current relationship. You need to handle that business yourself.)
