Marly Youmans's Blog, page 142

One Burns High

I just hung an etching on my wall—a little one by Nancy Dahlstrom, "One Burns High." It's a darkish print with trees barely visible in the background, and in the center is a burning stand of pampas grass.  Last summer I was at Nancy's home studio and had a hard time picking out a piece; I chose this one at the time because it seemed both simple and to possess a kind of mythic power.

Unskilling, uncreation

Photograph: courtesy of sxc.hu and Jef Bettens of Herk-de-Stad, Limburg, Belgium.As Jef Bettens and sxc.hu do not ally themselves with long-dead Duchampor with Kenneth Goldsmith, I here acknowledge their rights to this work!



According to its author, I have neither to credit nor to do anything but claim as my own the passage about "uncreative writing" below. But as I do not wish to claim it,

Hunter-gatherer of names--

That's a picture of a tabletop in Cullowhee, North Carolina, with some of my mother's embroidery thread spilled across it and a picture of me in my very early 40's...  The other picture is of her brand new 4-harness loom, threaded to make a chenille scarf for my eldest son.  From this project she learned that she hates working with chenille! But he has an old chenille scarf that he loves, so

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage

Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu and Kym McLeod of Cann River, Victoria, Australia.

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction at Mercer University Press, is now scheduled to leap into the world in March, 2012.

The nautilus and the laurel leaf

Photo of a gate, Arboretum, Asheville, NC

I was feeling rather sad, reading an account by one of those unfortunate persons removed from planes on the tenth anniversary of 9-11—sad for what we have come to, and also sad to skim the comments and see much good will but also a certain amount of lovelessness and squabbling between people of different nations and races. To love one another seems

The Black Flower

Photograph:  courtesy of Ula Kapala of Wroclaw, Polandand sxc.hu

















































THE BLACK FLOWER

             Iris Chang, author of The Rape of
Nanking, 

                died on November 11, 2004



           

1.

Sick to Death



At dead of night she woke,
unmoved

 
By the crickets, moon, and stars;

From old they sang or shone above

    The fire and

The Better World

Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu
and Thomas Rathbone of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.


Ten years gone: was the hour so long ago when all those people were brutally thrust into eternity, throats slashed, passengers burned, and office workers chased into air by fire, the wind unable to do anything but tear at their clothing and let them plunge? No, they were not hounded by fire but by men with fire and

Oldish book, brand new review--

I love getting a review for a book that came out years before--it's encouraging to think that a book may be temporarily out of print yet still find its intended readers.  Here are a few clips from a new review.  Thank you, Black Cat Lit!

* * *

Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, The Curse of the Raven Mocker is a complex story inspired by the legends of the Cherokee

At the mouth of the Susquehanna

Since tropical storm Lee and the Susquehanna have wreaked havoc in New York and Pennsylvania and forced  more than a hundred thousand out of their homes, I am taking a walk-in-pictures (a small walk--I live hard by the mouth of the Susquehanna where it flows out of Lake Otsego) to the bridge over the river and Lakefront Park.  The mighty Susquehanna, so broad where I crisscross

Water Day

Photograph credit:  Rain on lady's mantle
courtesy of sxc.hu and michaelaw.


Fire and Ice



Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.



    Robert Frost was a clever fellow