Marly Youmans's Blog, page 69

March 18, 2014

The Ministry of Sanctioned Words teaches our children--

MSW proclamation! 

So I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent’s books section. And nor will the children’s books blog at Independent.co.uk.
The Ministry of Sanctioned Words continues on its mission to tell us what words are acceptable and what words are unacceptable. The
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Published on March 18, 2014 07:45

March 15, 2014

"Entertainment Weekly," loving "Catherwood"--

CATHERWOOD. Marly Youmans. A heart-stopping novel about a mother lost in the woods with her 1-year-old. It's insanity that no one's made a movie out of this.           --Entertainment Weekly, p. 42.  March 14, 2014
And here it is again as part of Entertainment Weekly's  "10 Most Criminally Underrated Books." Click and see! And thank you very much, EW staff.



Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition
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Published on March 15, 2014 05:04

Other worlds in this--

I like this comment from John Banville so much--and like many things that a person likes, the reason is that it chimes with a particular experience so well:

Long Lankin came from the early sixties. But Ireland in the sixties wasn’t the sixties as Americans think of it. When I look back now to the sixties here it’s like looking back to the Middle Ages. It was a primitive world. But it’s good for
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Published on March 15, 2014 03:08

March 14, 2014

Epiphany: gold, frankincense, and podcasts

Originally posted on January 6th, 2014.




"Puck in Spring," from The Foliate Head (Stanza Press, 2012)





"Ship of Trees," from The Foliate Head (Stanza Press, 2012)


"Clock of the Moon and Stars, from The Foliate Head (Stanza Press, 2012)



"In the Shadow of the Jasmine," from The Foliate Head (Stanza Press, 2012)


"I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters,"
The Foliate Head (
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Published on March 14, 2014 05:15

March 12, 2014

Zander, Montana, and The Ministry of Sanctioned Words

As it is the clear and simple duty for poets and novelists in all times and all places to stand for absolute, wild, untrammeled freedom of speech on behalf of their narrators and characters, I draw my weird line in the sand right here in opposing the recent fracases caused by those in the academic community and elsewhere who would create and rule The Ministry of Sanctioned Words. (For the latest
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Published on March 12, 2014 21:14

Painting, cooking, alchemy--

detail, "The House Opposite," Leonora Carrington


from Susan L. Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art.



The relation of cooking and art production, according to Chadwick, is of central concern to the artist:


The prominent place given to the cauldron in Celtic myth and Grail legend had long fascinated Carrington, as had alchemical descriptions of the gentle cooking of
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Published on March 12, 2014 12:39

March 11, 2014

A Sandbergian Modest Proposal

Jeanne d'Arc on campaign.
Unknown earlysixteenth-century artist.

Bossy is a word that started life referring to a swelling (as, say, a raised area on the skin) or to those nail-like studs on, say, a sixteenth-century shield. It isn't recorded as a name for a cow (round and often swollen creatures!) until the 1840's, and it didn't migrate to become a name for a domineering woman until the 1880
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Published on March 11, 2014 07:10

March 8, 2014

Tiger Lily proverbs

Detail, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, rear jacket of Glimmerglass.
This minotaur has flowers and lovely tiger lily spots!


Tweedly morning posts from the Twitterlands, all in one place. And this is what comes of thinking about Leonora Carrington and surrealism when one wakes up...

Fair lady goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man must go to the mountain.
Let
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Published on March 08, 2014 06:44

March 7, 2014

"Sing whatever is well made"

Courtesy of sxc.hu and Lieven Volckaert of Belgium.

I found this in my blogger drafts folder--I wonder, what book was it that inspired this little rant? I must have thought it was too over the top to publish. Or perhaps I thought it would hurt somebody's feelings. I can be a downright wimp, as I am a kindly soul and also a Southerner brought up to be awash in empathy and guilt. I suppose it
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Published on March 07, 2014 07:54

March 6, 2014

Carrington's Sidhe

  

Compilation by DistantMirrors, youtube 2012


I've been reading Susan Aberth's Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art in my little bits of stray time and may have something to say about it later... I started with the alchemy chapter because my The Book of the Red King in part rises out of alchemical lore, and so I was eager to read that portion.



But now I am back to the start
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Published on March 06, 2014 06:59