No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. It's Just One Planet. But There Are Many Stories.
Declan planned to have a nervous breakdown. He had studied the DSM-IV and ICD-10 and knew that there was no formal definition for a nervous breakdown or a mental breakdown, but the terms were synonymous. Some ideas struck like lightening. Other ideas took time to construct: they built like skyscrapers in your thoughts and cast long shadows.
You will run back into burning buildings,
of course you will, despite all the pleas not
to- you will feel your skin shrink into itself
as you breathe in the heat, your lungs will
protest against the anger in the air, they
Thursday
From afar Boyd could see it like the patched gray quilt his grandmother used to cover him with, saying, Good night, sleep tight, wake up bright in the morning light, and do what’s right. She must have learned those rhymes before the Wars of Excision, back when doing what was right was a credible notion. Now, as a gray cloud swallowed the hills and palm groves dozens of kilometers east, he didn’t need to remind himself that there was neither right nor wrong anymore. As he triggered his camera’s shutter, hearing it snap over and over, he tried to recall an old proverb, something to the effect that There is nothing either good or bad but Guv’na Brush makes it so—but he soon gave up. The railroad tracks, black lines that covered The Valley’s belly like surgical sutures, were beginning to recede. Whether the cloud had begun with the prevailing westerlies slamming into a cold front east of Mount Marvelous, or whether it had gathered force thanks to some unimaginably humongous fans constructed by the Looters on the shadowy northern slopes of the mountain, it was no still life. Its gritty gusts were approaching, though not as fast as a falcon. There was time to photograph dunes and rocky outcrops being obliterated, time to focus on sand dervishes reconnoitering, scouting out ever-widening swatches of ground. Although he couldn’t hear it, soon, he knew, the deafening whoosh of a prewar freight train highballing directly overhead would block out every sound. Too soon there would be nothing to shoot, nothing breathable, even with a bandana pressed over his mouth.
the true poet knows words
are second to action weaker
than blood spilled on the battleground
of human rights and dignity
Question: Can a film delve into the topical yet timeless issues of free-will, social conformity, and malevolent authority, and still remain a fun, genuine entertainment? I answer in the affirmative and as Exhibit A give you Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter (2015).
Earlier this year, as soon as I heard news of Lydia Millet’s newest novel, I diligently set about reading the last two novels of her recent trilogy (How the Dead Dream, Ghostlights, Magnificence). Even when this author writes a trilogy, it is more like three loosely connected novels, the way some novels are a collection of loosely connected stories. I finished the trilogy satisfied that she had given me three distinct examples of her worldview shown through the eyes of three related characters.