Chapel Perilous

Hi! I'm Lauren, and I'm a writer living in Philadelphia. This is the blog for Chapel Perilous, a short weekly-ish newsletter about magic, fiction, poetry and technology. 

[shesnake]

Ruth Negga as Hamlet, 2018 // Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ophelia, 2009

[soracities]

“Fairy tales — the proper kind, those original Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales I recall from my Eastern European childhood, unsanitized by censorship and unsweetened by American retellings — affirm what children intuitively know to be true but are gradually taught to forget, then to dread: that the terrible and the terrific spring from the same source, and that what grants life its beauty and magic is not the absence of terror and tumult but the grace and elegance with which we navigate the gauntlet.”

— Maria Popova, “The Importance of Being Scared: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Fairy Tales and the Necessity of Fear”

[hadrian6]

Medusa. 2012.

Christophe Charbonnel. French b. 1967. bronze.

http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

[archaeologicals-deactivated2016]

What are some good books written by women?

oh, so many.

Poetry

Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines

Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück

The Complete Poems by Anna Akhmatova

Memorial: An Excavation Of The Iliad by Alice Oswald

The Selected Poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete Poems by Emily Bronte

Selected Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva

Also - Sappho, Sharon Olds, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde

Fiction

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Love, Death, and the Changing of Seasons by Marilyn Hacker

Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

Non-fiction (essays, autobiographies, literary criticism etc.)

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

Woman: An Intimate Biography by Natalie Angier

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

A Room Of One’s Own by Virgina Woolf

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

On Lies, Secrets & Silence by Adrienne Rich

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Laugh of Medusa by Hélène Cixous

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Also this list has more. Hope this helps xx

[alexjay042]

“After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”

— Bernardo Bertolucci, in a statement regarding The Dreamers, 2004

[buttonpoetry]

[buttonpoetry]

Sabrina Benaim - “Unrequited Love”  – Read more brilliance from Sabrina in her bestselling debut book, Depression & Other Magic Tricks.

[likeniobe]

gutsy of william to have a character acknowledge his changes to the plot during the play

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I take refuge in my heart, where I love him as I wish.

Paul Valéry, tr. by W.M. Stewart, from “Monsieur Teste,” (via loveage-moondream)

[bostonpoetryslam]

Your grave is untouched by flowers I might have brought. You left me this fierce love of spaces. My newest memorial to you is a meadow garden holding stones of many shapes: mushroom, serpent, loaf of bread. You enter through the East and spiral through it til you come to two log chairs. It’s stunning the way the wind through the pines still can’t make the sound of your voice.

Judith Vollmer, “Poem at an Unmarked Grave,” from The Door Open to the Fire (via bostonpoetryslam)

[wordrummager]

Pennsylvania snapshot

Tonight smells of charred meat -juicy on the inside- with a healthy whiff of diesel and cigar and gardenia along with fresh mown hay and a nearby possum that didn’t make it several days ago;

the magic of dusk mingles with decay and lush greenery to make an olifactoral postcard.

[camewiththeframe]

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Voltaire (via camewiththeframe)

[aseaofquotes]

Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler

[xan-oku]

[magictransistor]

Agnes Giberne. The Story of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. 1898.

[saint-vagrant]

I AM THE SEA

// superpose //

[chapelperilous]

I read through all of the first arc tonight, can’t wait for the second!!!

[antigonick]

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

Boris Pasternak, excerpt of Nobel Prize (via antigonick)

[theclassicsreader]

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (via theclassicsreader)