Contact Sheet

[elysesimone-blog]

[elysesimone-blog]

Postmodernism, pt 😓

[elysesimone-blog]

Sweet everything. #spencersmiles

[elysesimone-blog]

We're in love and the world is tearing us apart again.

[elysesimone-blog]

80 degrees isn't the worst. #mydogisold

[whatshouldwecallfictionworkshop]

THANK YOU FOR SUBMITTING YOUR STORY, BUT...

[elysesimone-blog]

So I just submit to like 6 mags.  Preparing for heartbreak

[garfieldminusgarfield]

G-G the book - G-G on Facebook - G-G on Twitter

[elysesimone-blog]

Me every day

[bostonreview]

[elysesimone-blog]

So good!

[nprfreshair]

TODAY is the 50th Anniversary of the beloved classic Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  First published in 1963, it has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide.

The New York Times obituary for Maurice Sendak calls Where the Wild Things Are “simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making,” describing Sendak as being “…widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.”

One of the most talked about interviews we’ve ever done was with Maurice Sendak in 2011 shortly before he died. Sendak reflects on love, loss, and celebrating life:

I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, The New York Times did an amazing illustration to accompany our emotional interview with Sendak. 

[woodywombpecker]

Dachshunds can’t wait to take a bath

[biletree-deactivated20131029]

*hysterical crying and screaming*

[elysesimone-blog]

Cute panic

[internet]

[elysesimone-blog]

Yep

[elysesimone-blog]

Erik Kwakkel • Halloween (2): Bound in human skin This beautiful...

Halloween (2): Bound in human skin This beautiful binding is made of, you guessed it, human skin. For the longest time I thought this practice (anthropdermic bibliopegy) was a myth, but it is not. It frequently occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, and even later. Human skin was removed from a corpse, tanned (or processed in another way) and then used to cover a book. Harvard’s Houghton Library has one from the 1880s (read more about it here), but the one in this image is much older. Dating from the early 17th century, this book seems to have been bound in the skin of the priest Father Henry Garnet, who was executed in 1606 for his role in the Gunpowder Plot - the attempt to ignite 36 barrels of gunpowder under the British Parliament. Ironically, the printed book Garnet’s skin was put around outlined the story and the evidence of the plot. In a twist wonderfully suitable for Halloween, the face of Garnet was thought to have appeared on the binding (faintly visible in the image), which is the only nonsense part of this bizarre and gross story. Happy Halloween! More details. The story of binding a book in human skin is connected to criminals. During the 1830s a murderer was stripped off his skin (post-execution), which ended up as a binding for John Milton’s Poetical Works (read about it here). Another 19th-century criminal whose skin ended up as a book was John Horwood (read the gruesome details here). More about the practice in general in this National Geographic piece; more about the book above here, as well as in this Guardian news article. This is the second in a series of Halloween-inspired blogs. Here is the first, here the third, and here the fourth.

Uh.

[cloudunbound]

Krakow's story: a Unesco City of Literature built out of books

Home to two literary festivals, busy book fairs, clubs and writer after writer - this is a town where people queue for poetry

Well done, Poland! I heard glowing tales of your avid readers from my bestie T. when she was based in Prague. I will visit you soon.

[uispeccoll]

From bibliophiles in Iowa City, a hearty welcome to the City of Literature club, Krakow!

[elysesimone-blog]

Cool!

[apoetreflects]

I think what happens at certain points in my poems is that language takes over, and I follow it. It just sounds right. And I trust the implication of what I’m saying, even though I’m not absolutely sure what it is that I’m saying. I’m just willing to let it be. Because if I were absolutely sure of whatever it was that I said in my poems, if I were sure, and could verify it and check it out and feel, yes, I’ve said what I intended, I don’t think the poem would be smarter than I am. I think the poem would be, finally, a reducible item. It’s this “beyondness,” that depth that you reach in a poem, that keeps you returning to it. And you wonder, The poem seemed so natural at the beginning, how did you get where you ended up? What happened? I mean, I like that, I like it in other people’s poems when it happens. I like to be mystified. Because it’s really that place which is unreachable, or mysterious, at which the poem becomes ours, finally, becomes the possession of the reader.

—Mark Strand, from “The Art of Poetry No. 77,” in The Paris Review (Fall 1998, No. 148) (via apoetreflects)

[zwischendenstuehlen]

Well then, let me show you, because that’s what I do for a living.

Right now, it’s this time of the year, and the little ones have just freshly hatched:

You’ll notice they’re still blind and naked when they hatch. So I make them little coats to keep them warm...

[whedonversegifs]

[elysesimone-blog]

Sort of like when girls get down on other girls for not being "the right kind" of feminist.  Do you think you are a human with valid ideas and concerns and emotions?  K you're a feminist.

[chrysantheb0mb]

♥ DEAD MEN DON’T CATCALL ♥

[thatoldomegleguy]

Nor do genuinely decent men, or classy men, or men with wives/girlfriends, or in fact MOST living breathing men. The few that do? Find where their mother, sister, girlfriend and/or wives live and rebuke them over teaching their barbarian some manners. End of story

[chrysantheb0mb]

♥ DEAD MEN DON’T ADD BORING, UNNECESSARY “BUT WAH WAH WAH NOT ALL MEN” COMMENTARY TO PEOPLE’S ARTWORK ♥

[elysesimone-blog]

Yay