Leaves of Moon

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Baldwin’s Moon

I saw my mother’s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise.

--James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”

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Hurston’s Moon

And listenin’ tuh dat kind uh talk is jus’ lak openin’ yo’ mouth and lettin’ de moon shine down yo’ throat.

--Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Chekhov’s Moon

The rain, for some reason, took a long time to begin. Egorushka, hoping the storm cloud might pass by, peeked out from behind the bast mat. It was awfully dark. Egorushka could not see Pantelei, or the bale, or himself; he glance sidelong to where the moon had been recently, but there was the same black darkness as on the wagon. And in the dark the lightning seemed more white an dazzling, so that it hurt his eyes.

--Anton Chekhov, The Steppe (tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

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Bashō’s Moon

The tranquility of the priest’s hermitage was such that it inspired, in the words of an ancient poet, ‘a profound sense of meditation’ in my heart, and for a while at least I was able to forget the fretful feeling I had about not being able to see the full moon. Shortly before daybreak, however, the moon began to shine through the rifts made in the hanging clouds.

--Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep Interior (tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa)

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Twain’s Moon

There in the middle of the moonlit valley below them stood the ‘haunted’ house, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very door-step, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in.

--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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Wharton’s Moon

She lay for a long time sleepless on her bed, staring up at the moonlight on the low ceiling; dawn was in the sky when she fell asleep, and when she woke the sun was on her face.

--Edith Wharton, Summer

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Portis’s Moon

...and thus the course of the Initiate is made clear. He must emulate Pletho, the son of Phaleres, first Hierophant of Atlantis, pride of Jamsheed, the White Goat of Mendes, who, at the River Loke, on the day of the full moon, of the month Boedromion, when the moon is full at the end of the sign Aries, near the Pleiades and the place of her exaltation in Taurus...

--Charles Portis, Masters of Atlantis

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Reddy’s Moon

The travelers crept into the abandoned necropolis. Overrun with wild thyme, toppled colossi cast broken shadows in the moonlight. The lone and level sands stretched far away.

--Srikanth Reddy, Underworld Lit

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Bashō’s Moon

Potato leaves

On incinerated ground,

I awaited tiptoe

The rise of the moon.

--written by Tōsei, from Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep Interior (tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa)

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Morrison’s Moon

He had spent the night before watching a tiny moon.

--Toni Morrison, Sula

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Shimoda’s Moon

The road was black as a river with no moon.

--Brandon Shimoda, The Grave on the Wall

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Bashō’s Moon

We started out

On our moon-viewing trip,

Calling to halt

A boat ascending the river.

--written by Sora, from Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep Interior (tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa)

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Denis Johnson’s Moon

Climbing up from the dark underground into the decadent glitter of vending, he watched this shopping center as he might one of Jerry Twinbrook’s beaches, the arrested moment of it, and he thought he caught the somber heart of each bright color, the moons, so to speak, of which these colors were the suns, the softer actuality that Jerry Twinbrook had known for a long time.

--Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

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Strout’s Moon

“Oh, for christ’s sake.” He turned away, saw the blurry shape of the moon beyond the gauzy curtains.

--Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

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Denis Johnson’s Moon

He slept in the car by the side of the road and woke up he didn’t know when. The world was dark and moonless.

--Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

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Chekhov’s Moon

The moon rose intensely crimson and morose, as if it was sick; the stars were also morose, the murk was thicker, the distance dimmer. It was as if nature anticipated something and languished.

--Anton Chekhov, The Steppe (tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

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Morrison’s Moon

The one whom he had not been able to protect, to spare, to cover from the round moon glow of the flashlight.

--Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye