Love Begins
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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Sweet Seals For You, Always
almost home
Sade Olutola
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YOU ARE THE REASON
Misplaced Lens Cap
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izzy's playlists!
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@renlittales
A 16th Century German Pomander
a spherical vessel segmented into six compartments containing different spices and herbes (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, rosemary). Worn around the neck or waist, pomanders were thought to be a protection against infections and unpleasant smells.
This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8
I hate that my aesthetic sense agrees with this but everything you just said was correct
I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.
This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.
As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.
Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:
Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.
There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.
And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”
The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.
This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.
From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.
Kept thinking about this ever since I saw it and had to do something
there's art now
Ah dang to go further; the floor is framed as a refuge. As if there is literally no other space in this house that hasn't been populated by his wife with flimsy inanimate fakery. There is no space for this man in this house save for the floor. There is no space for him on the sofa, oon the counter tops, and most notably, no space for him in the marital bed.
I’d also like to point out the use of the word “has.” The wife has filled the house with chintz. She isn’t filling the house with chintz. She doesn’t fill the house with chintz. She has filled the house with chintz. Use of the past-tense makes the wife a subtly removed element in the story, someone whose presence we see in the environment, but who is blissfully distant during the actors throes of passion. There is an element of physical as well as emotional separation from the wife that is catalyzed by being fucked on the floor. Use of the past tense is an end to the wife presence in the actors life, a carnal catharsis amid cold fragility and emotional distance.
This is my new favourite post in the world
everyone cheer for the one (1) time tumblr had reading comprehension
defend my thesis? like with a sword?
not inaccurate
absolutely obsessed!!!!! with this cover illustration!!!
oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre
Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh
honestly Shakespeare would be so pleased to know his plays were nearly starting brawls centuries into the future
I played Claudio once and I fully support this
“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”
Oskar Eustis
The site is '12ft Ladder' found here:
Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.
Honestly. the more people I meet who went to Harvard, the lower my opinion of it as an educational institution.
Just to clarify, it’s not that I think that it’s a *bad* university! It’s clearly quite good. But the thing is that the alumni that I know don’t seem to be appreciably more knowledgeable or any more skillful thinkers than people who did their education entirely at public unis. They are, however, vastly more employable, especially in elite, high-paying positions, **even when they only have a bachelor’s degree**. And that’s what gets at the heart of the problem: the primary role of places like Harvard isn’t to educate; it’s to gatekeep membership in the elite. The Ivies in general are primarily about rich people scratching each other’s balls.
Ivy league colleges exist to launder privilege
Don’t forget about the alumni networks and wealth hoarding! Harvard and other ivies are better hedge funds and Rolodexes than other schools, not better at educating students.
the way ivan aivazovsky looks at the sea…i think…i think that’s what love looks like.
love is surrounding yourself with people who see you this clearly
Still the freakiest fact about him is that despite being as tall as a person or more, he banged out these beauties in a day or two at most (and smaller ones ina matter of hours). The longest he spent on a painting, at age 81, to make his largest ever painting, was TEN DAYS:
It is 2.9×4.3 meters large. That’s 9'4"×14'1" for people in other measurement systems. It’s HUGE. There are artists out there that spend years on paintings much smaller than this. He was not one of them.
He also didn’t only paint the sea, but he MOSTLY painted the sea. Very few people could draw light filtering through waves the way this guy did and apparently it was tied into his layering technique that allowed him to paint so goddamn fast.
He is obviously my most favorite painter ever.
!!!
20 Mid-Length Books
Book recommendation time! All of these books are between 200 and 400 pages long and I'd consider them mid-length books.
The number of pages given in this post corresponds to the editions I’ve linked to.
I have linked to free editions where possible and links with an asterisk are affiliate links for UK Bookshop.org. You obviously don’t need to use those links!
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The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
200 pages
First published in 1983
Gothic horror
UK Bookshop.org*
The Trial by Franz Kafka
208 pages
Originally written in German, translated by Idris Parry
First published posthumously in 1925
Philosophical fiction
Project Gutenberg | UK Bookshop.org*
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
213 pages
Originally written in Japanese, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
First published in 2015
Fantasy with touches of magical realism
UK Bookshop.org*
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
219 pages
First published in 1980
Fiction – beautifully written contemporary literary fiction with a compelling plot
UK Bookshop.org*
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
237 pages
First published in 1908
Fiction – a novel about social rules, codes of behaviour, and sexual awakening
Project Gutenberg | UK Bookshop.org*
Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
253 pages
First published in 1941
Historical fiction with pirates
UK Bookshop.org*
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
260 pages
Originally written in Italian, translated by William Weaver
First published in 1979
Postmodernist fiction
UK Bookshop.org*
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
272 pages
First published in 2020
Fantasy
UK Bookshop.org*
The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
272 pages
First published in 1666
A collection of prose including a work of utopian fiction that has been described as a forerunner of modern science fiction
Project Gutenberg | UK Bookshop.org*
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
274 pages
Originally written in Japanese, translated by Stephen Snyder
First published in 1994
Dystopian fiction
UK Bookshop.org*
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
304 pages
First published in 1926
Hercule Poirot #4
Crime
UK Bookshop.org*
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
309 pages
First published in 2003
Tiffany Aching #1, Discworld #30
Fantasy
UK Bookshop.org*
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
331 pages
Originally written in Italian, translated by Ann Goldstein
First published in 2011
Neopolitan Quartet #1
Bildungsroman
UK Bookshop.org*
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
336 pages
First published in 2020
Gothic Horror
UK Bookshop.org*
Milkman by Anna Burns
352 pages
First published in 2018
Historical fiction with an experimental style
UK Bookshop.org*
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
364 pages
Completed in 1002
Originally written in Middle Early Japanese, translated by Meredith McKinney
A collection of musings and observations about court life in Heian Japan
Internet Archive (Ivan Morris translation) | UK Bookshop.org*
The Martian by Andy Weir
369 pages
First published in 2011
Science fiction
UK Bookshop.org*
The City & the City by China Miéville
373 pages
First published in 2009
Weird fiction
UK Bookshop.org*
Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
392 pages
First published in 1995
Farseer Trilogy #1
Fantasy & Adventure
UK Bookshop.org*
The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe
397 pages
First published in 1791
Gothic Romance
Project Gutenberg | UK Bookshop.org*
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If you decide to pick up any of these books, please let me know what you think!
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anyone who told you much ado about nothing is good and worth watching was RIGHT and you should listen to them
In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick are adamant in their mutual dislike, while Claudio and Hero are deep in love, and the two s
Ah here we go! Free full play for anyone who needs it, i watched it last week so i still had the link in my history heh :D enjoy!
some memes I made to express my current frustrations with academia feel free to add your own
When people of color discuss issues of racism and discrimination where whiteness is prevalent, they are often treated as the cause of said problems (Ahmed, 2012, 152). Critiques of racism, in both public and academic spaces, are dismissed as angry outbursts and derailed by demands for civility […] However, civility is an oppressive tool used to silence dissenting voices (Nyong’o and Tompkins, 2018).
— Eduardo Ramos, Confronting whiteness: antiracism in medieval studies. Postmedieval 11, 493–502 (2020)
anyone who told you much ado about nothing is good and worth watching was RIGHT and you should listen to them
In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick are adamant in their mutual dislike, while Claudio and Hero are deep in love, and the two s
Ah here we go! Free full play for anyone who needs it, i watched it last week so i still had the link in my history heh :D enjoy!
God I love this version
if any of yall are interested in poetry and learning how to read, analyse, and appreciate a poem, check out this free course by the University of York that goes in-depth about reading poetry! i’m taking it now and it’s really good, 10/10 would recommend to anyone who is even a little bit interested in poetry
