write that shit down

words on writing, beauty, or both

[elizfarrell-deactivated20131227]

Lovers on Aran

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass, Came dazzling around, into the rocks, Came glinting, sifting from the Americas To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush to throw wide arms of rock around a tide That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash? Did sea define the land or land the sea? Each drew new meaning from the waves’ collision. Sea broke on land to full identity. 

Seamus Heaney

[writethatshitdown-blog]

"We were small and thought we knew nothing worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires."

Seamus Heaney, "The Railway Children" 

[writethatshitdown-blog]

Excerpt from "The Harvest Bow" by Seamus Heaney

As you plaited the harvest bow You implicated the mellowed silence in you In wheat that does not rust But brightens as it tightens twist by twist Into a knowable corona, A throwaway love-knot of straw.

[writethatshitdown-blog]

There are things that I never knew what made the pavement gray and what made the giant monuments move back and forth on the far horizon ceaselessly night and day on the far horizon and what made the leaves fibrillate on the trees and what comity meant and what made the heart stop and how unicorns got trapped in tapestries, these things I never learned.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

We need scouring powder, hand soap, lighter fluid, Fig Newtons, and tennis balls.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

He is mad about being small when you are big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you are powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you are necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

Come to bed, dear salad-head. Come to bed with me.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

I as thinking of salads, she said through her tears. Salad after salad. I am wonderful with salads.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

Machines are sober, uncomplaining, endlessly efficient, and work ceaselessly through all hours for the good of all, said the Dead Father. They dream, when they dream, of stopping. Of last things.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father 

[writethatshitdown-blog]

Yes it will be new but I think it's slightly insulting to be dancing with a person and then leave that person alone in the middle of the dance floor and go off and dance with an ape.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

[writethatshitdown-blog]

But it's hard to deny someone the thing he thinks will be the making of him.

Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father 

[napmag]

Oh my god, look at the air. There isn’t much time put the reactor core under your shirt. We’ve only got one chance.

Lief Haven, "The Corpse of Our Separate Youths" (NAP)

[vonnegutphile]

There are all these people bragging about how they’re survivors, as though that’s something very special. But the only kind of person who can’t say that is a corpse.

Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos  (via vonnegutphile)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Write me long letters. In the country - they unfurl like flowers in water. You do it by being so uninhabited: so magnificently unself-conscious.

Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters (via violentwavesofemotion)

[writethatshitdown-blog]

Everything wants to organize itself. Everything tries to find a way out.

"Miss Anaphora Foresees the End" by Simeon Berry, Hotel Amerika

[proustitute]

You made me cry in cruel stations, So I missed many trains.

Gwyneth Lewis, from “Fooled Me for Years with the Wrong Pronouns” (via proustitute)

[fuckyeahexistentialism]

We’re all curious about what might hurt us.

Federico García Lorca, “Blood Wedding”

via fuckyeahexistentialism (via frenchtwist)