JD_Cunningham

JD_Cunningham , 2 days ago to poetry group

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it’s the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay
but it’s the hollow
that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces
that make a house work
existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it work.
— Lao-tzu from ‘Taoteching: With Selected Commentaries from the Past 2,000 Years’, tr. from Chinese by Red Pine

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Guido Borelli)

JD_Cunningham , 3 days ago to bookstodon group

"Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described." -- from 'The Vulnerables' by Sigrid Nunez

#WednesdayBookQuote #BookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 6 days ago to random

"‘Languages affect each other; they inject new meaning into each other, and like water rushing out of a dam, the more porous the barriers are, the weaker the force.’" -- from 'Babel' by R.F. Kuang

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #reading #bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 6 days ago to random

Do you happen to read Tibetan? There's a fascinating ongoing project in Tibet that is digitizing all 84,000 artworks, manuscripts, and books held in an ancient and remote monastery library to make the Buddhist scriptures, literature, and art and science works available to scholars.
#libraries #books #manuscripts #Tibet #Buddhism

https://mymodernmet.com/sakya-monastery-library/

JD_Cunningham , 9 days ago to poetry group

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
-- 'The Dust of Snow' by Robert Frost

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Sarah Yeoman)

bookgaga , 10 days ago to poetry group

"when i am alone, i hear the thrum of blood pumping against my shirt. i feel my mother and grandmother wrap their arms around me until we are all chest to chest, the mirrors of our hearts beating in sync, as unending as the ocean lapping the shore"

#TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry
mistranslation by Alysha Mohamed (2024 The Temz Review) https://tinyurl.com/5n6jr2ap

bookgaga , 13 days ago to random

"She uses writing and art to find a kind of rightness in putting things together wrong."

#SundaySentence from Fox and Hedgehog - The myths of Anne Carson by Emily Wilson (2024 The Nation) https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/anne-carson-wrong-norma/

JD_Cunningham , 15 days ago to bookstodon group

As usual, I'm late to the party, but now am about a third of the way through R.F. Kuang's 'Babel' and thoroughly enjoying the storytelling and how Kuang weaves in such things as British colonialism, the fascinating, dangerous complexities of language, the concentration of power and the fight against it, and so much more into a wonderfully re-imagined Oxford that is recognizable, yet entirely different.
#FridayReads #CurrentlyReading #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 16 days ago to random

Air from another life and time and place,
Pale blue heavenly air is supporting
A white wing beating high against the breeze,

And yes, it is a kite! As when one afternoon
All of us there trooped out
Among the briar hedges and stripped thorn,

I take my stand again, halt opposite
Anahorish Hill to scan the blue,
Back in that field to launch our long-tailed comet.

And now it hovers, tugs, veers, dives askew,
Lifts itself, goes with the wind until
It rises to loud cheers from us below.

Rises, and my hand is like a spindle
Unspooling, the kite a thin-stemmed flower
Climbing and carrying, carrying farther, higher

The longing in the breast and planted feet
And gazing face and heart of the kite flier
Until string breaks and—separate, elate—

The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.
-- 'A Kite for Aibhin' by Seamus Heaney

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry

(Art credit: Anne Duke)

JD_Cunningham , 20 days ago to bookstodon group

"I may be a woman but when you stare at me, I dare to stare back, resolute." -- from 'I, Mona Lisa' by Natasha Solomons

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 23 days ago to poetry group

I hear you call, pine tree, I hear you upon the hill, by
the silent pond
where the lotus flowers bloom, I hear you call, pine tree.
What is it you call, pine tree, when the rain falls,
when the winds
blow, and when the stars appear, what is it you call, pine
tree?
I hear you call, pine tree, but I am blind, and do not
know how to
reach you, pine tree. Who will take me to you, pine tree?
-- 'I Hear You Call, Pine Tree' by Yone Noguchi

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Vincent van Gogh)

JD_Cunningham , 24 days ago to bookstodon group

"At one o’clock in the afternoon, with the crushing heat over the town, the dog’s howling was unbearable. The animal had been there on the Place Michelet for two days, and for two days it had barked." -- from 'The Red Collar' by Jean-Christophe Rufin, trans. Adriana Hunter

A gem of a novella set in France immediately after WW1 and the three people linked by the barking dog: a local peasant who is a decorated veteran of the war who is now in prison for dishonoring the nation, the officer who arrives to investigate his case, and a woman with an interesting story. And there is the dog who followed the prisoner to war.
#WednesdayBookQuote #reading #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 24 days ago to bookstodon group

I really wish I had started keeping track of the books I've read beginning when I was around ten or twelve, but sadly, it's just for the last few years that I've done that. But this grandmother did do it and a fascinating list it is too.
#reading #books @bookstodon

https://mymodernmet.com/nada-myers-book-log/

JD_Cunningham , 29 days ago to bookstodon group

"My face came first, edging into view against the spinning layers of white lead. He conjured me forth with tonal shadows and blocks of shading in dark washes. I was coated again and again with a layer of Imprimitura, translucent as a butterfly’s wing." -- from Natasha Solomon's 'I, Mona Lisa'

My weekend reading will include this novel of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa telling her own story through the centuries.
#BookQuote #reading #FridayReads @bookstodon

bookgaga , 29 days ago to poetry group

"A bird
has never sinned. They have no need for grace,
salvation, guilt, contrition, holy words,
and make the choice instead to fill the space
above with soulless bodies, not with prayer
but song."

#TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry
Hollow Bones by Matthew Moniz (2022 Porridge Magazine) https://tinyurl.com/n2bhwche

JD_Cunningham , 30 days ago to poetry group

Suppose it’s easy to slip
into another’s green skin,
bury yourself in leaves

and wait for a breaking,
a breaking open, a breaking
out. I have, before, been

tricked into believing
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye

of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.

To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.
-- 'Sanctuary' by Ada Limón from 'The Hurting Kind'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Ivana Olbricht)

bookgaga , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

"But Munro is an entirely different case, and she may be a singular author in that category for me: the time spent not reading her is as essential to my understanding of her work as the time spent immersed in her words."

#SundaySentence @bookstodon
by Yiyun Li in ‘Her stories are life itself’ https://tinyurl.com/5f8buhpv

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
-- 'Disillusionment of Ten O'clock' by Wallace Stevens

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Rob Regeer)

NyakoKitty , 1 month ago to random

Your Jedi kitty mind tricks won’t work on me 🤭

#CatsOfMastodon #BengalCat #CatLife #Photography #CatsOfFediverse #Photo #JediMindTricks #Cats #FridayFeeling

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

The Wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.

Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two three.
-- 'Two Sewing' by Hazel Hall
#VerseThursday #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Kume Bryant)

bookgaga , 1 month ago to poetry group

"But now that I am in love with a place
which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,

happy is how I look, and that’s all."

#TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry
Weathering by Fleur Adcock from Poems 1960-2000 (2000 @bloodaxebooks) http://bit.ly/1fOssvy

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

"In dreams, he could perceive the vast spider’s web of souls, the wool ball of existences interleaved in time, and he could follow a single life as one might pull on a thread, jump from one moment to another and, from the infinite heavens, even observe the forces that cause the stars to move, immense dark flows like streams of nothingness." -- from 'The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild' by Mathias Énard, trans. by Frank Wynne

#WednesdayBookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to random

#art to start🎨
...a cheerful night scene

'Amsterdam Skyline with Canal at Night' by M. Bleichner
#painting #acrylic #AcrylicPainting #cityscape

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

“We cut down the trees out of fear,” he continued, “but cutting down the trees releases our worst nightmares back into the atmosphere. This is a far more terrifying situation than before because now there is nowhere to hide. There is no way to run. There’s no escape.” -- from Jennifer Croft's 'The Extinction of Irena Rey'
#BookQuote #quote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

#BookReview Jennifer Croft's 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' is a completely off-the-wall and exhilarating novel set at the edge of the primeval forest of Białowieża which stretches across the border between Poland and Belarus.

When the book rumored to be her magnum opus is finished, a well-known Polish writer calls her eight translators together at her home to translate it as the group has done previously.

But the author disappears shortly after they arrive and things slowly, then with increasing speed, spin out of control. The falling apart of the translators' group and their relationship with the author is mirrored in problems in the forest--climate change is having an obvious impact and the Polish government is logging within this protected place.

Mirrors within mirrors, shifting group dynamics, relationships between an author and translators, the natural world at risk, the ruthlessness of creators, Croft writes about all of it here with a deep appreciation for and playfulness with language.
#reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

I watched the turquoise pastel
melt between your fingerpads;
how later you flayed

the waxen surface back
to the sunflower patch
of a forethought, your

instrument an upturned
brush, flaked to the grain -
the fusty sugar paper buckled.

You upended everything,
always careless of things:
finest sables splayed

under their own weight,
weeks forgotten - to emerge
gunged, from the silted

floor of a chemical jamjar.
I tidied, like a verger
or prefect, purging

with the stream from the oil-
fingered tap. Stop,
you said, printing

my elbow with a rusty index,
pointing past an ancient
meal's craquelured dish

to the oyster-crust
at the edge of an unscraped palette -
chewy rainbow, blistered jewels.
-- 'A Painting' by Sarah Howe
#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Bellesouth Studio)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

"Many tried to describe her indescribable aura. Some said it was akin to fine filaments of strummed silver that hovered over her dark cascading hair. Others were reminded of the southern lights, brilliant streaks that hissed across her deep-sky eyes. Still others said her fingers were like holy spinnerets, that her every nimble gesture was an act of brilliant, captivating love." -- from 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft

#WednesdayBookQuote #reading #BookQuote #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

"The armchairs were exhausted, worn out by life, and during the night they liked to stretch out their arms, legs, and backs, creaking and groaning." -- from 'Memories' by Teffi; trans. Robert Chandler & others
#SundaySentence #books #memoirs #BookQuote @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to poetry group

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.
-- 'This Moment' by Eavan Boland

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Eva Kryshtapovich)

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

It's been a year since the Seattle Public Library joined with the Brooklyn Public in the Books Unbanned program which gives young people (13 to 26), anywhere in the U.S. free, digital access to all the library's ebooks and audiobooks.

Now the two libraries have issued a report about the program with feedback from young people who are using the program. A blog post from the Seattle Public Library has background information about the report and a link to it.

#books #reading #libraries #BooksUnbanned #SeattlePublicLibrary #FreedomToRead @bookstodon

https://shelftalkblog.wordpress.com/2024/04/10/in-their-own-words-youth-voices-on-books-unbanned-censorship-and-the-freedom-to-read/

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to random

#art to start🎨
...evening life

'Saturday' by Trayko Popov
#painting #acrylic #AcrylicPainting #cityscape

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

There are two books I'm looking forward to starting this weekend, Richard Lacayo's Last Light whose subtitle sums it up nicely - How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph, and the intriguing-looking novel set in Elizabethan London, The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman.
#FridayReads #books #CurrentlyReading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to poetry group

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

Soon we'll make a supper of them.
Salted slabs between slices of bread.
Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.
The mail piles up.

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.
Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy
being small and hungry and alive.
-- 'Tomatoes' by Joy Sullivan

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Ylli Haruni)

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

"I used to draw and write to keep a hold on my imagination, certain that I was going to lose it, since all adults lost their imagination at some point. I clung desperately to the childlike gaze that finds motives for curiosity and astonishment in everything it encounters." -- from Cross Stitch by Jazmina Barrera, trans. Christina MacSweeney

An engaging debut novel about friendship, embroidery, travel, literature, and the coming-of-age of three friends. And now I really want to learn how to do the complex Yucatán needlework technique of xmanikté.

#WednesdayBookQuote #books #reading #embroidery #Mexico @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

Bookish temptations from The Millions - their extensive list of books being published over the next three months was posted this past week, and one that immediately caught my eye is a collaboration between Jamaica Kincaid and artist Kara Walker, 'An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children' which comes out in May. And I'm sure there are all too many more on this list that will end up on my wishlist.
#books #TBRWishlist #reading @bookstodon

https://themillions.com/2024/04/most-anticipated-the-great-spring-2024-preview.html

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

I
We came from the far side of the river
of starlight and will cross back over
in a little boat
no bigger than two cupped hands.
II
Thinking about compassion.
A firefly in a great dark garden.
An earthworm naked
on a concrete path.
III
I think of the journey
we will take together
in the oarless boat
across the shoreless river.
-- 'Travelers' by Ursula K. Le Guin from 'So Far So Good'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Lourry Legarde)

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to random

#art to start🎨
...the light's mirror

'At Quimperle' by Frits Thaulow
#painting #oil #OilPainting #landscape

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

"A book is the best means of transportation: it carries you far, doesn't pollute, arrives on time, is inexpensive, and never gives you motion sickness." -- from 'The Wild Book' by Juan Villoro; trans. by Lawrence Schimel; illus. Eko
#SentenceSunday #BookQuote #library @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

Pale grey and yellow limbs,
That never move
But step unceasingly in beauty,
You have come to me,
And all my thoughts are as a forest
With crystal-feathered birds.
-- 'Trees' by Hildegarde Flanner

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Gustav Klimt)

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to bookstodon group

"A great many books are firmly closed despite the general impression that they’re wide open—they’ll jovially present their back cover as page one and be baffled that you thought there’d be more." -- from 'Parasol Against the Axe' by Helen Oyeyemi

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 2 months ago to random

At age 69, Ukrainian farmer Polina Raiko, after a hard life and an especially difficult time, took up brushes and paint at the suggestion of a neighbor and painted her house. She covered the walls and ceilings with Ukrainian folk motifs and told her own life story through them. But the destruction Putin and his henchmen have unleashed on Ukraine may have destroyed most or all of her gorgeous work.
#art #painting #FolkArt #Ukraine #PolinaRaiko

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/polina-raiko/

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

A Spring breeze is blowing
I'm bursting with laughter
--- wishing for flowers.
-- by Matsuo Basho; unknown translator

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #haiku #poetry #Basho #spring @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

"Leaving Lamb in his top-floor office, its soft light softened further by a veil of cigarette smoke, so that any observer of a sentimental nature might imagine him a grubby Santa, putting the grot into grotto." -- from Mick Herron's 'Standing By the Wall'

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #quote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

Evocative photographs inspired by Murasaki Shikibu's masterpiece, The Tale of Genji.
#photograph #photography #books #Japan #TheTaleOfGenji @bookstodon

https://lithub.com/the-tale-of-genji-a-visual-journey-through-the-worlds-first-novel/

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

Who says a painting must look like life?
He sees only with children’s eyes.
Who says a poem must stick to the theme?
Poetry is certainly lost on him.
Poetry and painting share a single goal—
clean freshness and effortless skill.
Pien Luan’s sparrows live on paper;
Chao Ch’ang’s flowers breathe with soul.
But what are they beside these scrolls,
bold sketches, with spirit in every stroke?
Who’d think one dot of red
could call up a whole unbounded spring!
-- Su Tung-p'o from his 'Selected Poems', trans. by Burton Watson

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Chao Ch'ang)

dillyd , 3 months ago to random

The beauty of letting go.

(Plus omigod omigod I can't believe I captured this moment and I can't stay too serious here!)

#LettingGo #WaterDrop

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

"Whatever their country of origin, all kites are born in the popular imagination, which is what gives them their slightly naive look; Ambrose Fleury's kites were no exception, even the final pieces he made in his old age bear that stamp of innocence and that freshness of soul." -- from Romain Gary's 'The Kites', tr. Miranda Richmond Mouillot

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #reading #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 3 months ago to bookstodon group

My library hold for Helen Oyeyemi's newest, Parasol Against the Axe, arrived and I was able to sneak a few pages in yesterday. Taking place in one of my favorite settings, Prague, the book feels like it's going to be a strangely intriguing one. And it has a book-within-a-book that changes stories depending on the reader.

This week the New Yorker has an interview with Oyeyemi, which should be an interesting piece to read after finishing the novel.
#reading #CurrentlyReading #AmReading #books #libraries @bookstodon

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/helen-oyeyemi-thinks-we-should-read-more-and-stay-in-touch-less