Tag Archives: Books

Sylvia Plath’s Death: Five Decades Have Gone By in a Mad, Mad Whirl

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“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”-Sylvia Plath

She died on 11 February 1963.

Sylvia Plath's Grave

Sylvia Plath’s Grave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Reading her poetry is like picking up shards of glass with a bare hand. It is unnerving to discover that something so deceptively small can cause so much bleeding.”-Alicia Austen

The Dead Writers Round-Up: February 10th

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  • Sir John Suckling was born on 2/10/1609. “Out upon it I have lov’d/Three whole days together;/And am like to love three more,/If it prove fair weather.” (Ballad Upon a Wedding; Aglaura)
  • Baron de Montesquieu died on 2/10/1755. “Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.” (Persian Letters; The Temple of Gnide)
  • Charles Lamb was born on 2/10/1775. “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds…Books think for me.” (Blank Verse; Tales from Shakespeare; The Adventures of Ulysses; Essays of Elia)
  • Boris Pasternak was born on 2/10/1890. “Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.” (My Sister, Life; Themes and Variations; Safe Conduct; Doctor Zhivago)
  • Bertolt Brecht was born on 2/10/1898. “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” (Happy End; Saint Joan of the Stockyards; Don Juan; Trumpets and Drums; The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre)
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder died on 2/10/1957. “It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” (Little House in the Big Woods; Little House on the Prairie; On the Banks of Plum Creek)
  • Alex Haley died on 2/10/1992. “In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.” (The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Roots: The Saga of an American Family)
  • Arthur Miller died on 2/10/2005. “A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can’t live that way you don’t stay.” (All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A View from the Bridge; After the Fall; Mr. Peter’s Connections; Resurrection Blues)
Sir John Suckling
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
Charles Lamb, 1798
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Alex Haley in the U.S. Coast Guard

 

Books in Art: Oleanders by Vincent van Gogh

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Oleanders by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Oleanders (Vase with Oleanders and Books) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

The book on top is La Joie de vivre by Émile Zola. A framed copy of this painting hangs in my kitchen. The original, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Loeb, is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 8th-9th February

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  • Jules Verne was born on 2/8/1828. “Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” (A Journey to the Center of the Earth; From the Earth to the Moon; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Around the World in Eighty Days)
  • Kate Chopin was born on 2/8/1850. “A person can’t have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.” (Bayou Folk; A Night in Acadie; The Awakening)
  • Elizabeth Bishop was born on 2/8/1911. “If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I’m sure it’s a good one-and the same goes for paintings.” (North & South; Poems: North & South. A Cold Spring; The Complete Poems)
  • Iris Murdoch died on 2/8/1999. “We can only learn to love by loving.” (Under the Net; The Bell; The Sea, The Sea; The Green Knight)
  • Amy Lowell was born on 2/9/1874. “Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.” (A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass; Sword Blades and Poppy Seed; Legends; A Critical Fable) Continue reading →