Tag Archives: Poetry

One Year Later

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It has been a year (or thereabouts) since I moved A Small Press Life from Blogger to WordPress. It was a snap decision, but I haven’t regretted it for one second. Even though I have expressed this opinion a few times in the past, it is worth bringing forth once again: the WordPress community is awesome. A blog isn’t a blog without an interactive group of readers. With your keen commenting skills, you make every post an interesting, organic and unique experience.

2012 has been an incredible year. We have seen our stats steadily climb, and then soar. A Small Press Life was featured in both The Daily Post and  Freshly Pressed. Then, again, there’s all of you. Heading into 2013, you can be sure of two things: that we are truly grateful and feverishly excited to make the blog even better (more on that soon).

“I stay cool, and dig all jive,

That’s the way I stay alive.

My motto,

as I live and learn,

is

Dig and be dug

In return.”-Langston Hughes

Daily Diversion #75: I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You*

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Today is my wedding anniversary. Two years ago, The Chef and I were rocking out to our Bookish Punk Rock Scottish Vintage Poetry-Laden Party with a Wedding in the Middle. I walked out to the sweet, sweet sounds of The Clash and the ceremony was composed strictly of poetry by Rumi, Mary Pauline Collier (my husband’s grandmother), and my favourite, Pablo Neruda.

*I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You by Pablo Neruda was the heart of our wedding ceremony. We are weird like that.

Shoes

Shoes

Centerpiece

Centerpiece

First Kiss

First Kiss

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 7th-10th December

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  • Cicero died on 12/7/43 BC. “A friend is, as it were, a second self.” (On the Laws; Brutus; On Duties)
  • Willa Cather was born on 12/7/1873. “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” (O Pioneers!; My Antonia; The Song of the Lark; One of Ours)
  • Thornton Wilder died on 12/7/1975. “An incinerator is a writer’s best friend.” (The Bridge of San Luis Rey; Our Town; The Skin of Our Teeth; The Matchmaker)
  • Robert Graves died on 12/7/1985. “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” (Good-bye to All That; The White Goddess; I, Claudius; The Greek Myths)
  • Thomas De Quincey died on 12/8/1859. “The public is a bad guesser.” (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater)
  • James Thurber was born on 12/8/1894. “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.” (The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities; My Life and Hard Times; My World and Welcome to It; The Male Animal (with Elliot Nugent); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)
  • John Milton was born on 12/9/1608. “A Mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell , a Hell of Heaven.” (Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained)
  • Dame Edith Sitwell died on 12/9/1964. “I am not eccentric. It’s just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.” (Clowns’ Houses; Alexander Pope; I Live Under a Black Sun)
  • Emily Dickinson was born on 12/10/1830. “I’m nobody, who are you?”
  • Luigi Pirandello died on 12/10/1936. “Drama is action, sir, drama and not confounded philosophy.” (Six Characters in Search of an Author; The Rules of the Game)
  • Damon Runyon died on 12/10/1946. “I came to the conclusion long ago that all life is six to five against.” (Guys and Dolls; The Damon Runyon Omnibus)
  • Mark Van Doren died on 12/10/1972. “Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.” (Spring Thunder; Winter Diary; Collected Poems 1922-1938; The Transients)

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[All images are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

A Year in Books/Day 220: The Secret (No, Not That One)

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  • Title: The Secret The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron
  • Author: Ashley Hay
  • Year Published: 2000/This Edition: 2001 (Aurum Press Ltd)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: This is way more interesting than the “self-help” book by Rhonda Byrne. It’s also real. We all know that Lord Byron (and his buddies) had some hellacious and salacious adventures. Carousing, hell-catting, what-have-you. They were a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them. With all of that knowledge in the back of our heads, you’d think that any biography focusing on his personal life couldn’t offer up an intriguing perspective. You’d be wrong, and thank goodness for that. History has certainly seen its share of romantic mismatches and marital disasters. The union between Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke deserves a fairly high position on any informal ranking. Lest you worry that The Secret is trashy tabloid-esque fodder with a historical spin, fear not! Hay has written a fine exploration, taken from the couple’s journals and correspondence, that gives her subjects a respectful, though not heavy, seriousness.
  • Motivation: We always hear of Byron and his conquests, yet few words are devoted to the women he loved; and most of those are given over to his sister, not his wife. An entire book dedicated to the odd, brief relationship he had with the out-flanked Miss Milbanke? Oh, yes please.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 38: “At the same time, she became convinced that Byron was about to announce his engagement to someone else-to the young lady, in fact, whom he had told he wanted to see no more of Annabella’s poems. All the light, all the spark, went out of her and out of her effervescent summer: she told her aunt of this imminent announcement so definitely that Lady Melbourne took the idea to Byron as a fact, not a rumour, and he was at a loss to explain its origins or its vehemence.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
    Portrait of Annabella Byron (nee Anne Isabella...

    Portrait of Annabella Byron (nee Anne Isabella Milbanke) (1792-1860) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

 

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 14th-18th November

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  • Astrid Lindgren was born on 11/14/1907. “I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.” (The Pippi Longstocking books)
  • Booker T. Washington died on 11/14/1915. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” (Up from Slavery; Working With the Hands)
  • Marianne Moore was born on 11/15/1887. “If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.” (Poems; Selected Poems; The Marianne Moore Reader) Continue reading →