I was stupidly thrilled while reading my e-newsletter from @elcultural to find the word "letraheridos" (more or less "people hurt by letters") to describe what English might call #bibliophiles or #literature lovers—and now I'm wondering if the origins of this newer term have anything to do with #Auden declaring #Yeats was hurt into #poetry ... Wherever it came from, I'm declaring it the best word I've heard in ages.
@Zwieblein@poetry@translators We are all "wounded by letters, by words, by poems," that's why we read and write. I agree, it's a beautiful Spanish variant of the Catalan word lletraferit. Wordstricken!
Why yes, I will completely avoid the present this evening by tucking into my nearly 70-year-old edition of 7 Types of Ambiguity. Appropriate that it arrived today when, to rephrase #Shakespeare, I've been feeling quite out of joint in time.
"but America is like that,
unrelenting, you get what you ask for
in the ring or on the kitchen floor.
Someone always wants you to give up,
shake hands, wipe the blood away and talk
of lighter things. And you do
because you've been fighting long enough
to know there's no one here to save you."
Pondering forays today into pantoums and/or sestinas; I hope to be able in the next few days to test out a vague sense that certain poetic #forms might get at certain #feelings or situations in ways others might not. (Hardly a revelation, but it's a new point in my being unable to abandon attempts at #writing#Poetry.) @poetry@writingcommunity
Even if I'm never able to explain more than the very basic idea of Hélène Cixous's Double Oblivion of the Ourang-Outang, I will still offer all thanks to the literary gods for having brought it my way. What an incredible work, which I finished last night, and will go ahead and classify at least partially as #poetry, even as it probably also falls under #philosophy, #theory, #criticism, #essays, and so much more. All hail the unclassifiables!
I think it was you, @nadinmai, who mentioned Geert Mak's In Europe not too long ago. Well, I got, it, dove in, and just couldn't stop #reading. Incredible book—and it was all even better, knowing it was a sort of word-of-mouth recommendation!
In discussing Yvonne Vera's "description of Mbira music,"* Ng'ang'a Wahu-Muchiri says that he takes her writing "to mean that Mbira is fundamental in a way that entertainment and leisure do not capture."
In its turn, Muchiri's phrase pretty much lays out the very way in which #literature is fundamental to me.
Although a work trip had me away from all screens for a week (bliss!), I did read Amber Caron's excellent collection of #ShortStories, Call Up the Waters. AND I even wrote up an odd little #review right here: