Category: books

books and comics

This dress checks your movements

with that wasp waist,
your lungs, stomach, liver, and other organs
squeezed down out of place,
and
into one half their natural size,
and
with that long trail dragging on the ground,
how can any man of sense,
who knows that life is made up of use, of service, of work;

how can he take such partner?

He must be desperate to unite himself for life with such a deformed,
fettered, half-breathing ornament.

If I were in the matrimonial market, I might marry
a woman that had but one arm, or one eye,
or no eyes at all,
if she suited me otherwise; but
so long as God permitted me to retain my senses,
I could never join my fortunes with those of a woman
with a small waist.

A small waist!

I am a physiologist, and know what
a small waist
means.

Taken from the 1871 book Our girls by Dio Lewis. Submitted by John Rodzvilla.

Birth of the Suwannee

Cypress trees,
bottle-shaped, grotesque,
reach from the wine-colored water,
form a canopy. Light is weird and green.

Banners of
Spanish moss hide
the feathery foliage of
living trees, cover up dead stumps.

Through the vast
drowned swamp two tiny
streams creep sluggishly to join
at last before a spit of quaking land.

From Suwannee River Strange Green Land, Cecile Hulse Matschat (1938). Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

Four Trees Quartet

Eastern Hemlock

The leaves fall upon drying.
A poor Christmas tree.
Poor quality of wood.

Stonelike hardness of the knots
will chip steel blades.
Lumber taken for pulp.

Useful for railroad ties.
Holds spikes exceptionally well.
Bark rich in tannin.

A tea was once made from leaves
and twigs by woodsmen and Indians.
As fuel, the wood throws sparks.


Japanese Honeysuckle

Fruits eaten
by birds and mammals

and the dense cover
is much used,

but generally speaking
it is a weed.


Smooth Blackhaw

Fruits eaten
by foxes,

bobwhites,
and several

songbirds.
Some people

also like them


Bullbrier Greenbrier

Some twigs
may be

without
prickles.

Taken from George A. Petrides, A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs (Houghton Mifflin Marcourt, 1973). Submitted by J. R. Solonche.

Deserters

We were getting new recruits
sixteen and seventeen years of age
when we had to do this attack

The two youngsters were crying
It was such a shock
We moved up to the attack
They had cleared off
three or four miles from the action

They were brought back and charged
The verdict of the court was read out
The two young men had deserted
They were going to be shot at dawn

The two young men
were brought out
to a yard
blindfolded

Fire at the head
At the heart

The chances were
they would be killed instantly
As of course they were

The four men who had to shoot them
were sick with it all
There was sympathy for the boys
but more for their parents

We lived with it all
for days
weeks

I can see it all now

(Private William Holmes in Forgotten Voices of the Great War. Submitted by Lisa Oliver)

The Nightingale

The color paintings were prepared on fine,
brilliant Wu silk, which were closely and wonderfully woven.

Traditional Chinese paints were used. The blues
and greens came from azurite, malachite, and indigo;

the reds from cinnabar, realgar, and orpiment, with the brilliant red
from coral and the pink-red from a flowering vine; umber from an iron oxide

called limonite; yellow from the sap of the rattan plant; and white from lead
or pulverized oyster shells. To all, powdered jade was added

for good fortune. These colors were mixed with stag horn, fish or ox
glue, or glue made from the pulp of the soap bean. The black

Chinese ink is ten parts pine soot, three parts powdered jade,
and one part glue made from donkey hides boiled

in Tang River water. The paints were mixed with boiling water. In
the first stage, the water looked like fish eyes; in the second,

like innumerable pearls strung together; and in the final stage,
like rolling breakers. The paints were applied with Chinese brushes made

of sheep, rabbit, goat, weasel, and wolf hairs picked in autumn,
as well as of mouse whiskers, with handles of bamboo and buffalo horn.

Where changes were required in the art, the paint was removed
by wiping the area with the juice of the apricot seed.

Illustration notes from The Nightingale by Demi (Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1985). Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

Handling Queens

Remember:
the queen is the main-
spring of the hive.

She is a very delicate
piece of mechanism.

(It is very risky
to bend
her or to
bounce
her.)

Some folk seem to think
queen bees are like
opportunities
and nettles and ferrets–
to be grasped with a heavy hand.

A queen is as fragile
as a wren’s egg.

From H. J. Wadey, The Bee Craftsman: A short guide to the life-story and management of the honey bee (A. G. Smith, 1947), p 47. Some punctuation has been changed. Submitted by Rebecca Resinski.

Kugel decided then and there

that he would die a happy man,
that he would consider his meager life
a success, if
in years to come,
somewhere,
someday,
someone
kicked in Jonah’s door
and Jonah was surprised.
Shocked.
Amazed.

Let him be utterly
bewildered, dear God.

Let him wonder,
raised-eyebrowed and slack-jawed,

They kick doors in now?
Since when?
Hang on, hang on—
they’re putting people in ovens?
You can’t be serious.
Since when
do people
put other people
in ovens?

From Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2012). Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

What is the use of our being told that we live in a democracy if we want fountains and have no fountains?

By all means
let us have a policy
of full employment,
increased production,
no gap between exports and imports,
social security,
a balanced This
and a planned That,

but let us also
have fountains –

more and more fountains –
higher and higher fountains –
fountains like wine,
like blue and green fire,
fountains like diamonds –

and rainbows
in every square.

Taken from J B Priestly’s book Delight, first published in 1949. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Jammy

Consider
the fact
that
for 3.8 billion years,
not one
of your pertinent ancestors
was squashed,
devoured,
drowned,
starved,
stuck fast,
untimely wounded
or otherwise deflected
from its life’s
quest
of delivering a
tiny
charge
of genetic material
to the right partner
at the right moment
to perpetuate
the only
possible
sequence
of hereditary combinations
that could result –
eventually,
astoundingly,
and all too briefly –
in you.

Taken from Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003). Several words have been omitted between “3.8 billion years” and “not one”. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.