12 August (1930): Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins
Have something over 40,000 words done. Have worked well 6 days of every week since got here. Have 6 more cases of beer good for 6 more chapters.
9 August (1933): John Steinbeck to Carl Wilhelmson
I never had much ability for nor faith nor belief in realism. It is just a form of fantasy as nearly as I could figure.
8 August (1820): John Keats to Fanny Brawne
Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once—I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with.
"Symmetry" & Other PoemsFrom the Print
Sometimes I smile before I mean it. Better, sometimes I’ve smiled before I mean it. Meant it. You know what I mean?—Sometimes I smile before I smile, or know I’m smiling, and I mean it, although I didn’t mean to—never mind–
Prison Writing & Political Will
In the midst of the California prison system’s crackdown on dissent, inmates across the country lack the crucial tool: freedom of expression.
7 August (1918): William Carlos Williams to Amy Lowell
Perhaps I would not have written this letter had I not a knife in my hand.
Desperate Leisure: Ten Questions with Geoffrey G. O’Brien
The poem and the book want to think about what kind of people we are on Sunday and what we’d have to do to build an article in front of that term—to be a people rather than people…
6 August (1909): James Joyce to Nora Barnacle Joyce
My eyes are full of tears, tears of sorrow and mortification. My heart is full of bitterness and despair. I can see nothing but your face as it was then raised to meet another’s.
The Goldilocks VariationsFrom the Print
G enters the unoccupied cottage. Porridge, chairs, beds. Too hot, too cold, too high, too wide, too hard, too soft. Just right. G eats, breaks, crawls in. The owners return. An intruder!
Anna Craycroft: A Weekly Correspondence (8/12/13)
Consciousness itself arises, writes Mearleau-Ponty, in the realization that “I am able” meaning the realization that one can reach beyond the immediate…