Sunday, April 29, 2012

Michele Cassou & Stewart Cubley quote


"Creation is never about changing yourself it is about meeting yourself, probing deep into your own core. Creation wants only to fulfill your deepest desire: to know and accept yourself as you are."

Poetry Is Quote


"Poetry is about slowing down...it's about reading the same thing again and again, really savoring it, living inside the poem. There's no rush to find out what happens in a poem. It's really about feeling one syllable rubbing against another, one word giving way to another, and sensing the justice of that relationship bewteen one word, the next, the next, the next."
-Mark Strand

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Belleview Literary Review


 http://blr.med.nyu.edu/content/current 

Emotional communion provided by literature


 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/why-talk-therapy

-is-on-the-wane-and-writing-workshops-are-on-the-rise.html?pagewanted=all

NY Times article says writing groups are replacing traditional therapy.

 "The waning of psychotherapy has clear roots in the rise of psychopharmacology. Drug companies have been hard at work over the past three decades, marketing meds to troubleshoot our faulty brain chemistry. As managed care has compelled more and more psychiatrists to trade their notebooks for prescription pads, the classic image of the patient on the couch has been replaced by a man with a pill in his palm.
The ascent of creative-writing, particularly in an age dominated by the impatient pursuit of visual stimulation, might seem harder to explain. But my sense is that people remain desperate for the emotional communion provided by literature."

Monday, April 09, 2012

Don't Trust that Particular Flavor


William Gibson's collections of essays may not be new to diehard fans as they have all been previously published over the course of the last few decades, the oldest being "Rocket Radio" from 1989 Rolling Stone. But there is one quote that you may not have noticed that speaks beautifully to our topic of bibliotherapy.

At a talk given in NYC at Book Expo in 2010, Gibson said: "A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response." And later goes on to thank his audience of readers for shaping his career. Very cool.

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Shakespeare quotes - Much Ado About Nothing & Twelth Night

"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1

Twelth Night "If music be the food of love, play on."

 "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."

 "Better a witty fool that a foolish wit"

 “In nature there's no blemish but the mind; None can be called deformed but the unkind: Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks, o'erflourished by the devil.”

Twelth Night "Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better" Act III, Scene I

Shakespeare quote - As You Like It

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.1 "And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7 "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7 "Can one desire too much of a good thing?" - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 4.1 "Your 'if' is the only peacemaker; much virtue in 'if'." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 5.4 "Hope is a waking dream." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Epilogue

Shakespeare quotes - Hamlet

"All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2 "Give thy thoughts no tongue." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.3 "Brevity is the soul of wit." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2 "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2 "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2 "To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come," - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.1 "O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!" - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3. 1 "Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.2 "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.3 "Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.4 "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.3 "Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.1 "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2 "If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2 "The rest is silence." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2

Bibliotherapy for romance readers


 http://vaginalfantasy.com/ 

Fun and probaby cathartic. I have to admit, as a librarian, i have censored romance novels from our collection. But not because of the smut, because of the incredibly bad writing. I may have missed a trend toward improved calibre of authors who devote themselves to this genre. And, I have always thought that romance novels were women's porn. Good on the wymyn of Vaginal Fantasy for tackling the bodice ripper.

Monday, April 02, 2012

Lesser known Bronte


Finished reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Emily and Charlotte's lesser known, though more prolific, sister Anne Bronte. This is an excellent resource as a preventative measure for misaligned or misdirected affection. Our heroine falls in love with the intention of improving her beloved spiritually and ethically, i.e., to save him from himself (where haven't we seen this before), only to find herself dredged through the mud of intesifying levels of degradation. I found it comforting, oddly enough, to learn that the women continue to take on this sisyphean task diametrically opposed to their own well-being generation after generation. The nobler sex is not just hype, though we have our share of debasing examples, women aspire to inspire in proverbial ranks of musing angels.

Anne Bronte wrote a feminist treatise that still speaks to us through centuries of a steady trickle of women who demand quarter for their worth (not a quarter, but recompense in equal measure.) At 3/4 the wage earning power of men, we continue to gain independence from perhaps ourselves and our own charitable intensions as much as anything or any one else.