loveabadgirlme
I won’t become a doctor.
Remember this:
One day you will be sick.”
Poem written by an 11 year old Afghan girl
This poem was recorded in a NYT magazine article about female underground poetry groups in Afghanistan. An amazing article about the ways in which women are using a traditional two line poetry form to express their resistance to male oppression, their feelings about love (considered blasphemous), and their doubts about religion.
(via blua)
In honor of Mad Men’s triumphant return to television this Sunday, here is “Mayakovsky,” by Frank O’Hara, the poem from which Don reads the last section of at the end of the season two primiere.
1
My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!
then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.
2
I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
How to Get Your Book Banned in Arizona
Step 1: Write about people who aren’t white.
Step 2: THERE IS NO STEP TWO.
You will very rarely see me curse, tumblypoos, but…but…I mean, what the fuck? How is this even possible? This reads like an Onion article.
To be clear, it is now ILLEGAL to teach de la Pena’s novel (which I’ve read and which is excellent) in schools, not because the book contains violence or drug use or massively unerotic blow jobs, but because it contains Mexican American characters. (The protagonist of the novel is only half Mexican, but apparently that is too Mexican for Arizona.)
That’s it. That’s the whole reason it can’t be taught in schools.
Unbelievable.
For those browsers not as impressed by architecture as they are by the beauty of books upon books upon books in narrow hallways — not to mention a place to nap. Shakespeare & Company, Paris, France
