A temporary storage space for my splash page quotes and musings on them. Should the stars align, these may eventually receive the glory of legitimate html-hood. New quote every week, I should hope.

12/??/2023
"...so come on out, my dear old sweet Sister -- & we'll open our oysters together. ..."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
https://archive.org/details/lettersofednastv0000edna/page/78/mode/2up
I dunno, I just love the phrase "we'll open our oysters together". I love Edna's easy hopefulness. This won't be the last time she appears here, I think.

01/14/2024
"... as here in a dawn garden
 you may hear the highway's drone as oars in dark water
 and calmly wait on winter never caring if it comes."
-- Amy Beeder, Vertigo
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=42072
This poem is about those rare blissful moments of utter awareness that occur between waking up and getting up. I'm glad someone's written that feeling down, for the benefit of our future selves.

01/21/2024
"...Catch the foxes for us, 
 the little foxes
 that spoil the vineyards, 
 for our vineyards are in blossom.”
-- Song of Solomon, 2:15 (ESV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Solomon%202&version=ESV
I'm not religious, which is probably why Song of Solomon is my favorite book of the Bible. It's powerful, and genuinely sweet at times. This line in particular -- even the most mundane struggles become beautiful when you're in love. Forgive the little foxes.

01/29/2024
"...and I must be insane
to go skating on your name
and by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
of Alice..."
-- Tom Waits, Alice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8XY2d1c9ok
Such a pretty song. So icy and brooding. Arithmetick arithmetock.

02/05/2024
"When I was eight I thought the dead people
stayed up there like blimps.
Now my chair is as hard as a scarecrow
and outside the summer flies sing like a choir."
-- Anne Sexton, For Eleanor Boylan Talking with God
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29126
Young Eleanor speaks to God so freely. Why can't our narrator? Basic bitch that I am, Anne Sexton is one of my favorites. 

02/13/2024
"...Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth."
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Claribel
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45320/claribel
I promise I'll get a non-poem up soon, but God I just had to show you this one. Claribel in death participates in the quiet hubbub of nature, not just as an observer but truly assimilated, simply by "low-lying" there in her grave. It's sweet, and not a little spooky, which always gets you those brownie points here at Unicode Snowman.

02/20/2024
"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -- my darling -- my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea --
In her tomb by the sounding sea."
-- Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I *know*. This quote thing's been getting away from me a little bit. Still, I just couldn't resist keeping up last week's theme of entombed ladies. Hey, you knew we were gonna do Poe eventually when you saw my ghost costume.

02/26/2024
"'Baby,' they start saying to me, 'you are drunk.'
and I am. and I am. and I am. ...
... I drink too fast. they talk on. I hear them gently.
I sleep. I sleep in comradeship. the sea will not drown me and neither will they. they love my sleeping body. I am an asshole. they love my sleeping body. may all God's children come to this."
-- Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man
https://archive.org/details/notesofdirtyoldm00buko/
I live for those precious moments when Bukowski's inner Fragile Sensitive Boy bubbles to the surface in his dirtier stories. I love how the order in the text falls apart as he drifts off, drunk and doubting. It all happens so suddenly. Read the story; it's better in context. Next week: brevity, God willing.