ginguzzler

[ginguzzler]

If you enjoy fanfiction, I would also recommend And This, Your Living Kiss by opal-bullets! It's technically Supernatural fic, but totally divorced from canon; no prior knowledge necessary. Get some Poetry 101 in the guise of reading about a famous poet secretly auditing a poetry class

what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds

I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.

I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)

The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)

The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)

A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )

Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)

Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems

The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.

But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:

anything by Sara Teasdale

Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver

Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti

Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr

Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)

Crush by Richard Siken

Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Selected Poems by Walt Whitman

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Collected Poems by Vasko Popa

Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,

Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef

As for individual poems:

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib

"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros

"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky

“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail

"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin

“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón

“The Flea” by John Donne

"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland

“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker

"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside

“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio

“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver

"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott

“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska

"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy

“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris

"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer

"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje

"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis

"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)

"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz

"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye

"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman

"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah

"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller

"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May

"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:

Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver

"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca

"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky

"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan

#recommendations #poetry #supernatural

[ginguzzler]

Absolutely obsessed with the contrast between the smoothness of the animation and the rapid, jerky quality of the page numbers and tick marks to the side. Like, that's the foundation of the magic there, that's the engine underneath the hood of the car, that's Kahl working through the logistics of timing and weight to make this look real. Wow.

I took a traditional animation class a couple years back and it's those marks that stay with me; the numbers and tick marks are the bread and butter of making this shit work

ᴛʜᴇ ᴀʀᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴍɪʟᴛ ᴋᴀʜʟ - ᴘᴇɴᴄɪʟ ᴛᴇꜱᴛꜱ

#Animation #Disney #Milt Kahl #Animation test #Pencil test #Peter Pan #Alice in Wonderland #101 Dalmations #The Aristocats #Sleeping Beauty #These are all incredible but bouncing giggling Alice has to be my favorite #Would love to see the X-sheets for these

[ginguzzler]

top tier powerpoint presentation

#pride and prejudice #powerpoint #tiktok

[ginguzzler]

love Ao3 and love a well-put-together survey! legitimately had fun filling this one out

The AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 has arrived!

This project is an independent survey (not affiliated with AO3) which seeks to research the demographics and behaviours of AO3 users. The survey will take about 10-15 minutes to complete, will be open until 1 February, and can be found at https://forms.gle/2kt5J17ipzcAbnFY9

We are hoping to survey as large a group of users as possible, so we really appreciate anyone who shares the survey, whether by reblogging this post or sharing posts on other social media.

If you have any questions for us, we have FAQs on Tumblr or on AO3 which will be updated as the project progresses. And of course, you can follow us on Tumblr or AO3 if you want to see the survey results!

#ao3 #survey

[ginguzzler]

I think one of the big strengths of fanfiction as a medium is that it can, on average, assume the reader has a way higher degree of familiarity with canon than like…canon can. If you’re in the Star Wars AO3 tag you probably like Star Wars enough to remember more things about it than the average Star Wars-enjoying-ten-year-old. Which makes it way easier for fanwriter a to get to the juicy stuff and really engage with the worldbuilding or minor characters without having to spell out like. Who Wedge Antilles is for everyone who forgot or never noticed him in the first place. You could write a book about Wedge in the old EU because EU readers could also be assumed to be serious fans, but you can’t make a new canon Disney+ show about him. Those cost money to make and are intended for a broader audience.

And all this means that like. A good fic writer can and often will surpass canon when it comes to like. Thematic resonance and stuff, because they can really dig into something. Star Trek 2009 gave Kirk a new, more generic tragic backstory because it couldn’t expect the average moviegoer to be familiar with Kirk’s old, way more interesting tragic backstory. (Frankly, I’m not sure jj abrams knew about TOS Kirk’s backstory) whereas I have read a LOT of well-written, interesting, deeply resonant fanfic examinations of Tarsus IV, and what it means for Kirk’s character that he’s a genocide survivor. Star Trek 2009 answers the question “why did Kirk cheat on the kobayashi maru?” With “‘cause his dad crashed a spaceship when he was a baby.” A close examination of TOS canon implies the answer is “because he lived through a real-life Kobayashi that did have a win option, but which wasn’t taken.” BUT—and this is significant—even the TOS canon movies can’t really assume knowledge of the full TOS tv show, so that implication is never examined or made explicit. Instead it’s fanfic (and maybe spin off novels? Idk I’ve only read 2 trek books, if there’s one out there that covers this that would be really cool) where we get dives into that thread, where Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking because he can look a testing board in the eye and say “I’ve seen what happens when someone is entrenched in this kind of thinking, and I cannot let it happen to me. I understand the lesson, but it’s not hypothetical anymore and it never will be. I did what I had to do.” And that’s interesting! That’s meaningful! That can’t happen in a summer blockbuster. But it can happen in fic, easily, and that’s a strength of fic, I think.

[ginguzzler]

My favorite kind of superhero comic. Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah, everyone, from these two jerks! I’m posting this a little early this year. Line art by the amazing Ro Stein & Ted Brandt, and colour art by @deecunniffe. 

I want to point out what a technical achievement this story is on the art side. There’s a real joy to creating a whole story in eight panels, but this? This is some magic. We introduce four new characters. In panel 5, SIX PEOPLE are talking. SIX. In the world of comics, that’s almost un-doable. 

Yet Ro and Ted arranged everything so the conversations flow and are sensibly grouped, all the “acting” is fantastic, and then Dee laid on top these beautiful, almost fairytale colours – look at the subtle work, the blush in Henry’s cheeks, Frank’s five o-clock shadow, the shine of the wine bottle’s glass surface, the light texturing in the backgrounds… and of course the snow! This is some first-class illustration work on an incredibly hard script. (I fear Ro and Ted always get me at my worst – my very formalist script for them in the 24 Panels anthology was no cakewalk either. (The problem is, they’re just so damn good at it… check out their work on the Image comic Crowded!)

As always, if you like what we do in Hells Kitchen Movie Club, consider donating a little to a veteran’s charity. 

(I also have a thriller novel I’m crowdfunding, please check it out, we are more than halfway there. The book is all written…)

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // Hanukkah // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

#Hells Kitchen Movie Club #Webcomic #hanukkah

[ginguzzler]

[ginguzzler]

I made this a long time ago and was very nervous about posting it to Tumblr. I can’t really think of a good caption~ everything I wanted to say is in the little blurb at the beginning. 

‘God of Arepo’ Fan-made graphic novel 

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Read the Original Story Here

#art #comics #couldn't not reblog this #the original story made me cry and so did this #god of arepo

[ginguzzler]

Don’t think I ever posted this on tumblr. Inspired by Blends, a coffee shop au for Sirius & Remus. The fic is told from Remus’ POV, but I kept thinking about how this scene in particular looked to Sirius

#My Art #Harry Potter #Fic #Sirius Black #Remus Lupin #Sirius Remus #Comic #God this is old #Blends #Fellas is it gay if the new barista steals your cig opens up to you and then gently rests his head against your knee #As if you're the only anchor he has in a world that is constantly changing

[ginguzzler]

Decided to log back in on a lark and was pleasantly surprised by some of the traffic on my older art pieces. Idk if any of y’all are following me, but if you are: thanks! I kinda like the vibe of tumblr now that everyone has left the building

[ginguzzler]

Crawling out of my cave to share some fanart of Cinderwings, a truly exquisite Destiel retelling of Cinderella by bendingsignpost. Don’t like Supernatural? That’s okay, ya don’t need to, ya dingus! It’s a standalone fairy tale romance that will shatter your soul like a beautiful stained glass window. The world-building is top-notch - the second I read about the devil’s traps embroidered into royal clothing, I knew I had to draw it.

This account is basically defunct, but you can find my art on Instagram and my narrative critique/obsessive rewatch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on twitter - both @genemang

#My Art #Supernatural #Destiel #fanart #fanfic #If you like this work I highly recommend his entire library because goddamn #Destiel phone sex operator AU? Check #Sherlock Phantom of the Opera AU? Check #Detroit: Become Human awkward navigation of domestic romance and sex? Checkity check check check #Beautiful #Dean is super head over heels in the Cinderwings fic though which is so sweet I had to have all my teeth removed and replaced with dentures

[ginguzzler]

Another article! This one from a few months ago. I don’t talk a lot about being asexual, but this was one of those pieces I just couldn’t not write. And a few people have let me know that reading it has meant something to them, so maybe it’ll speak to some of you, too! It’s a little sexy, but should be sfw. Do your worst, tumblr

#Asexuality #asexual #Rocky Horror Picture Show #Writing #writing opportunities

[ginguzzler]

I’ve been pretty quiet on the tumblr front for some time, so here’s some big news: I wrote an article for Anime Feminist! They specialize in feminist critique of manga and anime, as well as boosting under-represented perspectives. They were also kind enough to let me translate some of my excitement about the differences between the book and movie versions of Howl’s Moving Castle into words. Sophie’s character changes pretty dramatically between the two tellings, but one thing is very consistent: insecurity. And damn, if that ain’t relatable. So please check it out! And if you like it, check out some of the other articles on their site. If you’re looking to get paid to write, look at their submission requirements and see if it’s a good fit! I had an absolutely lovely experience with them.

#howl's moving castle #Anime Feminist #AniFem #hayao miyazaki #Feminism #feminist critique #writing #writing opportunities #paid

[ginguzzler]

dnd item: an enchanted hot tub that compels its occupants to confront each other over any grievance they have been holding onto

it’s called a j’accusi

#Reblog #pfffff #puns #yes hello I'm technically still alive

[ginguzzler]

This one was a little bit more challenging to do than I thought it would be – and that was mostly in all the detail (RIP) ,as well as figuring out ways to adapt a Klimt-esque look to Howl. It was really tempting to put him in his pink jacket since it lends itself to rectangular form so well. However I just had to go and make things difficult for myself… because I love his transformed version!

Based on Klimts ‘The Kiss’ (1907-1908)

#Art #Inspiration #For later #Howl's Moving Castle #Klimt #The Kiss

[ginguzzler]

I’ve brought a precious gift for you too. This slave! Especially bought for you. He has the guile of a wolf and the agility of a cheetah. He will serve you in every way possible.

#Reblog #Gifs #Movie #Umm??? #Can I have more information please #Inspiration #Of course this is the first thing I post after like two months of nothing

[ginguzzler]

some really beautiful african architecture because honestly this site is so western-centric

mako

unknown

cameroon

burkina faso

mali

Ndebele

burkina faso

please add more if you can!

#Reblog #Photos #Architecture #African Architecture #Reference #Inspiration #mako #cameroon #burkina faso #mali #Ndebele #Lalibela Ethiopia #Great Temple of Ramesses II #Abu Simbel Egypt #Nubian Pyramids #Stone Town #Bibliotheca Alexandrina #Bosjes Chapel #Gando School #Dyeji Building #For later