#rebecca lindenberg

[firstfullmoon]

Rebecca Lindenberg, “The Splendid Body”

#do not distract it from its purpose which is to feel everything it can find ! #w #poetry #rebecca lindenberg #suppose the body did this to us

[apoemaday]

Poetic Subjects

by Rebecca Lindenberg

The capital city. Arrowroot. Water-bur. Colts. Hail. Bamboo grass. The round-leaved violet. Club moss. Water oats. Flat river-boats. The mandarin duck.                         — The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon

The sky. And the sky above that. The exchange of ice between mouths. Other people's poems. My friend says we never write about anything we can get to the bottom of. For him, this is a place arbored with locust trees. For me, it's a language for which I haven't quite found the language yet. The dewy smell of a new-cut pear. Bacon chowder flecked with thyme. Roasted duck skin ashine with plum jam. Scorpion peppers. Clothes on a line. A smell of rain battering the rosemary bush. The Book Cliffs. Most forms of banditry. Weathered barns. Dr. Peebles. The Woman's Tonic, it says on the side, in old white paint. The clink of someone putting away dishes in another room. The mechanical bull at the cowboy bar in West Salt Lake. The girls ride it wearing just bikinis and cowboy hats. I lean over to my friend and say, I would worry about catching something. And he leans back to say, That's really the thing you'd worry about? We knock the bottom of our bottles together. How they talk in old movies, like, Now listen here. Just because you can swing a bat doesn't mean you can play ball. Or, I'll be your hot cross if you'll be my bun. Well, anyway, you know what I mean. Somewhere between the sayable and the unsayable, poetry runs. Antidote to the river of forgetting. Like a rosary hung from a certain rearview mirror. Like the infinite rasp of gravel under the wheel of a departing car.  Gerard Manley Hopkins's last words were I'm so happy, I'm so happy. Oscar Wilde took one look at the crackling wallpaper in his Paris flat, then at his friends gathered around and said, One or the other of us has got to go. Wittgenstein said simply, Tell all my friends, I've had a wonderful life.

#poetry #rebecca lindenberg #poetic subjects #a personal favorite

[lillyli-74]

Hush, hush, heart-monster.

~Rebecca Lindenberg

#rebecca lindenberg

[derangedrhythms]

You give me flowers resembling moths' wings.

Rebecca Lindenberg, Love, An Index; from 'Catalogue of Ephemera'

#rebecca lindenberg #love an index #catalogue of ephemera #poetry #excerpts #moth

[kitchen-light]

You give me an apartment full of morning smells - toasted bagel and black coffee and the freckled lilies in the vase on the windowsill. You give me 24-across.

Rebecca Lindenberg, from her poem ‘Catalogue of Ephemera’, (from the collection “Love, An Index”, McSweeney’s, 2012

#rebecca lindenberg #quotes #poetry #words #found* #on love

[potatoesandsunshine]

#poetry #rebecca lindenberg #sorry for the bad screenshot but. ouaghhh #i can say i am not sorry. i sing.

[ashtrayfloors]

Fragment, I am a fragment of us. I am a fragment composed              of fragments. Mosaic, pastiche, ruin. Everyday              consciousness proposes lightbulb, ropeswing, teapot,              David Bowie, your sweater on, your sweater off, tomatillo,              not dissociated but associated. Parts suggesting              the whole they long to be gathered into. Frank O’Hara, superior poet and personist. I cannot pick up              the telephone and call you, so I write you poems. 

—Rebecca Lindenberg, from “Love, an Index”

#quotations #poetry #rebecca lindenberg #list #love #fragments #i cannot pick up / the telephone and call you #so i write you poems #dear you

[reicartwright]

where a story stops before it ends

#rebecca lindenberg

[blackberryjambaby]

A McSweeney’s Books Q&A with Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love, an Index

#rj speaks #is this grief? #rebecca lindenberg

[hautlesmasques]

"The mask that burns like a violin, the mask that sings only dead languages, that loves the destruction of being put on. The mask that sighs like a woman even though a woman wears it. The mask beaded with freshwater pearls, with seeds. The plumed mask, the mask with a sutured mouth, a moonface, with a healed gash that means harvest. A glower that hides wanting. A grotesque pucker. Here’s a beaked mask, a braided mask, here’s a mask without eyes, a mask that looks like a mask but isn’t—please don’t try to unribbon it. The mask that snows coins, the mask full of wasps. Lace mask to net escaping thoughts. Pass me the rouged mask, the one made of sheet music. Or the jackal mask, the hide-bound mask that renders lovers identical with night."

Rebecca Lindenberg, Carnival (Love, an Index)

#Rebecca Lindenberg #poetry

[cosmicodysseys]

I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you “have something to say.” I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say. Poetry allows us to hold many related tangential notions in very close orbit around each other at the same time. The “unsayable” thing at the center of the poem becomes visible to the poet and reader in the same way that dark matter becomes visible to the astrophysicist. You can’t see it, but by measure of its effect on the visible, it can become so precise a silhouette you can almost know it.

#rebecca lindenberg #why write poetry?

[apoemaday]

Catalogue of Ephemera

by Rebecca Lindenberg

You give me flowers resembling Chinese lanterns. You give me hale, for yellow. You give me vex.

You give me lemons softened in brine and you give me cuttlefish ink. You give me all 463 stairs of Brunelleschi’s dome.

You give me seduction and you let me give it back to you. You give me you. You give me an apartment full of morning smells—toasted bagel and black coffee and the freckled lilies in the vase on the windowsill. You give me 24-across.

You give me flowers resembling moths’ wings.

You give me the first bird of morning alighting on a wire. You give me the sidewalk café with plastic furniture and the boys with their feet on the chairs. You give me the swoop of homemade kites in the park on Sunday. You give me afternoon-colored beer with lemons in it.

You give me D.H. Lawrence, and he gives me pomegranates and sorb-apples.

You give me the loose tooth of California, the broken jaw of New York City. You give me the blue sky of Wyoming, and the blue wind through it.

You give me an ancient city where the language is a secret everyone is keeping.

You give me a t-shirt that says all you gave me was this t-shirt. You give me pictures with yourself cut out.

You give me lime blossoms, but not for what they symbolize.

You give me yes. You give me no.

You give me midnight apples in a car with the windows down. You give me the flashbulbs of an electrical storm. You give me thunder and the suddenly green underbellies of clouds.

You give me the careening of trains. You give me the scent of bruised mint.

You give me the smell of black hair, of blond hair.

You give me Apollo and Daphne, Pan and Syrinx. You give me Echo.

You give me hyacinths and narcissus. You give me foxgloves and soft fists of peony.

You give me the filthy carpet of an East Village apartment. You give me seeming not to notice.

You give me an unfinished argument, begun on the Manhattan-bound F train. You give me paintings of women with their eyes closed. You give me grief, and how to grieve.

#poetry #rebecca lindenberg #catalogue of ephemera #a personal favorite

[havingapoemwithyou]

the splendid body by Rebecca Lindenberg

#Rebecca Lindenberg #poetry #poem

[derangedrhythms]

[…] it was thought that when you die, your soul flutters as a moth from your open throat.

Rebecca Lindenberg, Love, An Index; from ‘Love, An Index’

#rebecca lindenberg #love an index #poetry #fragments #death #moth

[poemsforthesehours]

From Rebecca Lindenberg's book, Love: An Index (@mcsweeneys).

#poems #poems on tumblr #poets on tumblr #poetry books #poetry #poem #rebecca lindenberg

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of february

avery r. young peestain

claudine toutoungi future perfect

david rivard bewitched playground: "not guilty"

brian kim stefans the future is one of place

lisa gill post-traumatic rainstorm

clare pollard pinocchios

rebecca lindenberg love, an index: "catalogue of ephemera"

etel adnan the arab apocalypse: "xxxvi"

stanley moss god breaketh not all men's hearts alike: "a blind fisherman"

robert browning an epistle containing the strange medical experience of karshish, the arab physician

tom sleigh beirut tank

khaled mattawa ismailia eclipse: "date palm trinity"

mark levine unemployment (3)

lucia cherciu butter, olive oil, flour

reginald shepherd fata morgana: "you, therefore"

john updike claremont hotel, southwest harbour, maine

bruce smith the other lover: "february sky"

johnny cash forever words: the unknown poems: "don't make a movie about me"

eamon grennan what light there is & other poems: "jewel box"

eduardo c. corral in colorado my father scoured and stacked dishes

thomas mccarthy the beginning of colour

divya victor curb: "blood / soil"

henneh kyereh kwaku in praise

joanna fuhrman to a new era: "lavender"

rosemary catacalos sight unseen

sam willetts digging

megan fernandes winter

jaswinder bolina the plague on tv

juan felipe herrera notes on the assemblage: "almost livin' almost dyin'"

kofi

#tbr #tbr list #february #poem #poems #poetry #poet #poets #avery r young #peestain #avery r. young #claudine toutoungi #future perfect #brian kim stefans #the future is one of place #david rivard #not guilty #bewitched playground #lisa gill #post-traumatic rainstorm #clare pollard #pinocchios #juan felipe herrera #almost livin almost dyin #almost livin' almost dyin' #notes on the assemblage #johnny cash #don't make a movie about me #forever words #forever words: the unknown poems