JD_Cunningham

JD_Cunningham , 1 day ago to poetry group

One day
the Creator saw me alone,
so alone.

He made me sleep,
he made me dream
out in the fields of maize,

and he wrenched a rib out of me...

Upon waking,
in front of me
---gorgeous, naked, made of clay and corn,
scented like a mountain---

my poetry.

-- 'Awakening' by Humberto Ak'abal, trans. by Michael Bazzett
#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: C.R. Leyland)

JD_Cunningham , 2 days ago to bookstodon group

"The book didn’t want anyone to know it was there. If it were destroyed, everyone who’d survived in the story would be gone too. There would be no one left to remember the ones who had died. The balance of the world goes horribly askew when a story is confiscated; it becomes a darker, more ominous place." -- from 'The Book Censor's Library' by Bothayna Al-Essa; trans. Ranya Abdeirahman, Sawad Hussain

#WednesdayBookQuote #reading #books #translation @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 4 days ago to bookstodon group

I've been indulging myself by re-reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's 'Braiding Sweetgrass' this weekend. It's such a gift to look at the world through her eyes.

"When we braid sweetgrass, we are braiding the hair of Mother Earth, showing her our loving attention, our care for her beauty and well-being, in gratitude for all she has given us."
#CurrentlyReading #BookQuote #reading #books @bookstodon

(Photo credit: Kenny Mckeithan)

JD_Cunningham , 8 days ago to poetry group

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it’s the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay
but it’s the hollow
that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces
that make a house work
existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it work.
— Lao-tzu from ‘Taoteching: With Selected Commentaries from the Past 2,000 Years’, tr. from Chinese by Red Pine

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Guido Borelli)

JD_Cunningham , 9 days ago to bookstodon group

"Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described." -- from 'The Vulnerables' by Sigrid Nunez

#WednesdayBookQuote #BookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 15 days ago to poetry group

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
-- 'The Dust of Snow' by Robert Frost

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Sarah Yeoman)

JD_Cunningham , 21 days ago to bookstodon group

As usual, I'm late to the party, but now am about a third of the way through R.F. Kuang's 'Babel' and thoroughly enjoying the storytelling and how Kuang weaves in such things as British colonialism, the fascinating, dangerous complexities of language, the concentration of power and the fight against it, and so much more into a wonderfully re-imagined Oxford that is recognizable, yet entirely different.
#FridayReads #CurrentlyReading #books @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 25 days ago to bookstodon group

"I may be a woman but when you stare at me, I dare to stare back, resolute." -- from 'I, Mona Lisa' by Natasha Solomons

#SundaySentence #BookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 29 days ago to poetry group

I hear you call, pine tree, I hear you upon the hill, by
the silent pond
where the lotus flowers bloom, I hear you call, pine tree.
What is it you call, pine tree, when the rain falls,
when the winds
blow, and when the stars appear, what is it you call, pine
tree?
I hear you call, pine tree, but I am blind, and do not
know how to
reach you, pine tree. Who will take me to you, pine tree?
-- 'I Hear You Call, Pine Tree' by Yone Noguchi

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Vincent van Gogh)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

Suppose it’s easy to slip
into another’s green skin,
bury yourself in leaves

and wait for a breaking,
a breaking open, a breaking
out. I have, before, been

tricked into believing
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye

of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.

To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.
-- 'Sanctuary' by Ada Limón from 'The Hurting Kind'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Ivana Olbricht)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
-- 'Disillusionment of Ten O'clock' by Wallace Stevens

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Rob Regeer)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

The Wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.

Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two three.
-- 'Two Sewing' by Hazel Hall
#VerseThursday #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Kume Bryant)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

"In dreams, he could perceive the vast spider’s web of souls, the wool ball of existences interleaved in time, and he could follow a single life as one might pull on a thread, jump from one moment to another and, from the infinite heavens, even observe the forces that cause the stars to move, immense dark flows like streams of nothingness." -- from 'The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild' by Mathias Énard, trans. by Frank Wynne

#WednesdayBookQuote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

“We cut down the trees out of fear,” he continued, “but cutting down the trees releases our worst nightmares back into the atmosphere. This is a far more terrifying situation than before because now there is nowhere to hide. There is no way to run. There’s no escape.” -- from Jennifer Croft's 'The Extinction of Irena Rey'
#BookQuote #quote #reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

#BookReview Jennifer Croft's 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' is a completely off-the-wall and exhilarating novel set at the edge of the primeval forest of Białowieża which stretches across the border between Poland and Belarus.

When the book rumored to be her magnum opus is finished, a well-known Polish writer calls her eight translators together at her home to translate it as the group has done previously.

But the author disappears shortly after they arrive and things slowly, then with increasing speed, spin out of control. The falling apart of the translators' group and their relationship with the author is mirrored in problems in the forest--climate change is having an obvious impact and the Polish government is logging within this protected place.

Mirrors within mirrors, shifting group dynamics, relationships between an author and translators, the natural world at risk, the ruthlessness of creators, Croft writes about all of it here with a deep appreciation for and playfulness with language.
#reading @bookstodon

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to poetry group

I watched the turquoise pastel
melt between your fingerpads;
how later you flayed

the waxen surface back
to the sunflower patch
of a forethought, your

instrument an upturned
brush, flaked to the grain -
the fusty sugar paper buckled.

You upended everything,
always careless of things:
finest sables splayed

under their own weight,
weeks forgotten - to emerge
gunged, from the silted

floor of a chemical jamjar.
I tidied, like a verger
or prefect, purging

with the stream from the oil-
fingered tap. Stop,
you said, printing

my elbow with a rusty index,
pointing past an ancient
meal's craquelured dish

to the oyster-crust
at the edge of an unscraped palette -
chewy rainbow, blistered jewels.
-- 'A Painting' by Sarah Howe
#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Bellesouth Studio)

JD_Cunningham , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

"Many tried to describe her indescribable aura. Some said it was akin to fine filaments of strummed silver that hovered over her dark cascading hair. Others were reminded of the southern lights, brilliant streaks that hissed across her deep-sky eyes. Still others said her fingers were like holy spinnerets, that her every nimble gesture was an act of brilliant, captivating love." -- from 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft

#WednesdayBookQuote #reading #BookQuote #books @bookstodon