Love And Summer

She tried to think about all that, to see before she came to it another blackened area, a different place from last time, his way of keeping the track clear. Badgers had been here once and he had shown her their setts. It was easier not to feel a stranger to herself here, to tell herself that she had allowed a convent-child's make-belief to have its way with her, to be ashamed and know it was right to be ashamed. It was easier because everything around her made sense in a way she understood. The confusion of thoughts that did not feel her own made no sense at all.

William Trevor, Love And Summer (2009)

The Name Of The World

I doubt there were more than a dozen others at the tables around us. All men. Middle-aged, middle income, midwestern. Golfers. In this twilight they were more imagined than seen, but I felt surrounded by the practitioners of a sacred mediocrity cloistering inaccessible tortures. I don't know quite how to put it. People, men, proud of their cliches yet full of helpless poetry. Meanwhile the music whamming and bamming. The women shaking themselves almost shyly.

Denis Johnson, The Name Of The World (2000)

Lines Of Vision: Irish Writers On Art

Works of art that arrest our attention, stop us in our tracks and consume us with possibilities are often not mirrors of our lives but rather they are prisms that we subtly adjust to reflect other peoples' experiences in broken parallels to our own. We do not see our past, we see another past and, with a jolting empathy, it can cut to the core of our being, in a reflection of our lives and, sometimes, our loss.

Bernard Farrell, "A Painting and a Poem" (2014)

Andy Zipf

Ray Bonneville

Reunion

All I knew then was that this was my country, my home, without a beginning and without an end, and that to be Jewish was fundamentally no more significant than to be born with dark hair and not with red. Foremost we were Swabians, then Germans and then Jews. How else could I feel? How could my father feel otherwise? Or my father's grandfather? We were not poor 'Pollacken' who had been persecuted by the Czar. Of course we could not and would not deny that we were 'of Jewish extraction', any more than anybody would dream of denying that my Uncle Henri, whom we had not seen for ten years, was one of the family. But this 'Jewish extraction' meant little more than that once a year, on the Day of Atonement, my mother would go to a synagogue and my father would neither smoke nor travel, not because he believed in Judaism but because he didn't want to hurt other people's feelings.

Fred Uhlman, Reunion (1971)

My Lensless Imaging

Willie Anne Wright, My Lensless Imaging / Pinhole Photographs and Photograms: 1972-2002 (2003)

The Revelers

The Poets' Wives

She knows that the greatest source of their power, a power that seems to endure, is that they have silenced the voices. And not just the voices of political dissent but also the voices of the artists - writers, composers, painters, playwrights. All of them bound to a lifetime of artistic servitude. She believes that Osip was right when he declared that in their country poetry was held in such high esteem that a poem could cost you your life. They had come to know the bitter truth of that.

David Park, The Poets' Wives (2014)

Shall We Gather At The River

He learns that language is power, in law, politics, poetry, church or state. A preacher must dominate his congregation the way some folk command animals, for man is like any other beast: sometimes you have to shout to get his ear, sometimes you must pin him down like a snake, or smack him on the nose like a disobedient mutt. But above all a preacher must speak in his own voice, forged of his own experience, for the Holy Spirit is the agent of the original, not the counterfeit, and that is why the Devil is jealous of the Almighty: the Devil is limited to imitation of what is, unable to create what is not. He is a trickster who can throw his voice but never once strikes an original note.

Peter Murphy, Shall We Gather At The River (2013)

Sean Scully: Walls Of Aran

Photographs: Sean Scully

Essay: Colm Toibin

I was moving into a world of nature governed by wind and weather, sharp and soft lines of horizon, disappearing perspectives, high skies and great banks of cloud, and a world of people governed by careful politeness, watchful slow glances, and deliberate understatement.

Colm Toibin, Sean Scully: Walls of Aran (2007)

New Town Soul

I suppose we are all hobos until God claims our souls.

Dermot Bolger, New Town Soul (2011)

Captain Blood (movie)

A God In Ruins

The war now was for him a jumble of random images that haunted his sleeping self -- the Alps in the moonlight, a propeller blade flying through the air, a face pale in the water. Well, good luck to you then. Sometimes this overwhelming stench of lilacs, at other times a sweetly held dance tune. And always at the end of the nightmare there was the inescapable end itself, the fire and the sickening hurtle of the fall to earth. In the nightmare we wake ourselves before the awful end, before the fall, but Teddy had to be woken by Nancy's shushing, by her cradle hand soothing him, and he would stare into the darkness for a long time wondering what would happen to him if she failed to wake him one night.

He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future.

Kate Atkinson, A God In Ruins (2015)

Here

TSCHITTGUSSIL.

Richard McGuire, Here (2014)

The Colloquy of the Dogs

Look you, Berganza, no one should interfere where he is not wanted, nor take upon himself a business that is in no wise his concern. Besides, you ought to know, that the advice of the poor, however good it may be, is never taken; nor should the lowly presume to offer advice to the great, who fancy they know everything. Wisdom in a poor man lies under a cloud, and cannot be seen; or if by chance it shines through it, people mistake it for folly, and treat it with contempt.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Colloquy Of The Dogs (1613)

Steve Poltz

The Art Of Racing In The Rain

The now-living zebra said nothing to me at all, but when it saw me, it began a dance, a twisting, jerky ballet which culminated with the zebra repeatedly thrusting its gelded groin into the face of an innocent Barbie doll. That made me quite angry, and I growled at the molester zebra, but it simply smiled and continued its assault, this time picking on a stuffed frog, which it mounted from behind and rode bareback, its hoof in the air like a bronc rider, yelling out, "Yee-haw! Yee-haw!"

I stalked the bastard as it abused and humiliated each of Zoe's toys with great malice. Finally, I could take no more and moved in, teeth bared for attack, to end the brutal burlesque once and for all. But before I could get the demented zebra in my fangs, it stopped dancing and stood on its hind legs before me. The it reached down with its forelegs and tore at the seam that ran down its belly. Its own seam! It ripped the seam open until it was able to reach in and tear out its own stuffing. It continued dismantling itself, seam by seam, handful by handful, until it expelled whatever demon's blood had brought it to life and was nothing more than a pile of fabric and stuffing that undulated on the floor, beating like a heart ripped from a chest, slowly, slower, and then nothing.

Garth Stein, The Art Of Racing In The Rain (2008)

Bill Kirchen

The Eye Stone

It was the first time in his life that Edgardo had slept under the same roof as a woman. Although their beds were not close, he thought he could hear her breath and heartbeat. Even when the mind is not willing, and the body is not willing either, desire awakens and sin takes over your soul. He tossed and turned under the blanket, unable to sleep. The night silence had turned into a racket. The swish of the waves along the shore had become a waterfall, and the cry of an owl had become a call of death. The faint flame of the oil lamp squashed the shadows into the floor, awakening glistening eyes and fragments of stars.

Edgardo started to pray as he had been taught to by monks when he could not sleep for love or money. However, Kallis's breath and heartbeat seemed to grow louder and dance around him. He continued to repeat his litany to chase away thoughts and images.

Roberto Tiraboschi, The Eye Stone: The First Medieval Noir About The Birth Of Venice, (2014)