Poems that I Like that were Written by James Tate

Consumed

Why should you believe in magic,
pretend an interest in astrology
or the tarot? Truth is, you are

free, and what might happen to you
today, nobody knows. And your
personality may undergo a radical

transformation in the next half
hour. So it goes. You are consumed
by your faith in justice, your

hope for a better day, the rightness
of fate, the dreams, the lies
the taunts-Nobody gets what he

wants. A dark star passes through
you on your way home from
the grocery: never again are you

the same-an experience which is
impossible to forget, impossible
to share. The longing to be pure

is over. You are the stranger
who gets stranger by the hour."
-James Tate


Memory

A little bookstore used to call to me.
Eagerly I would go to it
hungry for the news
and the sure friendship.
It never failed to provide me
with whatever I needed.
Bookstore with a donkey in its heart,
bookstore full of clouds and
sometimes lightning, showers.
Books just in from Australia,
books by madmen and giants.
Toucans would alight on my stovepipe hat
and solve mysteries with a few chosen words.
Picasso would appear in a kimono
requesting a discount, and then
laugh at his own joke.
Little bookstore with its belly
full of wisdom and confetti,
with eyebrows of wildflowers-
and customers from Denmark and Japan,
New York and California, psychics
and lawyers, clergymen and hitchhikers,
the wan, the strong, the crazy,
all needing books, needing directions,
needing a friend, or a place to sit down.
But then one day the shelves began to empty
and a hush fell over the store.
No new books arrived.
When the dying was done,
only a fragile, tattered thing remained,
and I haven't the heart to name it.

-James Tate


I'll post more as I read them and like them. Does anyone have any poet recommendations?

Love,
Jessica

This is from a really cool website that has a sorted book project. Here is the link http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php

Anyway, my brain aches. Tomorrow I am frying squash. I want to get married soon.

Not a whole lot going on with books today. I need to clean my house and get rid of some books I don't want to make room for new ones. I need money to buy books for school, but I just got a pay cut and can't pay all my bills at the moment. I owe everyone in the world money. This sucks. The older I get the more things suck and I want to get out of Athens so that I can have the opportunity to make more than 5 dollars an hour.

Do you want to see my wedding dress?

I think it is wonderful.

That's all for now...

Love,

Jessica

http://www.ala.org/ala/accreditation/lisdirb/Alphaaccred.htm

This is the list of schools I get to choose from...

PRATT BABY! I hope and wish...

1. first of all, this is my favorite statue in Budapest. You can see her all the way from the sidewalks of Pest.
2. second, this blog could be about books.
3. lastly, i will try to quote things i find wonderful/funny/and random.

I try to read as much as humanly possible. This is more difficult when school comes around. I have been reading others' blogs a lot lately and they all have interesting things to say about the book world and recommendations, etc. I will try to put what I think is interesting up here too.

Books I Have Read 2007

Dec 06

Love in the time of Cholera by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Jan 07

Tracks by: Louise Erdrich

Immortality by: Milan Kundera

If on a winter's night a traveler by: Italo Calvino

I and Thou by: Martin Buber

100 Years of Solitude by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Red and the Black by: Stendhal

The Children's Hospital by: Chris Adrian

Feb 07

The Zurau Aphorisms by: Franz Kafka

Wuthering Heights by: Emily Bronte

Shoot! by: Luigi Pirandello

The Street of Crocodiles by: Bruno Schulz

Lolita by: Vladamir Nabokov

Strange Pilgrims by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Embers by: Sandor Marai

Heart of Darkness by: Joseph Conrad

Moby-Dick by: Herman Melville

Selected Poems by: Zbigniew Herbert

March 07

Fatelessness by: Imre Kertesz

Play it as it Lays by: Joan Didion

10 Little Indians by: Sherman Alexie

Natural Novel by: Georgi Gospodinov

Laughter in the Dark by: Vladimir Nabokov

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by: E.T.A. Hoffman

The Day of the Locust by: Nathanael West

The Bingo Palace by: Louise Erdrich

Drohobycz, Drohobycz and other stories by: Henryk Grynberg

April 07

Selected Writings by: Gerard de Nerval

Kiss of the Spider Woman by: Manuel Puig

Poems Collected and New: Wistawa Szymborska

Short Cuts by: Raymond Carver

The Beet Queen by: Louise Erdrich

Istanbul by: Orhan Pamuk

The Summer Book by: Tove Jansson

The Orchid Theif by: Susan Orlean

Four Souls by: Louise Erdrich

May 07

Laughable Loves by: Milan Kundera

What is the What by: Dave Eggers

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by: Marisha Pessl

After Dark by: Haruki Murakami

Ishmael by: Daniel Quinn

June 07

Life of Pi by: Yann Martel

The Wild Sheep Chase by: Haruki Murakami

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by: Milan Kundera

The Ground Beneath her Feet by: Salman Rushdie

How we are Hungry by: Dave Eggers

Funny by: Jennifer Michael Hecht

July 07

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

The Antelope Wife by: Louise Erdrich

Hard Boiled and Hard Luck by: Banana Yoshimoto

Animal Dreams by: Barbara Kingsolver

Snow by: Orhan Pamuk

Here They Come by: Yannick Murphy

Life is Elsewhere by: Milan Kundera

The Year of Magical Thinking by: Joan Didion

Water For Elephants by: Sara Gruen

The History of Love by: Nicole Krauss

The Joke by: Milan Kundera

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by: J.K. Rowling

Man Walks into a Room by: Nicole Krauss

Invisible Cities by: Italo Calvino

Memoir of the Hawk by: James Tate

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by: Sherman Alexie

Samuel Johnson is Indignant by: Lydia Davis

What was she Thinking: Notes on a Scandal by: Zoe Heller

Anyway, I will also try to keep up with Grad school stuff through this blog.

love,

jessica