It doesn’t look like a finger it looks like a feather of broken glass
It doesn’t look like something to eat it looks like something eaten
It doesn’t look like an empty chair it looks like an old woman
                                        searching in a heap of stones
It doesn’t look like a heap of stones it looks like an estuary where
                              the drifting filth is swept to and fro on the tide
It doesn’t look like a finger it looks like a feather with broken teeth
The spaces between the stones are made of stone
It doesn’t look like a revolver it looks like a convolvulus
It doesn’t look like a living convolvulus it looks like a dead one
KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY FRIENDS USE THEM ON
        YOUR BITCHES OR
YOURSELVES BUT KEEP THEM OFF MY FRIENDS
The faces between the stones are made of bone
It doesn’t look like an eye it looks like a bowl of rotten fruit
It doesn’t look like my mother in the garden it looks like my father
     when he came up from the sea covered in shells and tangle
It doesn’t look like a feather it looks like a finger with broken wings
It doesn’t look like the old woman’s mouth it looks like a handful
                of broken feathers or a revolver buried in cinders
The faces beneath the stones are made of stone
It doesn’t look like a broken cup it looks like a cut lip
It doesn’t look like yours it looks like mine
BUT IT IS YOURS NOW
SOON IT WILL LOOK LIKE YOURS
AND ANYTHING YOU SEE WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU

-Hugh Sykes Davies, 1938

 In the stump of the old tree, where the heart has rotted out, there is a hole the length of a man’s arm, and a dank pool at the bottom of it where the rain gathers, and the old leaves turn into lacy skeletons. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees, where the hearts have rotted out, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and dank pools at the bottom where the rain gathers and old leaves turn to lace, and the beak of a dead bird gapes like a trap. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees with rotten hearts, where the rain gathers and the laced leaves and the dead bird like a trap, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and in every crevice of the rotten wood grow weasel’s eyes like molluscs, their lids open and shut with the tide. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the rain gathers and the trapped leaves and the beak and the laced weasel’s eyes, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and at the bottom a sodden bible written in the language of rooks. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are holes the length of a man’s arm where the weasels are trapped and the letters of the rook language are laced on the sodden leaves, and at the bottom there is a man’s arm. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are deep holes and dank pools where the rain gathers, and if you ever put your hand down to see, you can wipe it in the sharp grass till it bleeds, but you’ll never want to eat with it again.

-Hugh Sykes Davies, 1936

If the father’s bankrupt, and the sons fail,
   Blaming it on their own bad start,
Say the father should have gone to gaol,
   Forgetting their grandfather’s part.

So with all centuries of blame
   Fathers by their children cursed,
Say that all the trouble came
   From Eve and Adam first.

Both wrong: are wronged. But we are wronged
      the most.
   Their life was deep, but only deep, immersed.
We fathom further, deep enough to boast
   We know a worse beneath our father’s worst.

-Hugh Sykes Davies, 1930

sorry for not posting much lately, think I’ll give tumblr/the internet in general a miss until I sort myself out in terms of uni assignments. Don’t quite want to get up in the morning right now as it is.

atramentum:

Meanest Book Reviews

1.Of Henry James, Mark Twain said, “Once you’ve put one of his books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.”

2. In response to reading Benito Mussolini’s “The Cardinal’s Mistress”, Dorothy Parker said, “this is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

3. Of George Meredith, Oscar Wilde said, “as a writer he has mastered everything except language; as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story; as an artist he is everything except articulate­.”

4. “Moby Dick” was largely a dud when it was published, and most of the critics were scathing. One reviewer dismissed Melville’s magnum opus as “sheer moonstruck lunacy.”

5. “Wuthering Heights” was universally panned, and Emily Brontë read every single review before her untimely death prevented her from knowing that the book would someday be considered a masterpiece. The first review published in January 1848 by the Atlas calls it a “strange, inartistic story…[that] is inexpressibly painful.” The reviewer describes every character in the book as “hateful or thoroughly contemptible.” The Examiner dismissed it as “strange” as well as “wild, confused; disjointed, and improbable.” But Graham’s Lady Magazine really dug in: “How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”

6. Gore Vidal said of Hemingway, “What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?”

7. Randall Jarrell’s one sentence review of a forgettable book of poetry: “This reads like it was written on a typewriter­—by a typewriter­.”

8. H.L. Mencken managed to pan one of his closest friends, Theodore Dreiser: “An Indiana peasant, snuffling absurdly over imbecile sentimenta­lities, giving a grave ear to quackeries­, snorting and eye-rollin­g with the best of them.” He called The Great Gatsby a “glorified anecdote.”

9. At more than 2,000 pages, here’s what The New Yorker had to say about James Michner’s CHESAPEAKE: “I have two recommendations. First, don’t buy this book. Second, if you buy this book, don’t drop it on your foot.”

10. Edmund Wilson wrote: “Mr. Nabokov is in the habit of introducin­g any job of this kind which he undertakes by the announceme­nt that he is unique and incomparab­le and that everybody else who has attempted it is an oaf and ignoramus, usually with the implicatio­n that he is also a lo-class person and a ridiculous personalit­y.”

11. A favorite from Norman Mailer on J.D. Salinger’s FRANNY & ZOOEY: “The greatest mind ever to stay in prep school.”

12. Alexander Woollcott once reviewed a self-published book of poetry called “And I Shall Make Music” with: “Not on my carpet, lady.”

(Source: vintageanchorbooks)