Dear Reader – enjoy a lucky dip in this refreshing pool of posts, randomly selected like literary Russian roulette (but more fun and much safer). Or filter by category to take a deeper dive into specific themes. Enjoy!
Quick-growing harvests
A picture of fecundity and plenitude.
'The earth is rich with quick-growing harvests, with sugar and wheat and olives.'
Source:...
Instinct with poetry
A fine and subtle way to depict a look which appears to express more than the person looking is capable...
Ribbons blue
There are many fine details in this lovely book, and the young girl finds signals of invisible hands arranging thoughtful,...
Joining thought to thought
Thoreau is a vigorous soul and I found it refreshing that he associates vigour with connected thought. As you see...
Communing with the cosmos
Glorious moment in this splendid, human novel: an army officer camped somewhere on the steppe enjoys a moment of embracing...
The path to alchemy
The route to alchemy? There is none, there is no set path. As I understand this enigmatic injunction, we need...
Like a wound…
A stunningly original depiction of the pink streaks of dawn resembling a sky-wound.
'... as the dawn like a wound...
Brave and courageous
Xiong means ‘male’, ‘grand’, or 'having great power or influence', and is used in the word for ‘hero’. Here, combined...
Light-hearted colours
What a delightful way to describe a palette of colours: light-hearted. What hues would it include? Sky blue, dancing fuchsia,...
A star hanging in the east
This novel burns with the heat of the desert and I like this single star's fiery amplitude.
'... a single...
Doubt in an age of faith
Dante lived in an age where faith was the norm, at least in public, and doubt could land you in...
Food-rich water
Here's to hoping the future will see the ocean still full of food-rich water.
'Its dredger-bucket mouth agape...
Horse-taming Argos
Leigh Fermor echoes the hundreds of Homeric triologisms, many attributing this or that characteristic to one or another Greek city...
Roiling poetry
Written by a poet, this suggests that poems aren't written, but rather roil and form of their own volition. Having...
Feeding & reading: nuts vs apples
Thoreau's observation on the pitfalls of eating nuts. However, the upside, as far as I gather, is that nuts are...
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