Poe Riverside edition 1897

My oldest edition of Poe's work, which includes 8 poems and 4 tales, including The Fall of the House of Usher. At some time, I'll type in the introduction to compare how Poe was viewed in 1897 to present day.

Original Resting Place of Edgar Allan Poe and Wife

Hawthorne's grave (Just because I had to!)

Although I love Poe, I wrote my college paper on Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and of course, the gorgeous Rappaccini's Daughter (not to mention dozens and dozens of other wonderful tales). I might be southern, but I am totally "Hawthorne" at heart. No other American writer has influenced me as much as Hawthorne. My novels and short stories are filled with literary allusions to his life and work.

My First Book on Poe (c) 1970

Quote

“When people die they leave behind tiny deposits, like dust or ash, littering the lives of those who have to carry on. Impossible to wipe a house clean. Memories dwelled in cobweb places behind wardrobes and between cupboards; they hide behind radiators; they urged on shelves; like slivers of shattered glass, they waited for their moment to lodge deep in any vulnerable expanse of passing skin.”

                                                  from Requiem

                                                    by Graham Joyce

                                                    (1954-2014)

Influences

Augoustos Sordinas, Bronze Age, caves, geoarchaeology, Ionian islands, Kephalonia, Mesolithic period, Neolithic period, Northwest Greece,Palaeolithic period, prehistoric research, Sidari, Stone Age, stone tools,Thesprotia

He drove a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He was old by the time I met him, but still driven to teach. He was distinguished and kind and invited me to go on one of his personal field trips. He told me that I wrote the most interesting essays. (Laughing and maybe one day I'll post the one he liked the most.) Today I was reading all my papers from his classes and I knew I would find him online somewhere. He died many years ago, but his work is still used through-out the Anthropology community. He knew everyone and traveled everywhere.  He was not only my teacher but my advisor. And a huge influence. I was always interested in caves, mainly because I feared them.  As a young girl I had been in several, some very primitive and wet and dark and haunting and I told him about them. In turn, he showed our class a great many personal slides of caves that he had visited all over the world. Caves fascinated me in a way that they fascinated him, the idea of people living in them or using them for magical purposes. I was very interested in how prehistoric people thought about magic, primitive religions, personal possessions, the idea of sympathetic magic and if primitive cultures thought about that in the same way that modern people did. We used to talk about that a lot and I still think about those conversations, I still know that if I had gone that way in life, I would have focused on sympathetic magic, that would have been my thing, because I had seen it in so many of his slides and I felt a deep connection to it.

Beautiful Monsters

Penny Dreadful is a beautiful, Gothic masterpiece. Until it appeared, I forgot how much I loved good vampire fiction, so I am reading as much of it as I can this year, or books with faeries rooted in the original folklore. After all, fairies, vampires, angels, they are all pretty much the same thing. Monsters. The Uncanny. And yes, The Dead. It's no secret that I prefer Monsters to the serial killer folks out there. Serial killers and related murderers are not really evil in the sense of Monster evil, they are part of human psychopathology, which is grounded in mental disease. Monsters, on the other hand, are not human. They reflect the shadow world of our fears. It's a whole new ball game.

On Penny Dreadful, there was a character named Fenton, a Renfield-like character, serving his Master, the powerful Vampire/Dark God. I found Fenton absolutely gorgeous, and the casting of Olly Alexander worked perfectly. Isn't he a beautiful Monster? Of course, he is.  I was so disappointed when he died. I believe he could have had a much longer character arc.

There is something appealing to me about the Fentons of dark fiction, the young, vulnerable, partly human Monsters who are caught between worlds. You ache for them, understand them, in a way you cannot let yourself care for the others. You know they are doomed, too, which makes it worse. I am sure there is a whole Jungian element to loving these beautiful, young, carefree Monsters whose fates are sealed the moment they are chosen. Maybe it's the fact that most of these Monsters are chosen and do not really choose. Maybe it is their youth and vulnerability. I don't know. Must think about it.

Mother's Daylily

Mother's Day Lily

Pink Rose Mallow

Pink Rose Mallow, old fashioned plant

Blue Lovers

Somehow this painting reminds me of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. It's Marc Chagall's Blue Lovers.

Your Kiss, your Kiss
it bruised my bones.
Your arms, your arms,
they turned me Cold.
And now I'm Blue 
as a starry night.
But my eyes glow
Red with a fierce delight.
Kiss me, Kiss me,
I bite my tongue.
Hold me, Hold me,
forever young.
                   Madly Jane 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black: Some thoughts and a book recommendation

I just finished this book and I am going to have a hard time escaping its world for the “work and wonder” of my own work-in-progress. I have read a lot of good books this year, but this is one of those rare books that will stay with me for a long time, and I am likely to reread it dozens and dozens of times.  I bought this book last year when it came out for several reasons (1) I loved the cover art (2) it was a vampire story where the vampires are not the good guys (3) it was written in third person viewpoint, which is my favorite point of view in a novel  (4) I had read that the heroine had no super powers and was not a chosen one, in other words, she was just a normal girl going to school and parties  (5) I had read that there was a love story but not the usual one (6) It had modern Goth sensibilities (7) People die and each of the chapters had a quote about Death (8) It was set in a present time where vampirism had spread all over the world, but not so much that society could not function. (9) It had a new twist on the vampire mythology. I wish I could say that I bought it because I was a Holly Black fan, but honestly, I had never read any of her works, though I owned two titles by her, Tithe and Ironside.  I may be late to Holly Black's work, but I am now a die-hard fan and yes, I had to write that! (Note: I had read, long ago, a short story about a Coldtown on the Internet. This was years and years ago so I had an idea of what the vampirism might be like.)



First I want to talk about craft and then I will tell you what I loved about this book, because considering the fact that I am not able to sit long due to a back injury (am sitting now) I must truly love this book and want to talk about it. Meaning people, I recommend it to everyone. Yes, everyone.  I want to say there are too many YA books written in first person point of view lately. What happens is the story becomes very claustrophobic and involves a narrative that adds more than it should in certain elements of the story. I think a lot of YA has always been first person, however, I've read some wonderful third person narratives, especially this book.  The way viewpoint is handled in this book is an art form.  How flashbacks are handled is another wonderful aspect of this novel. I am not a fan of flashbacks of any kind, but in this book, I loved them and they were also placed and used in the narrative to increase tension. Very clever. The plot was genius. This was basically a road trip, but it's unlike any road trip I have read recently and is very nuanced.

The beauty of this story is about character and how is developed. I loved Tana, and from the very beginning, her character is developed by showing, not by telling and she is bound to that character. In fact, it is Tana's core personality that moves the entire action of the story. It is so clever, so subtle, and yet, right there for everyone to see. What happens in the beginning of the book is why readers get that perfect ending.

Gavriel was a bit of a surprise for me.  He an anti-hero with a big heart. I never expected to like him or love him, and I love him. He's a wonderful, complex, and interesting character who is so wise, and from the moment he meets Tana and she offers to help him, his life and future are changed, though we as readers can't completely understand the depth of that change without experiencing the story.

There are many other characters in this book and all of them are tightly defined. The worldbuilding, the Coldtowns, the mythology of the vampire, the technology in Coldtown, the family relationships, all these elements make this book a masterpiece in my mind.

It's the best book of 2013 for me, and so far, it's my favorite read of 2014. I honestly don't think I will read another book that makes me feel like this one.

It's a PERFECT BOOK.
 

Some days are yellow

Elena Shlegel

Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything. Madly Jane

Quote

All cities are mad, but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.

Where the Blue Begins, Christopher Morley

The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman

Well, Dear Readers, I am so impressed with The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman that I am going to write a series of blog posts about the book and related fairy tales. This is my favorite YA read of 2014. But we will see. 

Mother Church's garden

One of the first flowers I came to love was the petunia. My grandmother, whom everyone called Mother Church, grew them along with Old Maids, Morning glories, and hollyhocks. As soon as I finish my "heart of the rose" painting, I am doing one of my grandmother's house with the flowers she loved to grow. That painting will be more of my style and what work I am doing since it's a southern landscape and has folk art motifs.

Cinderella (1876)

Cinderella 1876, colour wood-engraving after W Gunstan

Originally done by Kronheim and Company for Aunt Louisa's London Toy Book, 1876, design by W. Gunstan. Source: The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie.

Old Blush, a china rose

Old Blush, May 2014, from my garden

Old Blush, read here, is a very old rose. The one I love is the very old china that only blooms once or twice a year, the first time is very beautiful and in May. It's a briar rose that reminds me of Edward Burne-Jones and the many roses in his paintings. This is one plant and it spans over twenty feet in every direction. I asked John today if we could order a couple more. He looked puzzled, probably thinking I was insane, since the garden is getting crowded. But I love the wildness of this plant, it's unruly nature, and the fact that it really doesn't need me. That's my kind of garden. One of the plants that will go in my new garden journal.

Gardening and philosophy of life

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,

Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,

As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,

Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows;

And all rare blossoms from every clime

Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

from The Sensitive Plant by Percy B Shelley

Some of the most important things I have learned about life have been discovered in my garden. The first lesson you learn is how nature is full of contradictions, both literally

and metaphorically. At first you are surrounded by all this beauty and mystery, and then those senses are followed by the hard work and dangers, the losses you experience, some so quick you are shocked senseless. You begin to understand that while the world is very big, it is also very small, that one moment it is beautiful and the next moment it's the ugly monster. You try to comprehend that while you are a part of nature, it is totally apart from you. No one has written about this so well as Percy Shelley in his poem, The Sensitive Plant. The poem spells out all the beauty and love of a garden, then all the horrors of what a garden is, and then our feeble hopes as human beings in that garden. It is a poem about contradictions. I've come to understand one thing only, that sometimes I have no answers, no solutions, no theory.

Quote

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”

—	William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury

Coming In From Outside

Coming In From Outside

I cannot find my way through the house, 
clothes, dishes, perfect words,
all hidden behind some cobweb. 
The rooms are uncanny, 
and I feel like an illegal immigrant, 
lost in an language I have never heard. 
Some door shuts, noise from a TV 
floats through the halls. 
I fall into bed and stare at nothing, 
my heart beating, my feet cool and bare,
with a single blade of grass between two toes. 

Who knows what I have left outside?