Barbed Lyre: perfection is itself the most perfect lie

descensus Averno facilis est

Thursday, May 14, 2015

perfection is itself the most perfect lie

via

Posted by Moira Russell at 7:21:00 AM

Labels: writing

Newer Post Older Post Home

About Me

Moira Russell: Seattle, Washington, United States

View my complete profile

legend

The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

reading

ongoing

2016 booklist
2015 booklist
Books read in 2014 - Tumblr
2013 booklist
Books read in 2012 - Pinterest
Books read in 2011 - Pinterest
2010 50 new books challenge
2009 50 new books challenge

Blog Archive

► 2016 (114)
- ► December (5)
- ► November (9)
- ► October (3)
- ► September (6)
- ► August (12)
- ► July (16)
- ► June (9)
- ► May (7)
- ► April (14)
- ► March (11)
- ► February (12)
- ► January (10)

▼ 2015 (499)
- ► December (10)
- ► November (21)
- ► October (12)
- ► September (27)
- ► August (19)
- ► July (41)
- ► June (49)
- ▼ May (70)
- ► April (65)
- ► March (77)
- ► February (51)
- ► January (57)

► 2014 (448)
- ► December (38)
- ► November (42)
- ► October (22)
- ► September (43)
- ► August (46)
- ► July (35)
- ► June (29)
- ► May (62)
- ► April (49)
- ► March (11)
- ► February (26)
- ► January (45)

► 2013 (653)
- ► December (99)
- ► November (85)
- ► October (95)
- ► September (80)
- ► August (49)
- ► July (63)
- ► June (32)
- ► May (65)
- ► April (39)
- ► March (15)
- ► February (17)
- ► January (14)

► 2012 (15)
- ► December (3)
- ► July (8)
- ► June (4)

► 2011 (1)
- ► April (1)

► 2010 (13)
- ► February (5)
- ► January (8)

► 2009 (3)
- ► December (1)
- ► August (2)

Parue -- nec inuideo -- sine me, liber, ibis in urbem:
Little book, go without me – I don’t begrudge it – to the city.
ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo!
Ah, alas, that your master’s not allowed to go!

— Ovid, Tristia, I.i, tr A.S. Kline

Search This Blog

listening

offworld

Flickr
G+
Last.fm
Librarything
Twitter

credo

"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." -- Henry James

Labels

music (285) books (221) quotes (156) poetry (103) writing (94) what I'm reading (81) reading (51) musical therapy (39) seattle (39) women writers (37) reading wednesday (35) women (30) web two dot oh (29) feminism (28) jane austen (27) readsday (27) mentally interesting (24) virginia woolf (24) art (18) sexism (17) addiction (16) book covers (15) lou reed (15) reading: it's what I do (15) 2013 books read (14) sylvia plath (14) 2014 books read (13) 2015 books read (13) commonplace book (13) 2016 books read (12) alcoholism (12) anne carson (12) dead poets society (12) depression (12) emily dickinson (12) the tim and moira show (12) movies (11) reading is my superpower (11) sleater-kinney (11) music goddess (10) sobriety (10) wishlist (10) dorothy sayers (9) fun with metrics (9) live (9) TV (8) anna karenina (8) best band ever (8) charlotte bronte (8) gpoy (8) hermione lee (8) shakespeare (8) television (8) tumblr (8) ancient world (7) blues (7) charlotte (7) classical music (7) elliott bay (7) manuscripts (7) margaret atwood (7) my dead literary boyfriends (7) my girls (7) my reviews (7) paintings (7) seamus heaney (7) ursula k le guin (7) van gogh (7) actually you mean grammar *fascist* (6) chronic illness (6) corporeality fucking sucks (6) crushing penury (6) edith wharton (6) f. scott fitzgerald (6) flannery o'connor (6) generation exed out (6) george eliot (6) great covers (6) homer (6) kate zambreno (6) links (6) mourning (6) oh tumblr (6) personal (6) persuasion (6) photographs (6) pride & prejudice (6) recovery (6) suicide (6) terry pratchett (6) book reviews (5) classics (5) david bowie (5) dead writers (5) dessa (5) dfw (5) edgar allan poe (5) elaine migraine (5) emily (5) gentrification (5) grief (5) hiatus (5) john keats (5) kristin hersh (5) last.fm (5) librarything (5) my girl (5) my neighbourhood (5) oscar wilde (5) pancreatitis (5) reviews (5) sappho (5) shirley jackson (5) anton chekhov (4) badreads (4) band of my heart (4) booklog (4) charms to soothe the savage breast (4) cooking (4) emily bronte (4) film (4) food (4) franz wright (4) goodreads (4) grammar dominatrix (4) jason molina (4) mansfield park (4) nin (4) nine inch nails (4) nirvana (4) odyssey (4) penelope fitzgerald (4) pj harvey (4) rebecca solnit (4) sarah connor chronicles (4) tana french (4) ted hughes (4) the brontes (4) the great gatsby (4) things what are awesome (4) will think for food (4) writers (4) year zero (4) a.s. byatt (3) alice munro (3) ancient greece (3) andrew bird (3) anne (3) beauty (3) bipolar disorder (3) bipolar ii (3) bitterness (3) blogging (3) blue (3) brody dalle (3) caitlin r. kiernan (3) cats (3) covers (3) edna st vincent millay (3) elizabeth bowen (3) forgiveness (3) fyodor dostoevsky (3) in lieu of actual content (3) jane eyre (3) jenny diski (3) jo baker (3) john le carre (3) kate beaton (3) katherine mansfield (3) keats (3) kurt cobain (3) latin (3) lauryn hill (3) leonard cohen (3) lev grossman (3) loss (3) mary beard (3) mary shelley (3) much ado about nothing (3) odysseus (3) racism (3) roma (3) sense & sensibility (3) tennessee williams (3) the bell jar (3) the secret history (3) thomas mann (3) unread books challenge 2013 (3) urban life (3) -30- (2) 2012 books read (2) Der Zauberberg (2) Dwight Garner (2) Kazuo Ishiguro (2) Louise Glück (2) New York Times Book Review (2) Roberto Bolaño (2) adrienne rich (2) alan lew (2) alcohol (2) alex garland (2) anais nin (2) ane brun (2) angela carter (2) art is resistance (2) august wilson (2) beowulf (2) best book ever (2) bill bryson (2) blue is love (2) bo diddley (2) c.s. lewis (2) calexico (2) caturday (2) death (2) diane arbus (2) dickens (2) donna tartt (2) doris lessing (2) ebooks (2) ecstasy (2) emma (2) eurydice (2) favourite books (2) fernando pessoa (2) gospel (2) hamlet (2) heroines (2) history (2) ian rankin (2) iris murdoch (2) isak dinesen (2) it's the most wonderful time of the year (2) j-franz (2) james agee (2) james thurber (2) jeanette winterson (2) jenny lewis (2) jenny woolf (2) jessica jones (2) jimmy cliff (2) joanna russ (2) jonathan franzen (2) joyce carol oates (2) kafka (2) kexp (2) leo tolstoy (2) lewis carroll (2) low (2) magic & loss (2) margaret drabble (2) marguerite duras (2) maria bamford (2) mark strand (2) morphine (2) nanowrimo (2) national poetry month (2) negative capability (2) neil gaiman (2) neko case (2) nelson mandela (2) nikolai gogol (2) nina simone (2) northanger abbey (2) northern soul (2) now playing (2) opera (2) ovid (2) patti smith (2) paul scott (2) perfection (2) portishead (2) publish and perish (2) punk (2) replacements (2) richard thompson (2) roxane gay (2) russell hoban (2) russian literature (2) sady doyle (2) saints (2) sam cooke (2) sara teasdale (2) seriously people BOOKS (2) slackers (2) snark (2) socrates (2) sonnets (2) sub pop (2) t (2) ta-nehisi coates (2) the cramps (2) the globe (2) the lost art of editing (2) the odyssey (2) the wire (2) tolkien (2) twentynothings (2) velvet underground (2) visual arts (2) w.b. yeats (2) w.s. merwin (2) william blake (2) women artists (2) writer's block (2) you say bitch like it's a bad thing (2) 2010 50 new books challenge (1) Adam Zagajewski (1) Chaiyya Chaiyya (1) Christine Montross (1) Hildegard of Bingen (1) Hüsker Dü (1) I'm the vulture in your culture (1) Judaism (1) Kirsty MacColl (1) Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1) Magnus Renfors (1) Marina Abramović (1) Patrick Modiano (1) TBR (1) The Culture of Narcissism (1) Tomas Tranströmer (1) VIDA count (1) a change is gonna come (1) a communion of saints (1) a. e. housman (1) a.e. housman (1) aa (1) adrian conan doyle (1) adrian leblanc (1) agnes obel (1) air (1) aja gabel (1) alan rickman (1) alice (1) alice in chains (1) alice sheldon (1) amazon (1) amelia edwards (1) american horror story (1) amos oz (1) ange mlinko (1) angels (1) angels in america (1) anger (1) ann rule (1) anne lamott (1) anne sexton (1) annie dillard (1) anniversaries (1) aretha franklin (1) arthur conan doyle (1) astral weeks (1) atlantic monthly (1) audiobooks (1) autumn (1) aventine (1) baby busters (1) ballads (1) ballet (1) barbara pym (1) beauty will save the world (1) beethoven (1) bells bells bells (1) bless this mess (1) blue angel (1) book blogs (1) book of lamentations (1) books beat movies (1) bpal (1) brain pickings (1) bram stoker (1) bryant & may (1) bryher (1) burning my study (1) c p cavafy (1) calibre (1) caroline alexander (1) case/lang/veirs (1) cat power (1) catullus (1) cesare pavese (1) charles baudelaire (1) chelsea wolfe (1) christopher fowler (1) christopher marlowe (1) chronic disease (1) chronic pain (1) chuck klosterman (1) city of the dead (1) claire north (1) clare pollard (1) cock robin (1) collective nouns (1) colour sense (1) conflict of interest (1) continuum (1) counting the count (1) covenant (1) cowboy junkies (1) crazymeds (1) cure for pain (1) dalton trumbo (1) dana scully (1) daniel smith (1) dar williams (1) darran anderson (1) date gabriel rossetti (1) david gilmour (1) david markson (1) david tennant (1) days of awe (1) de profundis (1) deirdre blair (1) demon rum (1) depressed cake shop (1) detroit (1) diaries (1) digressions (1) doctor who? indeed (1) donald barthelme (1) doomtree (1) dorothy parker (1) douglas rushkoff (1) dracula (1) drama (1) dsm-v (1) e.b. white (1) eat the rich (1) economic malaise (1) edith wharton fans never forget (1) edmund spenser (1) egoism (1) ekstasis (1) elias canetti (1) elizabeth winder (1) emily haines (1) empathy (1) etgar keret (1) exorcism (1) failure (1) faustus (1) favourite colour blue (1) favourite eed poem (1) ferguson (1) folk (1) folks that's how it's done downtown (1) for Christ's sake people (1) ford madox ford (1) found poetry (1) fragments (1) frankenstein (1) fringe (1) frustration (1) frye museum (1) fuck gawker (1) fucking stupidity (1) gabor mate (1) genderqueer (1) gene clark (1) george orwell (1) gertrude stein (1) gothic (1) grace potter (1) grant snider (1) graphic arts (1) grauniad (1) greek myths (1) gretel ehrlich (1) group reads (1) grunge (1) guerilla art (1) hadestown (1) halloween (1) hamlet text adventure game (1) hanne blank (1) happy easter to me (1) harriet vane (1) hart crane (1) henry james (1) henry v (1) henry vaughan (1) her life was saved by rock & roll (1) history goddess (1) hole (1) holger syme (1) hope in the dark (1) horace (1) horrid novels (1) hugh howey (1) i want all of it (1) if you don't like ukulele orchestras you have no soul (1) illiteracy (1) ingeborg bachmann (1) irl (1) isaac newton (1) isadora duncan (1) j.k. rowling (1) jack kerouac (1) jacob's room (1) james baldwin (1) james tiptree jr (1) jane (1) jane bowles (1) jane hirshfield (1) jane kenyon (1) janet maslin (1) jaron lanier (1) jee young lee (1) jeff bezos (1) jennifer michael hecht (1) jennifer weiner (1) jerry vile (1) jesmyn ward (1) jill barber (1) jill scott (1) jim carroll (1) joel plaskett (1) john berryman (1) john darnielle (1) john dickson carr (1) john lee hooker (1) john lennon (1) john m ford (1) john mcphee (1) john steinbeck (1) john updike (1) jonathan carroll (1) jonathan miller (1) jonathan swift (1) joseph arthur (1) joy division (1) julian assange (1) julie driscoll (1) juvenal (1) karl shapiro (1) kate quinn (1) katha pollitt (1) kierkegaard (1) kim deal (1) kim gordon (1) kind kit (1) kit mills (1) klezmatics (1) l m montgomery (1) latuda (1) laura gibson (1) laura miller (1) lauren eggert-crowe (1) leonard woolf (1) like buttons (1) liminality (1) lucasta miller (1) ludwig wittgenstein (1) luna (1) lush (1) lydia davis (1) lyrics (1) mais il faut cultiver notre jardin (1) male geeks (1) many rivers to cross (1) mara collins (1) margalit fox (1) margaret cavendish (1) margery kempe (1) marilyn hacker (1) marilynne robinson (1) marina tsvetaeva (1) marisha pessl (1) mark doty (1) mark sandman (1) marvin gaye (1) mary ruefle (1) mashup (1) matthew jaffe (1) mean girls (1) mendelssohn (1) menstrual lifeforce power thingy (1) metamorphoses (1) mike carey (1) mike doughty (1) misogyny (1) misquotation is a bitch (1) missy higgins (1) moi (1) more powerful than two cleopatras (1) morgan james (1) motown (1) movies seen in 2015 (1) movies seen in 2016 (1) mozart (1) my band (1) my brilliant husband (1) neil gaiman writes bestiality porn (1) netflix (1) new yorker (1) nicola griffith (1) no scrubs (1) nolle timere (1) nostalgia (1) novel navel-gazing (1) o rare ben jonson (1) old sport (1) on strike against god (1) ophelia (1) optima corrupta pessima (1) orhan pamuk (1) orpheus (1) pablo neruda (1) paddy mcqueen (1) pathetic attempts at generating actual content (1) patricia highsmith (1) paul elie (1) paul weller (1) paula vogel (1) people born after 1980 (1) persephone (1) peter porter (1) phil ochs (1) philip k dick (1) pianos (1) pinterest (1) politics (1) pompeii (1) portlandia (1) postmodern jukebox (1) powell's (1) prayer (1) prince (1) privilege (1) ptsd (1) public art (1) qi baishi (1) radiohead (1) rape (1) rape culture (1) raymond chandler (1) readers (1) reading schedule (1) real life (1) rebecca mead (1) red shoes (1) rejections (1) remembrance day (1) repeated misconduct (1) richard ii (1) robert graves (1) robin johnson (1) robin williams (1) rosemary ashton (1) rosemary dobson (1) rosemary tonks (1) russell atkins (1) ruth rendell (1) ruth scurr (1) safe in heaven dead (1) salinger (1) sam kriss (1) sarah blasko (1) sarah manguso (1) sarah slean (1) sarah waters (1) satire (1) saudade (1) schizophrenia (1) scout niblett (1) seattle public library (1) self-publishing (1) shame (1) shameless (1) sharon jones (1) sheer unadulterated genius (1) sherlock holmes (1) shine a light (1) shirley manson (1) shitty movies (1) short films (1) show of my heart (1) shut up millennials (1) sisters three (1) sleep (1) smarm (1) so eighties it hurts (1) so indie it hurts (1) so nineties it hurts (1) sonya taaffe (1) spalding gray (1) spirit in the dark (1) st jude (1) stefan zweig (1) stephen king (1) stephen marley (1) stevie smith (1) stigma (1) stories (1) strangeways radio (1) street poetry (1) success (1) sue townsend (1) susan alliston (1) tea (1) teng baiye (1) tennyson (1) the beatles (1) the blue flower (1) the doors (1) the friend fiend (1) the greatest fuck-you letter ever written (1) the man who died in his boat (1) the most wonderful time of the year (1) the neglected story of white males (1) the nine tailors (1) the raveonettes (1) the red shoes (1) the smiths (1) the symposium (1) theatre (1) theme song (1) this year (1) thomas beller (1) thomas merton (1) thomas wolfe (1) throwing muses (1) tim kreider (1) titles (1) tom gauld (1) tom mcrae (1) translation (1) tumblr tags (1) twitter (1) typewriters (1) ukulele orchestras (1) umberto eco (1) undead dinner parties (1) under the bed? (1) unscheduled napping (1) utter brilliance (1) utter crap (1) vanessa bell (1) verdi (1) vic chesnutt (1) victorian vapors (1) victoriana (1) vienna teng (1) visual great american novels WTF (1) vladimir nabokov (1) w somerset maugham (1) walt whitman (1) wandering womb (1) war poetry (1) warren zevon (1) west coast ghosts (1) where have all the penguins gone (1) whitehorse (1) wigan (1) wikileaks (1) wilfred owen (1) will self (1) willa cather (1) william stafford (1) wine-dark sea (1) wolf parade (1) words words words (1) wye oak (1) x-files (1) you are the product (1) your vagina is haunted (1) yves klein (1) zelda fitzgerald (1) zoe keating (1) zoe whittall (1) zombies (1) zombies are done (1)

mothers and men

Hither rushed all the throng, streaming to the banks; mothers and men and bodies of high-souled heroes, their life now done, boys and unwedded girls, and sons placed on the pyre before their fathers’ eyes; thick as the leaves of the forest that at autumn’s first frost drop and fall, and thick as the birds that from the seething deep flock shoreward, when the chill of the year drives them overseas and sends them into sunny lands.

literary resources

A S Byatt
Alice-in-Wonderland.Net
Alicejames Books
An Annotated Frankenstein
Anaïs Nin Homepage
Anna Karenina Russian-English dual-language text
Anna Kavan aka Helen Ferguson
Anne Brontë - The Scarborough Connection - A Magical History Tour -
Annotated Finnegans Wake
Arts & Letters Daily
Augustine's Confessions
Aurora Leigh - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
BBC Radio 3 drama
BBC Radio 4 drama
BBC Radio 7 drama
Bartleby.com: Great Books Online
Between the Covers (Tattered Cover Book Blog)
Blogging all the poems of Emily Dickinson
Bob Dylan lyrics
Brontë Parsonage Blog
BrontëBlog
Brontës at Haworth
Brussels Brontë Blog
CARO: The Lady Caroline Lamb website
Caustic Cover Critic
Charlotte Brontë: The Secret and Lily Hart
Charlotte's web (Charlotte Mew)
Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market": An Overview
Complete Review
Concordance of Finnegans Wake
Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company: A Henry Miller Blog
Cover Junkie
DailyLit
Devil's Dictionary Dot Com
Elliott Bay Book Company
Emily Dickinson - David Preest
Emily Dickinson Electronic Archive (FINALLY)
Emily Dickinson Lexicon
F.Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page
Faerie Queene
Finnegans Wake online
Folio Society
GalleyCat
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
Guardian Books blog
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
HEAD OF ORPHEUS A Russell Hoban Reference Page
Hark! A Vagrant
ICARUS... the Santa Fe Public Library Blog
Infinite Detox
Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer: Reading Dracula
International Lawrence Durrell Society
International Virginia Woolf Society
Jacket Copy
James Joyce Portal
James Joyce: The Brazen Head
Judge a Book by its Cover
Juvenal at the Latin Library
Juvenal in Latin and English
King James Version
Language Log
Latin Library
Library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf
Life and Work of John Keats
London Review of Books
Lou Andreas-Salomé
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
Lyrics - alwaysontherun.net
MIT: Complete Shakespeare
Martial translations
Michael Pennington
Moby Lives
Modern American Poetry
NYPL Blogs
Odes of Horace
Online Books Page
Open Letters Blog
Open Letters Monthly
Open Source Shakespeare
Ovid (Diane Wood Middlebrook)
Ovid at the Latin Library
Ovid's Tristia, tr. A.S. Kline
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Paris Review Interview Archive
Persephone Books
Perseus Digital Library: Classics
Perseus Digital Library: Renaissance
Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1848)
Powell's Books Blog
Project Gutenberg
Quillblog
RSC Pictures & Exhibitions
Representative Poetry On-line
Republic of Pemberley
SCETI: Horace Howard Furness Shakespeare Collection
Shakespeare's Globe
Shakespeare's Words
ShakespeareFlix
Shelf Talk (Seattle Public Library Blog)
Sylvia Plath info
T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land (annotated)
TLS
TLS blogs
Theoi E-Texts
Theoi Project
U B U W E B :: Sound
UVA Etexts Center
Ursula K. Le Guin
VIDA count
VIRGIL, AENEID 6
VictorianWeb
Virago Press
Virginia Woolf - "A room of one's own"
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers
Woolf in the Virtual World
languagehat
open letters.
rogueclassicism
wood s lot

Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.