Robby Prenkert

The world of machines is running
Beyond the world of trees
Where only a leaf is turning
In a small high breeze.

Wendell Berry, “Sabbaths, 1988”

He closed his eyes and the night ran together in his mind and he remembered the rifle in the corner and thought: I’ll throw it in the creek tomorrow. I never want to see it again. He would be asleep soon. He saw himself standing on the hill and throwing his rifle into the creek; then the creek became an ocean, and he stood on a high cliff and for a moment he was a mighty angel, throwing all guns and creulty and sex and tears into the sea.

Andre Dubus, “The Intruder”

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure of the windowpane”

John Shade, in Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov


and a bonus quote, since I missed yesterday…

“My commentary to this poem, now in the hands of my readers, represents an attempt to sort out those echoes and wavelets of fire, and pale phosphorescent hints, and all the many subliminal debts to me."

Charles Kinbote, in Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

“It was a dark and stormy night."

Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

So let us leave. Let us get to the Plymouth with an impolite quickness–let us fly, as witnesses of eras past might say. Because at home, the hard and escalating war has paid a visit. And it’s Swede, my darling sister, who has met it at the door.

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Every man has within his own reminiscences certain things he doesn’t reveal to anyone, except, perhaps, to his friends. There are also some that he won’t reveal even to his friends, only to himself perhaps, and even then, in secret. Finally, there are some which a man is afraid to reveal even to himself; every decent man has accumulated a fair number of such things. In fact, it can even be said that the more decent the man, the more of these things he’s accumulated. Anyway, only recently I myself decided to recall some of my earlier adventures; up to now I’ve always avoided them, even with a certain anxiety. But having decided not only to recall them, but even to write them down, now is when I wish to try an experiment: is it possible to be absolutely honest even with one’s own self and not to fear the whole truth? Incidentally, I’ll mention that Heine maintains that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible, and that a man is sure to lie about himself. In Heine’s opinion, Rousseau, for example, undoubtedly told untruths about himself in his confession and even lied intentionally, out of vanity. I’m convinced that Heine is correct; I understand perfectly well that sometimes it’s possible out of vanity alone to impute all sorts of crimes to oneself, and I can even understand what sort of vanity that might be.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground

"…I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp."

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6t594P6myw?fs=1&hl=en_US&w=480&h=385]

Crying, in the loneliness of the night
Dying, in the emptiness of this life

Sweet, sweet mercy
Shine on me.
Can you hear me?
Please, be near me

Michael Pritzl, “Sweet Mercy”

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

That’s the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

p.s. The most beautiful novel I have read (three times now) in some years.

“I just met a wonderful new man, he’s fictional but you can’t have everything."

-Cecilia, in The Purple Rose of Cairo

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself alone in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

-Dante, “The Inferno”, The Divine Comedy

“You cannot teach creativity – how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.”

-Mario Vargas Llosa (Nobel Prize Winner, 2010)

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


-Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”

He had stuffed his own emptiness with good works like a glutton. He had ignored his own child to feed his vision of himself.

-Flannery O’Connor, “The Lame Shall Enter First”

He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.

Flannery O’Connor, “The Artificial Nigger”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDwQaVZuAjI?fs=1&hl=en_US&w=480&h=385]

October
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care
October
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on
And on

Now that I’m dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true. I know only a few factoids that I didn’t know before. It’s much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.

Since being dead–since achieving this state of bonelessness, liplessness, breastlessness–I’ve learned some things I would rather not know, as one does when listening at windows or opening other people’s letters. You think you’d like to read minds? Think again.

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbdtq75xhlk?fs=1&hl=en_US&w=480&h=385]

“When I read the Bible, I find that I relate to the sinners, more than I relate to the saints."

Michael Pritzl, The Violet Burning


“Ditto”

Robby Prenkert, ‘everything and nothing’

“Good!” Johnson said savagely. He thrust his head forward. “Listen here,” he hissed, “I don’t care if he’s good or not. He ain’t right!"

Flannery O’Connor, “The Lame Shall Enter First” (Rufus Johnson speaking)

‘Why is it that really beautiful people think everyone else in the world exists merely for their amusement?'

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad


p.s. Is it bad that my blog is made up now almost entirely of words penned by authors I force 19 year olds to read in my classes?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFJUKIULsxk?fs=1&hl=en_US&w=480&h=385]

you’re so far away
and i won’t see you any day soon
we came a long way
and now you want to fly to the moon
all alone going your own way
i thought i owned your love
and now you say

ache, ache beautiful for me
go along and ache
ache beauty babe

Michael Roe, “Ache Beautiful”

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory—meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion—is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

—William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow


(Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory”)