Nell Stevens, Briefly, A Delicious Life

“Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.”

“the tradition of the drowning woman in the background of ‘anna karenina’" - sydney schultze // the awakening - kate chopin // hamlet act IV scene VII - shakespeare // “ophelia” - friedrich wilhelm theodor heyser // “utonulá” - jakub schikaneder // the awakening - kate chopin // “la jeune martyre” - paul de la roche // “found drowned” - george frederic watts // david copperfield - charles dickens // the bridge of sighs - thomas hood // “past and present no.3” - augustus leopold egg

the tragic hero attains something like divine completeness, except that for human beings completeness is death.

tenderness and destruction

[aka a wen kexing starter kit part 2 (part 1)]

Hieu Minh Nguyen // Raymond Carver, from Late Fragment // @Mothcub // Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry // Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous // Hozier, Sunlight // Hanif Abdurraqib, from “Board Up the Doors, Tear Down the Walls,” in A Little Devil in America

when margaret atwood said “i'm sorry there is so much pain in this story” and richard siken said “there is no other version of this story” and mary oliver said “you don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway, i don’t want to tell it”

there is no such thing as good grief

“big god,” florence + the machine/mary oliver/richard siken/wandavision/jamie anderson/“good grief,” hayley williams/unknown/“i promised no more poetry,” trista mateer/“heaven’s gate,” the wonder years

Louisa May Alcott, from Little Women

you never get over your first love, not if its your best friend.

“Rage, maybe rage would lift me up, make me stand, make me walk—”

— Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (via antigonick)

“I don’t know how to stay tender with this much blood in my mouth”

— Ophelia, Act IV, Scene V