Tag: The Penelopiad
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‘Penelope of the Twentieth Century’ by Elisaveta Bagryana
We are kneaded from the dregs of the past, layered unknowingly in us through time. It lends the violet or scarlet colour to our blood, it gives the lighter or darker shading to our soul. And look- is there an ossicle of my skull, a rounding of my flesh, a fingernail, a soaring of my […]
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Julian of Norwich, a literary midwifery
When Julian of Norwich describes her mystical experiences and her visions in her Revelation of Love, she describes them in three parts, thus: ‘That is to sey, be bodily sight and by word formyd in my understonding and be gostly sight. But the gostly sight I cannot ne may not show it as hopinly ne […]
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‘Sculptor’ By Sylvia Plath.
Dedicated by the Author to Artist Leonard Baskin. To his house the bodiless Come to barter endlessly Vision, wisdom, for bodies Palpable as his, weighty. Hands moving more priestlier Than Priest’s hands, invoke no vain images of light and air But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone. Obdurate, in dense-grained wood, A bald angel blocks […]
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Earth Caves and Such.
I was reading a translation of the Old English ‘A Woman’s Lament, from a book of translations by Burton Raffel: ‘Poems and Prose from the Old English‘. It is written in the Woman’s voice and from experience of the inner exilic condition (possibly imprisonment): ‘The valleys seem leaden, the hills reared aloft, And the bitter towns all bramble […]
chris murray | text work 