December 1998 – commonplacebook.com

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
Two hundred to adore each breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity:
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think , do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow chapped power
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Through the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

The Lover’s Resolution

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Poems
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George Wither
From the Book: A Book of Love Poetry, Jon Stallworthy, Editor

Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or my cheeks make pale with care
‘Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day
Or the flowery meads in May–
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pined
‘Cause I see a woman kind;
Or a well-disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove or pelican,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman’s virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her merits’ value known
Make me quite forget my own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of Best;
If she seem not so to me,
What care I how good she be?

‘Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind
Where they want of riches find,
Think that with them they would do
Who without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?

Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne’er the more despair;
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
But if she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?

Lisa’s Anti-Guido Poetry

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Poems
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from Lisa

Dear Steph, I wrote these in contemplation of my neighbor Guido’s horrible little yapping inbred cocker spaniel. perhaps they are worthy of publication
also? hehehe. more to come. (the dog continues to bark)
xoxo
Lisa

Interlude

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Poems
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Amy Lowell
From the Book: Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell

When I have baked white cakes
And grated green almonds to spread on them;
When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries
And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;
When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;
What then?
To-morrow it will be the same:
Cakes and strawberries,
And needles in and out of cloth
If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,
How much more beautiful is the moon,
Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;
The moon
Wavering across a bed of tulips;
The moon,
Still,
Upon your face.
You shine, Beloved,
You and the moon.
But which is the reflection?
The clock is striking eleven.
I think, when we have shut and barred the door,
The night will be dark
Outside.

Decade

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Poems
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Amy Lowell
From the Book: Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

Random House Modern Library Readers’ 100 Best Novels

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Reading Lists
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In response to their list of 100 best novels, the Modern library let the readers respond with their favorite books. This list was derived from an online user poll conducted on the Modern Library web site from July 20 to October 20, 1998, during which 217,520 votes were cast.

**Note from Steph: Consider the first ten entries, and ask yourself if the internet culties weren’t overloading the Modern Library online poll with votes. Damned Scientologists! And, really, who the hell is Charles De Lint, the guy with something like twelve books that made this list? After awhile I just stopped linking to his books.

1. Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged

2. Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead

3. Hubbard, L. Ron. Battlefield Earth

4. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord Of The Rings

5. Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird

6. Orwell, George. 1984

7. Rand, Ayn. Anthem

8. Rand, Ayn. We The Living

9. Hubbard, L. Ron. Mission Earth

10. Hubbard, L. Ron. Fear

11. Joyce, James. Ulysses

12. Heller, Joseph. Catch-22

13. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby

14. Herbert, Frank. Dune

15. Heinlein, Robert. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

16. Heinlein, Robert. Stranger In A Strange Land

17. Shute, Nevil. A Town Like Alice

18. Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World

19. Salinger, J. D. The Catcher In The Rye

20. Orwell, George. Animal Farm

21. Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow

22. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes Of Wrath

23. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five

24. Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With The Wind

25. Golding, William. Lord Of The Flies

26. Schaefer, Jack. Shane

27. Shute, Nevil. Trustee From The Toolroom

28. Irving, John. A Prayer For Owen Meany

29. King, Stephen. The Stand

30. Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman

31. Morrison, Toni. Beloved

32. Eddison, E. R. The Worm Ouroboros

33. Faulkner, William. The Sound And The Fury

34. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita

35. De Lint, Charles. Moonheart

36. Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!

37. Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage

38. Flannery O’Connor. Wise Blood

39. Lowry, Malcolm. Under The Volcano

40. Davies, Robertson. Fifth Business

41. De Lint, Charles. Someplace To Be Flying

42. Kerouac, Jack. On The Road

43. Conrad, Joseph. Heart Of Darkness

44. De Lint, Charles. Yarrow

45. Lovecraft, H.P.. At The Mountains Of Madness

46. Spillane, Mickey. One Lonely Night

47. De Lint, Charles. Memory And Dream

48. Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse

49. Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer

50. De Lint, Charles. Trader

51. Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

52. McCullers, Carson. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

53. Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale

54. McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian

55. Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange

56. Shute, Nevil. On The Beach

57. Joyce, James. A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

58. De Lint, Charles. Greenmantle

59. Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game

60. De Lint, Charles. The Little Country

61. Gaddis, William. The Recognitions

62. Heinlein, Robert. Starship Troopers

63. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises

64. Irving, John. The World According To Garp

65. Bradbury, Ray. Something Wicked This Way Comes

66. Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting Of Hill House

67. Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying

68. Miller, Henry. Tropic Of Cancer

69. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man

70. Windling, Terri. The Wood Wife

71. Fowles, John. The Magus

72. Heinlein, Robert. The Door Into Summer

73. Pirsig, Robert. Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

74. Graves, Robert. I, Claudius

75. London, Jack. The Call Of The Wild

76. Flann O’Brien. At Swim-Two-Birds

77. Bradbury, Ray. Farenheit 451

78. Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith

79. Adams, Richard. Watership Down

80. Burroughs, William S.. Naked Lunch

81. Clancy, Tom. The Hunt For Red October

82. Hamilton, Laurell K.. Guilty Pleasures

83. Heinlein, Robert. The Puppet Masters

84. King, Stephen. It

85. Thomas Pynchon. V.

86. Heinlein, Robert. Double Star

87. Heinlein, Robert. Citizen Of The Galaxy

88. Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited

89. Faulkner, William. Light In August

90. Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

91. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell To Arms

92. Bowles, Paul. The Sheltering Sky

93. Kesey, Ken. Sometimes A Great Notion

94. Cather, Willa. My Antonia

95. De Lint, Charles. Mulengro

96. McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree

97. Holdstock, Robert. Mythago Wood

98. Bach, Richard. Illusions

99. Davies, Robertson. The Cunning Man

100. Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses

Random House Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1998
Post category:Reading Lists
Post comments:2 Comments

In 1998 the Modern Library, a division of Random House, New York, released this list of ‘the 100 best novels written in the English language and published since 1900.’ The jurors were Daniel J. Boorstin, A.S. Byatt, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., William Styron, and Gore Vidal.

Top 10 Things To Say About A Holiday Gift You Don’t Like

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 25, 1998
Post category:Holidays
Post comments:0 Comments

author unknown

10. Hey! There’s a gift.

9. Well, well, well…

8. Boy, if I had not recently shot up 4 sizes, that would’ve fit.

7. Perfect for wearing in the basement.

6. Gosh, I hope this never catches fire!

5. If the dog buries it, I’ll be furious!

4. I Love it, but I fear the jealousy it will inspire.

3. Sadly, tomorrow I enter the federal witness protection program.

2. To think I got this the year I vowed to give all my gifts to charity.

1. I really don’t deserve this.