Tag Archives: drunken library

Excerpt from Looking for Alaska – John Green

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

Question Sunday – Can Poetry Be a Visual Medium?

sheepwithasword:

sheepwithasword:

Bit of a continuation of last week’s question:

Can poetry be a visual medium? Is it always a visual medium, never a visual medium, or sometimes a visual medium?

My answer: It is a visual medium as long as it is being read on the page. The way words look will always…

Got this response in my ask box from one of my first followers (and one of the first I followed), snake-oil-lullaby. I thought it was a great response, and I learned some things, so I’m sharing it!

“In response to the Sunday question, I think poetry can be extremely visual. There’s three examples I can use from my background as a U.S. Marine, a graphic designer, and a newspaper editor.

1: In many Islamic countries, iconography is forbidden. To get around this, they will use Arabic Calligraphy to make art. Some of the most beautiful verses of the Quran are made far more poetic by the flowing strokes of a master calligraphist.

2: Typography is the arrangement of the letters on the page.  The fonts used and even the spaces between individual letters (tracking and kerning) can give a message more meaning and stress or enforce certain words. A prime example would be Tristen Tzara’s use of typesetting in his Dadaist Manifestos.

3: They’ve done studies on the size of type in newspaper print to determine the impact it has on the reader’s comprehension and how they react to certain variations (and even if their moods can be changed by the font and weight selected.)  I was gonna get more into that, but I didn’t.

So I would say that, yes. Poetry is a very visual medium, but like any art it goes beyond that, and channels something that we can’t really see.

Sorry if that was a bit lengthy, but that’s what I think.”

Question Sunday

Excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.

I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

—-Atticus Finch

LA Book Fair 2014

hyperallergic:

Your Handy Guide to the 2014 LA Art Book Fair

Parra’s “Paris Hilton Replica” scented air freshener was designed for the 2014 LA Art Book Fair…

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Poet-to-Poet – National Poetry Month 2014

poetsorg:

For National Poetry Month 2014, we introduce Poet-to-Poet, a multimedia educational project that invites young students in grades 3-12 to write poems in response to those shared by award-winning poets who serve on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors.

STUDENTS: To participate, watch the videos then write your own response poem. (Follow the directions on the site.)

TEACHERS: If you are interested in using Poet-to-Poet in the classroom, we worked with a curriculum specialist to design a series of activities, aligned with the Common Core, especially for you. Click the link to the Lesson Plans.

LA Art Book Fair – Moca

thinktankgallery:

LA ART BOOK FAIR OPENING TONIGHT AT THE MOCA

Free and open to the public, the LA Art Book Fair is a unique event for artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines presented by over 250 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers.

The event will be open through the end of this weekend at the MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary location in Little Tokyo, and looks to see tens of thousands of print-lovers from around Southern California. A series of lectures and discussions curated by David Senior called The Classroom will draw visitors each and every day of the fair, and Hyperallergic will even be present and hosting a get-together of their own after hours on Saturday.

You can find more info at the LA ART BOOK FAIR site and at this interview with organizer AA Bronson. The opening event is tonight.

LA Art Book Fair 2014 – Printed Matter

acehotel:

Downtown Los Angeles, California

The second edition of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair kicked off last night in The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA as the fledgling of the famed NY Art Book Fair.

Over 250 international outfits are taking part in the assembly, and the range of offerings is highly impressive. Everything is egalitarian, sharply presented and extremely tempting.
Hometown heroes Ooga Booga, KesselsKramer, and Arcana — who are making waves on the international scene — are paired with their out-of-town peers, simultaneously repping their work and acting as ambassadors.

The fair is going on until Sunday and is free to enter and enjoy, thanks to the selfless contributions of many. For more information and for the full schedule for screenings, panels, lectures and special events visit laartbookfair.net.