Poems should echo and re-echo against each other. They should create resonances. They cannot live alone any more than we can.
— Jack Spicer

The Bronze Medal is glad you're here. Other places you can find Ryan are:
Flickr / Facebook / Twitter / Last.fm / Shelfari
He also likes mail - ryan [dot] gessner [at] gmail [dot] com
Read in 2009
Jose Saramago / Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Thomas Mann / The Magic Mountain
Mikhail Bulgakov / The Master and Margarita
Cormac McCarthy / The Crossing
Graham Greene / The Power and the Glory
Virginia Woolf / Mrs. Dalloway
Bill Davis / Mass Appeal
Chris Adrian / A Better Angel
Nam Le / The Boat
William Gass / Tests of Time
Haruki Murakami / Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Colson Whitehead / Sag Harbor
Karen Russell / St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Virginia Woolf / Orlando
Walker Percy / The Moviegoer
Michael Ondaatje / In The Skin of A Lion
Nicole Krauss / Man Walks Into a Room
James Joyce / Ulysses
Steig Larsson / Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Nicholas Christopher / A Trip to the Stars
Randall Jarrell / No Other Book
William Gass / Habitations of the Word
Thomas Pynchon / Inherent Vice
Lorrie Moore / Self Help
Clarice Lispector / Near to the Wild Heart
Italo Calvino / If On A Winter's Night A Traveler
Aleksander Hemon / The Lazarus Project
Steig Larsson / The Girl Who Played With Fire
Sarah Hall / How to Paint a Dead Man
Dave Eggers / Zeitoun
Steig Larsson / The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Poems should echo and re-echo against each other. They should create resonances. They cannot live alone any more than we can.
— Jack Spicer
Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough.
— Jeanette Winterson
How was this not on my vacation itinerary!!?!! Now I need to go back to England just to see this.
so, you ask, why am i telling you a story without a great ending? because, as in all great stories, the end is never where you expect it to be.
— rabih alameddine, the hakawati. (via paperbackgirl)
here’s a very pretty picture of the royal observatory, in honor of me having to sit here and think about greenwich. (via here)
This was one of my favorite stops in London.
In one way or another, we’re all anchored to the book. A library is a metaphor for human beings or what’s best about human beings, the same way a concentration camp can be a metaphor for what is worst about them. A library is total generosity.
— Roberto Bolano
Rhett Miller at Housing Works Bookstore last night, performing the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York with opening act Jill Hennessy.
Rhett played a terrifically long set, which since he was playing in a bookstore consisted only of songs that mentioned books or writing. The best moment was him telling the crowd he wouldn’t insult their intelligence by assuming they didn’t know which writer’s work influenced Rollerskate Skinny, and then mid-song deciding to insert “it was Salinger” between lines of the first verse. Hennessy’s set was surprisingly decent, although after every song instead of clapping I wanted to make that Law & Order scene transition noise.
The Olympic flame is given multiple seats on its flight from Athens to Canada. Do you think the flame enjoyed the in-flight movie?
Via the Big Picture
James Nord - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
i covered my first christmas song
This is terrific.
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the blue monkey
Among the mumblelards, the blue monkey is the creature blamed for lost or broken toys, strange nighttime noises, and unexplained manifestations. Floyd and I have never pushed the...
The Top Five books I read in 2009
As I look at the list of some 30 or so books I read this year I find it easier to pick the five books I read I didn’t like. Lists like that are silly and counter...
Two things I really need to get better at:
GPOYW
This was taken right before our Ugly Christmas Sweater party two years ago. I was without said sweater type (of course) and so my very small roommate lent me hers. I(t) was a hit.
GPOYW, tea time edition.
What are the respective average words per text/gchat message from my parents and from people my own age?
Gratuitous Picture Of Your Weather
If I were still in Kansas, this would be the start of SLEDFEST ‘09.
(via fuckyeahbulldog)
I WILL make it through this week. I WILL make it through this week.