Friday, February 28, 2003friday five
1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
i gravitate mostly to fiction of any kind but my achilles heel are fashion magazines. usually when i immerse myself in a passing fad (this month is finding ways to decorate a cubicle and a how-to books to organize your life ) i like to drown myself in as much information as barnes and noble can supply me with.
2. What is your favorite novel?
john irving's a prayer for owen meany. i was going to be on a six hour flight to california from new jersey and my usual routine included buying reading materials to occupy my time. i read through a geek forum on amazon.com for the top ten fiction books of the 20th century and this book was mentioned quite a few times. its the funniest book with the most unique and loveable characters. and so many strangers strike up conversation with me about how this is their most favorite book as well.
3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
pablo neruda's poem #20 from 20 love songs and a song of despair
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
this poem was on the soundtrack for the movie "il postino." buy the soundtrack if you ever get a gift certificate to a music store and dont know what to do with it. it has several of neruda's more popular poems read by famous personalities such as sting, ethan hawke, julia roberts and andy garcia. and the musical score is also quite lovely.
4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
i have always wanted to read the bible. i have read excerpts from religion class in grammar school and high school, but there arent too many people that can say they have read the whole bible (for leisure's sake, anyhow). i would also like to read the dictionary.
5. What are you currently reading?
mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf and incidents in the life of a slave girl by harriet jacobs for my graduate course. organizing from the inside out by julie morgenstern for my current obsession (i saw her on oprah and was intrigued). i have been trying to finish atlas shrugged but i have too much to do.
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