#keypix4

Edit: upon further research, it might appear that a shrimp is une crevette and a prawn une fucking gamba, and the French/English dictionaries are wrong 💀

I think I'll start either "The Good Fight" or "The Good Wife" in June, because atm I'm following 4 different shows, but cannot wait for your thoughts/our discussions about particular scenes either. ❤️❤️

( If anyone is looking for the asks post : https://zellkabellk.tumblr.com/post/748079934173577216 )

OH! HI!! Okay... Carson is... Not the most approachable writer in the sense that her prose is, well, whatever the fuck she wants it to be, however she wants it. Sometimes it’s not even words lol. It sometimes can defy a strict definition, and her grammar, syntax, etc. may seem haphazard. And she can be seen as a dense read, mostly due to the deluge of references she makes to all sorts of mythology, classical lit, cultural iconography, etc etc etc. To make comparisons (since hey, THT) to Atwood cos yeah, female Canadian poets unite. Atwood is less abstract and far less reliant on references, more visceral and immediate in her what she evokes. I find myself not often having to sit with Atwood going, “What the FUCK does THAT mean?” While obviously sometimes there are deeper layers to her work (poetry specifically), there’s a sort of strong reaction almost instantaneously because you can just feel it. (I mean, some of her books are more work, cos lbr, THT is prolly not one of her better books (and the Testaments really is not a good book, imo). It’s very basic almost, comparatively, but those are what most people are most familiar with now.) When Atwood speaks of women, feminism, God, or nature, you just know.  Carson is some other sort of being. So you really have to be very prepared to sometimes sit with something because first you must decode the language. Now, not always. Some of her stuff is less obtuse than others but the woman is a philosopher as well as a poet and essayist, so like all philosophers, she’ll layer shit and just not say other shit and ask questions in what look like statements. This isn’t to say Carson isn’t evocative, or isn’t as evocative as Atwood for example, cos she is, mostly. It... sometimes, there’s just a little more thought involved on the part of the reader. Atwood does a lot of the work for us, and I think her assistance there is a lot of why I love her approach cos I want to feel a lot, without having to sit and pick apart each line and word. Now, that said, often delving deeper into Atwood really, really drives things home and you can get way more from it but I don’t think always that is absolutely necessary to enjoy her poetry, and especially not her prose. Carson, you just have to be prepared. Maybe sometimes you won’t. But I’ve found more people turned off by Carson’s style than Atwood’s. BUT this makes it sound like they’re very different and contrasting, but really, it’s not as if Carson is THAT impenetrable. She’s really not. If you like Atwood, Carson will probably be a nice step up, maybe sideways? Cos where Atwood uses a fair amount of religious/Christian and nature symbolism, Carson is almost dependent on mythology (mostly Greek, but she does delve into Judeo-Christian as well) and literature. If you like Atwood in her more The Blind Assassin sort of style, Carson should be accessible enough.  Keep in mind too, Carson, was first and foremost a translator of ancient Greek texts (and Latin, iirc), and she drew. She didn’t write until her 20s and still doesn’t quite seem to consider herself a proper “writer”. So, if you want to sort of get an idea of her influences, her translations of Sappho are one place to start. (Arguably, her translations of Sappho are the most famous ones.) But she has done many Greek texts. If this what you are into, I would recommend Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides. You’ll see quotes from that a lot on Tumblr.  Personally, and I say this completely personally, I’d read a few of her poems and then Autobiography of Red. This is not a novel nor is it a poem. It’s like some mishmash of the two. Again, style. It is probably one of her most famous and most accessible books, and it’s not too long either. You just have to be prepared to read “a novel” in “verse” form. (I put all these things in quotes cos... who knows how to define things anymore.)  BUT if you don’t want that yet...   I personally hear a lot of praise for Eros The Bittersweet (a lot of academics really love it) but I wouldn’t recommend that as a starting point. Unless you really like Classical lit. Personally, I do recommend Autobiography of Red, but if you wanna start with individual poems/”essays” aka “texts”, I would say go first to Glass, Irony and God. It’s really a personal preference and includes one of her most famous/popular poems, “The Glass Essay”. I like “The Truth About God”, also. And I am partial to the “Book of Isaiah” too from the same collection, although that’s not exactly a popular opinion but honestly “The Gender Of Sound” is something really special to me as a feminist, and is much more of an essay than poetry prose--and it is a great exploration of the female voice in literature. After that, I’d move onto Plainwater: Essays and Poetry. (I’d rec "The Anthropology of Water".) This may be her best collection? It really reignites poetry for a lot of people.  Basically, I’d try to stick to her works from the 90s. Her newer stuff? Meh. I mean, I have yet to read Float, tbh. So maybe I’m not being fair. Haven’t read Red Doc > either (which is a “sequel” to Autobiography of Red) but I mean, if you’re gonna pick up anything of hers post-2000, maybe I’d say Decreation, again for the essays?   Here’s just a short article about Carson. It’s a nice overview of Carson, and her place in culture right now, although it’s not really about how to get started reading her.  Just for shits and giggles, cos it’s not a full Carson book, but The Blue of Distance. Mostly cos I also love Rebecca Solnit and her part of the book is great too. But this isn’t really a book you can download.

Yeah it’s so stupid, Jimmy didn’t like Lena until like 2 episodes ago... They don’t know what to do with them so they randomly pair them up, bc it’s the CW and people just can’t stay single.

That’s my only question. Why did they think that would be a good direction for the show? What was their overall message? I don’t get it. But then I am a hardcore Trish Walker stan and it’s an emotional thing too. My faves ALWAYS get fucked over by shows.

I am! :DDDDD Oh, thank you so much!!!

Will do, yeah