Recent points of influence for poet and writer Emilie Menzel // visit emiliemenzel.com for more.
“the pathological sublime” —Wendell Holmes
“a battleship caught in a thorax, a jackstone stuck in an esophagus, a padlock not quite at home inside a stomach”
“how these things might have gotten inside a body”
“their arrangement into a cosmology of things”
“our bodies are implicated”
“never merely an intellectual encounter”
“most of all, we are reminded of our mouths”
“the complex physiology of the human swallow”
“we might even gasp or gulp before his display”
“a foreign body in the body is not a rarity, an exception, or a wonder, but a commonplace event”
“swallowing things the wrong way”
“a museum of pathological specimens”
“slipping a sword into the gullet”
“the admission of play”
“the consequences of our imaginations”
“the tongue as an eagerly developing muscle detached from licks and tastes”
“Chang ‘E”
To build a house: one is for shelter, the other to unfold, and in the distance is the difference between sunlight in a field and the lesser seen light of the other sky. (42)
“Goddess Tin Hau”
an ocean fever to break between my teeth (53)
“Chang ‘E”
A home is not a home until you build it. (55)
“In Which the City-Island Is”
an intimate wilderness, a place for hiding, high walls (83)
“Chang ‘E:”
We pretend that a body loves a person, but a body loves a ghost. A body loves the house. A body loves the moon. (118)
“Chang ‘E:”
A stranger, a disturbance, so I held my ear to the ground, my mouth to the sky. (135)
In the morning when I woke, my teeth felt cold and light fell away from their appropriate objects. (135)
“Chang ‘E:” (whole poem)
Ever transitioning / toward some old / nocturnal light, / we pretend it is / not in vain. We / are all night- / ridden insects. / Unstuck,itwaves / aflicker— (119)
My body wasn’t taken with me, the soul being a very spacious ([specious]) thing. (7)
“Petit mouton de Noël,” Veronique Lux
“Hedgewitch,” Melodie Stacey
“Still life with frozen Charlotte - a new work in gouache on Fabriano paper. This detailed study measures 22.5cm x 20.4cm - I have painted ‘flat lay’ still life works in the past, but not so recently, so this was a very interesting challenge for myself. The frozen Charlotte is a little ceramic doll made in the late nineteenth century most likely. I purchased it from a local bottle digger.“ by Cathy Cullis
“Home,” Carson Ellis
Illustration by Lieke van der Vorst
Illustration by Olesya Kosmodemyanskaya for Inktober
Illustration and photograph (and desk space) by Alisa Galler
Houses and Two Hundred Animals, John Podhorsky (dates unknown), Auburn, California, United States, c. 1950s, pencil, colored pencil, and crayon on paper. Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard, Jr., 1998.10.37. Photo by Gavin Ashworth.
1. Octopus, Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863), Amherst, Massachusetts, 1828–1840, pen and ink and ink wash on cotton. Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.
2. Colossal Octopus [Pierre Denys de Montfort]; Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863); Amherst, Massachusetts; 1828–1840; pen and ink and watercolor wash on cotton; 27 7/8 x 21 in.; Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.
Ellen Gallagher, Bird in Hand 2006, Tate collection
Tiger by Liliana Porter
Scenes, photos by Liliana Porter