Category: t
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A.S. Byatt in The Children’s Book (2009) answers: Money was freedom. Money was aesthetic. Money was Arab stallions, not rough cobs. Money was not being shouted at. […] Money was freedom. Money was life. -p. 59 How poor can one…
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A.S. Byatt in The Children’s Book (2009) answers: The parents […] found it hard in practice to do what they believed in theory they should do, which was to love all the children equally. A man and a woman with…
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Text by Melvyn Bragg. Images and [insertions] by yours truly. ‘Union Jack’ or ‘Union Flag’ – say ‘Union Flag’ if you want to sound upper class. I saw London en fete. Union Jacks, five abreast, went from Upper Regent Street,…
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Or how I categorise the Cha submissions….. Or how I categorise people….. – – – –––
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[click image to enlarge] John Everett Millais’s Esther (1865) | Handmade oil painting The story might be that of a Jewish queen from the Old Testament, but it is the swathe of yellow silk that immediately strikes the viewers. Millais is…
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And the word ‘love’ makes no sense, this history is almostRipe for the mind’s museum — broken jarsThat once held wine or perfume.Yet looking at their elegance on the standsI feel a certain pride that only lately(And yet so long ago) I…
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Cha’s co-editor Tammy Ho is featured in the Spring 2011 issue of King’s College London’s In Touch (p. 42). – –
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THE SOLILOQUY OF THE PAPER IPOD MAKER Thousands of years of devotion to the dead.Once newly-deceased, they receive everything:pig-tailed paper maids, Gucci bags and the latestgadgets, such as laptops and iPads. I createan impression of the real with inflammableand coloured…
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Click the image to learn more about the object – – “It’s easy for an ungrateful recipient to become unworthy of a gift, and conversely, a gift given without worthy intentions is one which can be rejected as worthless.” (p.…
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The End Of The Worldby Archibald MacLeish Quite unexpectedly, as VasserotThe armless ambidextrian was lightingA match between his great and second toe,And Ralph the lion was engaged in bitingThe neck of Madame Sossman while the drumPointed, and Teeny was about…
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Originally written on March 30, 2009 –星期六那晚看了賈樟河的 <<三崍好人 Still Life>>. 一氣連續看了兩次. 電影淡淡的繪出兩個主角三明及沈红由山西往奉節縣尋親的故事, 背景為消失中的三崍. 一個尋十六年不見的妻子及女兒, 一個尋兩年沒見的丈夫. 故事有點相似, 但結局大不相同. 在這裡不詳細解讀電影, 但有少許感受想說. 很多人認為中國現代化了, 富了, 事實只是一細小部份的人先富起來. 政治領袖也許覺得一小部份人富好過人人都不富. 在光彩的背後有無數貧民的故事, 有多少是外人知曉的? 當中國人不易, 當中國窮人更不易. 話說回來, 當甚麼國的窮人都不易, 當甚麼人都不易. 電影結尾其中一個鏡頭是空中人在遠處江上走鋼絲, 賈樟柯解釋道: “最後走鋼絲, 雲中漫步, 我覺得雖然前路坎坷渺茫, 或者說雖然前路很危險, 但是不管什麼樣的人, 我們必須走下去, 我覺得雖然很危險, 但是要走下去, 所以同時也很浪漫.”…
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Let the Right One In is a vampire story set in the suburbs of Stockholm in the early 1980s. The film centres on Oskar, a 12-year-old loner from a dysfunctional family. Frail and androgynous, Oskar is unable to stand up…
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The Managing Housewife J. H. Gray’s poem “The Girls that are Wanted” (c. 1880) might give you some ideas. The girls that are wanted are good girls Good from the heart to the lips Pure as the lily is white…
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MAY IN POETRY –– Do you know any May poems? Do you know any May songs? Perhaps you have written one? Contribute to the “May in Poetry” archive. – –
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Derek Walcott is one of my favourite contemporary poets and “No Opera” is a relatively new poem by him, published in the February 2010 issue of The Believer and collected in White Egrets: No Opera No opera, no gilded columns, no wine-dark seats, no Penelope…
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Isobel Armstrong praises photography; and a certain person’s justification of her obsession with (her own) images. “The very fact that [the photograph] emerges from a fleeting moment in time means that that time is irrevocably lost. Even to exchange the…
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“The Pleasant truth” (1966) by rene MAGRITTE Emily Dickinson answers: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation kind The…
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“Lovers” by Rene Magritte In Jonathan Ames’s Bored to Death (HBO), the character George, played brilliantly by Ted Danson (have you watched Cheers?), answers (but not indisputably): I am in your movie. You are in mine. Two different films, really.…
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In One Day (2009), David Nicholls answers: “It would be inappropriate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging…
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The British Art Show 7 The artist who created the pictured artwork: Juliette Blightman Lamp, net curtain (courtesy the artist and Hotel, London) From the exhibition guide: Juliette Blightman ‘has introduced an arrangement of objects, including a vase [which I…
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The poetry in the new issue of Cha is now available in a booklet. You can download it here. – –
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cover artist: annysa ng Dear All My apologies for bombarding you with messages of late. If you happen to be on Facebook, please consider supporting our Facebook page. We used to have a fairly successful “Group” but unfortunately Facebook has…
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–The publication of my very short poem “The Final Straw” in the March 2011 issue of elimae reminded me of this day-trip to Winchester. Read on and you will see why. ::::: In March last year, we took a day…
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The poem alluded to in this post is now published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. There are two squirrels in a recent poem I wrote roaming in the garden outside the kitchen. I put them in the work not because…
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell talks about the logic of Science in this episode of Beautiful Minds. The following is my transcription: Way back in the Middle Ages, they thought that planets went round the sun in circles. Perfect circles. They had…
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“The Swing” (1767) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard Harold Bloom (1994) sums up Johan Huizinga’s summary of the properties of play: 1) freedom2) disinterestedness3) excludedness or limitedness4) orderJohan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1944), p. 13: Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity…
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Paolo and Francesca da Rimini (1855) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Yesterday, when I was reading the following description of watercolour by Laura Cumming in “New Review” (pp. 32-33), ‘love’ came to my mind, and I am still thinking about it: Watercolour has…
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I know parallel semantic and syntactic structure is a key feature in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. But reading the poem below, I was just thinking that ‘need not’1 might make more sense than ‘cannot’ in the first stanza. What do you think? The…
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