Louise Glück has just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is great news. Diane DiPrima has died, which is bad news.
Tribute article for Diane Di Prima:
NPR
Read more about Louise Glück:
New York Times
The Guardian
I had a whole set of posts about Halloween ready this year but then I got sick the week of Halloween and then the U.S. election happened last week and since we're on the brink of Civil War here, I'm not that enthused about revisiting fictional horrors. But I have been interested lately in Vincent Price movies. This is another week of Cher/Poetry blog cross-writing about him.
But anyway, this week I watched his movie Diary of a Madman and there was a poem in it by Heinrich Heine:
A Woman
Sie hatten sich beide so herzlich lieb (They both loved each other so dearly)
They loved each other beyond belief —
She was a strumpet, he was a thief;
Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafter
She'd throw herself on the bed with laughter.
The day was spent with a reckless zest;
At night she lay upon his breast.
So when they took him, a moment after,
She watched at the window — with laughter.
He sent word pleading, " Oh come to me,
I need you, need you bitterly,
Yes, here and in the hereafter. "
Her little head shook with laughter.
At six in the morning they swung him high;
At seven the turf on his grave was dry;
At eight, however, she quaffed her
Red wine and sang with laughter!
Vincent’s character explains how each stanza ends with the same words but a different tone.
Finally, around Halloween I heard about two new books of early short stories by women, two books which claim to prove women were some of the earliest adopters of surreal and scary stories.
Women’s Weird, Strange Stories by Women (1890-1940),
edited by Melissa Edmundson (2019)
There’s a Women’s Weird II coming out soon.
Weird Women, Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923, edited by Morton and Klinger (2020)
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