Commonplacing

Links and a poem for the week

This powerful resignation letter from NY Times Magazine poetry editor and poet

Anne Boyer

is an act of incredible strength and beauty. And she is not the only one…

The myth of gendered divisions of labor in prehistory continues to be debunked.

Just because there should always be moments of fun: a medieval cat meme generator.

A fascinating dive into the life of Ikkyū, a.k.a. Mad Cloud (Kyōun)—a medieval Japanese monk whose sense of humor and irony is on full display in the illustrations he created for his collection of poetry and prose, Skeletons (Gaikotsu, ca. 1457).

If I lived in the U.K., I would love to be out walking to visit ancient stones—and joining the Stone Club, which believes in connecting ancient sites and community, and paying attention to place.

A beautiful project that digitally restored a nineteenth-century monograph on all known hummingbirds at the time.

A meditation on the transformative relationships of people and wolves.

A recent NyTimes article (paywalled¹) asks about L.M. Montgomery’s lesser-known series Emily of New Moon. I love to see any of her work discussed—and this (non-paywalled) article about visiting Montgomery’s home—and the conflicts she endured in life—fills in more details about her life and work.

And finally, I loved

Bailey Richardson

’s post on the artist Sophie Calle seeking to unapologetically mourn her devoted feline companion of seventeen years.

And I have still been thinking about Joan of Arc’s defiant, perfect, and witty bite of a response to her inquisitors when asked what language her voices speak to her in and she replied in better language than yours. So I have also been thinking of these lyrics as poem, from Lenoard Cohen:

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
As she came riding through the dark;
No moon to keep her armour bright,
No man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite."
Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
You know I've watched you riding every day
And something in me yearns to win
Such a cold and lonesome heroine.
"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke.
"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."

"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

Ancient stones. Rollright Stones, Gloucestershire, England. 2012.

1. I recently ended my subscription (again) because I don’t want to subscribe to a place that is trying to control the opinions of their contributors and engages in anti-trans bias, among many other issuesx.