“Much of the wildlife is nocturnal, and it creeps through the nights, poisonous and alien: the sidewinder, the rattlesnake, the scorpion, the giant centipede, the black widow, the tarantula, the brown recluse, the coral snake, the Gila monster. The kissing bug bites you and its poison makes the entire body erupt in red welts. Fungus drifts on the valley dust, and it sinks into the lungs and throbs to life. The millennium has added a further danger: all wild bees in southern Arizona, naturalists report, are now Africanized. As if the desert felt it hadn't made its point, it added killer bees.”
Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Devil’s Highway : a True Story 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown, 2004.
Catalog Record
Little, Brown and Company
“It makes one’s mind-shape as if that is the other side. (As if anyone's mind-shape is the other side of the sublime.) His is not viewing the equinox itself and where there are warm nights black liquid with no birds beside, the gelid frozen, thus double, yet glass days, their equal duration at once.”
Scalapino, Leslie. "Floats Horse-floats or Horse-flows." The Brooklyn Rail (2007): Accessed November 30, 2020.
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The Brooklyn Rail
“Like Lionel Tollemache’s friend who played with his blade on his forehead, children hold their books on the knife edge of damage. But, like Mr. Lockwood, we stumble upon the hieroglyphs of boys and girls, and, if they give us dreams on sodden nights, they provide us, too, with spells for our scholarly imaginations.”
Lerer, Seth. "Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children's Marginalia." Representations 118, no. 1 (2012): 126-53. Accessed May 4, 2021. doi:10.1525/rep.2012.118.1.126.
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JSTOR
“Abdullah thought back to the winter before last, everything plunged into darkness, the wind coming in around the door, whistling slow and long and loud, and whistling from every little crack in the ceiling. Outside, the village’s features obliterated by snow. The nights long and starless, daytime brief, gloomy, the sun rarely out, and then only to make a cameo appearance before it vanished.”
Hosseini, Khaled. And the Mountains Echoed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. p.22.
Catalog Record
Bloomsbury
“Evening succeeds evening.
Demons discourse
on familiar topics.
They describe a wraith’s response
to a description.
‘I think he was signaling.’
One night
differs from all other nights
Through their deployment of synonyms.
‘Craft a way forward.’
‘Get out ahead
of this
with his plan.’”
Armantrout, Rae. Versed. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2010. p. 48.
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“I’ll twist sunlight into
Words for the walk over
To the blank. Thoughts
Are things. Thoughtless streets
Pass nights outdoors. Syllables
Aim to spread out,
But hardly do.”
Perelman, Bob. “Wishes.” Primer. Oakland, CA: This Press, 1981, p. 3-4.
Catalog Record
Internet Archive
“The bit of earth upon which I press my feet here and now and the larger earth that yields me food and drink , this ocean with its relentless power when goaded by winter storms, and with its heavenly peace and calm in its middle stretches under the summer's tropical sun, the blue sky, the approaching night , and the night and the morning, the sun, the stars, the milky way, the grass, the trees, my animal companions, the wild birds, the barn-yard fowls, my dogs, the cattle, the horse, and above all my human friends , my colleagues in work, and my family -- all these have for me a reality that no disorder or dimness of mind (unless indeed , these go to the point of swoon or delirium) or no speculative sophistication can strip them of.”
Ritter, William Emerson. The Probable Infinity of Nature and Life; Three Essays. Boston: R.G. Badger, 1918. p. 131.
Catalog Record
Hathi Trust
“...and when there existed, ‘...a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, and time and place were lost; where eldest night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy.’ Even the less exuberantly fanciful Chaos of Hesiod held to be a ‘yawning abyss composed of Void, Mass, and Darkness,’ could hardly appeal to the curbed and guided imagination of present-day science.”
Ritter, William Emerson. The Probable Infinity of Nature and Life; Three Essays. Boston: R.G. Badger, 1918. p. 40.
Catalog Record
Hathi Trust
“...while the meadows at their feet sparkle with frost-stars like the sky; the sublime darkness of storm-nights, when all the lights are out; the clouds whose depths the frail snow-flowers grow; the behavior and many voices of the different kind of storms, trees, birds, waterfalls, and snow avalanches in the ever-changing weather.”
Muir, John. The Writings of John Muir: Sierra Edition. Vol. II. The Mountains of California. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917, 169.
Catalog Record
Internet Archive
“The bit of earth upon which I press my feet here and now and the larger earth that yields me food and drink , this ocean with its relentless power when goaded by winter storms, and with its heavenly peace and calm in its middle stretches under the summer's tropical sun, the blue sky, the approaching night , and the night and the morning, the sun, the stars, the milky way, the grass, the trees, my animal companions, the wild birds, the barn-yard fowls, my dogs, the cattle, the horse, and above all my human friends , my colleagues in work, and my family -- all these have for me a reality that no disorder or dimness of mind (unless indeed , these go to the point of swoon or delirium) or no speculative sophistication can strip them of.”
Ritter, William Emerson. The Probable Infinity of Nature and Life; Three Essays. Boston: R.G. Badger, 1918. p. 131.
Catalog Record
Hathi Trust