The Blazing World — via a dizzy mix of animal-human hybrids, Immaterial Spirits, and burning foes — tells of a woman’s absolute rule as Empress over a parallel planet. Emily Lord Fransee reflects on what the book and its author Margaret Cavendish can teach us about empire, gender, and imagination in the 17th century.
“Taken together, these examples challenge the idea that the past disappears once it is no longer actively remembered. The past often remains present in quieter and less obvious ways. It stays in what is unsaid, in the places people move through, and in the physical traces of those who came before them.”
I wonder where these guys are from. I wonder if they’re far from home. I wonder if they have kids or wives or parents or dogs who miss them. Or, maybe, who are glad they’re gone. Which would be worse?
2 short short stories from Alfred D Searls
“For the most part the armies marched through the valley, so that they might do battle elsewhere, but some, like the soldiers of the crocked cross and the soldiers of the blood red banner, had stayed and fought and died, and in so doing they watered the rich, rocky soil with their blood, and their sacrifice gave nourishment to the legends of the nationalist and internationalist alike.”
“The boys were never apart, from the earliest they were inseparable. They slept in the same bed, ate from the same plate, fought the same fights.”
“Wait,” he would tell us. “You’ll have to wait.”
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
They’re not meant to last very long, these votives, these penny candles.
“The humans, human-animals and animal-animals in my books are the deliverers of the spirit of my work, and its substance — character, humor, wordplay, story, color, and visual pleasure.” An interview with Calef Brown.
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