The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “language”

Finding Poetry in Other Lives: James Baldwin on Shakespeare, Language as a Tool of Love, and the Poet’s Responsibility to a Divided Society
Finding Poetry in Other Lives: James Baldwin on Shakespeare, Language as a Tool of Love, and the Poet’s Responsibility to a Divided Society

“The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing… that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him.”

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Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe and the Strange Story of How the Term “Black Hole” Was Born
Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe and the Strange Story of How the Term “Black Hole” Was Born

From Calcutta’s most macabre prison to the ivory towers of Cambridge, by way of ancient mythology and Einstein.

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Daytime Visions: A Tender and Unusual Illustrated Alphabet Celebrating the Whimsy of Words
Daytime Visions: A Tender and Unusual Illustrated Alphabet Celebrating the Whimsy of Words

“Words are a wonderful kind of glue.”

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A Darkly Delightful 1905 Poem Celebrating Punctuation, Newly Illustrated in Silkscreened Typographic Art
A Darkly Delightful 1905 Poem Celebrating Punctuation, Newly Illustrated in Silkscreened Typographic Art

“The semicolons’ mournful racket is drowned out by surrounding brackets…”

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Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Deeper Meanings of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak
Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Deeper Meanings of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak

“All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.”

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Eudora Welty on Friendship as an Evolutionary Mechanism for Language
Eudora Welty on Friendship as an Evolutionary Mechanism for Language

“When we learned to speak to, and listen to, rather than to strike or be struck by, our fellow human beings, we found something worth keeping alive, worth possessing, for the rest of time.”

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Strong as a Bear: An Illustrated Celebration of Animals and Their Emotional Presence in Language
Strong as a Bear: An Illustrated Celebration of Animals and Their Emotional Presence in Language

Free as a bird, busy as a bee, and the rest of the metaphorical menagerie of the human imagination.

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Audre Lorde on the Vulnerability of Visibility and Our Responsibility, to Ourselves and Others, to Break Our Silences
Audre Lorde on the Vulnerability of Visibility and Our Responsibility, to Ourselves and Others, to Break Our Silences

“That visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”

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Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means
Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness, and What Maturity Really Means

“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.”

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A Questionnaire for the Immodest and Curious: Clever Puzzles, Riddles, and Word Games from Nabokov’s Love Letters to His Wife
A Questionnaire for the Immodest and Curious: Clever Puzzles, Riddles, and Word Games from Nabokov’s Love Letters to His Wife

“Kisses, my love, from your eyebrows down to your knees and back.”

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