words fail me

Hi there! Posted below for your listening pleasure is the only known recording of Virginia Woolf. It comes from part of a BBC broadcast from April 19, 1937. Hope it can bring you some inspiration on this dreary Saturday!

"How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth? That is the question."- Virginia Woolf

Jenny Lewis

Hey Labcat readers,
After a really rainy day here in Northampton, why not listen to some good music? I have been listening all week on my iPod to Jenny Lewis, formerly of the band Rilo Kiley.  She has a great voice and her songs are unique.  Here is one of my favorites in a live performance- aren't live performances always better? This is "Sing a Song for Them."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaxNlskBAfY&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BLUgJ4GTRz8lspTEIdQz9U&index=15&feature=plcp

Enjoy!
Esra

inspiration

I thought that for today I would post a quote to (hopefully) inspire some of you to post your work on the labcat. Here is a quote from Smith alum Sylvia Plath: 


"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

We hope to hear from you :) 

Labrys love,
Kelsey '13

Sand Art!

After a day of reading and reading, my mind has been officially frazzled. And I imagine that, this being Wednesday, many people are in need of a respite from words and all their beloved eccentricities. So here's a video of an insanely talented sand artist from the Ukraine. Enjoy! -Jackie

freezing points

four months of

blankness. nothingness.

tonight was the snap.
yesterday, my thighs chafed,
sweat swaddled my upper lip.

my mouth that was so great
to you.

tonight
the raw skin between my legs
prickled with the premonition of snow.




happy anniversary to me.

--becca

prompt

i once contemplated what a poem might look like if it were almost wholly composed of song titles. a little idiosyncratic, but may it inspire:

far away is the man i love 

and his sweet tooth, mumbling 

on a blanket the beer barrel polka 

with a storm in his tired hands. 

i pick at the grieving breath, 

the seagull of moth wings 

and blueberry mountains. 

dear cliff-top, the deer will write

with angry ink, biting at red apples - 

it's like reaching for the moon - 

the body's dance, handjobs for the holidays. 

i would be remiss not to thank my dutiful favorites: national skyline, art tatum, gillian welch & dave rawlings, autolux, the andrews sisters, josé gonzález, k.c. accidental, benoit pioulard, first aid kit, manchester orchestra, cat power, billie holiday, broken social scene

margaret draft '13

To the Harbormaster

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
                                   
                                   Frank O'Hara


Kristen DeLancey '15

Cindy Sherman

Why not start the weekend off right by digging into some Cindy Sherman artwork.  Sherman's artwork, including her most recent exhibition first displayed at the NYC MOMA is incredible.   I was lucky enough on my recent visit to San Francisco to see the exhibition at the SF MOMA.  Sherman photographs herself as different women from various backgrounds.  The outfits are crazy, and the makeup even crazier.  I found out about the Sherman exhibit after listening to Ira Glass' narration of visiting the Sherman exhibit when it had just opened at the NYC MOMA.  Someone posing as Cindy Sherman went around the exhibit saying she was Cindy Sherman. Of course, Ira Glass being Ira Glass, he had to make a hilarious prologue segment of This American Life on it.  Listen to it here. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/468/switcheroo

Here are some amazing photos of some of Sherman's photographs I saw in her recent exhibition.  (All Photos courtesy of www.moma.org unless otherwise noted)

Courtesy of aesthetics.com

Photo above Courtesy of  artobserved.com

Esra Karamehmet '13J

Mountain Day

In honor of Mountain Day...here's a poem about what else? A mountain!

The Mountains -- grow unnoticed

Emily Dickinson

The Mountains—grow unnoticed—
Their Purple figures rise
Without attempt—Exhaustion—
Assistance—or Applause—

In Their Eternal Faces
The Sun—with just delight
Looks long—and last—and golden—
For fellowship—at night— 

We hope you all had a wonderful Mountain day, whether it was your first, second, third or last. There is nothing better than hearing those bells ringing at 7 AM! 

Kelsey McDermott '13

Random Thoughts

And now, snippets of Rainer Maria Rilke (dead Austrian poet)'s advice to other younger, less-dead poets on love and, yes, poetry:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.”

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”

Jackie Leahy '14

wye oak, civilian

i am nothing without pretend
i know my faults
can't live with them
i am nothing without a man
i know my thoughts
but i can't hide them

i still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table with my jewelry
you still sleep in the bed with me
my jewelry, and my baby teeth

i don't need another friend
when most of them
i can barely keep up with them
perfectly able to hold my own hand
but i still can't kiss my own neck

i wanted to give you everything
but i still stand in awe of superficial things
i wanted to love you like
my mother's mother's mother did
civilian

\

Presented to you by Becca O'Leary '13

friday sentiments

For reasons entirely due to my own procrastinatory (it is a word) tendencies, this lovely start to the weekend finds me holed up in the periodicals room working on last minute assignments. However, I did find some time in this midst of all my pointed concentration to quickly flip through this summer's Paris Review and find this lovely quote for you (rhyming unintended):

"Don't be so sensitive. Lots of things bore me. Things I love. My husband. My daughter. My Native American pottery collection. It's not an insult."
                                  - Sam Lipsyte, "This Appointment Occurs in the Past"

I thought it put my general feelings towards 200+ pages of economics reading into words perfectly. The rest of the story is just as good, so if you too find yourself "working" up here sometime soon, I'd highly recommend it. Oh and--

Welcome back,
Kristen (former secretary/budding social media chair)

cool cats, welcome back

artwork by margaret draft '13

an update from labrys: the labcat plans to galvanize the face of our magazine's counterpart. in doing this, we ask for your patience, enthusiasm and dynamic engagement. we invite your feedback; how would you like to play with the labcat? send your thoughts and work as we strategize ways to inspire continued readership and participation. in the meantime, bask in the bosomy bounty of our relentless procrastination in impassioned sketches of cow/pigs.

moo?, your editor-in-chief
margaret

sometimes it's hard to be funny

in honor of our upcoming bad poetry, bad music event (thursday night, 7.00, dewey lounge, be there), here's a labcat challenge:

write a wonderfully bad poem. comedy's always hard to put into written words without expressions or hand gestures. i find that saying the jokes out-loud helps rouse those literary juices. if you come up with anything, email us! i'll post it! if this isn't bad enough, i'll be subjecting you to some of my bad poetry very, very soon.

submission date extended!

show off your brainy chops in our smith college lit & art mag. we extended the deadline to december 23rd, the very end of the semester, for all you procrastinators out there. but really, we'd love to read & see your stuff.

so send in your poetry, short stories, essays, screenplays, drawings, painting photos--anything, really--for publication in the early spring. limit to five poems. stories should be 5-7 pages. art should be in 300 dpi. all submissions as attachments to labrys@smith.edu. yes, that was a fragment.

be sure to include your name, title, and class year in the body of the email.

contact our lit mag mavens with any questions. should i have written all of that in small print?

hope to see you in the submissions pile! happy december!

bad music bad poetry

a celebration of cold
creativity:

bad music, bad poetry

dewey lounge, seven p.m.

thursday/
december 8th

(bring silly rhymes, half-baked stories, undeveloped pictures, an off-pitch song or two. crapapella will be joining us for some loud & proud bad music. laugh off finals stress, grab a piece of cake, and join us for a LABRYS study break)

-->i'll cook up some more bad poetry by then.

weekend inspiration

a little something to get your pen penning, your shutter shuttering, your paintbrush painting...

thanksgiving break is in two weeks. express your home home--the good, the bad, the ugly--whatever comes to mind.

send us the things you come up with! we'll post em.

rainy days

no sun and copious amounts of rain calls for a little Bukowski.

Alone With Everybody

by Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and

sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too

much

and nobody finds the

one

but keep

looking

crawling in and out

of beds

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

there's no chance

at all

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

nobody ever finds

the one.

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

the magic of this poem rests in Bukowski's semiotic strip tease--the point of this depressing nihilism is to call into question the seemingly obvious significance of the human body. of course, we hope that another person will eventually mean love, companionship, the end to loneliness. Bukowski robs us of our innate and elusive humanity and relegates us to pitifully hopeful animals, a group of which he is a part. "we are all trapped by a singular fate" -- even the speaker is a part of this group of lonely people and with this admission, any didactic or condescending tone relents. because of this, we as readers are able to distrust this jaded and heartbroken creature who speaks to us, and we are able to find idealism while maintaining the knowledge that heartbreak (and rain and gloomy days) will appear again. so why not dwell in it, until a beautiful fall day emerges?

a fresh fall

This fall, we've decided to freshen up our vision for the LabCat. We still want to see, read, hear your work. We also want to talk about process , inspiration, criticism. Send us an essay, a poem, a painting, a song that somehow has made your day indulgently sad or positively brighter. Tell us why. Tell us how you start your art, give us tips, share inspiration.

Here's a collaborative space for Smithie's creativity. Join us!

Hello, Kitties!

The Labcat has been enjoying a bit of an extended summer vacation, but now that the leaves are turning and the nights are getting ever more nippy it's becoming apparent that the time has come to trade beach blanket bingo and iced tea lemonade for more...indoor pleasures. And what better way to enjoy the great indoors than curled up with a mug of dining hall hot chocolate and your very own Labcat?

That's right, we're back and we want to know what you do!
Yes, you!

In case you're not familiar with what we do, I'll clue you in. The Labcat is the online life of Labrys, Smith College's art and literary magazine. Think of us as Labrys' web savvy partner in crime. We were established last year by the dearly missed Elizabeth Pusack and Emily Burkman, who couldn't get enough of your submissions and decided that once a year just wasn't often enough to see them all in one place. We accept everything from notebook doodles to jokes to scenes from your screenplay to collages! As long as you did it, we want it!

Of course, the Labcat isn't a substitute for Labrys, so anything you submit is also eligible for the magazine. Let us know if you'd like pieces to be considered for the print edition when you send them our way.

Send submissions as attachments to labrys@email.smith.edu.
Anonymous submissions are welcome. Please indicate whether you'd like us to enable or disable commenting.

Yours faithfully,

The Labcat

Car Lights and Ice Cream, by Emily Bush '11

York Beach; Powers by Rachel Miller '09

These lovely photographs were slated to appear in the 2008-2009 issue of Labrys, but we weren't able to get high-res versions for printing. So be careful when you submit: always scan your artwork or take your photographs with 300 dpi at least. If you have particularly large images (like 20x30in or something similarly ginormous) at 72 dpi, we may be able to make it work. Still, better to have your images at 300.

Isabella by Liza Aberbach '11

Mirror Images; Protest by Molly Sauvain '11

Snacks, No People

Shots from our Fall Issue Reading/Release Party! 

They are all of snacks and books and things, no people. Sorry.

Thank you for coming! (Part II)

Thank you for coming!

Thanks to everyone who came to the reading last night! It was lovely to see all of your faces, which are also lovely. Keep an eye out for the poets you heard last night and more in our upcoming issue!  We have Amanda Pollock to thank for these shots from the party. 

Green Street Café Hosts Labrys Poets

Thursday April 9

8-9 PM

64 Green Street

Four poets from the upcoming print issue of Labrys will read from their work as part of the Green Street Café Poetry Series! 

Anny Chen

Amy Sefton

Megan Burbank

Indus Chadha

Come enjoy a glass of wine, pots de crème, the candlelight or just the poetry! Reading ought to last under an hour!

Laundry by Angelica Huertas '10

the clothes must be separated.

first, my son’s faded band tee
a whitish smear undoubtedly spurted
as a result of his private passion.

there is a hint of red stain
in my daughter’s underwear, betraying
the secret of new sexuality.

my husband’s blue button-down
carries the faint scent of foreign woman
an odor familiar from his embrace.

and the only sound that echoes in this house
is the dull hum of the washing machine.

Love by Claire Harper '11

She lay awake in her boyfriend’s arms some nights, watching the blue of a movie flicker over blanket and walls. She felt the weight of his arms on her ribcage and tried to feel the size of her heart. This pressing feeling against her esophagus, was this love? She imagined that lumpy cardiac muscle expanding, ever expanding to hold this big thing called love, its thin pathways lengthening, its unexplored niches becoming cavernous. She pressed herself closer to his warm body, wanting to retreat into his comforting skin. To make her overwhelming but still abstract feeling for him something solid, to live among his precious organs and hold in her hands the beautiful cells that made him.

Petrograd, by Abby McIntyre '10

Other Side of the Glass, by Claire Harper '11

October Growing Pains by Melissa Maranto '12

Wrinkled in my closet
Folded and jammed between
A flapper gown and a faded spacesuit
Lies my favorite costume:
Iridescent white slip,
Gold-painted cardboard jewelry, plastic scepter
To make me Queen of the Nile
Cherished that outfit, promised
To wear it on another Halloween

It’s my final year of high school
I’ve spent the whole day in costume
Prepared to prowl the darkened block
For the very last time:
Wrapped in enigmatic black
Velvet cape, emerald painted face, pointed hat
Cleopatra forgotten, for now
Not bound by a river’s waters
I defy gravity as the western witch

But I am bound by schoolwork
Shackled by my own maturity
Slave work unknown to an Egyptian queen
I am slave to my own nature:
My sophisticated black colors my mood,
And I dream of skipping again
Through both street and life
Seeking happiness and chocolate
My Cleopatra gown white as innocence

The clock strikes eleven
Celebrations, quests for candy over
My studies complete at last,
I can challenge my situation:
Toss aside the broom that failed to fly
Retrieve white dress, fake jewelry
But the little slip sticks
Refusing to fit a woman’s body
My face still green with envy
For the child I once was

We Live off the Highway by Catherine Dodson '11

We live off the highway. Like so many suburban landscapes, they laid the thick black tongue of the highway down and these houses just kind of sprouted up around them.

Have you ever listened to the call of the road? It never ends; be it dark or light, dawn or dead of night, the highway keeps up the roar. I can hear it even now, beneath the murmuring tones of suburbia; lawn mowers, children, birds chirping in the pseudo-wilderness of the immaculately tended backyard forests.

So little of this existence are words spoken. Present in the absence of sound is the silence, or worse, the hushed and quieted tones of languages that would be spoken aloud, crushed beneath the roar of that yellow-barbed beast.

Shleep by Nina Schwartzman '10

A Poet by Sarah Collins Honenberger '74

You put your head in the oven. Because Ted left you? I don’t think so. I’ve read the bee poems. I’ve read your novel. You tried once before when you were too young to know what it was—or even guess—but you came back. Suicide was just another idea, hyperbole of life and death, fascinating and frightening. An exam you failed the first time. So you sat and spun the words and ideas into poems, threads of hope and hate. And then you put down the pen, turned on the gas, and rested your cheek against the cool metal and closed your eyes. The emotion melted away, pooled into puddles—pure into alloy—and then welded flesh and untouchable gas, a monument to what was, a substitution for what might have been. You never meant to give it up for nothing known or dear.

Nicholas cried out in the night, Mama, while Frieda worried tears to threadbare skin. And Ted wept, thinking he had done it to himself. Or perhaps not able to stop himself, rejoiced to think he was the ultimate tutor then, the mentor and the pupil merged, control that had escaped him with your pulsing heart and brain. And again now and now and now he pushes the lines across the page, hidden in the dark hole, enemy of the red bursts that split a body bold. The river washes by him, prostitute poet, flotsam on the flooded shore.

Remembering the crowded sidewalks, pram caught on the curb, and blackened letters in your hand, he struggles to forget. Instead he writes it down, the birthday letters, before he remembers he no longer has you to type it out on a clean page and to send it out into the world, a pirate ship of starless greed. He blots out sharp phrases from your journals, lies down in still waters, and genuflects to his own image reflected there. The thought-fox warily sets lame prints in snow, colder and deeper in the darkness than Ted’s nightmares or the weeping children’s waking dreams. The eye widens, coming about its own business, and he thinks he touches again the melting fingers and your smile. Blinded, he writes and lies and sells them wholesale, the gold pieces heavy on his heart. Your story, just a story, he says. Yet he knows now the loneliness you felt, as if by osmosis he becomes you, harried and searching, wanting and disdainful.

The clock ticks. Grain by grain, the hourglass empties its hate. White fists become the ashes of what could have been. Coal angels, ask and you shall receive. Yours, Sylvia, was a weird blue dream that might have been a sunny day gone stormy or an ocean sucked into the earth and swallowed whole. You wrote ‘what immortality is,’ but never meant it for yourself.

Sarah Collins Honenberger ’74 embraced a second career as an author at a Smith Alum Summer Session, SASS, in 1995. Her first novel, White Lies, was a 2007 nominee for the Library of Virginia Fiction award and her second novel, Waltzing Cowboys, just released in January 2009, is an Editor’s Pick on Bookviews.com. More at www.readhonenberger.com.

"A Good Affair While it Lasts" by Ingrid Johnson '11

"A Good Affair While it Lasts".mp3

Party Time! Save the date!

You are cordially invited to the release party and reading for the fall print issue of Labrys! We hope you'll come in out of the snow for some arty/litty festivity! 

Where: The Poetry Center, Wright Hall, Smith College!

When: Friday, February 20th at 7 PM!

What: Food, Poems, Prose, Artwork, Music, Magazines! 

Longer Still by Kelsey Hattam '09

Longer Still.m4a

For Lillian by Anonymous

Perched on Hail Mary,
on the verge of Our Father,
the Apostles and their Creed
thread between your frail fingers.
Rocking back and forth,
paper thin eyelids drawn closed—
I can see the thoughts behind them.
Your lips are moving
and what you are saying
fills the room
although no sound escapes you.