Word: quotidian
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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What is literature, in the end, but the art of rendering uncanny one’s own language, of not taking words for granted, of watching language undulate in slow motion through space? Nietzsche understood this. The quotidian life of any language ("What’s up?" "Nice weather!" "LOL") is naturally disenchanting. 99.99 percent of the words we speak show no trace of life. Clichés trickle from our zombie mouths. We speak a lot and say little. Literature re-enchants language; it fills its lungs with gasps. What are the pangs induced by good poetry...
While “Mrs. Adams in Winter” does not fully deliver on its promise of this nuanced portrait, it succeeds admirably in reconstructing the quotidian details—cultural, financial, geographical—of overland travel in the early-19th century. We learn of the staple food of travelers in Prussia, “beer soup,” a mixture of beer, egg yolks, wheat and sugar; of a road-tax imposed on greased wheels; and of nights spent in post-stations, a kind of 19th-century motel where one slept in a cubicle with waist...
Beyond its basic set pieces, the work also benefits from compelling staging by director Paul Melone. The entire stage is horizontally cleaved by a deep, trench-like space, through which actors at times trudge like dogged soldiers in stiff ranks or drift like lonely, faceless strangers through their quotidian lives...
...energy reached a certain pitch, [the warrior’s] amulets [representing this bond] would spring to life... opening the passage to the spirits.” Thunder Hawk agreed, noting that the Lakota people draw on these spirits to help them in both the rage of war and quotidian life...
...strength of “Mean Free Path” lies in its air of intimacy. The subjects of the poems range widely from the most quotidian matters—the act of looking up from reading a book—to the gravest ones—the death of a friend. By including the trivial alongside the serious, Lerner creates the illusion of conversation with a close friend. He writes, “I want this to be... a little path / For Ari... That’s why I speak / In a voice so soft...