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Claudia C

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Claudia’s Bookshelves

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Claudia’s Notes & Highlights

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

2 notes & 6 highlights

Have you ever seen a hawk catch a bird in your back garden? I’ve not, but I know it’s happened. I’ve found evidence.

yes - happened in my back garden

The Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell

5 highlights

Claudia’s Quotes

“I had nightmares I thought were really horrible until I woke up and remembered what reality was at the moment.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

36 likes

“The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.”
― Iain M. Banks

tags: fiction, fiction-writing, writing, writing-craft

246 likes

“As for me, I used to be a bird
with a gentle white womb,
someone cut my throat
just for laughs,
I don’t know.
As for me, I used to be a great albatross
and whirled over the seas.
Someone put an end to my journey,
without any charity in the tone of it.
But even stretched out on the ground
I sing for you now
my songs of love.”
― Alda Merini, Love Lessons: Selected Poems

14 likes

“Nothing remains but to hope the end will come to extinguish the unrelenting pain of waiting for it.”
― Pier Paolo Pasolini, Poems

18 likes

“God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think;”
― Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost

tags: books, writing

3 likes

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Claudia’s Groups

Literary Darkness — 4722 members — last activity 1 hour, 45 min ago
This group is dedicated to an appreciation of important works of literature, both classic and contemporary... that happen to fall into the category of ...more

¡ POETRY ! — 22610 members — last activity Nov 19, 2025 04:25PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more