s-a-mo asked: hey so you attend bard?i'm a junior in high school and i've been looking into it, but i cannot manage to see what sets bard apart from several of the other liberal arts colleges(besides location, etc.). i've read that there is a strong activist and music culture there; however, i would really appreciate if you could give me your perspective?i'm in that rut that every, or at least most, juniors get stuck in when eliminating colleges.i guess my question is: what makes bard so great?thanks a lot :)

Hey! I’ve honestly been thinking about it but I’m not 100% sure, in part because I don’t know an incredible amount about other colleges. Do they have punk rock prom? Do they have a surrealist circus? Does everyone do a senior project that makes them go a bit mad in the last month? What are the publications like at other colleges - do they have a science journal, a sex-discourse journal and a myriad of literary magazines? I don’t know, but I know we do.

Spinning and Spinning or, A New Discourse on the Poetics of Procrastination

The day relapses into evening and now she says
how come I’m not asleep? my brain is absolutely asleep.
Absolutely. And curled up, cold, under a pale moon, sailing
to a faraway land, like Max from “Where the Wild Things Are,”
away and away. She sighs and wishes
that she was a small child and it was appropriate to not
feel obliged to sit up for late-night wrangling, to worry about,
in the back of her head, the constant worry worry about about
Gertrude Stein and irony and semantics.
because there is too much sarcasm and not enough sincerity and that’s what
she said. That’s WHAT SHE SAID!!!
 
She said that she didn’t, and then she started hypothesizing that.
Oh, that hypothesis. Yes.  She tangled herself in
the sweetness of familiar self-annoyance and music,
constant, irritable music of constant, irritable uncertainties—
uncertainties about will be and what is even,
so much so that her thoughts were like small strange birds perched
on an exposed electric wire.
Easily scattered, they were,
more easily shocked up into the air and falling down like
warm and fluffy snowflakes. No—suspended
and drifting like pale stars, they were.
And it’s just she, but actually me.
not here, because of its uselessness and long pointless words.
 
Someone told her, finally, said, Just wait—
wait for it, because at some point
it’s all going to start spinning.
 

Anonymous asked: My friend told me Bard has a BDSM club. Is that true? If so, I think it's really cool. :)

I’m not sure that there is an official registered club, but there is definitely a community that discusses it (so like a less official form of club). Certainly sounds like something that would easily come into a more formal existence though.

someone correct or support this?

My Brother, the Artist, at Seven by Philip Levine

As a boy he played alone in the fields   
behind our block, six frame houses   
holding six immigrant families,   
the parents speaking only gibberish   
to their neighbors. Without the kids   
they couldn’t say “Good morning” and be   
understood. Little wonder   
he learned early to speak to himself,   
to tell no one what truly mattered.   
How much can matter to a kid   
of seven? Everything. The whole world   
can be his. Just after dawn he sneaks   
out to hide in the wild, bleached grasses   
of August and pretends he’s grown up,   
someone complete in himself without   
the need for anyone, a warrior   
from the ancient places our fathers   
fled years before, those magic places:   
Kiev, Odessa, the Crimea,   
Port Said, Alexandria, Lisbon,   
the Canaries, Caracas, Galveston.   
In the damp grass he recites the names   
over and over in a hushed voice   
while the sun climbs into the locust tree   
to waken the houses. The husbands leave   
for work, the women return to bed, the kids   
bend to porridge and milk. He advances   
slowly, eyes fixed, an animal or a god,   
while beneath him the earth holds its breath.