I am: Diana Tang, born on the Twenty-First of July, twenty years ago in New Jersey, is currently majoring in English while attending Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, class of 2006.  At this point in my life, I am trying, hopefully not too desperately, to be happy with who I am.  I think art is a miracle. Most of the time, the world is beautiful.

l i s t e n . r e a d . w a t c h

Ani Difranco At the Drive In Azure Ray Beck Bjork Blonde Redhead Blur Bôa Bright Eyes Coheed & Cambria Cursive Death Cab for Cutie

The Decemberists Ed Harcourt Fiona Apple Gorillaz Mars Volta Modest Mouse Neutral Milk Hotel Our Lady Peace Pedro the Lion Pele Pinback Portishead Postal Service

Pretty Girls Make Graves Radiohead Rage Against the Machine Rilo Kiley The Shins Sleater-Kinney Sparta Sufjan Stevens Tori Amos Weezer White Stripes Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Björk - It's Not Up to You
Boa - Duvet (Acoustic)
Death Cab for Cutie - Brothers in a Hotel Bed
Decemberists - Shany for Arethusa
Donovon - Hurdy Gurdy Man
Ed Harcourt - Beneath the Heart of Darkness
Eric Whitacre - Water Night
Fiona Apple - I Know
Gary Jules - Mad World
Mars Volta - Televators
Portishead - Glory Box
Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Weezer - Say It Ain't So

A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess
Difficult Loves | Italo Calvino
The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton
The Iliad | Homer
Les Miserables | Victor Hugo
To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee
Wrinkle in Time Series | Madeleine L'Engle
The Complete Stories | Franz Kafka
White Fang | Jack London
Moby Dick | Herman Melville
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami
The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand
The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Hamlet | William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus | William Shakespeare
Raise the Red Lantern | Su Tong
Galápagos | Kurt Vonnegut
The Once and Future King | T.H. White
Leaves of Grass | Walt Whitman
Roald Dahl
Octavio Paz
Carl Sandburg

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Window
Carl Sandburg

Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.

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Bath
Carl Sandburg

A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and built something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on.

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Cool Tombs
Carl Sandburg

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ...in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ...in the dust ... in the cool tombs.

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Relámpago en repaso
Octavio Paz

Tendida,
piedra hecha de mediodía,
ojos entrecerrados donde el blanco azulea,
entornada sonrisa.
Te incorporas a medias y sacudes tu melena de león.
Luego te tiendes,
delgada estría de lava en la roca,
rayo dormido.
Mientras durmes te acaricio y te pulo,
hacha esbelta,
flecha con que incendio la noche.

El mar combate allá lejos con espadas y plumas.

Lightning at rest
Translation by Muriel Rukeyser

Stretched out,
stone made of noon,
half-open eyes whose whiteness turns to blue,
half-ready smile.
Your body rouses, you shake your lion's mane.
Again lying down,
a fine striation of lava in the rock,
a sleeping ray of light.
And while you sleep I stroke you, I polish you,
slim axe,
arrow with whom I set the night on fire.

The sea fighting far off with its swords and feathers.

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Día
Octavio Paz

Un día se pierde
En el cielo hecho de prisa
La luz no deja huellas en la nieve
Un día se pierde
Abrir y cerrar de puertas
La semilla del sol se abre sin ruido
Un día comienza
La niebla asciende la colina
Un hombre baja por el río
Los dos se encuentran en tus ojos
Y tú te pierdas en el día
Cantando en el follaje de la luz
Tañen campana allá lejos
Cada llamada es una ola
Cada ola sepulta para siempre
Un gesto una palabra la luz contra la nube
Tú ríes y te peinas distraída
Un día comienza a tus pies
Pelo man blancura no son nombres
Para este pelo esta mano esta blancura
Lo visible y palpable que está adentro y sin nombre
A tientas se buscan en nosotros
Siquen la marcha del lenguaje
Cruzan el Puente que les tiende esta imagen
Como la luz entre las dedos se deslizan
Como tú misma entre mis manos
Como tu mano entre mis se entrelazan
Un día comienza en mis palabras
Luz que madura hasta ser cuerpo
Hasta ser sombra de tu cuerpo luz de tu sombra
Malla de calor piel de tu luz
Un día comienza en tu boca
El día se abre en nuestra noche

Day
Translation by Muriel Rukeyser

A day is lost
In the sky suddenly there
Light leaves no footprints in the snow
A day is lost
Opening and shutting of doors
The seed of the sun splits open soundlessly
A day begins
The fog goes up in the foothills
A man goes down to the river
They meet and are found in your eyes
And you lose yourself in day
Singing among the leaves of light
Sounds of bells far away
Every call a wave
Every wave obliterates
A gesture, a word, the light against cloud
You laugh and you do your hair not noticing
A day begins at your feet
Skin had whiteness these are not names
For this skin this hand and this whiteness
The visible and palpable which is outside
That which is within and is nameless
By acts of touch they go searching in us
Following the turns that language made
Crossing the bridge this image strung from them
As light pouring itself among the fingers
As you yourself between my hands
As your hand interlaced within my hands
A day begins in my words
Light which goes ripening until it becomes flesh
Until it becomes shadow of tour flesh light of your shadow
Network of warmth skin of your light
A day begins in your mouth
Day which opens in our night

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The Struggles of Words
Pierre Reverdy (Translation by Michael Benedikt)

Torment wanders into the light beyond the roof. At midday, without sunlight. The walls are coved with snow, against a gray background. The eye stops and vainly seeks a better path.

They've rubbed away the designs that gave life to the crumbling walls. Some words raise themselves affirmatively. And the flood, too high, carries off the shore where the grass smooths the bank into well-combed hair. And while across the bluish rays turbulences whirl and slowly rise, silence falls heavily on the ground, without breaking.