About

  • Essays and observations on books, culture, and life in the city of lights, by Lauren Elkin, a writer, reader, and native New Yorker.

    More about the blog here
    My Paris: where to eat, drink, and shop in les Paris de Maitresse
    Version française: MaîtresseVF

Pièces maîtresses

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Literary events in Paris

What it looks like from here

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Books and Other Sundries

Francophones, -philes, -phobes

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What they said

mention in Le Parisien

interviewed by National Book Critics Circle

interviewed by Paname Ensemble: Blog of the week

interviewed by Expat interviews

"...the height of class" (Startling Moniker)

"Great blog on literature and culture... elegant writing and intriguing content..." (StumbleUpon)

"[Maitresse] vaut le détour" (Tatiana de Rosnay, writer, on FigTree)

"Carrie Bradshaw with an M.Phil" (anonymous commenter)

"... the very charming Lauren Elkin, the Paris/Tokyo-based and fantastically rainbooted brilliant mind behind Maitresse, where she ruminates on "Paris's best make-out bars," and contemporary literature with equal elan." (Lauren Cerand, LuxLotus)

"Lauren Elkin, who blogs as Maitresse, is the sort of person who can use the word 'Hegelian' in casual conversation and is as witty and clever as her blog." (Joanna Walsh, Badaude)

Regarding On Books as Sweaters: "This post made me sweat until I bled." (Edward Champion, Edrants)


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Maîtresse in the press

My Wish List

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The Book Nook

Honored

Tender Buttons

I wrote it, not you

  • All of the text and most of the photographs on this blog are the exclusive property of Lauren Elkin, (c) 2004-2008.
  • Creative Commons License
    Ce/tte création est mis/e à disposition sous un contrat Creative Commons.

Coin poésie

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
  • How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
  • I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
  • My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
  • For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
  • I love thee to the level of everyday's
  • Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
  • I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
  • I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
  • I love thee with the passion put to use
  • In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
  • I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
  • With my lost saints--I love thee with the breadth,
  • Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
  • I shall but love thee better after death.
    • (1850)

Coins poésie du passé

  • Marilyn Hacker, "April Couplets"
  • Mild Sky of a day which may or may not be forgotten
  • as days of a life, lives themselves, are forgotten.
  • Tenacious ivy crawls from a plastic pot in
  • a window-box which the early rain's forgotten
  • Nocturnal narrative's coherent plot in
  • the sleeper's mind disconnects, and the dream's forgotten
  • textures, flavors, burlap, honey, satin
  • systematically derange, dissolve: forgotten
  • This morning's crisp half-loaf in which I've bitten
  • a crescent lies near coffee dregs, forgotten.
  • On a lined page in front of me are written
  • haphazard words grasping what I've forgotten
  • A letter will be answered today or not. In
  • the gap, what it might have said could be forgotten.
  • A three year-old picked up w dropped red button
  • and cried for a lost rag doll not quite forgotten.
  • The sidewalk glistened in the Marais, Manhattan
  • or a Balkan town whose vowels howl unforgotten
  • chronicles of neighbors at war, ill met in
  • each market-place, blood mixed, but no slur forgotten
  • What key turns in the lock, who will be let in
  • to the bright room of what is not forgotten?
  • The scribe turns hacker: DOS displaces Latin:
  • Exiles hoard both, the plain speech of peace forgotten
  • William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"
  • If I when my wife is sleeping
  • and the baby and Kathleen
  • are sleeping
  • and the sun is a flame-white disc
  • in silken mists
  • above shining trees,--
  • if I in my north room
  • dance naked, grotesquely
  • before my mirror
  • waving my shirt round my head
  • and singing softly to myself:
  • "I am lonely, lonely.
  • I was born to be lonely,
  • I am best so!"
  • If I admire my arms, my face,
  • my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
  • again the yellow drawn shades,--
  • Who shall say I am not
  • the happy genius of my household?
  • [c. 1917]