Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: shakespeare

  • ‘Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard’ by Ben Crystal -book review

    Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    During my undergraduate years as an English major at Rutgers, Shakespeare wasn’t my favorite figure of English literature. He seemed overly hyped and scholarly to tax the enjoyment of the simple pleasure of reading. The impression of the Bard has mellowed, but he’s in the upper caste in the constellation of writers. Crystal wrote the book with me and other kindred spirits in mind.


    Shakespeare wasn’t a stuffy academic writer whose ambition was to imprint indelible footprints in the path of humankind. Instead, he was a playwright, a modern-day screenwriter who was more interested in attracting audiences to his plays as much as possible. His characters are timeless and boundless, transpiring in every human face from all races and cultures because they are universal. The plays are dramatic portrayals of what it is to be human. King Lear, played by a Korean veteran actor, begets the same level of emotions as his English peer has demonstrated because it is the heart that spurs the mind to speak.


    Crystal is a knowledgeable writer who wears his knowledge on the subject from the studies lightly with the general public in mind. His endeavor to bring the figure of the literary giant is magnanimously noble and altruistic. Perhaps Crystal might have been the one who was disaffected with those elitist writers and pedantic academics claiming Shakespeare as one of their own, only to be appreciated by the literati. In sum, if you are interested in reading Shakespeare for the first time or discovering who he was, this book is a commendable read and a good primer for further reading about his plays and more.


    View all my reviews

  • Once More unto the Breach! Here comes my New Year’s Resolution

    Once More unto another year, once more!

    As the first day of the new year has almost ended, I feel the urge akin to duty to make a new year’s resolution. There’s not much but high hopes for low heaven, with a reasonable scope of expectation and humble measurement of happiness. And since none other writers know about the depth and breadth of humanity than Shakespeare, I deem it fit to match his quotes with the contexts of what I have resolved to make this year of Rabbit fruitful and blissful.

    1. Be Not Afraid of Challenges
      ‘This is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap. For in my way it lies.’ – Macbeth
    2. Don’t be easily crestfallen
      ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ – Hamlet
    3. Read More, Write More, No Matter What
      ‘We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.’ – Hamlet
    4. Keep it simple with humor
      ‘I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.’ – Much Ado About Nothing
    5. Let not a curse be my light purse
      ‘I say, put money in thy purse.’ – Othello
    6. Be vigilant at all times
      ‘Love all, do wrong to none, trust a few.’ – All’s well that Ends Well.
    7. Overcome existential malaise
      ‘Then I defy you, stars!’ – Romeo and Juliet

    Nobody says life is easy, and we know it to the point that such a saying has become a cliche. But life itself shouldn’t be and is not because we are such stuff made of spirit, fire, and dew, harvesting sunlight and starlight. Now that I have listed my New Year’s resolutions as above, I feel fresh of spirit charged with new energy like the Energizer bunny to keep going in my life, even if perils will lie ahead. But in the meantime, let me be that I am who I am as I write this post in my tiny room with my two cats, Toro and Camille, and seek not to alter this moment of simple pleasure.

  • Why she lost

    The case of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard has gone viral on social media platforms since the trial began a few weeks ago, Amber Heard could have been quickly on the winner’s circle. She must have believed that it was all over but the shouting that the goddess of victory was on her side. Yet, it appears to be anything but, and she has become some modern-day Jezebel.

    The current defamation trial brought by Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard has been broadcast live, which I became strangely attracted to. Perhaps, it’s the biggest and most sensational court drama since the OJ Simpson case was also broadcast live. Or perhaps, it’s about Johnny Depp. His bohemian image and matching film characters render him uber-cool and unassuming compared to his Hollywood peers, creating halo effects of being likable and honest. When I read the comments about the trial on Youtube, I was surprised by the social dynamics of praising Depp to the detriment of Amber, who has no friends from any gender. The defendant is alone in this battle, forsaken by her community of actors and actresses, and she is not sorry. Her confident demeanor is translated to be arrogant, cold, and irritated. Sometimes, she looks bored and drawn, as if she knows that she will lose the case. And you know what? In the witness box, Heard didn’t even act convincingly that she was a victim of the alleged domestic violence because her expressions transpired a lack of emotional delivery. If she trusted her beauty to excel her peers as the most sought-after actress, then she should learn that Marlyn Moroe was wise enough to know that beauty was a fad and that she took an acting course and an English literature course at night.

    I opine that the reason Heard is losing is her personality, she is conspicuous in all she looks and she acts. Apart from the truth, Heard fails to gain favorable votes from the general public that she has proudly overlooked because of those disgraceful acts that flow from her words and actions. Shakespeare, who himself was also an actor, knew about the world of Tinsletown Beauties thus: “All that glitters is not gold.” Now I know it.

  • Musing on Earth Day

    Glass globe photographed in a moth forest

    With the power of the mind put into practice for conserving nature, we can make the whole world a better place because we are part of nature, made of fire, water, earth, and air.

    In our annual celebration of this year’s Earth Day, we want to spread the spirit of Mother Nature. We want all to find the beauty of life in music from the trills of birds in the rhythm of running brooks, words of wisdom in the susurrus of trees, and books in the vivid scarlet twilight of the sunset lingering in the west. The wonders of nature tame belligerent brutes and soften the hardened hearts of cynics.

    One-touch of nature makes the whole world kin. In the arms of Mother Nature, we are all her children, so keeping the earth clean and livable is our filial duty to her.

  • Living boys’ adventure tales: a-ha at the Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA, on April 8th, 2022

    a-ha from left Magne Furuholmen (Keyboards), Morten Harket (Vocals), and Pal Waaktaar-Savoy (Guitars)

    After the two years beneath the gray clouds of the pandemic, a-ha came to town with the halos of seasoned veteran wizards of pop music. They entered the world’s music scene like brilliant comets four decades ago with the catchy hit ‘Take on Me’ and continued to travel into the universe all the more brilliantly over time. Indeed, age could not wither them away, nor custom could stale their musical alchemy.

    With the opening song ‘Sycamore Leaves’ with its characteristic guitar riffs and heavy drum beats, a-ha came on the stage. The fans were instantly enchanted by their charismatic appearances, like the Three Musketeers of Pop. Magne Furuholmen (Keyboards), Morten Harket (Vocals), and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (Guitars) were now veterans of the music industry. They were all methodically professional and effortlessly entertaining to present what the fans wanted the most by coming to their concert after two bleak lockdown years. They gave all they got by mainly playing the songs from the first and second albums because those two albums were best known and loved by their US-based fans. The result was the touchy-feely, feel-good atmosphere of the concert. Viktor E. Frankl, the father of Logotherapy, acknowledged that the moments of pleasure in appreciating arts equal the happiness in finding the meaning of life. That night at the Wiltern, a-ha gave the happy moments of life to their fans as their music pleased our senses and sensibilities, allying our passion for what our existential life outside the concert hall had brought to us just for the moments.

    Music is the most potent magic in conjuring up the memories in the phantasmagorical display of images of the misty past, vivid and vital, all adrift then aglow in condensed particular energy, becoming nostalgia in the sweet melancholy of romantic solitude manifested in the music of a-ha. Looking at the audience, I thought that we all came to go back to our days of innocence when the pleasure of listening to a-ha’s music on the radio and records required no dreadful existential worries of the world. That night at the Wiltern, a-ha transported us back to our memory lane in the soft sweet melodies of the past and then to the present, lingering in the heart’s windows and staying in its garden forever with the triumphant ‘Take on Me’ ending on a high note in the encore.

  • Untitled

    Is anyone out there? Although I feel like a lonely gauche scientist who incessantly sends a life signal to an extraterrestrial being across the galaxies, I am again sending another life signal in writing to express that I am still alive. So, if any accidental reader stumbles on this blog, welcome.

    I once read that magic is the power of manipulating nature without knowing the source of the force. If so, then the magic I once possessed is lost, making me good for nothing. But, as observed by Francis Bacon, I am talking about the faculty of cognition that affects linguistic abilities for speech that makes a ready person, reading a full person, and writing an exact person. The satisfaction of reason, the power of expression aspiring to development of the spirit, which gave me a content elbow room, vanished into the curtains of the past, leaving me to fend for provisional existence of survival in the most primitive way. It reminds me of Viktor E. Frankl’s memories in concentration camps, where many of the inmates dissipated into the hopelessness of abandoning themselves in the stupendousness of tragedies.

    I always think of my life as an inspiration fit for a documentary film about a working-class immigrant single woman who painstakingly tries to preserve a sense of purpose in life with a grasp on intellectual aspiration. Doing so makes her compare to the burgeoning careers of her peers, who seem to be of a higher station in life than she. I am not trying to play a typecast role of proverbial fatalist or unreconstructed defeatist caviling at the happiness of others as a result of their hard work and abilities to do wonders. That would be a callous and sordid a priori judgment for her unfortunately cursed life. Didn’t Shakespeare also say that our lives are governed by our stars? Didn’t Cicero believe that our lives can be read by avian augury? Come to think of it, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton also believed in and engaged in alchemy craft. The commonality of the examples described above illustrates that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt in your philosophy about the world, whatever it may be.