Nature Audacious: plnats and other things that sprout

We are, at this moment, the preeminent, virtual thread for:

• poetry
• photographs
• eyewitness weather reports
• anecdotes
• Oregon
• farm reports
• grits and tomatoes
• bird sightings
• comma styles
• whatchamacallits (as in LOL, imho)
• independent bookstore news
• New South Wales
• missing persons (where did they go, anyway?)

Now in its 13th (or is it 14th?) installment.

Yay! Oregon and it's wacky 'global weirding' (to borrow a phrase from Anna).

what about recipes from Louisiana? Does that fall under "grits and tomatoes"?

The phrase is not mine. I learned it from a loquacious dude on a Tri-Met bus.

Hehe... Love it though, Anna. Loquacious, eh? ;-) The kind that won't let you read?

The sky is mostly clear with a few low, puffy clouds over there to my right. There is a gentle breeze. My back porch is a comfortable place to be.

Robert

6: And here's yet another chance to play the Salon version of "Where's Waldo" - "Where's Mr. Durick's Back Porch?"

Between the kitchen-dining room side of my town house and my little back yard where there are a couple of trees to offend some of the association board of directors members. I win!

Robert

Addendum to message #1

Also perhaps the only thread:

• with recipes from Louisiana
• with contests
• that grants dual citizenship
• that abhors a vacuum
• where it's summer and winter at the same time
• to which prodigals eventually return
• where Mason meets Dixon
• with boating reports from Lake Michigan

Obviously, Mr Durick is in the south.

Dual citizenship, really? I've always wanted a French accent, so I imagine being a citizen would help with that. (Yes, yes, yes, I have a French bias! Sue me! Really. I'll sue back. I know how!)

So how do I get this dual citizenship? Is there some oath to take? Trick to perform? I only have one trick and if I tell you what it is you'll think I'm being unnecessarily coy. Unless it's the other one, which I can tell you about, and to which you may relate: I can read upside down in a mirror. I haven't tried to read French like that, but I bet I could.

Who makes these decisions, anyway?

What did Mason have to say to Dixon?

Robert

>11 citygirl:. You need not apologize around here for a French bias, citygirl. We are an ecumenical ensemble.

RidgewayGirl has dual citizenship because she spent time in Edmonton, Canada, before finding herself in Greenville, South Carolina. Ditto for NYC Jane and N'Awlins. Porius is a Detroiter who spends half the year there and half in San Diego, but he hasn't applied yet.

Do you have another place, aside from Gaithersburg, that we can put before the highly secretive committee? If you do, I'll be your advocate, and I have considerable pull, if I do say so myself.

I think Mr. Durick is either in Hawaii, on Guam or somewhere around Indonesia or Malaya.

I'm with Tani, except I don't think he's in the south South, but in Florida, within range of a movie multiplex and a Unitarian church.

However, it must be south, south Florida, because Orlando north has been freezing.

>13 copyedit52:. Well...yes. I spent time in Winnipeg before finding myself in Gaithersburg. I spent time in California (in an unnamed city that I call THe Hellmouth) before finding myself in Winnipeg. I spent time in New Orleans before finding myself, bitter and confused, in The Hellmouth. I spent time in Washington, DC, my growing-up area to which I have returned, before answering the call to go to New Orleans. I spent time in Gainesville, Florida, before finding myself back in DC. I lived in the same DC/MD area before sending myself to Florida. I joined the world in Atlanta before being taken to Maryland.

I will claim New Orleans, DC & Maryland (kinda the same to me), Gainesville, and Atlanta.

You don't want me to do my trick?

I lived overseas from the US for 13 years.

France: 88-89
(then a 3 year period in Washington, DC)
Tunis: 92-94
Saudi Arabia: 94-95
Nigeria: 96-97
Egypt: 98-04 (the only country on this list that I would claim psychological dual citizenship with)

In the US I have only resided in two places, Oregon (rural and Portland) and the greater DC metro area.

I have discussed all this with the committee and (the royal) we has/have come to the following decision:

citygirl: we can't give out triple and quadruple citizenship because that would set a precedent, an we don't like precedents. So pick one among the four (or five) you claim and it will be done, but only after you reveal your trick.

anna in pdx: we will consider Egypt your second home, even though that will just about destroy anyone's chance of claiming high temp in the summer (and prob'ly in the spring and winter and fall too) ...

An aside: that's all dual citizenship consists of anyway.

... but where in Egypt, anna? You can't have a whole country, after all.

The Great Oz has spoken.

As far as I'm concerned Anna can have the whole country. That'll teach those Egyptians.

Robert

Says the man without a country.

Ice forming on the lake & bay. Local paper had an article about charging people that have to be rescued from the ice. (It's expensive) We took the bridge across Sandusky bay today and it was mostly covered with a layer of snow-covered ice. But every now & then was a stretch of open water - a cold, dark blue. Sun shining,
clear blue sky, but the sun is weak. Nothing is melting.

Doggone, born and raised in Chicago and still here. Frankly, love to visit other places (especially in the winter) but cannot imagine not being here by the Lake. However, Egypt is one of the favorite places that I have been privileged to visit. The poor place gets lumped in with a whole region that us 'mericans tend to think badly of, and it is so different.

As to Robert, west coast of south Florida--that is where there are so many communities that care about trees being in particular places. Or, Hawaii or Guam.

Marian, since you seem to get the weather after we do, don't be looking for anything to melt any time soon!

I spent two years in Japan (Nagoya, Tokyo, and a beautiful lush place on the Boso peninsula called Toke), where they have seasons we don't even get a look in on. Even more than the wonderful people and the incredible sights and eats, I miss typhoon season.

53
BUT I CAN'T
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay:
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

W.H. Auden (October 1940)

An Auden doubleheader. This second poem is a repeat but it is one of my favorite, what a silly thing to say, poems. It has no fancy language; not all greenery-yallery; it is terrible in its straight-to-the-pointness. As you might have noticed I am a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to poetry. I am a follower of old Yeats in this respect. I cannot abide slap-dash poetry with all its limbs, etc. out of joint. It gets straight up my nose. I don't know how one can call oneself a poet unless one masters all the verse forms, etc. A poetaster, but hardly a POET. Thomas Hardy, WBY, Thomases (Dylan & R.S.), Auden, Frost, Millay, et al. all slaved over their efforts until they were pleased, if that is the word. Some of them were never pleased. We throw the term poet around like a blind man throws a football.

78
THE MORE LOVING ONE
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all the stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime
Though this might take me a little time.

W.H. Auden (? September 1957)

Selective lows and highs today:

Al Iskandariyah 55/76
Roma 30/43

Envoys From Alexandria

For centuries they hadn't seen gifts at Delphi
as wonderful as those sent by the two brothers,
the rival Ptolemaic kings. But now that they have them,
the priests are nervous about the oracle.
They'll need all their experience
to determine subtly how to express it, which of the two--
which of two brothers like these--will have to be offended.
And so they meet secretly at night
to discuss the family affairs of the Lagids.

But suddenly the envoys are back. They're taking their leave.
Returning to Alexandria, they say. And they don't ask
for an oracle at all. The priests are delighted to hear it
(they're to keep the marvellous gifts, that goes without saying)
but they're also completely bewildered,
having no idea what this sudden indifference means.
They don't know that yesterday the envoys heard serious news:
the "oracle" was pronounced in Rome; the dispute was settled there.

Constantine P. Cavafy

I lived in Cairo. I don't want to own it, I just want to claim my sisterhood with it.

Thanks for the Cavafy.

Al Iskandariya (Alexandria) is usually kinda cool/rainy this time of year. Kinda like where I live now.

Anna, isn't it true you worked for the C.I.A. until you were outed as depicted in the new film starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, Fair Game?

You were in Nigeria, eh? Interesting. That's where not only the aluminum rods allegedly came from (Niger, Nigeria, what's the difference?) that you and your cohorts tried convincing the Bush admin. couldn't possibly be used in a nuclear reactor, and don't you dare try telling me that you didn't send your husband, Sean Penn, over there (covertly, off the official record) to see if there had been a sale from Niger to Iraq of 50 tons of yellow cake uranium!

It was -3° (F) here this morning with the most beautiful of blue skies and sparkly snow.

I worked for the USIA (overseas it's called USIS) and I was a press/culture officer.

CIA is barred from using USIA for cover, by law. They use state department for cover, and sometimes I believe they use military positions, but can't use USIA positions, because USIA works directly with foreign publics.

My posts were Tunis, Riyadh and Lagos.

29: Brrrrrrr! I am hoping to visit my dad over my vacation (week after Xmas) and if it is really snowy we can't go. He lives in the Siskiyous and I am hoping it stays relatively mild down there.

Sean Penn is too much of an "Ivan" for me.

#31 - Don't like the Siskiyous in Winter. Broke my ankle (3 screws) in a nasty whiteout 31 years ago over Thanksgiving weekend. I avoid 'em like the plague.

We're actually having a snowstorm! One to three inches MY ASS!

And, if I have to chose only one other citizenship, I'm not doing any tricks.

You don't have to do any tricks, citygirl, unless of course you want to. And concerning dual citizenship (Is that what I've been calling it? Sometimes I forget my own affectations), it turns out we already list New Orleans and Atlanta on the periodic whatchamacallit (for dual citzen Jane and wood-splitter Gene), and as you note, D.C. is kinda the same as Maryland, which leaves:

Gainesville, Florida, which is now yours, where tomorrow's low/high will be: 53/75

to go with:

Gaithersburg, where it's snowing, and tomorrow will merely be cold: 23/35.

Those Gainesville temperatures are ideal. Ideal!

Robert

Gainesville? I would not have thought you to be that far north.

What a character you are, Robert. Giving us a hint that might or might not throw us off the track. You are a university type guy, after all, and Gainesville is a college town. So perhaps you're there; or not.

Meanwhile:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/from-lighthouse-to-ice-house-23525590

DAFFODILS
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Lantana editore posted a brief bio of me and gave my new book a mention. I'm of course waiting for them to offer me a contratto:

Durante i tre decenni impiegati per portare a termine le sue memorie, l’autore è stato postino in California, reporter per un settimanale del Connecticut, addetto stampa per un candidato al Congresso e giornalista. Attualmente si guadagna da vivere come editor freelance dalla sua casa di Woodstock, New York. È prossima la pubblicazione del suo secondo romanzo, Digging Deeper.

Another pic from Wilson's collection...

Cold enough for you yet? Penguins, captured by our South American correspondent in Patagonia.

I love penguins! I collect them, like these:



And now I wonder why I ever left Gainesville. It was such a lovely place to live.

Penguins are my favorite books to read.

In grade school we called the nuns, Penguins, or Zeros. nuns, get it.

Thanks for the penguins. That just cheered me up on a stressful day.

Magellanic Penguin

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.

the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.

Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.

Pablo Neruda

Porius, such wonderful Auden.

And Murr, that Pushkin in the old thread left me wanting more.

Mr Durick could almost be in Australia, except that he uses Americanisms all the time (such as 'porch') so one assumes he shares the same general soil as most of you here.

But here today there is nothing of cloudless skies etc. It's cold and rainy. I am not in New South Wales today though, but in Canberra, ACT (Australian Capital Territory, for those who know it not - a little jellybean shaped spot inside NSW which belongs to the capital city and does Not Associate with NSW). It's the brown splodge in the pale purple NSW here: http://longweekend.info/images/au-map.gif

Brown splodge it may be, Sheila, but apparently too exclusive for the likes of us.

eek, me too. How's this then: http://longweekend.info/

Not that exciting, considering the wait :)

DOVER BEACH
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; - on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-drench'd sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

>50 Porius: Fuck. Pfuck, even. My fave.

Here's a thing.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

SONNET 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes my love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shake-speare

The rain it raineth every hour here in San Diego. Got soaked to the skin watching my niece's soccer game. More rain for tomorrow.
Two holiday tournaments over the Xmass break. Very little time to make a motley of myself at the Salon. Just enough time to type in a birthday or 3, and contribute a poem, or sometimes even 2 a day as the spirit, of Poetry, moves me.

the poetry is wonderful por.

50 is also one of my favourites.

some while back citigirl asked for some poetry about the tropics and summer time.

Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat’s yawn.
Trees with dust on their lips, cars melting down
in its furnace. Heat staggers the drifting mongrels.
The capitol has been repainted rose, the rails
round Woodford Square the colour of rusting blood.
Casa Rosada, Argentinian mood,
Croons from the balcony. Monotonous lurid bushes
brush the damp clouds with the ideograms of buzzards
over the Chinese groceries. The oven alleys stifle.
In Belmont, mournful tailors peer over old machines,
stitching June and July together seamlessly.
And one waits for midsummer lightning as the armed sentry
In boredom waits for the crack of a rifle. …

MidsummerVI
Derek Walcott

keep warm citigirl.

An easygoing weather report:

Nontemperatures for Selected Locales
for tomorrow, Sunday, December 19

Bethany, Conn.: mostly cloudy
Cairo, Egypt: sun
Chicago: partly cloudy
Chino, California: rain
Denver: snow showers
Edmonton: snow showers
Gainesville, Florida: sun
Gaithersburg, Maryland: partly cloudy
Ghent, Belgium: light snow
Greenville, South Carolina: sun
La Pine, Oregon: snow showers
Little Rock: sun
New Orleans: sun
New York City: mostly cloudy
Portland, Oregon: rain
San Diego: rain
Sandusky, Ohio: snow flurries
Sydney, Australia: rain
Taipei: sun
Vancouver, Canada: cloudy
Woodstock, Georgia: partly cloudy
Woodstock, N.Y.: somewhat partly cloudy

Cloudy and cold it is. Frost on the ground.

Cold?! You guys don't know cold! We'll be lucky to hit 60 degrees today. I'm shivering. And actual water is falling out of the sky. It's freaking me out man.

The Wise

Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.

Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.

Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.

Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.

Countée Cullen

Additional weather ... snow on the ground and cold in Salt Lake City.

Over 6 inches of snow on the ground in Oxfordshire - most snow I;ve seen in 13 years in the UK.

Reportedly shaping to be the coldest December since records began in 1910.

COUNTEE CULLEN! Overcast. The threat of rain, but none so far. Coldish for So. Cal. The hardy southlanders are all tricked out in down this dank December day.

OK, this is really not in the same league as the stuff posted above, but it is (loosely speaking) poetry (hope he doesnt blow it!) and it has heat in it for those who are feeling cold.

Spanish Harlem Incident

Gypsy gal, the hands of Harlem
Cannot hold you to its heat
Your temperature’s too hot for taming
Your flaming feet burn up the street
I am homeless, come and take me
Into reach of your rattling drums
Let me know, babe, about my fortune
Down along my restless palms

Gypsy gal, you got me swallowed
I have fallen far beneath
Your pearly eyes, so fast an’ slashing
An’ your flashing diamond teeth
The night is pitch black, come an’ make my
Pale face fit into place, ah, please!
Let me know, babe, I’m nearly drowning
If it’s you my lifelines trace

I been wond’rin’ all about me
Ever since I seen you there
On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I’m riding
I know I’m ’round you but I don’t know where
You have slayed me, you have made me
I got to laugh halfways off my heels
I got to know, babe, will you surround me?
So I can tell if I’m really real

>55 copyedit52: in Canberra, also rain. And so cold, I'm just wondering if your influence has rubbed off, and Canberra thinks it's Woodstock or something.

>62 anna_in_pdx:. No anonymous poetry on this thread unless it's at least a thousand years old. Author please, anna.

>63 ChocolateMuse:. I'm not all that powerful, Choco.

I thought my hint would be enough....

It's Bob Dylan.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth

I missed the hint, but it is later here than it is there, and at a certain hour the world is too much for me. I prob'ly should've gone to sleep an hour ago.

Heavy snow hits air travel, roads across Europe

LONDON—Blizzards and freezing temperatures shut down runways, train tracks, and highways across Europe on Saturday, disrupting flights and leaving shivering drivers stranded on roadsides. Conditions on the roads were treacherous, with hundreds of motorists stranded in northwestern England following a deluge.

Airports in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark reported cancellations or delays. Icy weather also swept over large parts of Scandinavia. In Copenhagen, Denmark, dozens of flights were cancelled.

In Sweden, experiencing its coldest winter since the 1800s, there were more than twenty accidents in the Stockholm area alone.

In Italy, the Autostrada of the Sun—the country's main north-south highway—was jammed with hundreds of vehicles, whose chilly occupants slept in their cars, vans or trucks.

In France, civil aviation authorities cancelled numerous flights at Charles de Gaulle airport amidst the heavy holiday travel season. Numerous flights were also cancelled in northeastern France, including service at airports in Nantes and Rennes.

A significant number of domestic and European flights were cancelled at Germany's Frankfurt airport. Railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was pressing all the trains it could into service. “Everything that can roll is rolling," a spokesman said.

Weather forecasters in England say this December is currently the coldest on record.

Thanks for the hot poetry. It's already helping. The mind is a funny thing.

Damn. Hope Mac and zenomax and Pim (and forgive me if I've forgotten other regular European posters here) are inside warm, snug, and safe.

Beyond the Snow Belt

Over the local stations, one by one,
Announcers list disasters like dark poems
That always happen in the skull of winter.
But once again the storm has passed us by:
Lovely and moderate, the snow lies down
While shouting children hurry back to play,
And scarved and smiling citizens once more
Sweep down their easy paths of pride and welcome.

And what else might we do? Les us be truthful.
Two counties north the storm has taken lives.
Two counties north, to us, is far away, -
A land of trees, a wing upon a map,
A wild place never visited, - so we
Forget with ease each far mortality.

Peacefully from our frozen yards we watch
Our children running on the mild white hills.
This is the landscape that we understand, -
And till the principle of things takes root,
How shall examples move us from our calm?
I do not say that is not a fault.
I only say, except as we have loved,
All news arrives as from a distant land.

~ Mary Oliver

I am heading 'out west' again later this week, and according to the forecast, it will reach 30º Celcius (which is quite nice - 86ºF) and 90% humidity by Sunday! It'll be like breathing through a wet blanket. I will be longing for your snow.

You do get around, don't you, Sheila? Out west would be ... South Australia? Western Australia? The Great Australian Bight?

Aww, I wish. It'll still be NSW Piero, though the term is very broad here and would still apply if I was going to Northern Territory or Western Australia. Just a few hours north-west of here, towards the centre of the state. Still farming country, before it gets bare and red and full of anthills.

71
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities,
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boats in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated, for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same,
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-chocked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armourer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away;
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

W.H. Auden (1952)

Still raining here in So. Cal. and will remain raining for at least another couple of days. Tournament games at night but no pfucking school for two weeks, praisethelord. I feel like Sam Kineson on a three day pass to nowhere.

I want to thank you guys. I've been thinking for a long time that I don't like poetry, except for a few awesome poets (Emily D, Anne Sexton, Edna SVM) but you've opened my eyes to to some very lovely and...well, all that stuff that good poetry is (haven't finished my coffee, brain be real slow). So, thanks, for being your wonderful poetry-pimping selves.

Thanks for the thanks, citygirl. Porius, aka San Diego Peter, has been into poetry for a long time and has cogent things to say about it. He knows things like the meaning of iambic pentameter. I, on the other hand, have long had a distrust of poetry, mainly based on poets I've encountered (in the flesh), cliquish poetry readings I attended, and just plain laziness in not acquainting myself with what was out there. I feel differently now; obviously.

Here's a guy who popped up during my morning stream-of-consciousness search for a poem to post who might well exemplify why you were as wary of poetry (and poets) as I was, though Porius might well disagree:

Modern Poetry

How I hate those modern Poems
Vaguer, looser than a dream!
Pointless things that look like poems
Only, to some held-back theme!
Wild unequal, agitated,
As by steam ill-regulated--
Balder-dashie steam!
And if (in fine) not super-lyrical,
Then vapid, almost to a miracle.

Charles Harpur

Hee. It's funny. My first output was a poem when I was seven. I still remember it:

Untitled

For spring has come
There's lots to be done
Watching flowers grow and flow
Hopefully wishing
The unexpected snow
Won't harm them.

The teacher called my mother in.

Yes. I love Harpur's little poem. To play basketball with any skill, etc. one must learn the fundamentals. Same with poetry. How does a male caesura work? A spondee? What does it matter? A sonnet? A villanelle - (aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa - 5 stanzas of 3 lines each, and a final stanza of 4 lines.Only 2 rhyme sounds are permitted throughout. First and third lines in the first stanza are refrain lines. Line 1 reappears at the end of the second and fourth stanzas and as the third line in the sixth; line 3 reappears at the end of the third, 5th, and 6th stanzas.
Ingenious and musical, for light and dainty fancies, with a few of a serious mystical religious - notably Dylan Thomas.
Example of a light one:

ON A NANKIN PLATE
"Ah me, but it might have been!
Was there ever so dismal a fate?" -
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

"Such a maid as was never seen!
She pased, tho' I cried to her, 'Wait,' -
Ah me, but it might have been!

"I cried, 'O my Flower,my Queen,
Be mine! "Twas precipitate." -
Quoth the little blue mandarin, -

"But then . . . she was just sixteen, -
Long-eyed, - as a lily straight, -
Ah me, but it might have been!

"As it was, from her palankeen,
She laughed - 'You're a week too late!"
(Quoth the little blue mandarin.)

"That is why, in a mist of spleen,
I mourn on this Nankin Plate.
Ah me, but it might have been!" -
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

Austin Dobson

Of course I look more like a fullback than a poet, but the Jesuits early gave me a love for all things poetry. Lots of voters think poetry is for whispy numbers who traipse around the mulberry tree, etc. They couldn't be more misinformed. Look at Frost. Is there anything greenery-yallery about him? It's too bad the kids of today avoid poetry at any cost; a familiarity with poetry might prevent them from becoming a walking cash-register, etc. A poet like Yeats has meant everything to me. Without him I might have spent my weekends swilling beer and betting on football games, as the voters I grew up with still do. I shudder to think of what I might have become without the civilizing influence of the Jesuits.

From a white and cold Europe:

Looks bleak and dismal. Who is the gentleman?

Looks like fun for snowshoeing around town, though. Reminds me of our big 2008 snowstorm here, where suddenly Portland OR was playing the role of Fargo ND....

You found us, Pim! Welcome to the thread. This means that Driebergen, Netherlands, will now be added to our periodic list of high and low temperatures, and, as befits this season, weather calamities.

You fit right in!

Pim, go inside and have a cup of hot chocolate!

What would be in Pim's Cup?

Pyms or Geneva.

Total eclipse of the moon tonight, beginning, I believe, around 11:15, and ending at 2-something, fwiw. Will be the last total eclipse of the moon until 2014. Not that the weather will permit many of us to see it should we stay up for it.

Only shadows know the secrets
of closed houses,
Only the forbidden wind,
and the moon
that shines
on the roof.

~ Pablo Neruda

Yes, of course. Remiss of me not to mention it. Alas, Henri, your 11:15 p.m. is my 2:15 am, and I'm no spring chicken anymore. I might have to read about it in tomorrow's newspaper.

Even if I could stay up to watch it, we won't be seeing the sky in Chicago. Not as much snow as Europe, but snow. And in the morning, some "freezing fog" predicted. What the heck is "freezing fog"? The only good news is that the temperature will be above freezing for the first time in who knows how long. Guess that fog will melt.

Freezing fog is like lacy sugar icing. You walk into it and it cracks and falls to the ground all around you with a tinkling sound. However, be careful. It can be dangerous. Sometimes it's razor sharp, especially if doesn't completely collapse, leaving jagged edges.

Gene, is this true, or are you having us on? It sounds fairy-tale-ish.

WHY SO PALE AND WAN, FOND LOVER?
Why so pale and fond, young lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinnee?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothng do 't?
Prithee, why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame! This will not move;
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!

Sir John Suckling (1609-1642)

Grouped with Richard Lovelace as a leading "Cavalier" poet (his political involvement forced him to flee the country), Suckling wrote plays and poetry that are notable for their refinement and polished ease.

HAP
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: 'Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
Know thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!'
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
- Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

The demise of "verse in the most adverse of conditions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/nyregion/21poetry.html?nl=todaysheadlines&...

I finally found the book from which I learned what juvenile mysteries poetry contained: My American Heritage. This is the book that taught me words in aggregate make their own sounds not related to themselves each.

From the frontispiece:

Adventure

Here's an adventure! what awaits
Beyond these closed, mysterious gates?
Whom shall I meet, where shall I go?
Beyond the lovely land I know?
Above the sky, across the sea?
What shall I learn and feel and be?
Open, strange doors, to good or ill!
I hold my breath a moment still
Before the magic of your look,
What shall you do to me, O Book?

Anonymous

More to come. I've been waiting to find this book before getting into a regular poetry posting rhythm.

92: Sorry to hear New York won't have any more poetry on the subway.

Our program here in Portland was saved at the last minute, apparently, don't ask me how, so it's good for another year and we've started seeing the new poems in the past couple of months. It's called "Poetry in Motion" and I love seeing poems on the bus and train.

My only beef is, in past years they used to use all new poetry and now they have some classics like Wordsworth's poem about hearing an astronomer talk and being sick and having to look at the stars. This is irritating to me because I think the program should give people something that there is a high chance will not be something they had to read in school.

It is not seemly to be famous ...

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all--this is creation,
And not--to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive--this only matters--
Alive and burning to the end.

Boris Pasternak

Seasonal hi-jinks with a nod to Urania.

Robert

Peter, I'm taking that one to heart.

Which Peter? What poem? Give us a clue on this cold night, citygirl.

Robert, you win the prize (what prize--I don't know) for this week. I loved it.

May 24, 1980

I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly
width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country that bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles,
worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter,
planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables,
guzzled everything save dry water.
I've admitted the sentries' third eye into my wet and foul
dreams. Munched the bread of exile: it's stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;
switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about my life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,
only gratitude will be gushing from it.

~ Joseph Brodsky (translated by the author)

Another good one, Henri. And here's a bio on Brodsky and his books:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/4

Thanks. I've just been getting acquainted for the first time with some of his work and it's impressive, to put it mildly. And thanks for the link; I know very little about him, except that he was a Soviet dissident. Here's another one, more in tune with our Winter motif ...

A Polar Explorer

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary. And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.

~ Joseph Brodsky (1977, translated by the author)

ODE ON SOLITUDE
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose field with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

One of the greatest English poets of the 18th C. Master of the heroic couplet (a 2 line stanza) and had success translating Homer's poems. Pope was 12 or so when he wrote ODE ON SOLITUDE.

SONNET 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight:
Then I can grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

William Shakespeare

Very soggy here in So. Cal. Steady rain for almost four days. A Green Christmas to be sure.

Afternoon

When I am old, and comforted,
And done with this desire,
With Memory to share my bed
And Peace to share my fire,

I’ll comb my hair in scalloped bands
Beneath my laundered cap,
And watch my cool and fragile hands
Lie light upon my lap.

And I will have a sprigged gown
With lace to kiss my throat;
I’ll draw my curtain to the town,
And hum a purring note.

And I’ll forget the way of tears,
And rock, and stir my tea.
But oh, I wish those blessed years
Were further than they be!

Dorothy Parker

More about the French language

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/12/parlez-vous-fran%C3...

Another from my anthology. This one is not a poem, but a short conversation. There are many versions of this around. This is the one I grew up with.

How to Tell Bad News

(Mr. H. and the Steward Talking)
Mr. H. Ha! Steward, how are you my old boy? How do things go on at home?
Steward. Bad enough, your honor; the magpie's dead.
H. Poor Mag! So he's gone. How came he to die?
S. Overeat himself, sir.
H. Did he? A greedy dog; why, what did he get he liked so well?
S. Horseflesh, sir; he died of eating horseflesh.
H. How came he to get so much horseflesh?
S. All your father's horses, sir.
H. What! Are they dead, too?
S. Aye, sir; they died of overwork.
H. And why were they overworked, pray?
S. To carry water, sir.
H. To carry water! And what were they carrying water for?
S. Sure, sir, to put out the fire.
H. Fire! What fire?
S. Oh, sir, your father's house is burned to the ground.
H. My father's house burned down! And how came it set on fire?
S. I think, sir, it must have been the torches.
H. Torches! What torches?
S. At your mother's funeral.
H. My mother dead?
S. Ah poor lady! She never looked up, after it.
H. After what?
S. The loss of your father.
H. My father gone, too?
S. Yes, poor gentleman! He took to his bed as soon as he heard of it.
H. Heard of what?
S. The bad news, sir, and please your honor.
H. What! more miseries! more bad news!
S. Yes sir, your bank failed, and your credit is lost, and you are not worth a shilling in the world. I made bold, sir, to wait on you about it, for I thought you would like to hear the news.

Anonymous - from McGuffey's Fifth Reader

I've heard of McGuffey's Reader, of course, but reflexively dismissed it, sight unseen, assuming it was a Dick and Jane kind of thing. Apparently not. Got any more like it, Gene?

My grandparents used to own several textbooks, my grandmother had been a teacher in the twenties, among them were several McGuffey's readers, as well as a couple of arithmetic texts. The thing I remember from the arithmetic books was the sense behind long division and casting nines in multiplication. Those texts, I think took for granted that the students were capable of understanding things that we don't dare stress our students with today.

The McGuffey's readers were nothing like Dick and Jane. They were full of wisdom, short aphorisms and poetry. I would prefer my children learn things like

Beautiful

Beautiful faces are they that wear
The light of a pleasant spirit there;
Beautiful hands are they that do
Deeds that are noble, good and true;
Beautiful feet are they that go
Swiftly to lighten another's woe.

Anonymous - From McGuffey's Second Reader

A week's worth of lessons could be gotten out of just that small poem. Today, young readers read picture books, often of unconnected words under a representative picture. Some books are nothing more than politically correct tracts designed to introduce children to adult political propaganda. How wrong is that? No wonder people can't, won't, and don't know how to read. We apparently teach some form of mechanics, but not much in terms of understanding. I don't think we teach much that lifts up the human spirit, either. It's all about perseverance in adversity. Whatever happened to teaching "Deeds that are noble, good and true"?

For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.
And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be, finally,
an accident of hope.
I tapped my own head;
it was a glass, an inverted bowl.
It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,
although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all...
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face.

--Anne Sexton

I liked the Anne S. poem very much. I am not sure I got the context but if it was a breakup poem, it was the sweetest one I've ever read. I have always been fascinated by breakup songs; perhaps I should look into breakup poetry.

I've never read it as a break up poem, but I really like that interpretation/perspective.

I get it, I think. But then, it seems that just about every poem I read was written about me.

That's good poetry P.

110 - 112> So how do you guys read that poem then. What's happening there?

Anne Sexton. I'm not sure how I read that one myself. We should have a poetry explication thread someday, for dissection and analysis. Or not.

Another suicide, sad Sylvia, writing about a break up of sorts ...

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

~ Sylvia Plath (28 March 1961)

Despondent now.

I've been trolling around the salon, trying to figure out where to place this entry, and finally decided to do it here. What the hell, I'm among friends, right? And I have shared other personal book stuff on this thread.

To my great relief, Atif Farooq Qureshi of Epic Press, publisher of Digging Deeper (more on this and the lack of a Touchstone to come), tells me that all the booksellers will eventually display the book cover (barnesandnoble.com, alibris, etc.), but there's an updating cycle they go through that can't be rushed. (It currently is displayed on all the amazons--in the UK, U.S., and even in France, where no one has ever bought a book from me.)

Tim Spalding of LT essentially told me the same thing, I think, about the Touchstone, or lack of it at the moment. That I have to be patient and it will happen. Which would be good, because I can't seem to get the hang of calling it out in linkable blue, though several people have tried to tutor me. My failure threw me back to junior high school, where I was looked upon as an uncouth ruffian who didn't belong among the smarter kids. I spent nearly a whole day feeling incompetent and humble.

EF, I read the Anne Sexton as addressed to someone who is rejecting the madness she feels, someone to whom she was trying to expose herself, her experience.

That's okay, Wilson... we still ♥ you.

So, the touchstone won't work until the cover is available? Or coincidentally, they gave you the same answer? Sheesh.

Well, we are heading over the river and through the woods to my brother's place. Somehow, I would trade all the cooking/cleaning to not have to. Aren't the kids supposed to do that? Ah, well. It is a very crisp 10° (F), the roads are a bit icy or packed snow. Oh, hell... tripcheck shows the same in the passes. So, should be a good drive.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

117> thanks. Complicated character, that Sexton. I wonder if she was reasoning with herself.

116> hey I got your cover scanned and input into the covers for the book, if that's any consolation, as I now have a hard copy in hand. I was hoping to post your autograph in the "Stuff you find inside books" thread, but man, Piero, your note to me was so touching -- raised my spirits, it did indeed -- that maybe it'd be appropriate not to.

Have a better day today, okay?

And drive careful; be safe, Tani!

Thank you, Henri, for wishing me a better day, though I didn't exactly have a bad day. A person like me, who tends toward overexuberance and exaggeration, could do with a bit of humbling now and then.

Oh ... wait. Am I talking about you or me? I'm confused.

Do you know who Peter is?

Is this a trick question, citygirl? I'm Peter, and Porius is Peter too. If you mean me, well, there are of course numerous versions. But then, Porius no doubt has his versions too.

Yes, it was a trick question, but I didn't know that Porius is also Peter. And what a coincidence, my name is Peter, too!

(And many posts ago, I was referring to the Pasternak as the one I'm taking to heart.)

I could have been Peter, too.

A Baker's Duzzen Uv Wize Sawz

Them ez wants, must choose.
Them ez hez, must lose.
Them ez knows, won't blab.
Them ez guesses, will gab.
Them ez borrows, sorrows.
Them ez lends, spends.
Them ez gives, lives.
Them ez keeps dark, is deep.
Them ez kin earn, kin keep.
Them ez aims, hits.
Them ez hez, gits.
Them ez waits, wins.
Them ez will, kin.

Edward Rowland Sill

115> oh, sorry about that. Hopefully this one below will prove more cheery ...

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

~Dorothy Parker

Hallillllullya, no gym till Monday next. And it is not raining. Problem: I'm too damn tired to do something.

WHEN WE TWO PARTED
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow -
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me -
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well -
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

>123 citygirl:. Well, that took a while to get to, citygirl. (Do you have a name, and will you reveal it, or join Mr. Durick in the Hidden Mystery department?) From #95 to #123, with a stop at Anne Sexton in between.

I'm glad you took it to heart. It popped out at me when I was reading poetry that morning, by clicking on bookmarked websites and thinking about transitions (I'm always thinking about transitions; it's the foremost challenge I have to deal with as a writer, since I have an anecdotal style), probably because of the Winter Solstice. And somehow that got diverted by a stray thought (perhaps I thought it was time we had a Russian entry) to a different set of pages, and voila, there was the Pasternak.

Another thing I do as a writer: I look for a theme for each chapter--things that actually happened, but that I choose, for a variety of reasons, to set in a particular framework--and what sometimes suggests itself are points in time, historical situations (I love history). Like in Digging Deeper, the chapter/story called "Immigrants," in which I am a New York transplant to California, but could well have been an immigrant from one cultural setting to another, even if the difference was less extreme than leaving one country for another. There are, after all, commonalities in all similar things.

And, long story short (I just finished a chapter, and I'm in my writing head, but this isn't the time to write a whole new chapter): I'm an unknown writer, pretty much, but I've recently begun to experience some modest success, after thirty years of struggle. And reading the Pasternak, I stepped inside that poem as if I were he, looking at a whole other set of problems, on the heels of success.

To get the touchstone type [10731346::Digging Deeper] exactly.

Digging Deeper

Robert

R.W.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBkTUzKAiXQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcQZ2tnWeg&feature=related

Digging Deeper

Thank you, Robert. I'll never make fun of you again.

ADIEU, FAREWELL EARTH'S BLISS
Adieu, farewell earth's bliss;
This world uncertain is;
Fond are life's lustful joys;
Death proves them all but toys;
None from his darts can fly;
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health,
Physic himself must fade.

All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by;
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Strength stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed on hector brave;
Swords may not fight with fate,
Earth still holds ope her gate.
'Come, come,' the bells do cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Wit with his wantoness
Tasteth death's bitterness;
Hell's executioner
Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Haste, therefore, each degree,
To welcome destiny;
Heaven is our heritage,
Earth but a player's stage;
Mount we unto the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)
Nashe had a brief and tempestuous career. He produced plays, satires, pamphlets, and a novel, as well as poetry. The following lyric is taken from his comedy SUMMER'S LST WILL AND TESTAMENT (1592)

To be or not to be: that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep --
To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life --
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than to fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene I

And bonus points to anyone who can use "contumely" and "fardels" in a sentence.

Not entirely fair but - I bear my fardels with oh so much less than the proud man's contumely.

contumely: harsh language or treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt

fardel: bundle, burden

Peter W, that is so not a sentence.

Porius, I should have known you'd be the first...

His contumely attitude was paid back with interest by a privy kick in the fardels.

The new, improved predictions, incorporating dual citizenship(s) and a soupcon of nontemperature info:

Christmas Day Weather
Lows and highs for selected locales

Edmonton 12/16 partly cloudy
Chicago 17/30 snow showers
Woodstock, N.Y. 20/29 cloudy
Driebergen, Netherlands 23/28 partly cloudy
Sandusky, Ohio 23/29 snow showers
London, England 23/30 sunny
Bethany, Conn.24/33 partly cloudy
Ghent, Belgium 25/30 partly cloudy
Gaithersburg, Maryland 25/33 snow showers
New York City 25/39 sunny
Denver 25/51 sunny
Little Rock 26/44 cloudy
Atlanta 27/40 snow
Greenville, South Carolina 27/42 sunny
La Pine, Oregon 28/40 rain, snow showers
New Orleans 34/56 rain
Portland, Oregon 36/44 rain
Vancouver, Canada 44/51 rain
Gainesville, Florida 44/70 sunny
Los Angeles 52/66 cloudy
Taipei 53/60 rain
San Diego 53/62 cloudy
Cairo, Egypt 56/76 sunny
Sydney, Australia 66/85 partly cloudy

Notes: There is also, of course, a London in Ontario, Canada; a Vancouver in Washington state; a Portland in Maine; a Cairo in upstate New York (not far from me, and pronounced "Kay-ro"), and also a Ghent up the road a piece.

Very nice, zenomax. Even a pun! How Shakespearean of you.

I did a bit of birding this morning. 'Ticked a Barnacle Goose that had been present for some time at a Westport, CT Golf Course. It had been "banded" (ringed) in Scotland! No exotic aviary escapee, here. This Goose has impeccable provenance.

Sorry about that. I've been reading Digging Deeper the past few days. I should finish by Monday. I especially like the post office descriptions.

In honor of the season:

Jest 'Fore Christmas

Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,
Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill!
Mighty glad I ain't a girl---ruther be a boy,
Without them sashes, curls, an' things that 's worn by Fauntleroy!
Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake---
Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache!
'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me,
But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!

Got a yeller dog named Sport, sick him on the cat;
First thing she knows she does n't know where she is at!
Got a clipper sled, an' when us kids goes out to slide,
'Long comes the grocery cart, an' we all hook a ride!
But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an' cross,
He reaches at us with his whip, an' larrups up his hoss,
An' then I laff an' holler, "Oh, ye never teched me!"
But jest 'fore Christmas I 'm as good as I kin be!

Gran'ma says she hopes that when I git to be a man,
I 'll be a missionarer like her oldest brother, Dan,
As was et up by the cannibuls that lives in Ceylon's Isle,
Where every prospeck pleases, an' only man is vile!
But gran'ma she has never been to see a Wild West show,
Nor read the Life of Daniel Boone, or else I guess she 'd know
That Buff'lo Bill an' cowboys is good enough for me!
Excep' jest 'fore Christmas, when I 'm good as I kin be!

And then old Sport he hangs around, so solemnlike an' still,
His eyes they seem a-sayin': "What's the matter, little Bill?"
The old cat sneaks down off her perch an' wonders what's become
Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum!
But I am so perlite an' tend so earnestly to biz,
That mother says to father: "How improved our Willie is!"
But father, havin' been a boy hisself, suspicions me
When, jest 'fore Christmas, I 'm as good as I kin be!

For Christmas, with its lots an' lots of candies, cakes, an' toys,
Was made, they say, for proper kids an' not for naughty boys;
So wash yer face an' bresh yer hair, an' mind yer p's and q's,
An' don't bust out yer pantaloons, and don't wear out yer shoes;
Say "Yessum" to the ladies, and "Yessur" to the men,
An' when they 's company, don't pass yer plate for pie again;
But, thinkin' of the things yer 'd like to see upon that tree,
Jest 'fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be!

Eugene Fields

We made it to the valley without incident. A little sketchy near Madras, but otherwise very nice drive.

Mele Kalikimaka, everyone!

Salt Lake City report - cold and overcast. Lots of snow the other day so we drove up to near Solitude (54" of snow) to sled. My not quite 2 year old niece loved it and wasn't scared at all making us all quite smug parents, abuelas, tios, and tias.

That's beautiful country up there, Jane, in that Wasatch Range.

Lots of people here in Southern CA are having to clean up from some flooding and mudslides and debris flows. Highland, at the foot of the San Bernardinos, got hit hard with mud, some homes up to the ceiling in it, roofs of cars visible buried in it. Laguna Beach, Main Street, got mud flows, businesses on Main Street and the entire downtown, completely shut down. They're still pumping water out of the movie theatre there on P.C.H. in hopes to have it open in time for Christmas tomorrow. Silverado Canyon in Orange County got slammed. Story of a woman in the paper literally outrunning a boulder on foot that came careening down the narrow mountain road.

Mammoth Mountain got 16 feet (not inches, feet) of snow this past week. So much that, for a time, people couldn't get in or out of town. Most snow there since 1969. The Sierra snowpack, just a couple days into winter, depending on which section of the range you stand, is already two to three times above average snowpack levels.

The Prado Dam here in Chino got close to capacity on Wed., at 527 feet. If it had hit 542 feet I might not be writing this post right now. Lots of precautionary evacuations below the dam (just in case). Thankfully, the dam's been retrofitted and raised since it nearly overflowed in 2005. Without that strengthening construction they did, making it higher and thicker, it would have been a flooding disaster here in the Santa Ana River flood plain. Kudos to the State of CA for doing something right these past five years, and to the Civilian Conservation Corps of Engineers for kicking ass in improving the dam so fast.

Brilliant sunshine for soggy San Diego for the day and the night before Christmas. Feliz Navidad as they say around these parts. 70 degrees on Christmas Eve doesn't necessarily bring back memories of many Christmases ago. But you can play golf if that is how you swing. I tend to swing with 'Old Blue Eyes' et al. so I will not spoil a good walk, as old Samuel Langhorne Clemens might put it.

From Vancouver to Victoria for Christmas, and the South Island is living up to it's reputation as the desert of the west coast. I left home and it was frost and rain; I came home and it was cold air, sun and little fluffy clouds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHixChYgGRI

Reporting from Roswell, NM--sunny and in the 50s. Happy Holidays everyone!

Sounds like Henri got the worst of it ... the weather, that is. Who says they don't have winter in California? Except, apparently, in San Diego. Next year, Henri, you should depart for Roswell, and its flying saucers, or Salt Lake, with its powdery snow, or balmy San Diego. or even Vancouver, with its fluffy clouds. Here in upstate New York it was okay too, a cold but not too cold day, and people were in a holiday mood.

About that: though I don't celebrate Christmas any more than I do Chanukah or Festivus, and I abhor all the shopping and so on, you'd have to have your eyes closed not to notice that people are a bit nicer, a bit more generous, about now. I like that, a lot, and emulating it, wish a Merry Christmas to all you New Testamenters--and you too, Anna.

and to tomcat Murr too! The precious little baby Jesus away in his manger loves even a bad cat like him too!

Si-yi-lent niiiiiiiiiight.

Off to Naples, ta da, to walk the canals and see the elaborate custom home light displays on the water ....

We're having a white Christmas here in Woodstock, Ga. Something I don't ever recall happening before in Georgia, but I'm sure it has. It's just gorgeous. A nice gentle snow, no sleet, no rain, just snow is accumulating on the ground. We might get several inches out of it.

Sometimes Dreams can be real.

Sounds magical Gene! Perhaps you can regale us w/a photo soon ...

The canals of Naples were gorgeously done up last night, resplendent in festive glow ... I'll see if I can find some pics to show ...

Merry Christmas everbody!

Verymerrychristmas from sunny, for now, San Diego.

Merry Christmas or best wishes to all Salonistas from very sunny Roswell, NM!

Over here are a couple of photos of the snowfall in Georgia.

Looks lovely. Nothing here yet. Me and the missus took a drive across the river to Rhinebeck--now of Chelsea Clinton fame--to see a matinee, King's Speech, at what I'd guess you'd call the local art house. Not a creature was stirring, not a store or restaurant was open, but the little movie theater had a line out to the sidewalk and down the otherwise deserted block. Weekenders, no doubt. I didn't even stop, kept driving, back to the bridge and home again.

Tomorrow, on the other hand ... The deer rustling the leaves near the compost pile in back--I couldn't see it, only hear it--better eat its fill now. One to three inches expected in the afternoon, then wind gusts up to 40 mph and six to ten inches in the evening and into Monday morning.

How was the movie?
Anything alien in Roswell, NM? David Hatchcer Childress Damned Things? Though it appears that he has dropped his middle name.
A Winterwonderland Gene. A rustic Christmas for our woodsplitting voter. Wasn't 'Honest Abe' a railsplitter? Like Tolstoy a powerful man.

No deer rustling here in the littoral zone. Some delightful spindrift that has the saltsmellingair charged with that which we call salubrious. Delightful and salubrious, well hang me, I'm in a holiday fruit-cakey frame of mind.

Didn't go to the movie, Peter. Drove fifteen miles, saw the crowd waiting to get in, turned a few corners and drove back the fifteen miles without even getting out of the car. Not for me to suffer the urban indignities: lines, crowds, traffic jams. When confronted with close quarters, I gladly go home.

Concerning the predicted upcoming storm and its aftermath:

The Blizzard

Now that the worst is over, they predict
Something messy and difficult, though not
Life-threatening. Clearly we needed

To stock up on water and candles, making
Tureens of soup and things that keep
When electricity fails and phone lines fall.

Igloos rise on air conditioners, gargoyles
Fly and icicles shatter. Frozen runways,
Lines in markets, and paralyzed avenues

Verify every fear. But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition

With joy, watching hours of news
Devoted to weather. People finally stop
To talk to each other--the neighbors

We didn't know were always here.
Today they are ready for business,
Armed with a new vocabulary,

Casting their saga in phrases as severe
As last night's snow: damage assessment,
Evacuation, emergency management.

The shift of the wind matters again,
And we are so simple, so happy to hear
The scrape of a shovel next door.

Phillis Levin

Does it get anymore idyllic than that on Christmas, Gene? Great shots.

Here's one below from our yearly Christmas stroll through Naples Long Beach. The torrential rains, I learned, talking to a few of the homeowners out and about, had shorted out most of everybody's lights, so it was a much more subdued, quiet walk among the lights this year, but still a wonderful tradition I'd recommend to anyone, whether you celebrate the season or not.

Gene, we'll be getting your snow in a matter of hours.

There's a hellacious blizzard coming our way, AND we have our annual National Audubon Christmas Bird Count tomorrow.

Birders are crazy...

Henri--what beautiful boats!

Shit Peter if I would have read your post carefully I wouldn't have asked you about the movie. I such a stupid.

GOD'S GRANDEUR
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And all for this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And through the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

GMH was not published during his lifetime. His appreciation of Nature was deep, in all senses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_bvT-DGcWw&feature=list_related&playnext...

I caught up with one pfuckingassehole who used to paddle me quite regularly in High School and kicked the pfuckingshitoutofhim, and I can tell you it took longer than you'd think. I always hoped to meet up with some few others but chance never brought them in my way. God I despised those shitheels and I'm afraid the hatred, till this very day, has lost none of its fervor.

The Blizzard, Continued

A winter storm that brought a rare white Christmas to parts of the South was barreling up the East Coast early Sunday morning, with forecasters predicting blizzard conditions later in the day for New York City. Heavy snow was expected elsewhere in the Northeast and in the nation’s capital.

The blizzard warning for New York City forecasts 11 to 16 inches of snow from Sunday to Monday and strong winds that could reduce visibility to near zero. As much as 18 inches could fall on the New Jersey shore. Philadelphia and Boston are also in line for heavy snow, and 6 to 10 inches are expected in Washington, D.C.

As of late Saturday evening, the weather service had issued winter weather warnings from northern Georgia to southern New England. Winter weather watches were in effect for eastern Tennessee and Kentucky up to West Virginia. Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency on Saturday as crews tried to clear snowy and icy highways. Maryland declared a state of emergency early Sunday.

My wife tells me yesterday was the first White Christmas in our part of Georgia since sometime in the nineteenth century. She used one of her Christmas gifts to make a short movie of the snow in our yard. Nothing like what will befall those further north, but for these parts this is pretty good.

Lisa you'd love Naples with all those beautiful boats! And then there's the gondola rides with wine and cheese to take too.

All you East Coasters be very careful. Stay inside. Drink hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, and read something very, very good. Build a fire, get snug underneath an afghan, and don't forget your hand-knit slippers. Or, watch Niagara Falls, starring Marilyn Monroe, as I'm doing momentarily, once I step away from the computer.

Your wife, Gene, could be the next Sofia Coppola! Anybody seen her new movie yet?

>165 geneg:. That's a first around here, Gene. A personal movie. Thanks, Brenda. Or maybe a second, if the bird that sounded like an alarm clock a few threads ago was videoed by Sandy and not some other crazy bird watcher.

>166 absurdeist:. It does look enticing, Henri. I envy you your canals.

> 163 I am with you Por. Never forget the bullies or the *sshole teachers. Give them hell when you see them again !

Getting old Mac. But no mercy for bullies, that's certain.

163> Por-Mon, are we talking a priest who would paddle you regularly in Catholic School? When did this happen, your retribution? More details please. You'd probably enjoy the movie, Sleepers, if you haven't seen it already.

I found an odd book today, Por-Man, that you had reviewed, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being.

Lines for Winter

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Mark Strand

No priests. They were a gaggle of lay teachers who did the coaching and taught health & P.E. classes. I went to Catholic school for 12 years and never did a priest even look cross-eyed at me. This was from 1955-1967.

Ted Hughes's book is interesting on many counts but don't look to it for much guidance, and that sort of thing. Another T.H. book: WINTER POLLEN is an interesting study.

A slender 'review' certainly. I'd like to say pithy - but more like Elmer Pfudd would say it.

Hi, everyone! We're having "snow," but none of it's sticking. Yay! Hopefully I don't wake up to a winter wonderland. Just saw Black Swan. Extraordinary, stunning, harrowing. Frankly, didn't know Natalie Portman had it in her. I stand corrected.

Had a lovely Christmas.

Truly? It's not sticking? Try looking out another window.

It's quite white out there this morning.

Snow Fort

It all starts
with the quality,
the density, the size
of the snow bank.
True now, true forty years ago;
it is the critical ingredient.
We piled it high, over successive storms,
waiting not so patiently
for the right time. The right mix
of wet and cold
Snowman snow.
Digging, with shovels, with hands
creating a dome, an inner sanctum
interconnected tunnels, in and out
meeting in the middle
all within the pile of snow.

Raymond A. Foss

Really. It didn't stick.

It's not very sticky here either. It's blowing into very impressive drifts.

Blizzard

Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down --
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes --
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there --
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

W C Williams

THE MODERN HIAWATHA

He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That's why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.

George A. Strong

Snow slide show.

Is that you in pic #4, Sandy, in Westport with your dog?

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/26/nyregion/SNOW.html

Snowed out of New York for three more days. Hope y'all are having a good snow/holiday.

I just did a tiny bit of investigating and my little nook of the east coast is the only little nook that escaped the blizzard. Weird. What it means of course, is that I am at work.

179, Naw Pete, Sandy's a Yellow Lab! Man. it still sounds like a freight train out there.

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Shakespeare, 'Love's Labour's Lost'

TO A YOUNG WRETCH
As gay for you to take your father's axe
As take his gun - rod - to go hunting - fishing.
You nick my spruce until its fiber cracks,
It gives up standing straight and goes down swishing.
You link an arm in its arm, and you lean
Across the light snow homeward smelling green.

I could have brought you just as good a tree
To frizzle resin in a candle flame,
And what a saving 'twould have meant to me.
But tree by charity is not the same
As tree by enterprise and expedition.
I must not spoil your Christmas with contrition.

It is your Christmas against my woods.
But even where thus opposing interests kill,
Oftener than as conflicting good and ill,
Which makes the war-god seem no special dunce
For always fighting on both sides at once.

And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope,
My tree a captive in your window bay
Has lost its footing on my mountain slope
And lost the stars of heaven, may, oh, may
The symbol star it lifts against your ceiling
Help me accept its fate with Christmas feeling.

from A WITNESS TREE (1942)
Robert Frost

More blizzard pix:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/12/menta.html

184, Por,

Is there a poem, "To an Old Wretch"?

...just personally curious, that's all...

184-184> nice poems and pics

185> that's a jaw dropping clip, Piero!

An e-mail I just got from Italy, from the translator of I Think, Therefore Who Am I?:

Dear Peter,

last summer I had the pleasure to translate your memoir Penso, dunque chi sono? into Italian and meant to write you ever since. lately, though, my life has been busy and new projects came up, but at least I want to drop a few lines to wish you all the best for the coming year.

working on your book created a deep connection to your memories and to the language you used to describe them, a language so carefully chiselled during the years you spent involved in the writing process. it was a great experience and, even if I know it's not such an original thing to say, I felt very close to your personal story and to you as a writer.
even if I was born some years after the hippy movement was over, being an Italian smalltown girl, I always looked up to the New York you lived in and American counter-culture in general. as soon as Alessandra told me about your memoir, I insisted to work on it for I thought it would take me to a place where I would like to go, if I could travel back in time. I knew that my teenage myth was full of thorns and it became even clearer through your narrative, so different from the legends surrounding the American rock stars of the time. nevertheless, it was very interesting to deepen the knowledge of what I had dreamt about and longed for with my imagination, and see it as a real life experience.

so thank you! Now we are all waiting for the Italian version of the book to be ready and hope that the readers will share the same interest that we all feel towards your work.

will you make it to Italy sooner or later? you would be more than welcome here, but I'm sure Alessandra already told you that.

that's all for now, I wish you a very happy new year

Serena

I'm beaming reading that, Piero. I can't imagine how gratifying it must be for you.

185, that was indeed, really kewl! I always get Bellmawr and Bellmar confused. As long as the Joisey mailmen don't confuse, then all is well.

188, Penso, dunque chi sono? It's got a great ring to it. We should do a Group Read on it (the North American translation) sometime.

188 Peter! What a lovely letter. It must have made your day.

Yes indeed, Henri, Thea: I was beaming. Clearly this was no polite, friendly letter one might expect from a publisher, but something heartfelt, as if written to someone in il familia (correct that if it's wrong, Lisa).

Then I came across the following, an online catalogue from Lantana Editore, in which it seems I'm one of the featured writers to appear in bookstores on 27 gennaio 2011 (scroll down to the bottom to see my young puss). Since then I've spent the evening walking around bemused, asking the same question I've been asking myself the last few months: Is this actually happening to me? Peter Weissman? Another iteration of: Who am I?

http://www.lantanaeditore.com/site/

Pietro, "la famiglia". Of course you know I must correct!

Truly, you must visit them! Gli Italiani do not write letters like Serena's out of feelings of obligation.

I love to travel, and I love Italy as I have loved other places. My husband is not much of a traveler, but I have managed to get him to Italy twice and to France once. In France, we visited some of his father's first cousins, and had a wonderful time. Afterward, he said something to the effect of "that was nice, but I really prefer Italy".

>188 copyedit52: AH Serena....

Isn't that what it is all about ? Being famous, getting fanmail from all over the world ? Girls trying to get in contact with you ? : )

It's about time I write a book too

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
1
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies,
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

2
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands an sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

4
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

from THE TOWER (1928)
William Butler Yeats

More post-blizzard pix. After all, it does take a while to clean up after a monster storm.

New York City digging out:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/28/nyregion/20101229-snow-slideshow.htm...

Boston, saving parking spaces after digging out:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/28/us/BOSTON.html

Congratulations, Peter, on the growing success of your writing. It is truly wonderful to witness. :-)

In Chicago, we do the same thing with the parking spaces, but I will admit that the things the Bostonians used to mark their spots have it all over us!

Does Mayor Bloomberg know what happened to Chicago's Mayor Bilandic after the big snows in 1967? Is there anyone named "Jane Byrne" in New York?

>197 citygirl:. Grazie! citygirl. Being able to share the good news makes it even better. You weren't around the thread in February, I think it was (unless you were lurking) when I was "discovered" by the Italians. (Hence the name Piero.) I found out about it via e-mail, and after telling my wife about it (I rushed upstairs; she'd been asleep, thought the house must be burning down), I announced it right here.

>198 LisaCurcio:. Many years ago newly elected NYC mayor John Lindsay bungled a transit workers strike in December (he tried to get tough with labor, but like Chicago, New York is a labor town), and then a month or so later got hit with a blizzard that finished him off.

Greetings from northeast central Texas where it is sunny and 68 degrees.

Just wait a cotton pickin' minute, thea! I thought you was in New Mexico!

I'm now in Texas, where the sun has just set (beautifully) and it is still 62 degrees. And I am enjoying this mightily, knowing that I will soon be back in Joizy with about two feet of snow everywhere I look.

SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled: and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel nee Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leading in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Tomorrow it's going up to 48! Woo hoo! I'm getting out the bikini!

A DRINKING SONG
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

WBY (1910)

amazing

I am memorizing it.

New Year's Dawn--Broadway

When the horns wear thin
And the noise, like a garment outworn,
Falls from the night,
The tattered and shivering night,
That thinks she is gay;
When the patient silence comes back,
And retires,
And returns,
Rebuffed by a ribald song,
Wounded by vehement cries,
Fleeing again to the stars--
Ashamed of her sister the night;
Oh, then they steal home,
The blinded, the pitiful ones
With their gew-gaws still in their hands,
Reeling with odorous breath
And thick, coarse words on their tongues.
They get them to bed, somehow,
And sleep the forgiving,
Comes thru the scattering tumult
And closes their eyes.
The stars sink down ashamed
And the dawn awakes,
Like a youth who steals from a brothel,
Dizzy and sick.

Sara Teasdale

TO A SHADE
If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When gray gulls flit about instead of man,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head until the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death -
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.

from RESPONSIBILITIES (1914)
William Butler Yeats

Happy New Year to all and sundry! It's raining and raining and raining here. The greyhound is in our closet, where he goes because tornadoes are dangerous, y'all.

I'm looking forward to a fantastic year, reading-wise. Thanks for letting me sit at your feet.

Have a Good Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year ... Bah humbug, will there never be an end to it? Good to hear it's raining, RidgewayGirl. Puts some needed perspective to all the Happy Daze. Though I wouldn't wish a tornado on anyone.

I should find a poem to sum up my je ne sais quoi on this first day of January. If I don't come back, assume I got lost.

Happiness

Happiness, to some, elation;
Is, to others, mere stagnation.
Days of passive somnolence,
At its wildest, indolence.
Hours of empty quietness,
No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,
Effervescent, superfine.
Full of tang and fiery pleasure,
Far too hot to leave me leisure
For a single thought beyond it.
Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it
Means to give one's soul to gain
Life's quintessence. Even pain
Pricks to livelier living, then
Wakes the nerves to laugh again,
Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.
Although we must die tomorrow,
Losing every thought but this;
Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.

Amy Lowell

THE OWL
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired; yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I had escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Edward Thomas was a successful reviewer and critic, but it wasn't until he received encouragement from Robert Frost that he began to write poetry. In his poems he reflected on the beauty of Nature and the rural areas in his native England. He composed war poems while serving in WW1, and eventually lost his life at the Battle of Arras.

Seems the nature enthusiasts are still recovering from the celebration of the turn of the year! (Except the "Peters" of course.) All of the snow melted here at the end of last week, and I am very glad. It is a bit chilly, but not too bad by Chicago winter standards. Looking forward to the mayoral race heating up in the near future--unbelievable that there will not be a Daley on the 5th floor. I am 56 years old and at for at least two thirds of my life the mayor has been a Richard Daley. Despite Danny Davis leaving the race to leave just one African American candidate running against Rahm, I don't see Carol Mosely Braun going anywhere. Rahm's real competition is likely to be Gerry Chico.

Okay, TMI about Chicago politics. There is not much else to do here now.

Happy New Year everyone.

Thanks for the Happy New Years Lisa. I do love those faithful Peters hereabouts don't you? I know you do!

I notice there's thirteen of you now who've procured Peter's (that Weissman fellow's) latest book, the most recent being a chap from Ireland I sure hope will get himself more involved hereabouts in the coming year, LT user, Dalan. Damn right I called him out by name! Shoot me for it. I want to see all of you getting Digging Deeper into your libraries asap! C'mon now! Let's beat that sixty-six owners of Piero's first!

Yeah. What he just said about Digging Deeper.

Went down to the city a few days ago, took the train for a change. All those tourists around Rockefeller Center, with its tree: I guess you could say I was a tourist of tourists. Ridiculous number of people. Went to the Whitney Museum with the missus to see some art (Edward Hopper and his contemporaries), and took the bus down Fifth Avenue from there to a rendezvous at 23rd Street. Forty minutes to go twenty blocks, in the vicinity of the tree, what with the crowds. I had a manuscript to edit with me, so I was fine, did it in the bus: zombies in love.

>214 LisaCurcio: I am such a Rahm fan. Voting for him in spirit.

216 - Did you hear the Whitney is planning to move downtown?

215, EF, and peterw, don't worry, I'm getting it. I just thought I ought to read the first one first, and not just yet....

But it shall be done.

>218 janemarieprice:. I recall hearing twenty years ago or more that the Whitney was opening another branch downtown. Did it? Is it still there? Does this latest have to do with that? I am a country boy now, Jane, subsisting on hearsay and rumor.

>219 citygirl:. Of course, citygirl, Henri and I weren't referring to you, only everyone else (except the guy in Ireland who bought my latest from amazon.co.uk).

New Year's only deepens my longing,
Adds to the lonely tears of an exile
Who, growing old and still in harness,
Is left here by the homing spring....
Monkeys come down from the mountains to haunt me.
I bend like a willow, when it rains on the river.
I think of Jia Yi, who taught here and died here-
And I wonder what my term shall be.

-- Liu Changqing, from 300 Tang Poems

From Al-Khansa, an old favorite of mine:

Every man is stoned by time's hearth stones,
every long, high tent is pulled down.
Neither their subjects or kings remain
of those that the Persian and Rum ruled.

"Stoned by time's hearth stones"

What a great line.

How swell that you finally showed up, Sam. Now I can add Boston to the list of selected locales when next (the royal) we posts weather predictions. And what a coincidence, since I was about to post the following (not for the first time), in honor of the new year, with this prelude:

If you're not yet thirty, or maybe forty or even fifty (unless you're more morbid than I), skip this poem and go about your carefree business.

Limits

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

Jorge Luis Borges

Poor mirror, expecting in vain.

Clever Borges, clever even exeunt.

Past despondent now.

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

What are you trying to do to us? That's my worst nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!

*breathes into paper bag*

Somebody bring me a Valprotini.

Well, we can all just go hide in a corner now OR we can travel more, read faster, think harder, visit with more people. Are we the "who put all this s**t in this room" types or "there must be a pony in here somewhere" types?

MY BOY JACK
'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has anyone else had word of him?'
None this tide.
Nor any tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim.
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to this wind blowing and that tide.

Rudyard Kipling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Db8zOE8jCE

226, A challenge to become a better person? For real? Maybe after my valprotini.

I saw it on Masterpiece Theater last night, Peter: My Boy Jack. After I got over being annoyed with Rudyard Kipling, because he was such a bloody idiot, I was less indisposed to it. Rudyard recites that poem in the last scene.

citygirl, Better? I don't know; maybe just more manic :-). Valprotinis all around?

And this thread is rough today--Por, I hate reading about sinking ships.

Rest easy, Lisa, it was only a metaphor. In fact young Jack was in the army.

I also saw it. I've always liked R.K. for his verse. Much of the time I hear the music of the verse and forget about the jingoism, etc. I've always admired voters who are organized and efficient, and R.K. was every inch that. The guy who did Kipling was stupendous. The two women were just as, and even the harry patter fellow was pretty good. Though not nearly as good as the other three.

Just in time LC, I was about to type in THE WRECK OF THE DUETSCHLAND.

Yes. Better, thanks, Lisa

Life Is Fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

--Langston Hughes

Thank heavens for Langston!

letthelampaffixitsbeam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrsspndTRXo

I had a friend who didn't like ice cream. Not because he was lactose intolerant. He just didn't like it. Eventually I discovered other odd things about him and broke off the relationship.

>229 copyedit52: I had the same tought about Kipling when I saw the movie "My boy Jack". But it was another time...

Way back on #213, Porius,

Great poem! As I read it, I had moments ago heard outside, old Bubo (Great Horned Owl) making his (her?) mournful call, "Who's awake! Me, tooo..."

>231 copyedit52:, Pietro--but he was still dead! Sorry, I know nothing about Rudyard Kipling. My uneducated childhood did not include any of his books. My uneducated adulthood has not included anything by or about him. I did "google" My Boy Jack, and I must say that Harry Potter with a mustache and without a scar is a bit disconcerting. I also "googled" Rudyard Kipling, and I think I now know as much I as I would like to know about him.

>232 Porius:, Por, thank you for skipping that. Perhaps tomorrow? Is it a bit like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"? Close to home, you know, for us folks from the Midwest.

Lake Superior is Heaven to me LC.

Kipling was a great writer. Overlooked, overshadowed by his now unpopular and politically incorrect views. but as mac says, it was another time. He was a great writer. Try his short stories; the Just So Stories; Kim; and of course The Jungle Books, which are much much better than that stupid Disney nonsense.

Denizens of the midwest, chicago detriot etc might like these:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit

Kipling was indeed a great writer. He of course dipped into Trollope when the reading bug was upon him. Remember in the film that Jack hid his 'coffin nails' behind some volumes of old Anthonys', An Old Man's Love, shall we say?

The sight of the magnificent old train station is enough to bring tears to my eyes. We climbed to the top of that venerable pile and looked out over dear dirty Detroit. Every valuable item from that train station has been looted. Even the giant chandelier, I don't know how they got it out of there, you almost have to admire them. Which brings me to the old joke: How is a tight pair of pants like a cheap motel? No ballroom.

Here's one of the great poems in any language. The place is even more magnificent when the bluebells are in their glory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8-5kHj5_4c&feature=related

Great pictures Tomcat and so sad.

The Only Day in Existence

The early sun is so pale and shadowy,
I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
looking down at me in bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day--
the only day in existence--
the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
the thin bedroom curtains

as the beginning of a lecture
I will listen to until it is dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.

William Taylor Collins

Where's Tani? I'm looking forward to her Oregon Ducks getting shot out of the sky by Auburn. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Sounds like a case of Laker Compensation Displacement to me, boyo.

You hush up last place Net fan now ya hear!

Poetics

You know the old story Ann Landers tells
About the housewife in her basement doing the wash?
She's wearing her nightie, and she thinks, "Well, hell,
I might's well put this in as well," and then
Being dripped on by a leaky pipe puts on
Her son's football helmet; whereupon
The meter reader happens to walk through
and "Lady," he gravely says, "I sure hope your team wins."

A story many times told in many ways,
The set of random accidents redeemed
By one more accident, as though chaos
Were the order that was before the creation came.
That is the way things happen in the world:
A joke, a disappointment satisfied,
As we walk through doing our daily round,
Reading the meter, making things add up.

Howard Nemerov

THE COLD HEAVEN
SUDDENLY I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the justice of the skies for punishment?

William Butler Yeats (1912)

Epilogue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

Robert Lowell

Celestial mechanics in action!

Taken from the fourth floor of our office in Veenendaal, 2010-01-04 08:58+0100

Pim, how excellent! I was just reading about this in the paper.

I think it's buring my retinas (or retinae?)! In fact, I'm sure it is. Anybody know anything about the dangers of staring at photographs of the sun?

(Not that it's not gorgeous of course :-))

220 - Sorry for the delay in answering. Whitney is going to move the whole shebang downtown. They need a ton more space. That building is surprisingly small. No word yet on what they will do with the current building.

Snow is mostly melted here in NYC but more expected on Friday.

Like this, pdub? (That's you, copyedit.)

It seems poetic, and it's nature.

That appears to be snow on those bloomin' flowers! I am a prosaic guy: just the facts, ma'am. Then again, I recognize poetic when I see it.

Glossary to My Various Names
(I might be catching up with you, Henri)

P and PW: Porius's succinct way of IDing me.

Peter Weissman: someone called me that recently, but I don't recall who.

Wilson: Tani's name for me, because my face is obscured in one of my profile photos, which reminded her of the TV show Home Improvement, or is it Tim the Toolman? I forget.

Pierre: Which I called myself for a while, so I could then logically call Henri, Henri; and also to convey when I'm in a French mood, an affectation that has all but been superseded by:

Piero: Because I am soon to be an Italian autore.

Pietro: Because Lisa is a stickler for accuracy.

pdub: Which is suspiciously akin to dubya, but the last time I complained about a monicker, when ChocoMuse called me Weissy, I had to retract my complaint, so I accept it, citygirl.

I'm not gonna type out Peter Weissman everytime I want to distinguish you from Porius. Obviously, I am too lazy to even type out Peter W.

I find it harder to type PW than to type pdub, so that's too much work.

Each of the other choices, though lovely, still involves typing at least five characters, and one of those involves the shift key. You know, now maybe I understand e e cummings a bit better. maybe i ll start doing it that way

pdub is northern (I'm totally making this up); if you were southern, and I didn't like you, I might have used pdubya, but don't worry. Nooobody wants to be reminded of that.

Call me anything you like, citygirl. I can take it.

Is that a challenge?

Lyric written in 1830

What means my name to you? ... 'Twill die
As does the melancholy murmur
Of distant waves or, of a summer,
The forest's hushed nocturnal sigh.

Found on a fading album page,
Dim will it seem and enigmatic,
Like words traced on a tomb, a relic
Of some long dead and vanished age.

What's in my name? ... Long since forgot,
Erased by new, tempestuous passion,
of tenderness 'twill leave you not
The lingering and sweet impression.

But in an hour of agony,
Pray, speak it, and recall my image,
And say, "He still remembers me,
His heart alone still pays me homage."

Alexander Pushkin

258: This made me think of a Calvin and Hobbes comic from May 26 1993.

(Calvin is sitting behind a cardboard box with "Candid Opinions 5 cents" written on it. Susie walks up and hands him a nickel.)

Calvin: "You're a bat-faced, bug-eyed, booger-nosed, baloney-brained, beetle-butt!"

(last frame, Calvin's box is destroyed around his ears and he is lying on the ground beat up)

Calvin: "This social work just isn't for me."

ADAM'S CURSE
We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you an I, and talked of poetry.
I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied: 'To be born woman is to know -
Although they do not talk of it at school -
That we must labor to be beautiful.'

I said: 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

William Butler Yeats (1902)

Happy Three Kings Day, y'all! The official start of the Mardi Gras season.

So go watch this most awesome thing on YouTube. (Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Earl King, & The Meters doing Big Chief)

And have a slice of king cake:

Oooh, jane! I found the baby! (How macabre.)

pdub, for you:

Your Name

The name you chose
Your name
Informal, friendly, official
An act of will, of self
Defining for yourself
Who you are

Out from under
The rigid yoke
The mantel
Forced upon you
Defining you not as you
Desire. Her vision
Collided with the you
That is You

Raymond A. Foss

Thank you, Jane: for the food and the music. I was just thinking that we needed more of that--the music that is. Food only makes me sleepy.

And you, citygirl: You deserve a vitual renaming too, of course, but as one who's traveled and lived in a few cities, you seem to have the right, one might almost say, immutable name already. Then again, we know you like French; the sound and perhaps the idea of it. Maybe something with ville, fille ... Any takers?

In honor of Epiphany (so much more euphonic than "3 kings day"), we need some stars:



This one is andromeda in infrared, NASA's image of the day today.

266 - Pshh, 3 Kings Day is way better than Epiphany. 3 Kings is a party, Epiphany is a Holy Day of Obligation. :) Seriously though, awesome pic.

265 - If you're sleepy, get funky! Funky Liza performed by Bonerama. I have to admit that every time I read the sections of Brothers Karamazov with Lise.

265 - Fille Ville. Not grammatically correct, but poetic.

Epiphany is the name of the black girl played by lisa Bonet in the bleeding ceiling scene in the Angel Heart movie.

"that's a beautiful name" says Rourke

Young in New Orleans

starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for
hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, maybe it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my dark small room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.

women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.

that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.

there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.

sitting up in my bed
the lights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.

being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way
undisturbed.

New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.

no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no
anything.

me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.

Charles Bukowski

*speechless and swooning*

270 - Nice. Do you have a volume of his to recommend my putting on the wishlist?

Bukowski starts to be a bit interchangeable after a while.

Truth is, Jane, I've generally read his books, not his poetry; I've read a lot more poetry, period, since we went in that direction on this thread. On the books, I like Post Office, because I worked there myself, in Oakland, which I tackle too, in Digging Deeper; and Notes of a Dirty Old Man. There are many others--Bukowski was prolific--but I agree with Jesse that two or three are enough to get the point.

Drunk. Fought with woman. Drunk. Made up with woman. Drunk. Beat up by woman. Drunk with woman. Drunk. Drunk and cheated on woman. Drunk.

For the fiction, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Ham on Rye, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town or Tales of Ordinary Madness would all be sufficient to give yourself a feeling for the work. As for the poetry, I'm not a poetry person, so I'll leave that to someone else.

>265 copyedit52: Pietro: A mouthful, but we could say "Fille de la Cité." Or something a little cuter like "la gamine"?

there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.

That captures, on a deep level, how I felt at the times I experienced a depression when I was there (not because I was there, but just cuz). In fact, except for the rats, and, well, being white, I can relate strongly to what is expressed.

I like "la gamine," but if we're being strict, I must confess that no one's ever going to mistake me for a boy, but if we're not....

Hi, jesse.

> 276 La citadine ?

# 264
Aw, girl, I wanted the baby! ('always late).

Oh well, be sure to invite me to your party next year.

THE CAT AND THE MOON
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

William Butler Yeats (1918)

If your American dream is painted on a canvas
Neatly folded in the corner of Andy Warhol’s mind
New Orleans is a hurricane beating down your coast

If you close your eyes
And feel the easy ride
Of the St. Charles Street Car
Where a solo tuba
Blows the scent of magnolia
Down narrow streets
and everyone plays possum with the heat
and no one’s too big or too small
to paint their tongue with a snowball

where former slaves pay homage to the first Americans
by masking in suits of rhine stones and bright colored feathers
that transform security guards into Indian Chiefs
doing rain dances on Congo Square
where the drums drum
and the wine drink
and the big chief sing
somebody give me a quarter
cause pretty big chief want some water

if you can envision the souls of yesterday
living in the music
that rises from the cracks in the sidewalks
New Orleans is your dream
With a heart as soft
As the spanish moss
Dripping from centuries old oak tress

She’s a pretty face with dirty feet
The good witch of lake Ponchartrain
The spice god of shrimp and crawfish
Keeping the spirits fed

Communities of windowless monuments
Masquerading as cemeteries
Tower above ground
No earth or worms to cover the flesh
No silver bullets to turn out the spirits
That still dance with her

Spin your umbrella
And wave your bandanna
It’s Mardi Gras time
And everybody’s happy

Armed with a blue print of civilization
The new world stormed in
With enough asphalt and cement
To pave a boulevard back to Paris

the spirit of the swamp still hasn’t submitted
Leaving mildewed kisses of disapproval
On every thing foreign to the wet lands

Catholicism could not turn out the spirit of Marie Laveau
The wrecking ball could not turn out the spirit of Storyville
And death could not turn out the spirit of Louie Armstrong
When yesterday hangs on to forever
Tradition is a temple.

Chuck Perkins

>263 janemarieprice: Come here....you would love our Mardis Gras ;0) (L.A. not L.A. Cali) This is assuming you've been to South Alabama's Mardis Gras before...
King Cake abounds, they are also kind of stale, probably last years; left over.
I never get the baby!
I hate beads...
The toys they throw out from floats, I wouldn't let my dog chew on...
The candy is probably from Halloween 5 years ago...

If you like beer and boobs...Mardis Gras is the place for you.

Did you hear....Fat Tuesday is March!! What!? Always been Feb, since I can remember!

Quick ... who all had to Google what a "grit" is? No, not Girls Raised In the South.
Here grits are just another 5 letter word. Everyone knows what they are...and tomatoes are disgusting. ;0)

Here's a funny....(the follow up video for this past year, he was a lot happier it seems)
http://youtu.be/sv4Hpz-GI3g

Well, okay, SecondChances. I was going to post a poem to start off the day, but by the time I read through your profile--the pix, the car accidents, the animals, and the rest--I forgot what I'd decided to post. Welcome to our funky thread, but don't think we're giving you dual-or-more citizenship: you've been too many places and move too often. And it might be a moot point, since I suspect, given your restlessness, we'll never see you again.

Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus.
Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces.

Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and his
Shuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciation

And invention, is this the image of the promised end?
All music haunted by all the music of the dead forever.

Becky haunted forever by Pearl the daughter she abandoned
For love, O try my tra-la-la, ma la belle, mah walla-woe.

-Robert Pinsky, from "Gulf Music"

I have a daughter born on Mardi Gras. She gets two birthdays. We'll see if the two calendars ever again coincide.

Gentle snow falling. Maybe an inch and a half on the ground, another six or seven forecast. Two sets of deer prints crossing the driveway, one a big mother (or father), the other set not so big.

The road not plowed--they won't come by for a while--the New York Times a bulge in the snow resembling a miniature of one of Moses' tablets, wrapped in blue cellophane when I liberate it, bring it back to the house, detour to the edge of the woods to dump the compost that's been collecting in the kitchen.

Eat up, my deers!

The red Buddha and slate gray St. Francis sporting white skullcaps.

>277 citygirl:: I like "la gamine," but if we're being strict, I must confess that no one's ever going to mistake me for a boy

No, no--that is the feminine of the word which instead of "street boy" means "street girl" or urchin. So if you like it, we can go with it.

I was referring to the use of the word to describe Audrey Hepburn types, you know, slim, petite, and narrow-hipped.

But I still like it, and Mac, I like la citadine, too! Can I have both? So greedy.

There's a certain elegance to this city girl. You see it in her profile and in her award-giving thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/104052

I see gamine, and I think of whatshername in Fellini's whatchamacallit; an early fim, with Anthony Quinn. I mean, there's got to be some monicker between gamine and Audrey Hepburn.

I'll have to think about it some more. Meanwhile, here's some music to pass the time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Febr_t_qa9U

>283 copyedit52:: Thank you, Peter. I was able to get through your profile as well. How many red marks were on the screen, when you were done reading my profile? *smile* I check in minutely to LT. So I am sure I will post more than my fair share here. Also, after a vehicle wreck and the crappola to go with it...I think I am grounded from moving for awhile.

I do have a lot of animals ... I claim one cat and one dog. 5 animals claim me.

My friends birthday was always on Feb 8th, so we would invite him here for Mardis Gras. This year it won't be much of a birthday.

Night’s Mardi Gras - Edward J. Wheeler

Night is the true democracy. When day
Like some great monarch with his train has passed,
In regal pomp and splendor to the last,
The stars troop forth along the Milky Way,
A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray,
On heaven’s broad boulevard in pageants vast,
And things of earth, the hunted and outcast,
Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea,
Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind
Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start,
And specters of dead joy, that shun the light,
And impotent regrets and terrors blind,
Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part
In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.

Okay, I get it, but every time I see/hear that one I cringe. James Brown. Luciano Pavarotti. Each of them should stick to what they do best (well should have stuck to what they did best, I guess) Brown comes out better in that one than Luciano, though.

I like "citoyenne" (translated as "Citizeness" in Dickens) that was used in Paris during the revolution. I know it is not particularly urban but I just like how it sounds. However I will go with whatever you all decide and citygirl approves of.

I like the sound of citoyenne, but the connotations . . . .Just think of les citoyennes represented in Tale of Two Cities! Hey--we mentioned a book!

I think the citoyennes are fine role models. Whenever we discuss the mortgage crisis, the financial bailout, etc. my favorite thing to say is "knit one, purl two."

Oh! I love Brown and Pavarotti together. It gives me chills. The chutzpah it takes to bring together two very different muscial styles and the ability to bring out the beauty in both, admirable.

I'm scared of you now, anna. Knitting needles have put me on edge ever since high school when I read TTC.

Thank you, pdub, for the compliments and the pimpin'. Means a lot to me, especially as I'm trying to build a blog and feel overwhelmed with it at times.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Fellini film, but sure am curious now.

Thanks for the lovely poem, SecondChances, but I gotta ask: during what time period did Wheeler write?

>294 citygirl:. The movie was, of course, La Strada, starring Fellini's wife, Julietta Massina (I think it's spelled that way) and Anthony Quinn. One of Fellini's earliest and, if you don't like the later folderol, one of his best.

>293 anna_in_pdx:. I think we had this conversation once, or something approximating a conversation (if I could actually sit down with any one of you, face-to-face, you'd probably run away screaming at not getting in a word edgewise). Anyway, you either like the antiauthoritarianism of the French, and the vocabularly that goes with it, or you don't. It seems that Anna(pdx) and I do.

>292 LisaCurcio:. Lisa: How dare you mention an actual book on this thread! That was the book, btw, that Michael Steele quoted the other day, mistaking it (from his Cliff Notes, no doubt), with War and Peace.

On James Brown and Pavarotti: yes, I was making a point, about citygirl and elegance. Never saw Pavarotti live, but I did catch J.B. at the Apollo back in the day, wearing a neon green suit and sliding his way (on his knees) across the stage.

>289 SecondChances:. Thanks for the poem, Anna (aka SecondChances). I've had my share of auto accidents too, but I've never let them ground me. As soon as they come back from the body shop, I get back up on the horse and ride again.

289: Welcome! And now that there are two Annas, I guess if Citygirl does not like "Citoyenne" I could take it as my nom du guerre. As one of the resident revolutionnaires.

273-275 : Hmmm...sounds like I'll sit down in the bookstore with one of his books and browse before committing to anything.

276 et.al. Re: citygirl’s nickname - I personally prefer la gamine, more playful, seems to fit.

281 – Marvelous. Just checking out his stuff now.

282 – Welcome! In fact I have not been to Ala. MG. If my highly insensitive friends and family would stop getting married in the spring I will make it back down and do the traditional run – Orpheus party at Bob & Sue’s, sleeping on the neutral ground, 8am Tuesday morning fried chicken and doughnuts on the pool table at the bar, drunk flight home.

284/289 – Yeah! Let’s see if we can keep this going through Mardi Gras (only 2 more months!) :)

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEtXT9w9AYU">Hey...hey..hey..hey...hey Pocky-a-way

Hmmm. jane might have a point re my nickname. Citoyenne might have more gravity than I care to take on. I think you should have it, Che, I mean "Citoyenne X."

Thank you all for the welcome...On LT people just refer to me as Second. *smile*

You are welcome for the poem.

I am trying to find my pictures from Mardis Gras a few years back, I missed the last 4 or 5 years since I moved to North Alabama. (my proverbial moving, yet again) We plan on going this year, since we are back down here.

I am not going to address posts individually in this one, since I am just speaking to everyone in general right now.

ETA: Grounded with out a new vehicle yet and still not 100% to go back to gainful employment. As for the body shop...I guess you can say my vehicle is now scraps.

Among the notable gamine characters of film are Gelsomina, the street performer from La Strada, played by Giulietta Masina; Bree Daniel, the prostitute played by Jane Fonda (b.1937) in Klute (1971) (whose hairstyle was sometimes referred to as the "Klute shag"); Nikita (Anne Parillaud, b.1960), the titular punkish junkie in Luc Besson's 1990 film; and, most recently, Amélie (Audrey Tautou, b.1978) in the 2001 romantic comedy of that name.

Don't sound like citygirl to me.

don't forget Jean Seberg in A Bout du soufle.

ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM
I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night.

William Butler Yeats (1916)

And my little bit of wisdom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pu6V6_BEA
May he be clogging up in Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdgLtzWJhbU
Look close and see Norman Blake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aXZmbbPLaM&feature=related
K & A McG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPMm0MK0N2M&feature=list_related&playnext...
Myaimistrue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfZ5m-oGmtQ

Who can say where Tani is as her big game approaches? Here's a poem for you, duckie, whenever you do:

The Muscovy Duck

The rooster is a brainless dude, although he sports a crest,
The hen’s an awful fool we know, though hen-eggs are the best;
She’ll flutter, cackling, anywhere save through a gate or door,
And try to hatch a door-knob, too, for forty days or more.
The turkey is of small account, we’ll let it go in peace,
And other fowls are ornaments, and geese are simply geese;
But over all that cackle, hiss, or gobble, quack, or cluck,
My favourite shall always be the quaint Muscovy duck.

I’m fond of Mrs Muscovy, I think she knows the most
Of all the different kinds of fowls that poultry-breeders boast.
She knows best how to build her nest when laying time is past,
And you should see the knowing pride with which she sets at last.
She waddles out for food and drink—she’s not afraid of us,
And if we fix her now and then she doesn’t make a fuss;
No frantic flaps of useless wings, no cackle, hiss, nor cluck,
She’s queen of all philosophers—the quaint Muscovy duck.

It is a wondrous thing to see, and a wondrous thing to tell,
Her ducklings know as much as ducks the day they leave the shell.
That she is proud as proud can be, is plain to any dunce—
The little ducklings set to work to grow up ducks at once;
And, on a sunny winter’s day, ’tis a good thing for the eyes
To see her waddle round and watch her ducklings catching flies,
I love her for her waddle, and her patience, and her pluck,
Her wag of tail and nod of head—the quaint Muscovy duck.

Henry Lawson

Balm for the eye and the ear.

No frantic flaps of useless wings, no cackle, hiss, or cluck, - indeed.

Por-Man, I'm pleasantly surprised to see you link us some Elvis! Is it blasphemy to say I prefer that particular Elvis, to the more famous one? "Alison" and "Red Shoes" are favorites. I bought the 7" of "Veronica" -- a minor hit for him in '88.

It's the weekend, what we've been working for, right? (Except Piero, if I recall, whom I imagine views just about every day like it were a weekend day, which is the proper perspective, I believe, to have, to embody a full and buoyant life snatching opportunities like apples off a tree) ...

So, get'cher red spandex and red headband out and shake your booty like a polaroid picture, and enjoy you some Loverboy.

Wishing Tani well too, and her Ducks. I take back what I said before. Mea culpa. Hope you're well Tani.

Yes, I guess you could say I am living in paradise, Henry (which, oddly, is also Henry in Italiano). Like Sal Paradise, you might say. (Who among you knows that reference? Slick? Jesse?) Only my nom de plume is Piero.

Report from Paradise

In paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours
salaries are higher prices steadily go down
manual labour is not tiring (because of reduced gravity)
chopping wood is no harder than typing
the social system is stable and the rulers are wise
really in paradise one is better off than in whatever country

At first it was to have been different
luminous circles choirs and degrees of abstraction
but they were not able to separate exactly
the soul from the flesh and so it would come here
with a drop of fat a thread of muscle
it was necessary to face the consequences
to mix a grain of the absolute with a grain of clay
one more departure from doctrine the last departure
only John foresaw it: you will be resurrected in the flesh

not many behold God
he is only for those of 100 per cent pneuma
the rest listen to communiqués about miracles and floods
some day God will be seen by all
when it will happen nobody knows

As it is now every Saturday at noon
sirens sweetly bellow
and from the factories go the heavenly proletarians
awkwardly under their arms they carry their wings like violins

Zbigniew Herbert

NEW! EXPANDED!

Predicted lows and highs
for selective locales, Sunday, January 9

Edmonton, Canada –18/5
Denver 10/34
La Pine, Oregon 14/32
Woodstock, N.Y. 15/27
Boston 18/32
Sandusky, Ohio 19/27
Chicago 19/28
Bethany, Conn. 19/33
Woodstock, Georgia 22/39
New York City 23/34
Gaithersburg, Md. 23/35
Vancouver, Canada 26/35
Little Rock 26/37
Greenville, S. Car. 27/41
Portland, Oregon 32/40
Utrecht, Holland 33/40
Ghent, Belgium 34/42
London, England 35/42
New Orleans 39/49
Gulf Shores, Alabama 39/50
Huntington Beach, Cal. 43/55
Los Angeles 44/60
San Diego 44/61
Gainesville, Fla. 46/62
Taipei 54/64
Cairo 55/67
Sydney 69/76

300 & 301 Don't sound like citygirl to me.

Oh, well.

It snowed overnight, but didn't really stick. But is nasty cold. Good thing I got to stay inside this afternoon and READ!! Every time I start reading Dickens I say to myself, Why weren't you reading this before? But I suppose if one read Dickens all the time, it would get to be too much. And you'd certainly start talking funny, and we don't want another McCarthy incident.

Book Passion

I dreamed I was eating
a book.
It was made from 8” by 12” slabs
one inch deep.
It tasted like cheese
but cut like watercress.
as I chewed I understood.

As I looked around
others were reading
the same title
but in the regular way
I couldn’t determine
which was best,
eyes only
or digesting it my way.

Others began to notice me
and stare.
Made me feel queer.

I was in a restaurant though,
a fitting place to eat
and drink
so I ordered bourbon
and I kept on chewing.

I realized
their eyes
would never make them full.

Belinda Subraman

A Victorian incident might be nice.

Lotta snow on the ground here. It came in from the west. New York City didn't get much of it, if at all. And it's purty cold. I think I'll make a fire tomorrow.

Ran into Michael Lang at the bread and soup shop in town today (where I am known as the Baguette Man). He's the guy who organized the original Woodstock Festival and then the one up the road in Saugerties about ten years ago, which was a flop. He was with his two kids, seemed remarkably young for someone his age. I told him to buy my psychedelic memoir, which is on consignment in the local bookstore.

Citygirl: if you want to be a gamine, gaw head. We have no dictators on this thread.

LEDA AND THE SWAN
A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop.

WBY (1924)

The fever of the senses is not a desire to die. Nor is love the desire to lose but the desire to live in fear of possible loss, with the beloved holding the lover on the very threshold of a swoon. At that price alone can we feel the violence of rapture before the beloved.

George Bataille, EROTICISM

THREAD SWITCH!

Not so much because we've slowed down (though we are getting kinda heavy), but because our parameters--our girth, of you will--is somewhat askew, on my machine's screen, at least. This has something to do with the dimensions of some photos that've appeared here. Perhaps the one of a chunk of the universe A_musing presented above. Or Pim's humongous snowstorm in the Netherlands.

At any rate, we're switching again, gang. I'll add the link as soon as I create it ...

... ah, here we go:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/107021

There's a movie about the making of the Woodstock festival in which Michael Lange features very heavily. Did those guys ever make their money back? I wonder.

Dunno. If I run into him again, I'll ask. He's very approachable, an unpretentious guy. Looks like an outsize elf.