#poetry foundation article

[hintzy]

I accidentally deleted all the tabs i had open

[fiercynn]

poetry outlets that support a free palestine

after finding out that the poetry foundation/POETRY magazine pulled a piece that discussed anti-zionism because they "don't want to pick a side" during the current genocide, i decided to put together a list of online outlets who are explicitly in solidarity with palestine where you can read (english-language) poetry, including, except where otherwise stated, by palestinian poets!

my criteria for this is not simply that they have published palestinian poets or pro-palestine statements in the past; i only chose outlets that, since october 7, 2023, have done one of the following:

published a solidarity statement against israeli occupation & genocide

signed onto the open letter for writers against the war on gaza and/or the open letter boycotting the poetry foundation

published content that is explicitly pro-palestine or anti-zionist, including poetry that explicitly deals with israeli occupation & genocide

shared posts that are pro-palestine on their social media accounts

fyi this is undoubtedly a very small sample. also some of these sites primarily feature nonfiction or short stories, but they do all publish poetry.

outlets that focus entirely on palestinian or SWANA (southwest asia and north africa) literature

we are not numbers, a palestinian youth-led project to write about palestinian lives

arab lit, a magazine for arabic literature in translation that is run by a crowd-funded collective

sumuo, an arab magazine, platform, and community (they appear to have a forthcoming palestine special print issue edited by leena aboutaleb and zaina alsous)

mizna, a platform for contemporary SWANA (southwest asian & north africa) lit, film, and art

the markaz review, a literary arts publication and cultural institution that curates content and programs on the greater middle east and communities in diaspora

online magazines who have published special issues of all palestinian writers (and all of them publish palestinian poets in their regular issues too)

fiyah literary magazine in december 2021, edited by nadia shammas and summer farah (if you have $6 usd to spare, proceeds from the e-book go to medical aid for palestinians)

strange horizons in march 2021, edited by rasha abdulhadi

the baffler in june 2021, curated by poet/translators fady joudah & lena khalaf tuffaha

the markaz review has two palestine-specific issues, on gaza and on palestinians in israel, currently free to download

literary hub featured palestinian poets in 2018 for the anniversary of the 1948 nakba

adi magazine, who have shifted their current (october 2023) issue to be all palestinian writers

outlets that generally seem to be pro-palestine/publish pro-palestine pieces and palestinian poetry

protean magazine (here's their solidarity statement)

poetry online (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers)

sundog lit (offering no-fee submissions to palestinian writers through december 1, 2023)

guernica magazine (here's a twitter thread of palestinian poetry they've published) guernica ended up publishing a zionist piece so fuck them too

split this rock (here's their solidarity statement)

the margins by the asian-american writers' workshop

the offing magazine

rusted radishes

voicemail poems

jewish currents

the drift magazine

asymptote

the poetry project

ctrl + v journal

the funambulist magazine

n+1 magazine (signed onto the open letter and they have many pro-palestine articles, but i'm not sure if they have published palestinian poets specifically)

hammer & hope (signed onto the letter but they are a new magazine only on their second issue and don't appear to have published any palestinian poets yet)

if you know others, please add them on!

[lyralit]

3.1.24 - writing resources for the new year

isn't lovely to feel like you have the opportunity to start fresh again? here are some fo the resources I'm using going into the new year!

flocus is a pomodoro app with pretty backgrounds, availability to be customized, and it also tracks your productivity streaks, which is definitely a motivational booster

in addition to this, flocus' newsletter, the flow, is a weekly email on how to be more productive! it's one of the things I like to tuck away in my inbox and read.

calmly is a blank page. all you need to do is bring the words.

medium doesn't necessarily focus on creative writing, but it's an interesting place to find similarly interested people and all kinds of articles

characterhub is a website community that promotes interaction among OCs (and is great for artists also!)

poetry foundation has an enormous collection of writing that's great to read for fun, or inspiration, or if you're in a slump

and not necessarily writing related, but here are other things that I've been trying out:

via li's youtube channel. something about it radiates warmth and I listen to her videos like podcasts.

baking! it's so comforting and I love seeing the results. smitten kitchen has the best recipes.

also knitting. not necessarily specific sites, but I have these ideas of all the things I want to make.

and that's all for now. however I did up my wordcount! I hit 15k today, so hopefully by next monday I'll have everything I need done. I'm working on deadlines for the first time for a project, and I can definitely feel the pressure.

tag any other websites below and I'll be sure to reblog them!

k.

[handweavers]

i highly recommend crosscurrents (the journal) in general, if you are someone who is interested in religious studies or theology or philosophy of religion and how the subject intertwines with ecology, race and class relations, war and migration, etc. it also publishes poetry and reviews books on the subject and so many of my favourite articles have been published in it, including the skin of religion by s. brent plate which i consider to be a foundational piece of writing for my entire artistic practice

[acesw]

Knowing our Arcanists 1: Sonetto

Welcome to the first entry of this new series: "Knowing our Arcanists"! This is a series in which I introduce and tell the stories of our fellow characters in Reverse: 1999, and of course we will start with the game's featured character: Sonetto!

Sonetto is one of the first characters that we meet in this game, and I really love her as a character. I found her origins to be one of the most vague and one that I really wish that it could be further explored in a future patch. However, we make do with what we know about her in the story and in the game. That aside, lets get started.

Sonetto is an arcanist with an Italian lineage. Her arcane skill is being able to visualize and materialize poetry, and she practices it by reading them and painting what she can see. Despite being reserved, she is an innately curious person, sometimes subtly deviating from her path to satiate her curiosity. She may be grateful for being raised under the Foundation's roof, but she hopes that she's able to continue exploring the world on her own.

Driven by her desires and passions as an arcanist, she strives for peace among mankind, and works hard to be able to help everyone around her. She serves as a model investigator in the St. Pavlov Foundation.

Being born without family, Sonetto was taken into the Foundation at a very young age. And during this time, she worked intensely to perform amazingly as a student, and has always been known to be one of the best amongst her peers. With SPDM's teachings, she was a model student and future investigator.

She was very well-loved by instructors and students alike in the school, and she kept working hard to upkeep her performance over the years. Most of her curiosity had been pushed down to adhere to her teachings, but is sometimes rooted out because of a fellow classmate of hers: Vertin. As they were deskmates, Vertin was known to have attempted to create closure with Sonetto by bringing the things that made the former (and the latter) curious, such as stones, frogs, and toffees.

However, due to Sonetto's attempts to repress such desires, she stopped Vertin from bringing her anything "not allowed in the school." It didn't stop the two of them being together, but it created an emotional rift despite them turning to each other for help.

In her later years in SPDM, Sonetto's status as a top student and dedication to the Foundation remained unchanged, continuing to work hard to be able to graduate. However, she continued to be attentive to her classmates and friends, simply wanting them to be safe and happy above all else. Even when faced with the choice of having to bring the breakaway students back into the shelter, with the choice of joining Vertin and them, she could only let them be. It was too much of a risk. Whether she did or never knew what happened to them and what became of Vertin (before the prologue) is up to interpretation.

She eventually graduated, and naturally rose the ranks within the Foundation and became a squad leader in an investigation team. After what happened in the prologue, she was promoted to work alongside the Timekeeper, and neither of them left each other's side since.

Sonetto's curiosity starts coming to light again as she starts finding her own interests, where she reads and answers newspapers during the mornings and scrapbooks articles that she found interesting. She takes guidance from other poets to further expand her knowledge and practice. Sonetto wishes to travel under the guise of missions and breaks, and hopes to be guided by her friends so she could learn about the world.

On multiple occasions, her kindness and straightforward words shine through, complimenting everyone around her and treating everyone fairly. This doesn't mean that Sonetto is picture perfect, though. At times, she's overcome by her passion and emotions, becoming easy to get a reaction from. Efficient and calculated, but also quick to turn aggressive.

Throughout the course of the story, we see Sonetto's repressed nature slowly turn on its head as she spends time with Vertin and their newfound friends. In Chapters 4-5, she continues to defend Vertin and the rest of Team Timekeeper, and even bring posthumous justice to Schneider after learning of her origins. She's fortunately guided by her goal to help everyone to be able to defend her friends continuously and strive to give justice to those she's lost.

As the story moves forward, we'll continuously see how her character develops, and hopefully we'll get to see a story of her own in the future. Feel free to ask any questions about her! :)

[scp-niche-blorbo-beatdown]

Karcist Nakiakken vs Agent Ira Watts

(Nakiakken art by @gaykarcist, Ira art by @raddagher)

Character information and poll below!

Karcist Nakiakken

A karcist currently in Foundation Containment, 'willingly' imprisoned for the sake of his people- as in, he went from being imprisoned and experimented on by the nazis to being contained by the Foundation.

Articles:

An Anthropological Approach to Sarkicism - Case Study 02: The Divoši of Prague

Agent Ira Watts

An MTF agent forced to change career paths when he gets a life-changing injury in the field. After some time spent feeling like he’d lost his life’s purpose, he finds a new one in a new assignment.

Articles:

SCP-6432

Working Dogs

Losers in Every Dimension

How To Walk On Air And Poetry

Please take a moment to read about the characters before voting!

[skywalking-through-life]

hope you're doing well 💗💗💗 would love to know your favorite books and the ones that have inspired you as a writer <3

Hello my darling! 💙 What a wonderful, wonderful ask, because there are SO many I could list off! All of my writing is always an amalgamation of every book, fic, movie, TV show, piece of music, article, and life experience I've ever had, but there are definitely some writers whose stories and/or writing styles have stuck with me more than others.

In general, I was very influenced by the fantasy, science fiction, and historical mysteries that I read when I was younger, and look back on all the things I read then with great fondness! Some of my favorites as a kid/teenager were: Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising), Tamora Pierce (everything!), JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling (I know, I know - but I can't go back and unread them), Diana Wynne Jones (but I preferred Chrestomanci over Howl's Moving Castle), CS Lewis, Rick Riordan, Robin Hobb (The Blue Sword), Lloyd Alexander (Prydain), Ellis Peters (Cadfael), Lindsey Davis (The Silver Pigs), Candace Robb (The Nun's Tale), Timothy Zahn (Star Wars - Thrawn), Aaron Allston (Star Wars - X-Wings), Michael Stackpole (Star Wars - X-Wings)...I could go on for awhile here, lol. I read constantly as a kid, both things I should and things I shouldn't have been reading, so much so that there were weeks when I was reading a new book every day! I also loved myths and legends, so I read Le Mort d'Arthur, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh - all the usual suspects.

As I got older I mixed fiction with nonfiction and poetry, and started reading a lot of subject-specific academic material in undergrad and in my master's program after that. Quite a few writers from that time now influence me as well, building on the foundation of everything that came before: James Baldwin, bell hooks, Barbara Brown Taylor, Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, Henri Nouwen, Kate Bowler, William Stafford, Howard Thurman, Audre Lorde, Wendell Barry, Rachel Held Evans, Thomas Merton, Nelson Mandela...there are also too many to name here, lol, and if you follow the common thread that unites all these folks, you'll probably learn a lot about how I see the world. And that, too, is something that always makes its way into my writing! 😅

I'm sort of inspired by everything, haha, but I've tried to give a pretty good list of authors, so that maybe they'll inspire you, too! 💙

[laddersofsweetmisery]

There's nothing I can't stand more than elitist perspectives from supposed academics. Academia is a PRIVILEGE to pursue. You were lucky. You had just the right foundation, just the right experiences, and just the right support.

I was homeless, raised by addicts, and severely malnutritioned from the ages 12 to 20. I remember having to melt snow in the winter just to wash my hair and it was still a privilege for me to acquire a literary degree. I had just the right people looking out for me and just the right life experiences to encourage my interests. I've never considered myself without privilege nor have I believed 'I worked hard to get here, so I deserve it.' The truth is that thousands of people work hard and everyone deserves it, but their resources differed from mine and yours. I just had the right circumstances to encourage my educational pursuits.

Not everyone has that.

Even in my most unluckiest moments, I was lucky to receive an education.

If someone stumbles into dark/light academia for the vibes alone and ends up learning about art history, poetry, new books to read and obsess over...then THAT'S A GOOD THING. I view the aesthetic as a gateway towards learning. Telling others they have no place in academia is so counterintuitive and can make them resentful. If you can make education more palatable and more easily digested, why wouldn't you support that? If you truly love academia, then you will love all facets and not just the parts that allow you to stroke your ego.

I believe education is a privilege and we must take our privileges as a chance to educate ourselves so that we can educate others at a more affordable rate. To me, having the opportunity to receive a quality education means you now have a civic duty to pass on that knowledge to those who couldn't afford the same opportunities.

Education is not a pathway to superiority, it is a journey towards empathy and civic engagement.

I share my poetry and other writings not because I think I'm good. I share because someone somewhere might need to hear it. I found my love for literature when I stumbled into Instagram poetry at 13 years old--a realm of poetry that receives immense backlash from supposed 'lovers-of-the-written-word.' Now, I obsess over John Milton, the Brontë's, and Mary Hays.

Accessibility is vital to academic communities. These communities that utilize the aesthetic to encourage involvement are doing good in the world even if you think it to be frivolous. They are exposing those who may not have originally been interested in education due to their foundations and experiences to wear a cozy sweater, make some tea, pick up a book, head to their local art museums, and pursue something they didn't know was available to them.

I support the Colleen Hoover girlies, I support the Instagram poets, I support the aesthetic followers, I support ACOTAR, I support fanfiction. I support words and what they can do for others no matter the form.

In a world where literacy rates are at a low, encouragement and accessibility are our greatest tools.

Do not weaponize education for your own egocentric objectives. It is a selfless communal endeavor to enrich the way we understand, interact, and positively influence the institutions around us.

Most children enjoy learning about the world around them, ask yourself, 'What made them stop loving it?' and then, ask yourself, once more, 'Could it have been people like me?'

Mary Hays via Mr. Francis said it best: "When the minds of men are changed, the system of things will also change...Let us remember, that vice originates in mistakes of understanding, and that, he who seeks happiness by means contradictory and destructive, is emphatically the sinner. Our duties, then, are obvious--If selfish and violent passions have been generated by the inequalities of society, we must labour to counteract them, by endeavoring to combat prejudice, to expand the mind, to give comprehensive views, to teach mankind their true interest, and to lead them to habits of goodness and greatness...Let it, then, be your noblest ambition to co-operate with, to join your efforts, to those of philosophers and sages, the benefactors of mankind...everyone in his sphere may do something; each has a little circle where his influence will be availing."

-Memoirs of Emma Courtney, by Mary Hays

For those interested in learning from the security of home when you can't afford the privilege of a classroom, here are some links that I've enjoyed and perused multiple times throughout the years. They are FREE OF ANY COST. Have fun with education in whatever ways you can and feel free to ask me if your interested in further resources or just want to chat. I don't know everything, but I'll do what I can to help. Check out Perseus at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

Holy shit, they've got it all! I use it for their Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, but there is so much more to learn to and explore. The Mission of Perseus: "Our larger mission is to make the full record of humanity - linguistic sources, physical artifacts, historical spaces - as intellectually accessible as possible to every human being, regardless of linguistic or cultural background."

Check out Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free eBooks! They have a lot of free classics, so if you're struggling to afford books for school, this is an excellent resource!

Love poetry? Interested in Emily Dickinson? Then, read The Prowling Bee at https://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/?m=1

The Prowling Bee is a blog by Susan Kornfield. I love hearing her insight into the poems and hearing from someone passionate about Dickinson's work!

Check out the John Milton Reading Room at https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/contents/text.shtml

This one is a favorite of mine! It includes the complete poetry and selected prose of John Milton, with introductions, research guides, and hyperlinked annotations.

Interested in journalism? Check out The Outlaw Ocean Project at https://www.theoutlawocean.com/

The Outlaw Ocean Project is a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington D.C. that produces investigative stories about human rights, labor, and environmental concerns on the two thirds of the planet covered by water. The content they produce is so vital, I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Additionally, you can sign up for some newsletters so you can receive articles in your inbox everyday! My favorites are:

The Literary Hub at lithub.com

The Literary Hub is an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.

JSTOR Daily at https://daily.jstor.org/

JSTOR Daily is a daily magazine that contextualizes current events with scholarship found on JSTOR. They are published by JSTOR, the nonprofit digital library of scholarly journals, books, images, audio, research reports, and primary sources. JSTOR Daily stories are what we like to call academic adjacent—they are carefully researched and written by experts for a general audience. Each piece  provides historical, scientific, literary, political, and other background for understanding our world. 

[burningvelvet]

Your posts have gotten me interest in Percy Shelley and the english romantics writers in general. Where do you suggest I should start in terms of reading? Do you have book/poetry/article recommendations?

Thanks for the ask! For introductions to his poetry (or any older poet), I recommend the Poetry Foundation! Each poet's page has a brief biography and some of their most famous poems listed below it. Wikipedia is a boring answer but it's also pretty succinct for introductions to the Romantics. The Romantic era is really the most written-about era of literature there is, so you can't go wrong. The best Shelley biographies are the ones by James Bieri and Richard Holmes.

Here is a post where I answered a similar question -- it's filled with online resources about Romanticism as a whole: https://www.tumblr.com/burningvelvet/716180738717925376/i-love-the-romantics-esp-2nd-gen-and-was

[dkniade]

I was looking at Yun Jin’s and Furina’s TCG Chinese card captions

-

Yun Jin

“红毹婵娟，庄谐并举。”

(Hóng shū chánjuān, zhuāng xié bìngjǔ.)

“The (carpeted) stage’s beautiful actress, able to play both comic and tragic roles” (?)

…“Elegance on the carpeted stage, both comedic and tragic”?

Official English (alas): “Elegance on the stage, in decorous harmony.”

-

红毹 (hóng shū) —> (红 = red ) + 氍毹 (qú shū), type of patterned wool cloth/carpet, traditional Chinese theatre is often performed on carpets, thus 氍毹 or 红氍毹 often means “stage” (zdic)

Ohh!! I didn’t know that. Carpet on the stage…

“本义指古代西域进口的一种编织毯，后来引申为各种地毯挂毯床毯等，到了明朝，开始专指戏曲舞台。明朝是昆曲盛行的时代，演出时例必要在舞台铺上红地毯，是为“红氍毹”，渐渐地就成了戏曲舞台的代称。如此这个词儿基本不再用于口语，但是书面��章中仍然常见它的踪迹” (Guo Cui Jing Ju)—> basically, it originally referred to weaved carpet, then various carpets and tapestries. Until the Ming dynasty, where Kunqu opera gained popularity and there were always red carpets on the stage when performing, thus 红氍毹 became synonymous with theatric stage. (More literary than everyday usage though)

(Kind of similar to curtains associated with the western stage?)

婵娟 (chánjuān) —> literary term for a beautiful woman. Term appears in Su Shi’s 宋词 (Song ci, Song dynasty poetry) “水调歌头” (Shuǐ Diào Gē Tóu), “但愿人长久，千里共婵娟” but it likely refers to the moon in the line’s second half which talks about about sharing (the sight of?) a beautiful moon when miles apart

庄谐 (zhuāng xié) —> 庄 = serious; 谐 = humorous, lighthearted. Possibly comedy and tragedy?

并举 (bìngjǔ) —> develop simultaneously

-

Furina

“永世领唱，无尽圆舞。”

(Yǒngshì lǐngchàng, wújìn yuán wǔ.)

“Eternal lead singer, endless waltz”?

…“Perpetual prima donna, endless waltz”?

“Perpetual lead singer, endless waltz”?

Official English: “Perpetual muse of chansons and rondeaux.”

永世: “to/until [one’s] dying day” (Cambridge Dictionary)

“forever” (CollinsDictionary), eternal (Cambridge Dictionary)

领唱: the lead singer or soloist in a choir, or the act of leading a chorus (Baidu Baike)

but 领唱 also refers to cantor (in liturgical music and prayer, generally refers to the lead singer in a Jewish congregation but it also applies to Christian contexts too…? Feel free to correct me)

Oh, according to MyJewishLearning, “A cantor — hazzan (חזן) in Hebrew — is the person who chants worship services in the synagogue. Though the word is sometimes applied in a general way to anyone who leads services, it is more commonly used to denote someone who has completed professional musical training and been ordained as a cantor.”

Chinese term found in an English definition of cantor. (Cambridge Dictionary)

an English definition of cantor. (Merriam Webster)

Conversely, maybe 领唱 is HoYoverse’s way of saying “prima donna” which the Cambridge dictionary defines as “the most important female singer in an opera company” (a description fitting Furina)

prima donna is 首席女歌手 in Chinese (Cambridge) but its five characters wouldn’t fit the TCG’s eight-character restriction if the first part should only use four characters total…

chanson: “various eras of French song, from the monophonic chant of the Middle Ages to the polyphonic singing of the Renaissance. Modern chanson music connects nineteenth-century cabaret music in Paris to contemporary pop music” (MasterClass)

(In French “chanson” means song but as a borrowed word in English, the Chinese term for it is 香頌)(from Chinese article talking about French chanson on Gmw.cn)

rondeaux (plural), rondeau (singular): three-stanza poem of French origin, mainly octosyllabic, 10-15 lines (Poetry Foundation). (Chinese term: 回旋诗. From the online French-to Chinese dictionary frdic)

…where’s the 圆舞 part…? Why change the dance imagery to another poetic form when dance is one of Furina’s motifs?

圆舞曲: music written for a waltz and the dance itself

华尔兹: waltz, the music specifically. (Baidu Baike)

Meaning, the one in Furina’s card likely refers to a dance? (considering they took out the 曲 character which does mean “song”)

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, is actually going to be another Ukrainian. Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Тарас Григорович Шевченко). He was born in 1814 in the village of Moryntsi in what is now Cherkasy Oblast. He was a poet, writer, artist, folklorist, ethnographer, and was also important as a political and public figure. His book of poetry, Kobzar, is considered to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature. I'm going to attach a few links with more information about Taras Shevchenko.

Here's an article with links to different countries that have statues and sculptures honoring Taras Shevchenko.

And, one of my fav videos of Ukrainian warriors after liberating an occupied town. Finding a picture & poem of Taras Shevchenko that had been hidden under muscovy propaganda set to some music from my fav movie, Gladiator.

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[handeaux]

Cincinnatian James Ruggles Created A “Universal Language” But No One Listened

Cincinnati in 1829 overflowed with excitement. Our little river town had grown to a total population of more than 24,000. General Andrew Jackson made a brief stop here as he journeyed up the Ohio River on his way to inauguration as President of the United States. Frances “Fanny” Trollope scribbled notes for what would become her scandalous exposé, “Domestic Manners of the Americans.” Over the course of a week, witnessed by thousands, Rev. Alexander Campbell of the Disciple Church defended Christianity from the assaults of Robert Owen, founder of New Harmony, Indiana, and fervid apostate, who argued that all religions were false.

Hardly noticed in all the hubbub was the publication of a slim volume by Cincinnati printer James Ruggles proposing the adoption of a universal language. In the intellectual ferment of the early Nineteenth Century, Ruggles’ proposal gained so little traction that he is all but forgotten today.

It is interesting that Ruggles had his book published by Cincinnati printers John McCalla and Samuel Davis, because Ruggles himself was a printer and a publisher himself. Born in New York in 1795, Ruggles married a woman named Henrietta Disher and relocated to Steubenville, Ohio and then moved to Cincinnati. While here, he published a magazine called Ladies’ Museum which, according to an advertisement [29 January 1831],

“Embraced in its general subjects, Original and Selected Poetry, Tales, Notices and Reviews of New Works, Natural History, Sketches of Biography and History, Reports of Fashions, occasional articles relating to the culture of Plants Fruits and Flowers, with such Intelligence, Anecdotes, chastened effusions of Wit, Sentiment, and Humor, as will impart variety and furnish an agreeable miscellany.”

Although not identified as such in the city directory, James Ruggles was also apparently a teacher of some sort, although whether he taught in a private capacity or in the nascent public schools of the city is unknown. In Isaac M. Martin’s 1900 history of the schools of Cincinnati, Ruggles is listed among the “Teachers Who Have Become Authors.”

Martin’s book lists only Ruggles’ “Universal Language” among his publications, but an 18 November 1829 advertisement in the Ohio Monitor revealed that Ruggles was trying to attract enough subscribers to publish a series of books titled “The American Literary Preceptor,” which he described as:

“A complete system of tuition for American youths, containing all the branches of learning necessary, in forming the education of an American citizen – commencing with the first rudiments, spelling, reading, &c. and including those proper, as the foundation of a complete scientific and ornamental education, suitable for fitting one to enter a profession, or any useful occupation; to be comprised in about 15 volumes.”

The advertisement for the textbook series – there is no evidence any of the books were ever published – boasted of Ruggles’ role as the author of the book on universal language.

So, what was the “universal language” developed by James Ruggles? And why was it ignored by pretty much everybody? To begin with, Ruggles’ universal language was almost impossible to read and equally impossible to pronounce. Here is a sample:

“Kertholson sjtilmagpxl fjnhxl lokzturs, deksztxns fakhornpxs, karfzturps vovszdxrap, punkzpurapsdux kirkztur, rolsilnxmszdxrapdui.”

That tangled mess of consonantal gibberish may be translated as:

“To ascertain the relative situation and size of places, references are made on maps to direction, or the points of a compass, and to latitude and longitude.”

According to Ruggles, his universal language was superior to any previously proposed because it was:

“Founded on the clearness of its combinations – the simplicity of its construction, the uniformity and invariableness of its rules – and, especially, the facility and speed with which it can be acquired, of being universally adopted by the civilized world.”

The heart of Ruggles’ artificial language was simplicity. All plurals were formed by adding an s – none of this mouse/mice, goose/geese malarkey. Each vowel and consonant was pronounced uniquely to avoid homonymic rhymes like scoff-cough. Most root words were derived from Latin, so his word for “judge” was “prqt” from the Latin praetor, and his word for “stone” was “lap” from the Latin lapis.

Despite his obsession with simplicity and uniformity, the end result was so alien and complicated that none of the many literary magazines at the time paid it the slightest attention. Part of Ruggles’ problem was marketing. He never named his invention, referring to it only as “The Universal Language.” Later creators of Volapuk and Esperanto had better luck. Ruggles sent advance copies to scholars and celebrities, none of whom had anything particularly favorable to say about his Universal Language – but he published their responses in the back of his book anyway! Typical was this polite dismissal from John Quincy Adams, who found time despite his duties as President of the United States to respond on 27 July 1827:

“Sir: I return herewith, conformably to your request, the Plan of a Universal Language, which was enclosed with your letter of 28th May. An opinion long since formed, unfavorable to all projects of this character, has perhaps influenced that formed with regard to yours. From the examination, necessarily superficial, which I have been able to give it, I consider it creditable to your ingenuity. Respectfully, your fellow-citizen. J.Q. Adams.”

In other words, “I am opposed to the whole idea of a universal language, but your scheme indicates some level of imagination.”

For reasons unknown but probably involving money or the lack thereof, Ruggles uprooted his wife and sons and left Cincinnati around 1831. He reappeared in Edwardsville, Illinois near the banks of the Mississippi River in 1838 as the editor of a local newspaper with a decidedly unusual mission. According to the 1882 “History of Madison County, Illinois”:

“The Western Weekly Mirror was established at Edwardsville by James Ruggles in May, 1838. He was editor and proprietor. The Mirror was devoted to the introduction and propagation of a universal language by which the whole human family could hold converse with one another and be understood. It was a worthy mission, but the feeble effort of its progenitor fell stillborn. It continued until the spring of 1840, when its name was changed to the Sovereign People. It continued until the summer of 1841, when it suspended.”

James Ruggles died of congestive fever on 17 October 1844 in Edwardsville. He left no will, but his wife appealed to the local authorities to become adminstratrix of his estate, which she testified amounted to less than $300.

[britneyshakespeare]

So yesterday I read "Slimed with Gravy, Ringed by Drink" by Camille Ralphs, an article from the Poetry Foundation on the publication of the First Folio in 1623, a major work without which most of Shakespeare's plays might very well have been lost today, possibly the most influential secular work of literature in the world, you know.

It's a good article overall on the history and mysteries of the Folio. Lots of interesting stuff in there including how Shakespeare has been adapted, the state of many surviving Folios, theories of its accuracy to the text, a really interesting identification of John Milton's own copy currently in the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the fascinating annotations that may have influenced Milton's own poetry!!! Do read it. It's not an atrociously long article but there's a lot of thought-provoking information in there.

There's one paragraph in particular I keep coming back to though, so I'm just gonna quote it down here:

...[T]he Play on Shakespeare series, published by ACMRS Press, the publications division of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University... grew out of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s plan to “translate” Shakespeare for the current century, bills itself “a new First Folio for a new era.” The 39 newly-commissioned versions of Shakespeare’s plays were written primarily by contemporary dramatists, who were asked to follow the reasonable principle laid out by series editor Lue Douthit: tamper in the name of clarification but submit to “do no harm.” The project was inspired by something the linguist John McWhorter wrote in 1998: “[the] irony today is that the Russians, the French, and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do … [because] they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak.”

Mainly it's the John McWhorter thing I keep coming back to. Side note: any of my non-native-English-speaking mutuals who have read Shakespeare, I would love to know your experiences. If you have read him in translation, or in the original English, or a mix of both. It's something I do wonder about! Even as an Anglophone reader, I find my experience varies so much just based on which edition of the text I'm reading and how it's presented. There's just so much variety in how to read literature and I would love to know what forces have shaped your own relationships to the stories. But anyway...

The article then goes on to talk about how the anachronistic language in Shakespeare will only fall more and more out of intelligibility for everyone because of how language evolves and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not going to say that that's wrong but I think it massively overlooks the history of the English language and how modern standard English became modern standard English.

First of all, is Shakespeare's language completely unintelligible to native English speakers today? No. Certain words and grammatical tenses have fallen out of use. Many words have shifted in meaning. But with context aiding a contemporary reader, there are very few lines in Shakespeare where the meaning can be said to be "unknown," and abundant lines that are perfectly comprehensible today. On the other hand, it's worth mentioning how many double entendres are well preserved in modern understanding. And additionally, things like archaic grammar and vocabulary are simply hurdles to get over. Once you get familiarized with your thees and thous, they're no longer likely to trip you up so much.

But it's also doubtful that 400 years from now, as the article suggests, our everyday language will be as hard to understand for twenty-fifth century English speakers to comprehend. The English language has significantly stabilized due to colonialism and the international adoption of English as a lingua franca. There are countless dialects within English, but what we consider to be standard international "correct" English will probably not change so radically, since it is so well and far established. The development and proliferation of modern English took a lot of blood and money from the rest of the world, the legacy of which can never be fully restored.

And this was just barely in sight by the time that Shakespeare died. This is why the language of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans is early-modern English. It forms the foundations of modern English, hence why it's mostly intelligible to speakers today, but there are still many antiquated figures within it. Early-modern English was more fluid and liberal. Spelling had not been standardized. Many regions of England still had slight variations in preferences for things like pronouns and verb conjugation. We see this even in works Shakespeare cowrote with the likes of Fletcher and Middleton, as the article points out. Shakespeare's vocabulary may not just reflect style and sentiment, but his Stratford background. His preferences could be deemed more "rustic" than many of his peers reared in London.

Features that make English more consistent now were not formalized yet. That's why Shakespeare sounds so "old." It's not just him being fancy. And there's also the fact that blank verse plays are an entirely neglected art nowadays. Regardless of the comprehensibility of the English, it's still strange for modern audiences uninitiated to Elizabethan literature to sit there and watch a King drop mad poetry about his feelings on stage by himself. The form and style of the entire genre is off.

But that, to me, is why we should read Shakespeare. We SHOULD be challenged. It very much IS within the grasp of a literate adult fluent in English to read one of his plays, in a modern edition with proper assistance and context. It is GOOD to be acquainted with something unfamiliar to us, but within our reach. I'm serious. I do not think I'm so much smarter than everyone else because I read Shakespeare. I don't just read the plain text as it was printed in the First Folio! The scholarship exists which has made Shakespeare accessible to me, and I take advantage of that access for my own pleasure.

This is to say that I disagree with the notion that Shakespeare is better suited to be enjoyed in foreign tongues. I think that's quite a complacent, modern American take. Not to say that the sentiment of McWhorter is wrong; I get what he's saying. And it's quite a beautiful thing that Shakespeare's plays are still so commonly staged, although arguably that comes from a false notion in our culture that Shakespeare is high literature worth preserving, at the expense of the rest of time and history. It is true that his body of work has such a high level of privilege in the so-called Western literary canon that either numerous other writers equally deserve, or no writer ever could possibly deserve.

The effort that goes into making Shakespeare's twenty-first century legacy, though, is a half-assed one. So much illustrious praise and deification of the individual and his works, and yet not as much to understanding the context of his time and place, of his influences, forms, and impacts on the eras which proceeded him. Shakespeare seems to exist in a vacuum with his archaic language, and we read it once or twice in high school when we're forced to, with prosaic translations on the adjoining page. This does not inspire a true appreciation in a culture for Shakespeare but it does reinforce a stereotype that he must be somehow important. It's this shallow stereotype that makes it seem in many minds today that it would be worth it to rip the precise language out of the text of a poet, and spit back out an equivalent "modern translation."

[cyberpunkonline]

The Role of Poetry in Gaming

In the modern era of blockbuster games with dazzling visuals, fast-paced action, and intricate narratives, one might wonder where poetry fits into the gaming universe. Yet, the interplay between gaming and poetry has been significant and, in some instances, transformative. This article will explore the deep-rooted connection between these two seemingly disparate worlds.

Emotional Depth and Immersion The first and perhaps the most significant role that poetry plays in games is in delivering an emotional depth that is often hard to achieve with visuals or gameplay alone. Much like in the real world, where poetry has the power to move souls, in the virtual realm, it can evoke strong feelings and immerse players in a game's universe. The delicate use of words, rhythm, and imagery can instantly transport players to different realms, making their experiences richer and more profound.

World-building Narrative-driven games, especially those set in fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds, often use poetry and songs to create a sense of history, culture, and depth. By sprinkling verses, chants, and epic poems throughout the gameplay, developers give players a glimpse into the beliefs, traditions, and legends of the in-game societies. This poetic lore serves as a foundation, making the game world feel lived-in and authentic.

Puzzles and Challenges How many gamers remember being stumped by a riddle or a poetic clue that stands between them and the next stage of their quest? Poetry has often been used as a tool for creating challenges, whether it's deciphering a riddle in "The Legend of Zelda" or understanding a cryptic message in an indie title. These poetic challenges not only engage the player's intellect but also showcase the beauty of language in an interactive setting.

A Bridge Between Art and Technology The cyberpunk and tech-art subcultures have always found a unique synergy between technology and art. In this context, poetry in games serves as a bridge, melding the artistic with the digital. Games like "Kentucky Route Zero" or "Dear Esther" challenge traditional gameplay mechanics and instead focus on poetic narratives, merging tech-art ideals with mainstream gaming.

A Marketing and Memorable Device Let's not forget the iconic lines and verses that players remember long after they've finished a game. These poetic snippets can become synonymous with the game itself, serving as powerful marketing tools and creating a lasting emotional connection with the audience.

In conclusion, while poetry might seem an old-world art form, its incorporation into the gaming industry showcases its timeless appeal. Games are, after all, a form of storytelling, and what better way to tell a story than with the age-old beauty of poetic expression? Whether it's for narrative depth, emotional connection, or a cerebral challenge, poetry has carved a niche for itself in the digital playground, proving once again its universal allure.

- Raz

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

i have to say i’m so enamoured with the way you write ava in scp au (in everything else too, honestly). especially her curiosity and her thirst for knowledge and how you can sense this ocean of longing in her. for the world and everything in it and also beatrice.

i feel so fond of her every time i remember all her little pets - um, in short i’m just in love with scp au ava and i think the angle you’re taking with bea teaching ava is so sweet and poignant and beautiful.

i was wondering… if scp au ava was just an ordinary person, what do you think her favorite areas of knowledge/learning would be? i just feel as though you have such a nuanced understanding of her, so i’d be so so interested to hear your thoughts on that! 🥰

Thank you so much 😊😊😊! I write her that way because I'm enamored with her too. I think if she was just a normal girl, the first step would be getting her out of the orphanage and into a supportive learning environment. Once she gets there, I think her interests are all over the place. She would take any class that had an open spot, just to see what it's all about. Electives on poetry and physics before lunch, and then Enlightenment Philosophy 202 and Comparative Linguistics in the afternoon.

I think she has a real passion for languages. You don't become conversational in German in two months unless you really work at it, so we know that she was really invested in it. Learning a language opens new avenues of communication, and since Ava loves talking to people, that’s something she would really value, on top of just finding the study of linguistics to be fascinating.

She might also be interested in technology, especially if she still reads the article about Arq-Tech’s wheelchairs. She has a creative mind. With a bit of direction and a strong educational foundation, she might even make her own designs, possibly getting the attention of Jillian herself 👀.

So she would probably go into linguistics or tech, possibly even as a double major (I'm American, so that’s my point of reference). It would be hard, but she would give it her all. Because that's how she is 💕💕💕.