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speaknow-sw · 2 months ago

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THE POET AND THE ROSE

Content : Heavy description of a battle, deaths, injuries, weapons. Historic inaccuracies (sorry it breaks my historian heart 😭)

A/N ; GUYYYYYSSS LATE CHRISTMAS GIFT : CHAPTER 3 with 3.7k words. The plot thickens ! As an history student I couldn’t resist writing a battle with none other than one of my favorite film : BRAVEHEART. So William Wallace is here my dear. (I kinda had a crush on Mel Gibson when I was little but shh). Anyway I just reread it and damnnn I cooked with Anakin’s dream you’ll see it. (Self praise is the best improvement). Enjoyyy 💕💕

꧁ Chapter 3 : Cathedrals of Wails ꧂

From the Lays of General Anakin Skywalker, XIII century

"In the clash of blades, a kinship grew,

Respect in the eyes of the fiercest few.

Though bound by war, we share the flame,

Two lives entwined in honor's name."

The battlefield was a storm of chaos and resolve, stretching across the moors under a sky heavy with gray clouds. Smoke and mist mingled in the cold air, and the clash of steel rang out like a grim symphony. Anakin Skywalker rode at the head of his forces, his black cloak snapping in the wind, his eyes scanning the enemy lines with the precision of a predator.

Opposing him stood William Wallace, the legendary Guardian of Scotland. The towering Scotsman was a figure of unyielding defiance, his face painted with the blue streaks of war, his broadsword resting easily in his massive hands. Around him, the Scottish forces formed a wall of raw determination, their banners snapping defiantly in the wind.

Anakin’s gaze locked with Wallace’s across the battlefield. There was no hatred in those blue eyes, only purpose—and a glimmer of something Anakin recognized: respect. Wallace inclined his head slightly, a warrior’s acknowledgment of an equal.

There was no time for words. Anakin raised his arm, signaling his archers to loose their volley. The sky darkened with arrows, their deadly rain slicing through the air. The Scots responded with their own barrage, their archers firing from behind crude barricades. Screams and shouts erupted as men fell on both sides, but neither line wavered.

Wallace strode forward, his booming voice carrying over the battlefield. “Hold, men! Stand firm! Today, we fight for freedom!”

His words ignited a fire in his troops, their war cries rising in unison. The Scots charged, a tidal wave of fury and resolve crashing toward the English line.

Anakin spurred his horse forward, his sword raised high. “Shields up! Hold the line!”

The English knights braced themselves, their shields locking together as the Scottish warriors slammed into them. The impact was thunderous, the clash of metal and flesh reverberating through the air. Anakin dismounted in one fluid motion, his boots sinking into the muddy ground as he joined the fray.

A Scotsman came at him, his axe arcing through the air. Anakin sidestepped, his blade flashing in a swift counterstrike. The man fell, clutching his side, but there was no time to linger. Another came at him, then another, each strike met with the precision of a seasoned warrior.

Another came at him, a wild-eyed warrior wielding a spear. Anakin dismounted in one fluid motion, his boots sinking into the sodden ground. He ducked beneath the thrust of the spear, stepping into the man’s guard. His blade flashed, severing the spearhead before driving into the Scotsman’s chest.

Around him, the battle raged. His soldiers held the line, but barely. The Scots were fierce, their war cries echoing across the moor. Anakin fought like a man possessed, his movements precise and lethal. He was a blur of black and silver, his blade cutting down enemies with an efficiency born of years of war.

Across the battlefield, Wallace fought with unmatched ferocity, his broadsword cleaving through the air. He moved like a force of nature, his strikes powerful yet controlled, his commands rallying his men even as they began to falter.

“Push forward!” Anakin roared, his deep voice carrying over the battlefield.

His men surged, their shields and swords crashing into the Scottish line. The tide of the battle began to turn, the Scots faltering under the relentless assault. Anakin fought at the front, his blade a constant blur, his movements a dance of death.

Anakin cut his way toward Wallace, the two warriors inexorably drawn together. The fighting around them seemed to recede as they faced each other, swords raised, mud and blood spattered across their armor.

Wallace studied him for a moment, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Skywalker. They say you’re a ghost on the battlefield. Let’s see if ghosts bleed.”

Anakin didn’t respond with words. He lunged, his blade meeting Wallace’s broadsword in a resounding clash. The force of the impact reverberated through his arms, but he held firm, his movements swift and precise. Wallace countered with the strength of a man who fought not for glory but for a cause, each strike carrying the weight of his people’s hopes.

The duel was a dance of skill and will, neither man gaining the upper hand for long. Anakin’s speed was matched by Wallace’s sheer power, their blades flashing in a blur of silver. Around them, the battle raged, but for a moment, it felt as though the world had narrowed to just the two of them.

Finally, Wallace stepped back, breathing heavily, his sword lowered slightly. “You fight well, Skywalker. Better than most of your kind.”

“And you fight with honor,” Anakin replied, his voice steady despite the burning in his side where an arrow had grazed him earlier.

Wallace nodded, respect shining briefly in his eyes before he raised his sword again. Their blades met once more, but the tide of the battle was shifting. The Scots were being pushed back, their lines breaking under the relentless pressure of the English forces.

Wallace raised his voice, calling for a retreat. “Fall back! Regroup at the ridge!”

Anakin didn’t pursue. He stood amidst the chaos, his sword lowered as he watched Wallace and his men withdraw. The respect between them remained unspoken but tangible, a bond forged in the crucible of battle.

As the cries of the retreating Scots faded, Anakin turned to his men, his voice calm but firm. “See to the wounded. This fight is over—for now.”

He sheathed his sword, the weight of the day settling over him. Blood trickled from the arrow wound in his side, but he paid it little mind. His thoughts lingered on Wallace, a man who fought with a fire Anakin couldn’t help but admire, even as they stood on opposite sides of a war.

Victory belonged to the English that day, but Anakin knew it was only a momentary respite. The war was far from over, and his path would inevitably cross with Wallace’s again.

From the Lays of General Anakin Skywalker, XIII century

"Victory tastes of ash and steel, A hollow triumph I cannot feel. For every life my blade has claimed, I bear the weight, my soul is stained.

The banners fly, the crowds still cheer, Yet silence grows where none can hear. Is the glory worth the blood-soaked way, When shadows haunt both night and day?"

The battlefield’s roar had long faded, replaced by the quiet hum of the night. In his tent, the air was heavy with the scent of blood and sweat, the residue of a hard-fought day. Anakin sat alone, the flickering light of a lantern casting shadows across the canvas walls.

He removed his gauntlets with slow, deliberate movements, flexing his fingers as if the stiffness in his hands might ease the tightness in his chest. His wound—shallow but angry—throbbed beneath his tunic, but he barely noticed it. His mind was elsewhere.

The small leather notebook lay on the makeshift desk before him, its cover worn from years of service. It had once been a tool for mapping strategies and sketching plans, but now it served a different purpose. A quill sat beside it, its tip poised like a question he wasn’t yet ready to answer.

Anakin leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment. He could still hear the clash of swords, the cries of men falling, the steady rhythm of his own breathing as he fought. But beneath those memories, another image surfaced: your face.

He saw the softness of your expression as you watched him leave, the way your fingers brushed the edge of your gown when you thought no one was looking. He recalled the faint scent of lavender that lingered near you, a contrast to the grit and grime of his world.

Opening his eyes, he reached for the quill and dipped it into the inkwell. The first words came slowly, hesitant and uneven.

"She lingers in the quiet spaces of my mind, A shadow soft and fleeting, yet unkind. For how can one so gentle haunt me still, When all my life has bent to war’s cruel will?"

The lines startled him. He hadn’t intended to write about you, but there you were, emerging from the depths of his thoughts like a persistent flame. He set the quill down, running a hand through his hair.

Anakin hadn’t wanted this marriage. It was a treaty, a necessity, nothing more. Or so he had told himself. But the more he thought of you, the more that belief unraveled. You were more than a treaty, more than a pawn in a game of kings and generals.

He picked up the quill again, his hand steadier this time.

"She stands a world away from steel and fire, A quiet strength beneath her heart’s desire. And yet, I falter, caught within her gaze, A man unworthy of her gentle ways."

He paused, his jaw tightening. Was he unworthy? The question gnawed at him. You were so unlike the world he knew—soft where he was hard, quiet where he was loud. Yet in your softness, there was a strength he couldn’t deny.

Closing the notebook, Anakin leaned back in his chair and stared at the lantern’s flickering flame. For the first time in years, he felt something unfamiliar—hope, fragile and unsteady, but real.

Perhaps this marriage was more than a duty. Perhaps, despite himself, he was beginning to see you not as a symbol of peace, but as something far more dangerous.

Someone worth fighting for.

The light of the afternoon waned, stretching golden rays through the narrow windows of the tower studio. Your hands moved instinctively, the brush in your grasp guided by memory and longing. Each stroke built the shape of him—the strong line of his jaw, the determined set of his brow, the curve of his armor catching light.

The unfinished painting loomed before you, half-realized yet already brimming with life. His eyes were incomplete, shadowed outlines awaiting the weight of detail. They haunted you the most, those eyes, vivid even now in your mind. You had seen them blaze with frustration, glint with cold calculation, and—just once—soften as he regarded you before he left.

You paused, setting the brush down with a sigh. The studio was quiet, save for the faint crackle of the hearth and the soft rustle of the wind beyond the stone walls. It was a silence you had grown accustomed to, but one that seemed heavier now.

Isolation clung to you like a second skin. Since Anakin’s departure, the castle had grown emptier, despite the presence of bustling servants and noble visitors. Their voices were distant, their laughter hollow. None of it mattered. None of them mattered.

Your gaze returned to the painting. It was maddening, this pull he had over you, even from miles away. You tried to focus on your anger, the frustration of his coldness, his guarded demeanor. He was a man of stone and steel, a soldier who saw you as nothing more than a duty.

And yet, your fingers yearned to trace the lines of his face. Your mind clung to the rare moments when his facade cracked—the softness in his voice when he spoke to his men, the unspoken apology in his gaze when he had mounted his horse to leave.

As you picked up the brush again, your thoughts blurred, a haze of longing and anger intertwining.

That night, your dreams were vivid.

He stood before you in the castle courtyard, his armor glinting in the moonlight, his expression unreadable. You reached out to touch him, but the distance between you stretched impossibly far. The harder you tried to reach him, the more the space widened, until he disappeared into the shadows.

When you woke, the ache in your chest was as real as the cool dawn air seeping through the tower walls. You rose, lit a candle, and returned to the painting.

It wasn’t enough to ease the loneliness, but it was something.

The castle halls were quiet in the early evening, the fading light casting long shadows along the cold stone walls. You had been walking aimlessly, your thoughts tangled in loneliness and frustration, when a flicker of movement caught your eye.

A servant, hurrying through a side corridor, clutching a scroll adorned with the royal seal of your father, King Phillip of France. There was nothing unusual about correspondence in the castle, but the servant’s furtive glances and rapid steps made your heart beat faster. You followed quietly, staying just out of sight.

The servant stopped at the door to Count Aulbry’s chambers, rapping quickly before disappearing down the corridor. Suspicion gnawed at you. Count Aulbry had been a close advisor to your father for years, but something about his presence here had always unsettled you. He spoke in slippery tones, his words polished but never quite sincere.

You waited until the hallway was empty before stepping toward the door. It was slightly ajar, and from within, you could hear the rustle of parchment and the low murmur of Aulbry’s voice.

“Your Majesty’s plan is bold,” Aulbry said, his tone laced with intrigue. “The General will never suspect.”

A pause, then the sound of a quill scratching against paper.

“Yes, of course. The treaty was always a means to an end. Once the English army is stretched thin in Scotland, the betrayal will be swift. The princess? A mere pawn, as intended.”

Your breath caught in your throat. Betrayal. The word echoed in your mind like a thunderclap. You pressed yourself against the wall, straining to hear more.

“The Princess is naive,” Aulbry continued, his voice dismissive. “She will remain loyal to her husband, and in doing so, unwittingly secure our advantage. The General will fall, and the balance of power will tip in France’s favor.”

Rage and disbelief surged through you. Your father had orchestrated this marriage not for peace but for manipulation. He intended to exploit Anakin, to shatter the fragile truce between England and France. And you—his own daughter—were nothing more than a tool in his game.

Your fingers curled into fists as you stepped away from the door, your mind racing. You needed to see the letter.

Later that night, when the castle had grown still, you slipped into Count Aulbry’s chambers. The door creaked faintly as you pushed it open, and the faint scent of ink and parchment filled the air. His desk was cluttered with maps and letters, but it didn’t take long to find the one bearing your father’s seal.

Your hands trembled as you unrolled the parchment.

To Count Aulbry,

The treaty is a foundation upon which we will build our triumph. Skywalker is a formidable opponent, but even he cannot fight battles on two fronts. Scotland will drain their resources, and when the time is right, our forces will strike England's weakened strongholds. The Barbarian leader of Scotland will keep him occupied and the crown made sure to pay her allies handsomely. He must never know of the alliance or the possibility of his rallying with the General is great.

The Princess must remain unaware of our intentions. Her loyalty to her husband will be our greatest asset. Continue to monitor the situation and ensure the plan proceeds without deviation.

IV LE BEL

The words blurred as tears pricked your eyes. Your father had betrayed not only Anakin but you as well. This wasn’t peace—it was deceit.

You rolled the letter carefully and tucked it into your gown. What should you do? The question loomed large, its weight almost unbearable. Anakin—cold as he often was toward you—deserved to know the truth. But could you trust him with it? Could you trust anyone?

For now, you decided, this secret would remain yours alone. The risk was too great, the stakes too high. You couldn’t act without a plan, and the tangled web of politics and betrayal demanded caution.

Slipping back into your chambers, you locked the door and leaned against it, your heart pounding. You pulled out the letter once more, reading it under the dim light of a candle.

The game your father played was dangerous, and you were caught in the center of it. But you were no longer the naive pawn Aulbry believed you to be.

You folded the letter carefully, tucking it away in a hidden compartment of your desk. The weight of what you knew settled heavily on your shoulders, but resolve burned in your chest.

For now, you would watch, listen, and wait. If your father sought to use you as a weapon, he had underestimated the strength of the blade.

The night stretched long, cloaked in restless silence. The world seemed to hold its breath, and in the stillness, two hearts, separated by miles of cold earth and bloodied battlefields, beat in unison, tethered by invisible threads.

Anakin lay stiff on the hard cot in his tent, the air thick with the mingling scents of sweat, damp earth, and the smoldering embers of campfires. His armor, dented and streaked with the grime of war, rested against the far wall, catching the faint glow of moonlight filtering through the canvas. He drifted into sleep slowly, unwillingly, his mind clawing at the waking world before giving way to exhaustion.

The dream came quickly.

He stood amidst a battlefield that was no longer a battlefield. The ground beneath his feet shifted from mud soaked in blood to the cold stone floors of a cathedral. The air smelled of iron and incense. Church bells rang out, their mournful tones blending with the distant wails of the wounded. Above him, stained glass windows cast fractured light across the ground, painting his armor in hues of crimson and gold.

Vultures perched on the rafters, their beady eyes gleaming, watching, waiting. Anakin’s hand moved instinctively to the hilt of his sword, but when he looked down, he found it missing.

Ahead, you appeared, standing at the altar. Your hands were folded, your figure bathed in an otherworldly glow. The softness of your gaze contrasted sharply with the jagged edges of this warped place.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice hollow, reverberating off the cathedral walls.

“I am always here,” you replied, stepping closer.

As you moved, the cathedral twisted again. The stained glass shattered, raining shards that dissolved before they touched the ground. The bells grew louder, their toll turning into the shriek of metal clashing. He reached out to you, but the space between you stretched impossibly far.

The vultures swooped down, their forms changing mid-flight into soldiers with faces he recognized—brothers, enemies, and ghosts of his past. They surrounded him, their hands grasping, pulling him back.

“Anakin!” you called, your voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. He roared your name in return, fighting to reach you, but his hands closed around nothing but smoke.

When he woke, the air in his tent was frigid. His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, and his heart thundered against his ribs. The moonlight cast long shadows across the canvas walls, their shifting forms reminding him too much of the dream.

He sat up, his hand brushing against the small leather notebook he had tucked beneath his pillow. It was your notebook, left behind on your desk the day he departed. He had taken it without thinking, intending to use it to record military strategies, but instead, it had become something else entirely.

Anakin lit a lantern and opened the notebook, staring at the blank page before him. His fingers hesitated, the pen hovering over the paper. What could he say? How could he name this ache, this pull toward you that he neither understood nor welcomed?

Finally, the words came, spilling out in raw, uneven lines.

"Enemies can shapeshift from slaughterhouses to cathedrals, Ringing with church bells, echoing with wails, filled with vultures. But your face remains, unyielding against the storm, A light in a place where light was never meant to be."

He stared at the words for a long time before closing the notebook. The night stretched on, but sleep did not return.

Back at the castle, the world was no kinder to you. The wind howled outside the tower walls, and the fire in the hearth struggled against the cold. You stood before your easel, the unfinished painting of Anakin dominating your vision.

The brush trembled in your hand as you tried to capture his likeness. His eyes—those piercing, unreadable eyes—remained the most elusive. Every stroke felt wrong, every attempt at completing them futile.

Your dreams had been plagued by him again. You had seen him standing on a battlefield, surrounded by shadowed figures. He was reaching for you, his expression torn between rage and despair. You had called out to him, but the storm had swallowed your voice.

Now, as you stared at the canvas, the memory of the dream lingered. He had appeared vulnerable, stripped of the cold armor he wore in his waking hours. You hated him for the way he made you feel—this unbearable longing, this ache that twisted in your chest.

And yet, you painted. Stroke by stroke, you poured your anger, your yearning, your confusion into the image of him. When exhaustion finally claimed you, the painting was still unfinished, his eyes nothing more than shadowed outlines.

In the quiet of the castle, as the fire died and the wind stilled, the two of you, separated by miles, carried the weight of unspoken words and unacknowledged truths, dreaming of each other in the silence.

From the Lays of General Anakin Skywalker, XIII century

The vultures cry where the church bells toll,

Between slaughtered earth and a fractured soul.

Smoke rises where roses should bloom,

A battlefield cursed, a cathedral’s tomb.

#hayden christensen #anakin skywalker #anakin x reader #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker x you #anakin skywalker x female reader #evie writes

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definegodliness · 8 months ago

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Hi hi. I hope this finds you well. Haha.

Your work is fucking riveting. Just the perfect amount of Perplexing, relatable and You.

I keep wondering, given you mentioned you didn't ever expect or perhaps want, to get into writing how did writing find you and how is your experience. Writing. What does that feel like for you?

And your writing voice. Its so eloquent so... artful..is that something you cultivated or was that simply a natural happening.

Personally I find nyself very disconnected from my work and the experience when i try to actively cultivate or "play around" with technique and prose etc. I naturally have a keeness to word play of sound and feel. Cadence. But the eloquence of your word choice is beauteus. Its something I would love to see in my own work im not quite sure though how to approach that goal whilst staying connected and thoroughly immersed in my experience when writing.

Hello there, Anon,

Thank you for your glowing, upbeat words. They have found me very well today, and I will cherish them. I did not expect to get into writing, because as a young adult my aim was to be successful in a rather narrow- corporate-minded way. I aimed for a job that paid well. So, writing absolutely did not fit my ego-fueled ambitions. A simpleton I was, but fortunately I can blame my inexperience in doing this living thing. I have always been a logophile. A word sponge. I care not for archaism or rarity, what matters is descriptiveness. When I find a word that is oddly particular, specialist, and above all precise, I experience a sense of elation. Even more when I finally get to use such a word. I guess you could say I favor precise communication over clear communication. Ironically, this is instigated by an innate longing to communicate clearly; as to achieve the purest possible connection, with as little as possible noise on the line between sender and receiver.

So, even when I had abandoned my love (for writing) to climb the corporate ladder, she has always kept seducing me, and has always remained part of me. Life, since then, has been slicing away at me. On the one hand, unfortunately, because life would be so much easier if I still had the same ambitions as then, but on the other hand I feel fortunate to have been chipped away, and ongoingly ever closer, to my core-self. Now, I can honestly say The Writer is a core-part. A part of me that blew up when I met my first love.

Without consciously setting out to write poetry, in hindsight, I wrote poem after poem for that girl. Of course, back then, it felt like simply sharing my heart with her. And it was such an overwhelming outpour of love, that, when she was not near, I had to canalize it through writing.

When she shattered my heart, it was very much the same. I developed scribomania, and for years I could not go without writing without suffocating. I always say writing helped me to learn to breathe underwater. However, it was more than catharsis. Prose turned to poetry, and I fell in love with this art form. Aside from getting emotions out, I also soaked in every bit to do with the craft. In that, poetry has given me a sense of purpose. What I love most is that you're never done learning, and therein you are never done evolving as a poet.

Curiosity is key. Reading-wise, when I like a poem, I am always keen to learn the whys. Then, try my hand at it. So I tried a lot of different styles, and when I finally wrote a satisfactory poem in that style, I went back to my own. Still incorporating the things I have learned. I have tried (nigh) every type of fixed verse similarly. Yes, sometimes fixed verse feels mechanical. But when I reread old work I do see my, then subconscious, emotions resurface. It may feel as if you are more disconnected than when writing free verse, but I assure you you are not. The set boundaries of fixed verse should not be seen as shackles, but as a lens; you utilize it to create a focal point.

Still, if you are truly averse to fixed verse, it has been mostly beneficial to me, because counting syllables, utilizing meter, and searching perfect rhymes has often sent me to my thesaurus and dictionary. It helps to hone your inborn skills, like lyricism and cadence. I do think my writing voice is natural, and that any writing voice is — I have never searched for it, doubted, or questioned it — but I also have cultivated it, longing to make it resound as clear as can be.

I think it's great you are confident in your own writing voice. That you know your strengths, and can play around with them. Never let anyone take that away from you. Never be hesitant, worried, or ashamed to write what you feel, need, or just plain simply want to write. Like I said, I love poetry because you can continuously keep evolving, and even if you feel a poem turned out subpar, or bad, or great for you but it turns out nobody else likes it, it is always a step in your evolution. There are many roads that lead to Rome. I now shared a glimpse of my path. But if you stay curious and just keep doing what you love, you will always get where you want to be.

Long answer, but I haven't written for a week, and I guess I am still a bit scribomanic. Your message offered a welcome distraction, and reason to pick up the pen.

For which you have my thanks,

Best wishes,

Mark

#nice people on tumblr

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aboutanancientenquiry · 1 year ago

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The figure of ἐπιστάµενος (a person with knowledge) and the relationship between poetry and history in Herodotus

"To begin with a striking internal parallel, Herodotus introduces the Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon into his narrative as one of several Greek wise men or sages, σοφισταί (29.1), who visited the court of the Lydian king Croesus in Sardis. Before Solon has demonstrated his disregard for the king’s wealth, Croesus too makes much of the wisdom (σοφίη) that Solon has gained through his travels. However, when Solon proclaims his fellow Athenian Tellos and the Argive brothers Cleobis and Biton to be more prosperous than his fabulously wealthy host, Croesus demands to know the basis for Solon’s rankings, to which the Athenian replies (1.32.1):

ὁ δὲ εἶπε· Ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάµενόν µε τὸ θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες ἐπειρωτᾷς ἀνθρωπηίων πρηγµάτων πέρι.

‘Croesus’, Solon replied, ‘you are asking me about human affairs, as one who knows how utterly resentful and disruptive [sc. of human prosperity] the deity is.’

Solon’s self-description as ἐπιστάµενος45 is underscored by the emphatic placement of the participle immediately after his direct address of the king. As I have argued elsewhere,46 the explication of this gnomic generalisation by the Herodotean Solon incorporates several references to surviving pieces of the historical Solon’s poetry, beginning with his statement that he sets the limit of a human’s life at 79 years (32.2 W2, cf. 27).

If we look beyond Herodotus, external parallels confirm the use of ἐπιστάµενος to describe the skill and wisdom of the archaic singer/poet. At Odyssey 11.367-8, Alcinous praises the arrangement (µορφή) and good sense (φρένες ἐσθλαί) that characterise Odysseus’ tale of his travails while traveling from Troy: ‘You have told your story in expert fashion, like a singer’ (µῦθον δ’ ὡς ὅτ’ ἀοιδὸς ἐπισταµένως κατέλεξας).47 Solon’s longest surviving poem (13 W2) contains a generic description of a poet as ‘instructed in the gifts of the Olympian Muses, expert in the full measure of lovely skill/wisdom’ (ἱµερτῆς σοφίης µέτρον ἐπιστάµενος, 52). The parallel with the most striking Herodotean resonance, however, occurs in four lines from the Theognidean corpus, describing the poet’s responsibility to his audience (769-72):

χρὴ Μουσῶν θεράποντα καὶ ἄγγελον, εἴ τι περισσόν εἰδείη, σοφίης µὴ φθονερὸν τελέθειν, ἀλλὰ τὰ µὲν µῶσθαι, τὰ δὲ δεικνύεν, ἄλλα δὲ ποιεῖν· τί σφιν χρήσηται µοῦνος ἐπιστάµενος;

The attendant and messenger of the Muses, if he should know Something extraordinary, must not be grudging of his wisdom, But must seek out knowledge, display it, and compose it. What good will it do him if he alone is knowledgeable?

The recurrent emphasis on the poet’s special knowledge/wisdom/expertise culminates in the pointedly deferred participle, ἐπιστάµενος. Robert Fowler calls special attention to the penultimate line, with its triple admonition to ‘seek out, display, and compose knowledge’.48 Fowler suggests that these activities comprise precisely what Herodotus means by that much-discussed phrase in the first clause of his opening sentence, ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις. In Fowler’s own words, ‘[Herodotus] sought knowledge and, good Greek that he was, shared it publicly’.

In fact Fowler’s formulation fails to do justice to the specificity of this text, since by its criteria what Herodotus proves himself to be in sharing the results of his inquiries is not merely a good Greek, but more precisely a good Greek poet. In other words, at the end of his prologue—an unmistakably prominent juncture in his narrative—Herodotus not only invokes the precedent of the Odyssey but also, and more broadly, promises the kind of generalising insight into the nature of the human condition traditionally professed by poets. It is as if Herodotus anticipated Aristotle’s criticism in the Poetics (1451a–b) that history—and indeed, explicitly Herodotean history—is less philosophical than poetry because it tends to focus on specific past events rather than universal human truths.49 On the contrary: from the outset Herodotus frames his account of historical particulars as a manifestation of the sobering universal truth that human prosperity is fleeting. In other words, Herodotus brings to historical narrative a poet’s eye for an issue of fundamental importance, mankind’s place in the universe at large.50 This is also reflected in the tendency of prominent advisor figures in the Histories to utter gnomic generalities when offering counsel in the face of specific crises, as they warn their powerful interlocutors about divine resentment of human prosperity and mortal liability to misfortune (Solon to Croesus, 1.32); or the cycle of human affairs that prevents anyone from enjoying continual success (Croesus to Cyrus, 1.207.2); or the deity that cuts down whatever is outstanding and allows no one but himself to ‘think big’ (Artabanus to Xerxes, 7.10ε)."

From the article of Charles C. Chiasson "Herodotus' Prologue and the Greek Poetic Tradition", Histos 6 (2012), 114-143

#herodotus #the histories #ancient greek classics #charles c chiasson

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the-consortium · 2 years ago

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Doctor! How did you get your pimp cane and how you used it before?

The two opponents meet in the middle of the training cage, Bellephus turning sideways by just the tiniest of margins that Arrian can use to follow up and turn the fight in his favour. The nails hum dully at the base of his skull, their siren song toned down by the self-injected poison. For a second, the World Eater allows himself a sense of premature triumph before realising that he has walked into the very trap the Gutter Poet has been setting up for three seconds - an eternity by Astartes standards. Going into the cage with one of the Emperor's Children is always a lesson for Arrian - no matter the outcome. This time, he is just able to pull himself to safety with an inelegant dodging move from Bellephus' precise attack, which was exactly expecting Arrian's not even heartbeat-long mismatch, and is looking for distance to reorient himself when he notices out of the corner of his eye that Saqqara, who has been sitting and watching with interest on one of the crumbling tiers of the amphitheatre, suddenly jumps up, his eyes fixed on his dataslate. Laughing until he has to support himself with one hand, he then immediately makes his way to the exit. A cheerful Word Bearer is rarely too good a sign. Arrian jumps back, leaving the perplexed Bellephus standing, and dashes after the Diabolist and his Dataslate. "Mooooment!" Saqqara turns to face him. Innocence painted on his dark face like a not really convincing mask. "What? Mail for the Chief Apothecary. I'm being helpful!" Arrian reaches for the dataslate. Reads the short sentence. "Seriously?" Saqqara shrugs. "I want to hear what he says!" - "What he says? I mean, it's clear this is about Torment … but … Pimp Cane?" Against his will, Arrian notices silly laughter building up. Yes, that is indeed funny. One of the most unpleasant weapons in the galaxy. A demonic shard with a malevolent intelligence. A monster, only barely held in check by Fabius. And this, a pimp cane? Saqqara tries an innocent eye-roll. "Well, I like that description. And the Chief Apothecary is still a son of his father and loves to make a grand, elegant entrance. All that's missing is a few sparkly rhinestones." Bellephus has got a grip on his anger - no one leaves an Astartes of the Third Legion in the middle of training! - and gives in to his curiosity. Steps up beside Arrian. Looks over Saqqara's shoulder. You can't see his face through the mutant-grown helmet, but there's a grin in his voice, wider than the Great Rift. "Now, that's what I want to read, what he says in response!" Arrian shakes his head. "Let's leave that for now. At worst, we can track down some poor sod and drag them here for him to make his point about respect. And I don't fancy that at all. Although the hunting will probably be more on you and your lot, gutter poet. Still, more than unnecessary. No, make that disappear, Saqqara. If the questioner shows up in person, they have giant balls of Ceramite and have earned their audience with him. But otherwise, we'll leave the Chief Apothecary blissfully ignorant with this for now." Saqqara gives a mock disappointed sigh.

#Warhammer #ask post #roleplay #Fabius Bile #the Consortium #Torment

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libidomechanica · 27 days ago

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Untitled Poem # 13216

A sonnet sequence

And cannot take and then the game. With clay.-Ware met, and left and shalt ycrouned bell of death, till losing ere with potent spell? Over the has no great nightly votes participate this virtues of Blank- Blank Square. Doth homages,—is yet wist na what he said her Face been tending a chain roundelay. One party; polish’d horde, for Lycidas is a monsters, which is a cause to die, cool, he found of reach year gone that may be better, with poets, and eager gentleness!

His magic casement: so I can’t—if spared by the simple store: and one blood was her peace, and safely words to her, now reign; or to the floors, whose fleece is built upon the lions in every youth, and fast; a rich and selfe in disbelief, the world. And bright meet with many a breath was softening valleys heart in hue, where must avert her from world! Was not into mourn her vow, or a passing at the minion bleed and look of its either pain disclosed with misanthropy?

Lady Fitz-Fulke; the bay where Lucy playe: such, Lycidas, the room to room, and of my hands, that is long and garter’d in a happy mother! That is, and extremely— thou sing, and we are trifles. Continent’s novelty, and pilaus, that answer should have but description of hope to guess. It came to the trump and spawn of Evil; the bloods mingling, my darling, Oh. An hendy hap ich habbe yhent, ichoot from all the very nymph soe’er it should turn on the very faults.

A paragraph in looked up, and anchor weeps: sdeath! Where I used to tears amid this woodes beat—what staies, all delayed she cried: The devil a noise precisely equal right to cut off without paradise. Made her and each ear was abound in decent London winter drear, or is it? And heav’nly riches, but Juan stood, and scorn; or new Love and an honour was a nice you out for he is driving wheels, and Passion, Heaven known to teaches— Heavenly Zuhrah who dared.

My own. And thus found, be in his dodging Jove; as he wrinkled line: but it’s not very Russ credential, which served with a way as well apart, let blood and pointer and parts, and thirst, more praise—death comes, tours, that share I feel that all his glance up, and ever light’s more dance its thirst is flatter gladly all his oaten pype, albeit the storms they shall be still my boat whose days of love men are smooth springs, to keep themselves could rushes for my lover, floats their bowre, both my breast.

Or they’re too poor babes to flight. The staring-owl, to love become, we will scatter all were fame with sights, going to the lions, like on mine what made up now; and thoughts that being desire witless. Would not better graceful, I though of what you leave the house of desire the hart, hind, the luminous ice, has rise; and yet alas, if aught wait? ’ Joy, while my fears the Winters. A simplest he roses and light would knock me better doe him flowers are from memory yet.

Of men darken’d on either heart from thinks them beyond conceived till not go; if I look another summer you are dext’rous; they’re tried; his hearts are light dearer being allusions form a Turkish Dandy’s dandies, past all triumph’st and hid under them lose to the library, a marriage; the old of the Sea? Twin Kernels in good examples; pity your son, no vapour, but a mermaid no thousand swallowing or their wealth had domes of Blank-Blank Square. Which I fill the faith.

As dearly morning too as wonder clean again. Her share the point out of course true,—last was no less on what loudly and our sanctified, as Phidian foot; and half-crushed you for all other, me, the shepheard repeated, so that I shall to give you to hunt down from Wound on Wound no less, and kings, others: it seems, downright to stealth; perhaps the larger to encroach of the Pharos from four dozen sons, charms— these amber mouth a double the least when young, ’twad be any less.

Kiss we and charm to the stream on a sheepe in good compass such primal naked trees like a weird doubts appear—the shade, and admitted late minion bleed. And, ladies and in hir hand, what make her; and point of flesh was, and of lamps gleam; the quarter. But to some infidels, some raise o’er the tremulously, that pure the rang on his mantle muse with lullaby, my young planets dancing hers inquired; flirtation, and trousers of esteeming, all is too lately, by me.

She was mine’— why am I sitting in the weeds. Such them fit for they should mourn form, perhaps the fancy, and London when one knee: the Gothic, such comfortable to see you’ve bought footing seas wash far as in and spawns his wide! Then Violet. The cold morn thinking subjected, right; for Eastern stays are invade them out: Is your roots together, which a mandarin find then Deeper frame wherein was rich perfume. Then state, and when she says, and thro’ the gods of her elf, she rough little hours’ land, where well by these must and liver, horse by leanings be! Yet was intends, to be done, yet smelt roasts, arising have felt the sang. Now we return to the sun delight, the other last dances of brass. Of a yellow him!

Who is so rarely on each assumed by proper way back against the near us that does resemble deep take and all the fly’s bass turn and bearded mouth and leave. And when she hath his pipe, and, for her Hand—he rain an English work his should shatter how oft had made. Not to judge there’s safety to this grey ruin, with thee more the sacred heard a noise that can a moment, save when that which your sorrow, as insomnia. Huge aquamarine tears. The Southey’s gander.

—The cowslips into it myself a might have I seem a mockery to my own, who cleft, some nothing issues from the jocund race; even years she reason; but in their round himself extreme effeminate which shake, of all within— et caetera.—I’m o’er land, rapidly riding home to you said you will, and a good deal shocks of alabaster. And eagle scorn to our annals of wheel or to lookest doth lie, nor lose that stray from caused other, and yell: Get out.

The place—stumbling even by ill gouernement I must and smile, as Cuddie, as others by acclamation, Avarice, Vengeance overwhelmed and the mount looks toward care. Silence no double dream had ye bin the puppets pull up every door stands in my payne. With poets and plate. High toby-spice so costly. You love will give it awkward: and I make eye-water filter’d tread, and ducklings; these hands, Leezie Lindsay, thus Gulbeyaz, for what he was quench’d like that will blight on Alisoun.

Doom takes no father spoke: she sports in the things, that which, thou sing, and is held out an invasion of the Mansion the child with figure lengths of grass like a time than Heaven know the solemn port, or sometimes a plaints had streames my silken twist; this guilty beetles,—blind an R. Of the other Countesses of love of offsprings legitimacy its source of offspring his heart’s Blood. It were all worse I take, like an articles are king: thaw this is please the Mystery.

There shall I go on? She said: they bring through envy of thirty servants for that’s too lately deigning to pad, to the eye could should not a blast—quick while sore than marriage; the cried, the prey of wool and love share I feel the same A day she does resort. This skill’d in all while other blood: it will better that to lose, that once set her last award, at which I seek with his burnt me like all chaos was, and his duties be, beautifie your make a pear, or is it, each Medea has a good teeth, with words out Phoebus daunce: my old lord; heap’d on the was, because theyr wonted fell; but with their sleeping, was it woo, and where the few we know; this tiny no-sex voice like mode of this shaking of my Earth and for a threw.

Thy maysters present than death-white the blue veins in love; flesh extended on then, once;—through the other statues, tables, chaste as bright divine. And liver, he seem’d herself, He heard and learn. Carlton palace: we with the Muses upon the whisper off, and calm: then none we lingering around himself without parade, as if allied in still thrice or three; and the sighed sold giving power can escaped, to sentence, that may not absurd to behold. As he proof how may calls on.

What condescending. With five years as any, we are smooth farre their will; since at they went the four western bespake: how well address, all round the snow, as what choleric and blood and silenced quite a Jupiter, like a song the dwarf appeal brooked at once more. My thirst, more sure I must seems nothing bitter the soul—the distance between that calm and like the stouter, first Desire—No Tale of workmanship so rarely on fields devoid of a bare blasted, right: I fear.

Each ear was taken in the frame; spoilt, as we walk this veins in many window, hollow hue that o’er. A cloudy film surrounding to be done such as fit for our clashed it closer interpose a rich perfumèd garments warp us of theirs is a voyage done through horrible and the long frustration is there moan of songs the graced. Soft— music unto me. And Cuddie, were ye playing mass can be mine. In thunderstanding to his mind,—she’llturn, Alpheus: the young, ’twad been sleepe.

Explains of those weird song, hath yet a present above! Throughout layer of good found fairest may tend upon hisses? As if every roughest caste—the Brahmins of the speed of banners throbbed thunder’s sound with slow autumn, though heauen gan overseeing a hands obey— our heart in some touch only, if aught in a moments me: tis buried when we once, that Orpheus bore, the speed of late. Joys upon the speed of such was brought us type the fact for the deep below?

This strong the soil lies winking him. And let thy please a bon-mots! With little dull and greedy of my woundedness touch’d the three-thousand wan’d the Thames, and saw the spirit closed be a Greek from the time to sit down by tarnished up, and o’er here also in lessen it nurses; but small passages, will be as gay and turned,—and thus Pope says. Till the free. Better, that I in an Englishmen, and adorning! On the rivulets hurl’d; whether heart in hue, without Greek; those straw.

Your pads upon memory in your season. Or own high jove were not kneel once more time, and Lethe-wards grow, which was full before me the sense the joins me in purposed to run afresh—Desire with reward those Eastern isle, where the distance, the acacias, and your dwarfed or little look back the ocean light of human feelings of love be loves as sunk low, mountain Arethuse, and leave your yrksome street, place you silence of venomous woodes beate were like the pair.

Must be new and come, though ether of her hand the warm South, cap and desired his hear; all of sweet it, rubbing you ask’st if I could no doubt a little house of my cause bold Britons have seen—and we walk in the Countesses and go to be seen thee; though my life like Hindoos, for being mourn. With lullaby the steep wherein were the laurel-brow’d, that nought him but a few flowers, such produce it; and cavil; yet, some, squatted between what nought about her started base.

Moved that you see. That had been obliged to herself too soon—which alters not, lives’ my father blood of all. ’ Said the forms cut off a thousand cold, where will notion is so hard upon that thou arrivals halts, midst they came: anon through your roots, remembers, all the door; so sinks at meant forgiveness, if each fulfill at you to reach more nobly dear, and life’s joke foaming o’t; were things occurr’d to tune. A deadly pale, he cried the house seven to it—loss, surprised nor shame.

Know very clerks,—those Gothic times resonance just two memoirs upon our brain, and sometimes good and say’st the soft again, and if well- nigh close contrary; but still water- smoke, that befell, thoughts by a clear spirit down she died. The sparkled in plainness did befall, that is the Soul came a hundred of long white curtain plaster; you walk one drink my filling dream, though Rows’ most unlike way, her, piano? But pursue their lies, yclep’d desire, whom we can look of it.

Appease. She the wise or suite, late beware lest, where wants him that is, and sometimes—now what times truculent— but needle-like, ever beds down to tempt even more attended ice. But it with women through Satyrs dangling, my dead weighing, and an hour of his love is blacks, in love to be at one with Constant hour, and of Thamis—who di’d oppression with sigh o’er the hand touch near that so it was ta’en the least, and down, and I feel to-day as I should be—you of its glass!

There waste not hollow him! And tosse in themselves. The child; but there happiness. So superficial, as it shod ill, to find; and one hour winding as I gazed upon the tiles, for priefe there’s sake, that Love when this, give her time; whether or thee. That if so take me dead, my haunted; I had been fronting so backward them with circum-walk the sun, yet the memories of your son, or restrain of domes o’er the simple grumbling ouer the fisty ring, but t is the last did she?

Inhale but oh, ambrosial cash! Doth with man his head is one view— but Juan too little, did strong impressing, All ’s Well! Stella deare, how long gallery, bad or heaven rough the people writhed himself and you any change in the centre, as you, woman, which Catherine in the lead to doubted not with the spheres been she sport of so young, whilst the business—which, believe not been altogether live here doesn’t company those, for thou yielding space: if I could be. Sweet flowe!

But I’m sorry sigh, nor unequal: each sweetness up, and yet, thought suffice to guide-books, pawns; they’d loved you. I want to thee. Were true, that I might be vices with his torches light grows warmth and by no men in carriage. There she would fain imprint a brace to the eternal— speakers which is a good appetite was any, we are all to my sable guest. Its abacus and trousers of every parted from the dwarf would rejoiced together, you, and I am witless.

For truth enlighten, must be served up the heart’s the other way: now I recollective with clay, do not great krater-cup bearing. Not stain when only take you blind and sees another sixth shall mould—the Duchess of my mind o’er your virtue be your Faith her girdle, as they moved the gentleman of dames is best. On roads, east, and the land, when once still remits the frost a change in the moan of sea from birthright emptied some Italian quarry; but earthen we should not thrown a slight have seen; when first, my despaire whilst it hath hym payne, or who have a tale o’ love than Heaven rough to low should have said, Incense me, come upon Sion’s describes in this pocket pistol from sounded in me a little Castlereagh?

Now, if little kindred doors gainst the moon, weak lords out of languished, then dress, then holly she pause these my Father sisters and bleed from the jet, where your soul’s wark, and lift my madness of gore disagreeable and stood admired or for men, he said, as may be not a feint. Our maid;—indeed we see the crush it under a light lifts him furst; delight, but, swoll’n with holy Angel office, fed by fountain Arethuse, and the Muses upon my face; the right have mine.

Blood-red as cannot go, the kindlier prancing, with rolling of needfull thing which might mellow to palm to palm she cast, and revive to loved. It seems to beauty, but need the blossoms of revenge faces, sigh—as the cypressed and was high; but thee cannot left her mammie’s cot, and last, thought of killingness equal, hinted scrape, and place you no one a virtue, he conspiracy of an overbold; now I haue a squint eye: virginity; her way while with your great place you want to trouble. ’ Chiefly though full of gay and melt with cryes, when nature’s deep being quite lawful wedlock and pass’d in a happier time to my muse a fool’s cap—I love; I had forget through,—an’ Charlie, he’s my dark eye grew.

Yoked him dropt; and increases two cloud kissed, and the think with rags of shadowy lands obey—our hero, as an old ways, not one? Primordial climb, and seem so little create kindness, nor much product and influence and with wayling as Ulysses’ whistle, and merely known, they are. And Generall tend then the only this our sound, albeit I’m sorry sighs which make. With the man had gone, and my earth lies than when look. Who in hir hands and beam for her obteine.

I have before, my deadly creatures all along, with all the glimmer’d all oblivion, and gaze once their women after all musick mard by mistake, come a moral inebriety. Little near her nation, not so employ’d for thin potations might such a thank Heaven’s square, and thick leave. And bower, pursues have the wood bluebells; the name!—That Juan, turn the muzzle? When he had him as he that I never not bear, I am your lov’d to her people famous, three.

His poem will waste not grist. I scarce contrived him when it nurses; but envious human deeds divine hovers on the sang out in a stir; and the fatal and distant hour towne to me my love, as suddenly sings not bewray lead the stream, far less: but her still, t is come on with such strange; the field: sore against wreckes auoid. Tis Love, without elucidation; and full of grisly twilight ice I know what your will. Here a sainted; youth swain, enow of tradition.

I feel quite refuses finally to be pilots in the moon- gazing eyes to admired or dine. Is calm and aye she knit the fact for ever the waggish Welsh Judge, Jefferies and o’er than they call God—call God—call God—call God—call God! With flower of his one of the other, and fast and more tender seemed a flask of the van, that right-winged affection and sad occasion by Homer’s Catalogue of Empires and whispered swell’d thy saving balm, their vows, through thee!

Bid amaranthus all as breathing the conquering in shore, in the goodly wild will leaves and love not that’s meant her from whom I lorne? Bones are the harmless winged Fame attention of those sacred dew; Protection; and nursed that the middle state; her side by side. Love is of marble figure to Marmora with fair finger and both my grief, the breast in their own arms with his realms of ice, felt it seem’d over: you’ve to beautie’s worth thy name and rare the sprang to me appendage.

To you, the forlorne, alas the parasites; to themselves to catch my misfortunes, and evening just ere they haggled, which to feed her and wan’d the place. And roar of so great free: but what good name, and gather than to approbation neither knows what; and amidst thine happy he white or argentine. Sent from the better done, young diplomatical virgins blush’d a sigh, and for the air my quiet—sank in age and fast; a rich and wriggle, but the flood. Word: attorney.

Infinite heart; my body is then she saw with rolling sigh: heaven where I used to find out of which Eve her palace: we will his agony of flesh and the cowslips plied, Hold! Admitted as summer closer that he saw Ilion? Young mantle too, but the heart was done—hawk’d about a kiss, the weighing, and kindled you might reach’d the same and gain become alone, seeing as close that hast part: o, lest I should let our own Polygamy’s to be pilots in free-will.

And I hae the same the dwarf came. This is a king. And yet them true patrician, was to architecture of my mouth, call ourselves know no more; before than we from abroad, until the Fourth, to rally the household of the maid, by that melancholy dream? Would, I would will down the pin; and, with oriental as Mozart’s soften’d domestic this sons of dirt, out on Shooter’s mellifluously present lot, as dead, but lies the breede vprightly sings or said Juan; but to show!

Bid her the maids in Cashmire had put the dark his flea’s death, for all male moderate door this dearest, her soule, the wrist, her horse has Spagnoletto tainted, as well at once stoop from you flie from the tells you have? Of forms which were from pain; nor seemed about a stark unprinted types of marble figure in the tide I had, and I know not to my threshold, since is my father died or jingled, which the most favour, made the deserved, feast and for coquetry, she daily, laid.

Of the long before Don Juan, shall I not leaue the verge it intention to me; and wan’d the history scarce to point of vintage! I heardest tresses and hoary from friend, all me how could breaking lemonade and leave beetles,—blind again by iron, by that other; and revive the devil is it under the pages of conceived juan yet I shuddering who drew on, and she far-fleeted by the commends to be buried understroked in the moon, who shall no more.

In which my brows, those held sagest, and song, in the space, sometimes behind then play on the next meet the chillies fair; and I dance which in love with Esop crosse the world like one the Night Zulaikha went to seek; all have fretted that does resembling mass. When daisies pied a bonie Jean. Trees, at one who know exact affairs, she would but thee! And wan fond loved that summer heart is a friendly star? Which on the wandering axe was nothing imagination: but earth canto me.

Blue. The rain Unravell’d mongst the tents: the mountain, the Brahmins of death. Let thy mounting-box, and, as well, as you like a virtues with thy bondslave is to the dice seemed about all silent, or such great in the king hints we make your voice of resistance follow; let the wearing at sixty for fish, and out the long enough too daring on they do but kissed and both which, believe it. Then if I could no man, but little time left himself more free. We are ten in the load.

Or Knolles, which trotted not chariot, luggage, equipage! Yet, as I desires of the summit of London his toilet, which has built and air success. As the Winters wrath, and woof, we makes himself was sent abroad; discuss’d the steals sometimes of rising through the telle can; hire swire is as we embrace you were made. With holy Angel, but had I Heav’n expect me the flowers; but some days? Will be bought; now she glory for the punch. From her rage as winter sleepe.

And Medes, would rather die than when she says all his lips into a rivers smoke and never certain place, and eagle will now. Under them a voice: I can’t say or good deal shock’d; not your voices with death blew bubbles of that I cannot well hath in me than in her, and shot a flying Time with savage dares, and Bored. He found, their hue, just so much success that out the lamp of mute you only transition, fatigued with suavity, or with a mind, with aught of his victorye?

How dark grey ruin, and angling, with all have studded with Ins and pass’d with fear: but more they did! I want mine! Lady Fitz-Fulke; then assumptions, like all in wisdom’s ways; also the earth canal or pines in motionless for any interior of the lapping an ox, an aspirant too. These fresh, and leaves after sang out of love you; so costly ends my sole recommence thence love is mind o’er the wind sweet dream, past tenses all pass my heart-beat gold as dear.

And questions piteous Lilly of the Southey’s gander. Songs the wearing Cross, and thunder a lawn, and I have to buy. At forth, I knew mankind beats true countesses and Beauty, or thee. Wash far arose of shadowes you my heart—just ere time that I cannot be pathways though your blackened future bridge,— that some do see, before my Lady that in it; and I so fair as inseparated at hang more for himself upon the puncheons call’d the gallant cavalier.

Have but mute she had made myself was so very word and very nape of saffron, dagger rich to climb, a dreamt what the radio plays;—boats when man’s feelings change: thy prisoned soul shall its sweet Draught or worse it never met, but a human he call’d a little ease, as still not. A genial country much thy follow Echo of my wo, comes Sorrow she, sirs, a faint lamps, the same there are two hours of the woods, and lonely as hear; all our lawful awful wedlock; she learn!

Bore to his new, whom groaning, now, give myself dost breast as her whims, had a heart did not keep a shawl, who have done, young, I’m floor’d by the ship came down to find, by the same give invent, without a heart, which now hiding its winged Fame through coach, as if you rehearsed the tears fall: no lack—and cough, more quite a Jupiter, like the luminous eyes would put the harebell hung with it; after meals sometimes do well please a bonie Jean. So loue did not being new: nought that should pull it.

Extremely trite; not she never seemed a few slight, and left and stalls in good examples; pity your dwarf appear’d under the disdaining sun. To tend our stream, we lay which is a small old monastery from City Hall to thy high to lose my eyes are the sixth, to cull of hope and now and insolent each a fact and influence and causes my strictly meditative. Who little heart with women’s lost lie in bed, I’m fley’d it may be superstition as good?

Although someone free! So that may buye golden faces, sigh’d, and looking ill proceed upon the conscience, and thou hast lullaby be the tide ebbs in sunshine for one blood. I say you fought that blessed by Baba stopp’d with vain to see, before he cherub to perplex eve, and gave our wine and before with wayling at the right of Beres all his from these phrase, where, between the others pay which habbe yhent, ichoot from himself had caught of the world’s hunger face a little man.

She gave his vainer trouble while she wrought up, other rage, thread and vain; till the fawn that coat was faint, with cypressed, sleep’st by thy silver at there’s not understand at this veins. Oft till these fingers broken-hearted, the fawn that very flowers should be head; yet this toilet, which of Thine till death-wound, and speak; ah for me, held a volume of so you so that you could think how rapt was a Greek; those silent, or you, flint to get frown: let slip no occasion, private, trees.

But sadness off like a young to thee. My deadly perilous flood is nipp’d, and dumb—and thrust a hue— the rich banker’s sounds were my Pegasus should not Cervantes smile. He four. Mere combined, for rhymes, the truth is the most essential; and hale, with should poison or fascinate village green face, famous, too, would them of reach’d a tumult straightways in her mouths of gold: nimrods, whose left come beautye I weene, that you thumbed, thou be’st borrow No hungry, and say it is pity that signs.

Bitter close against thinke thus: On Thursday the quarter the tells you are, from their nation, if thou art freedom far estrange ball scores and pictures. Less he’s two cloud drag inward flies my side, whose modern nation moves—female had done its utmost honour, I should laughes through those the drew himself extremely could put thee; yet wist na what your leaves to rear’d it; but so employ’d for instancy endanger spotless content; a simple she is comprehend all native: alas!

Like an ancient epic laws, Nor only God, that I think of Siren tears, fits, like a robe, and the Thirty-three of earth waste in masquerading violence with her form in the wood where nothing naughty and gain in a thought vpon a dulling sigh: heaven, down she feare he may triumph in love ae e’ening herds pipe, and flash’d in a wed gallant cavalier., There wanting novel, nothing all trout they for feare more, dungeons may all human form’d a disarms—who fell, and blood.

Let bloods mingle Almond packt. Shall happiness quite shrink to famous, the unborn childlike in a mandarin find out within my hero; nor reign the maize, or rode a nag which maxim when he helm, now that I never yet she will was from aught age; and the day will expected woes awaits it, that you write, which on the darken’d of ladies’ lucubrations have turn’d up to head, we two, or on my plainness and purple always so politeness and scraps of your past yearn.

Verses dart; ’tis the shepherd pipe, or fair Salámán and cry of world my spirit all passion, and roses first and what’s enough to show for many false, ere Time drew ill his bright as it not wonder’d how happy, or to lie groan; when away: my thigh lawns all in a space to wood, whose please; and eager face. True Love, and love with pearl the high upon the broken in her throughout thee! To heare as bright, as Juan and time left and Mrs. That sad experience and glitter.

But Juan was blue were vanish’d nation, devoutly to be butcher’d in the silence too though the gloom of the blaze of shadowy lands; let rays of my worthy Christians he past all unfold, so drenched it in thee; the think, a sparely on each face, famous Druid oak stood half the spell? As moon was grant you find there’—for six month endows that venerable question, which your hair’d anger like an old tempests raise these are tried; hands I consequences are so mute? The doome.

I rise above, in case to the small distance free: but in wonder mind, and raw, when therefore the threshold, sincere a present their than he is watch, as insomnia. Thy touch by separable is proudlier in the merchant in a throne that wilderness touch drove Confusion in; bitter conquerours do well the shepeheards grow a night’s her to the fleshly fed by a cry. My love for pale and an according things else; and all, what mischiefe mought what madmen may run.

My Peggy’s face? Nor you stood by us, things were the white, those isles of power than I know what their hopes and I hae tint my pale, he was nothing field. Death in their answer bright intrude, and loved—that the Princely Graces, like skaters on a bandage rather selfe did lament, while he is flock, the two foes until fairest man, always so politesse, and all you will knowledge, beat heart-burning Post was steel tempest, thrown, the world is only fickle she waning to be mine.

But etiquette in kingly impart: o, lest I should you could reach me, such a trice: whate’er she is flatter, the petals twain, upon his rise again, she made baite of watch the very friends your times do I know which sounder horses can give to guess that should confine themselves, none that tender-ship, cried, the best friend, all born think, till he died, and sentiment; who, Pope says, greatest to right of sun was sent me loved, should not sleep? Might be sold, if the eye appeared that hand, through Groves, and therefore the foreigners invocate; a lion’s despotism in good to it, no highly places; the moan of threading on me the latest of recollect all utter loves white arms and calling show, as if in you had absence!

And when awakes up a great hour, as if I’ve a notion in this be decline; and tears: then she butterfly hath the sun, down the last was last coughing short pause I louers pitie: looked a little to shake a split broiler. Is full part, hind, the pansy freak’d with a stream. He left a bound! But he be buried deep, laughters admiration! In summon, ah! In me all my lady’s hands, comes o’er young to the dwarf replied: No! Ah for my presage, he ’ll be-’—Now, pray in their line.

Be nearer than solitary, assured she now and then me! Know that fine air sex should she inroules those smile betwixt the painting clause, said, he liked thee fade away: my thigh lawns all honoured outward Form of any take it is a run. Two trees wet breath,—he front in her e’er exprest with words enough; but to the frankincense me, thine eyes, and evening a tear, sae let them wish the basest clouts that was on the beasts, vegetables, chastity is smooth rocks, who have born.

My life, therewith my while I melt; make him up; I’ll die tonight the means sinistering dine. Thin, sticky, flutter through with the rose and settle on the litel fowl hath sought, I knew all except in rock and say it is to blending, too,—did shine, deck’d; also much to me; all Ear from his souls—the point, and every shadow. A day like foam-bells to cost the Outward Form of an imperial way, she list grows to mine eyes, ere palsy shake loose or used to lie and when once at their azure pillars of the Scales, so cleaues the yoke, I will ever like a jester’s. Though the daily labour was a bird, that wormes shown, a vestal spring; begin, and every paltry magazine can signifies The Sea?

When amatory hawks will? A stormed were seen there is the back against my lady’s emblem in tables, chaste my hart did see; a principle present time, dying accent driven through gald, and let them. No longer—in the golden myself, in hands and let our strange in the grass, the world like awe, than he is first this is a blundering kind, since lay understanding star, the prayers to welcome guests, assembled it, simple—short, and for though string—quite free; and thou, fair peace.

Now that he show ripe ears in worth: the gadding rimes a placemen to press; and wake, were to point with kings, upon bed and if he was, trailed in time according towers! Like their price; some years the place. And blocks with Bacchant giving wheel should back a hornet in the Arrow, Julia, I betimes some’s self- love, a nobleness, nothing in July—some bare-headed Eagles yelp alone, and rack and his work- day worldly please, so void of grisly twine, and fresh Cuddies Embleme.

All song and twilight was made his draught with fold to do with brows on mortals general to men are blast— quick while others should reach my mind, to differing may prove as true, despite till Ida hearts: yet was once ever afresh—Desire; and curtains, scarcely could reach my brow. And yell: Get out thee’—for six month endows that Juan stood the place, were her palace led, because those who are not absurd to slackening here was an everyone else them glides away, my loveliness.

Well can solve; but welcome touch fond of this by evil eye and left but lost indignant disease, but it’s not enough the pile—make herself; her shall happiness,—not lie still purged air, her side two women are so truly, when a culprit came a Seventh— the Sea, that she hard her care, and the head to her; take you asked the other noble Fame there not hollow stile to pant. Women shed and come deplore what we built of your Faith hair as many haruest Queen— I have him o’er young, I’m o’er the house my hopes and even aside his pards, but whether join. And I say, you see, if she have behind, a heart and live wisdom’s chorus on such a deed, of being nearest, with some nation, from committed forefingers.

Bad grace this calm, and green lollipops. Not to judge’s journey, but that lips into her decease.-Fence facing, was dead, the whispered to. From my thigh like his lips, which brings legitimacy its sheathe. The soil lies! The bough, more wont to and tricky, but in thy train might be this is, and, as if’t ad been half what times don’t decorum, and pride, twin Kernels in degree, whose served with from which steals somethinks the same and look’d, and wise, that lays.—I’m o’er the Daughter of that the Dambe.

But, reading others bow, Prithee why complete the telluric light, and over with th’abhorred she I cherished it—but weak, but we will be. Made a Lady’s quiet smile betwixt the distance—Ninon de l’Enclos. Nor sharply stood by us, half-lapt in two. With lullaby, as delight in a little we have a tale saddest—and makes me forth eternall price, and catch, as if ever light; through the days of wedlock bounding clause it’s novelty, and out by my pet-name!

And perpend if thine shall car, her face some reason due; for fun watched street, place. The Abbey, the wrought abound, and what is too for hours of men are such as can tell: we needles, which year extensive her rage was able, how dark more the womankind, single with them warm, and sees another love within this rougher hand serve the flesh and rather with circumstance for affording the petal stood, and of Hate; for ever: but a minister— that are just two might be schism.

And air—earth—water—fire lived overmuch, stands soone before they find him; by the deny it. I call me Papa. By the married men what is, a chain that you apt to consolation urging an ox, and, she of weather Attica; or heavenly alchemy; anon permits what is his burning of this sovereign at all but know what water even yet I am with him aboue, where beauty, but by and since court a Gothic times morn went up a blind could hurt to flight, and fragrant me likewise equal life, the fine old fell with my while upon the crush it understand off they were the sad glories, and told you are like an Alpine hills, who cleft to him, and taken tears, and nothing in that through deep.

A kind of ready came, the child! And Pegasus should chain on so unconscience willows bared, and aristocratic in ambush laid, and that they came loved. Find sometimes show the extremely strife. Like a bird, the parasitic forms a growth of Englishmen, and prophecy— except in some moments! No where on the gown the child willing out Mine—mine—not your wives, pure, which in the dog-days in such a sign that, the poor babe; but her for spring replied, Hold! Who love return.

Be your scant patchy pocket pistol from a darke; absence drew on, and were barks, wind-wafted far as in us lie, nor knew no better is the purpose the halls, which I will remain’d of length wit to hint the Duke of green and his Anguish in horror to keep at such was Rome’s stood but our feet as the peered full of a fool’s cap—I love of burning, too, there and we were gene: ’ the load. In ambush laid, and flood, and moved them here—now? If sudden black and put the fever!

As the world, or in love; Thy radiant beauties be, beauties Queen of Scots; true—tears that mourn. Lovely, Woman face that I love you of noble scarce trod on their babes to re- teach from might brow like a bell tolled at first a Candide founded more like a true-born Child I together is ogled be; thou pleasure, whom earth cantos of politician, was well, a wounded like harness’d meteor on, and my roots, remember not the face thought that grows not youth in bleakness, heroes.

I am throw, entering all they’re trifling, my despise o’erthrown influence of all is, wherein were slaves’ chief resound, and the voice slows down at zero,—lo common likings, the wolf’s-milk comes an art on while don Juan, as all the stores of the lady’s hands, and interrupt: you put me with things which make one is wounds. In twining carriages, brooding in the library, while, the maid, In Heavenly Zuhrah who drew you seem, but mute, and Frances terse. Warm, etc.

In a silence as gathered o’er Juan stood, woode as he bore to act with pype and what they did not to my three. That calm patriots hurry and by octobering kiss: work that you won’t anent the murmur are rustling bade her way, when spray biginneth the strings, all well— no heare, of his last infected with fair peace beneath to share, ’twad be a sin to talk you to know; such made wives a woman who was well of nights, and fell from scissors, painters fought age; and heard; his Soul?

For maydens more noble scars whine, and you keep court-favour: here perplex and fire, and by sweet wilder group of same, conform their own land for every doors: but it is, was open’d with their cleaues thy approach Love’s an early in me writhing when Rome’s an ideal it’s fun what was Indignation? I turn’d his could not provoking; but it will leaves linnet’s pipe, and hale, with rags of shadowy lands of revenging appetite precipitates. Others lie upon town.

When in hopeless desire; the basest not me? Might by Night Zulaikha went to see. Resting or office, as Cuddie, freely. And happy we have a tongue can I say: is throw away of sweetness, and though, God knows not open, but each assumed the wood, and step to warre: and yon shrine, for to looked forms the ostler pleas, thy glimmer’d all matters present, etc. Pleasures are was no open on a foreigneth in hue, who dazzled by those modern buildeth the rest.

It was the great hour of the will fly to stealing unknown; but oft clomb to the Herald of the thumb and Nut, Isis and blazon o’er us all those only his— acquaintance was a regatta of matter;—a dreadful pass into suddenly fair, the falling some sage Hippotades the purple island-sides, as the passed outside in loves are. The world—which was stiff as Lot’s wife, I shall I die, somehow, then, if your longing there was good society were not me?

The rigging and died in the Eleusinian cave—such I might head— for her face. Well agree, when he sleeps from the wood, and leades out Phoebus dauncing eyes and beautifie your mother’s down, some planes, and the envoy either even more that hath taken tea in small triumvirs; and statues, the most I woke to the doors, or manners through publicly impart: thou should it not much thy fair, so throwing violence, other large my free the maiden passive air of the Storm graced so.

Mere contemn; which the pinnacle, and what not, all well—no hear me, nor mine; the fat; breath; and then Deeper on one leg and heroines out and he and Wordsworth thou art from pain; yet the Board, whose built an odd glistenings and the names who bound, we spring bank: to no death. Bitter conquerours doe avoyd that to a certaine you will ye go to be foul, the shining sorrow she, sweet with their fancies at meals; he’s wrong—unless moonlight exclaim’d; through the bottom of them years.

Like a cloud an’ shilling tear, or pines in Blank-Blank Square;—for we will ye go to the extremely hand to her your Highness, yet do not getting day, and have fallen have hearts that them yearlong poring off his veins. And let the eclipse, arguing hour: come wait until the growing year. The list of any taken tea in small let herself extreme effeminate mankind beats true image were two predatory hues; for we will see how much the altar when no doubts course.

”—A merry larks are forgotten. You walk with his addition, and a hard upon the door this carefull lips, and that’s fair, and arc, sphere their pleasures do I previously would not reverencing heads of Fate, sunk on the frost. Which form divine, albee rude man had still walk about a humdrum tete- a-tete, to make them to the sex the place. I had a happy few an earphone with made, wery sound affrontery, pledge? The cups against thy will directly traces.

It is pass, pall Mall, as you will column. The elderly walk’d; if for good teeth clamping the main point, a day like an old Opera hat, marvelousness. And out of these king hers in contradicted but do it I will ye go to their backs on us and love for my soul of the linnet pourings, their flank’d with tears ago. And storm, their station—I don’t know not yshend your Highness, an acid-yellow to front to sing, and short absence in lonely, i, a long besides.

Death in bitter smile was the torrent our way to Mahomet’s ban on the golden pilgrimage picture of those built in the Ant’s eye; who pass into a very Russ credential queens, bishops, knight lessons, one unbelieve it. Where beauties Queene. Box and watches them of reason at all-soften’d domes o’er you in me worthy perusal state, those forced or jingled be; thou since her silken twist; I would say: for spite, perceiving country ladies, and put the year that I speak.

With foreign eye, the circumstance. Oil of bonie lasse she says, and then if I said, It grieve, shall because the summer from though such a grape with, she world, or as Dame Cynthia, thogh fair peace but a subjected, they mutually little oak-room which it hath no vines, reluctant pointer and are destroys what wormes should be always fair most English even bigger room is turn out of butter, magnificent long; and fears be: just so mute? The moans a word, nor the Third?

Lord Henry Silvercup, then is with finger and here, ’ said the painters, the good will downward no such a though string—quite enough a lady in the Continental oaths, t were a sainted, or imperial halls held carnival at wild will get opposite apart in awe: he saw me lying in the dear admiration, there ripe, the street, the knew not yet would appetite. Yet left her mammie’s wark, and I may seem’d jaded wife, and his worth my gross body shall before.

White or keeps his triumphant, unaware the Druids, like a young man, she means be brittle, one leg and looks red an honest spheres been and ancient eye: but an unexpect me they market range forth thou be its Interpreter being far as outward showed, should make a fair young diplomatic sinner, there’s my darling, banish mee. I ask you would scarcely term’d the grass, uncared for the point out what maken field when this vile world’s Te Deum, ’ and proffer, last did greue.

-Ship, you borrow more of Spring’s maturity, checked in two. But soon his saying, Accept all the fair most to yield; before he might munching for Lycidas? The bay when in far less desire the cried out an empire also my sockets first and she was not chance as if my years sheep: with thee ’gainst thy AEgis o’er the first were none lay in earth, nor find therefore, and often broken: let him to Desire? Why am I so loved, and let me powre hath hym payne.

Will, they would say: be hypocriticised the ladies—some reason; then, laden with thy perfum’d, as Phidian form’d but do not when look at the passenger e’e, as soon their way, but oft clomb to the ysicles holding paper I remembrandt made quiet, my father’s finger, the family his— acquaintance from never! I cannot been malt liquors exchange is no spot when its ample of the light have needs must ride, Fled is apt to his coming them years to flower.

It scarce past on; but Baba bow’d attend a traced our barometer: let rays reflection and the lake; speaks up annals wax’d but more in women and cannot do it Of evening, think of your leaves, and I so love’s offered his travellers to hold you deeply, and a word, not to guess each the eastern kings be decline of which, dissolve, and he steep where peccadillos are lit up by a spirits. Not one, where Beauty still it e’er set off a married which, dissolves the lava more said Juan’s was to be half in twelve said, while every youth o’ gear, and sunburnt mirth, leaves, and hears so gentle and Madeira strong althought of love, my love the same; excepting of this realms of our love than any rocks of ill!

Bronzed o’er here are wont to gas;—through coach, chariot, luggage, baggage, baggage, equipp’d a Camel side by Mrs. Also at that in all; let rays of Counsel of further changed, like waterfall liars and oil, ’ Samaritans shining from verge of the color of his owne child on our blood is whirl’d at the laves, none replied the figured in a gentlement said fireflies would I ad more can I saw a little space be sweet soul, as earthly sound so many a museum. With us through a lower than our own on true Love from men’s clocks, through gald, and yet some interior of you, she signs— that that sacred part, let him vp without them to keep at some by a new-fallen, not mute, temper?

When she signs—that I devoutly to the love! Whose enough; but her in a nut have to cross the girl to vex us? As plover’s curse must and let thy AEgis o’er, and General admired or are, we are beyond. Frogs sound is the child! Good and fair. Her charioteer that sweetness of noble conqueror at a cry. Body of my darkling valentine, all deckt with Sally Brown! Earliest soil of ovation urging an hour tongues—and out of which habbe y-yerned you.

And birds sang in the Victor of than our lot, at Longbow wildly fight; and wonder wanted types of the stoic to his elbow in a bigger than the Landor’ has taken up in sad embroidery well: well counsel had better is less and let me heart’s Blood. The colour will leave behind serene, it be channels? But after between what nymph-like in jest: for they should know, you are little thankful herdman’s art. In my pen and forth a quantity in faery land.

You know backward, the end—or, sinning like Esau, for witty, but she was hardly lea? And now is steady applied not known. And pure said: I will ring in a road, and honey-meal: and leaves are liked the painters. Soft—music rose call back upon the Nights, rooks, or maids in sun and once to mark the blood on the world, as my gently heart shall still we fluttering sections of right, and with thing! Just as my gentleman to resume, singe. And then a woodland reddening bed!

“Then I look for many others. Conform their glory of a compounded like Hindoos, for which he was stiff yet alas, from a prison to the time show’d all the petals shaking of my miserie!, Writing, Christian shore of humane to see one perspective pace past tenses I singing: Today we have the equinoctial line: but them I hear me, held a volumes another come out into Don Juan, having climb; through whom we can tell his nearer for human form die!

Love unreproved; and fell; but waxing the enormous gate again, as a dancer, had she north, I know it; my tongue can say the Wolues iawes: but for past my wind has swept down on the fire-side to palm to part of these days and kneel downward, without press in this soul of many-colored sail for bandages and shapes, that wholly; and there modestly call the time of shadows they call, and the swart star to love you again seem to kneel once was no ebb to it. And every is, a chain round; you scorn; now what woman, I’ve not enough the century through they came, and wondering like a mallet running were: and I have broken my should have eyes, which your meritorious nothing at the from thee.

Gave way groaning to a bottle of women are borne aloft incense me, come deem no worse. To a man, the tax; behind here all who; But hearts are like trick’d: but mountains by those, forget me do not, what they have changed fortune strange; there is no reason. I dancer, had all that later heard her grass and bid my wrist, her he waning moved. His your naive ties, that moral me; he’llfind it ranckleth ay more, but had disappear—the height years of weather-bell. In mind, a shadow.

100

Errors of spring on prey, are sighs, you know it; taunt me your disasters. I dance, on April of bloosmes, whose call hear meadows with golden fruit doth come in the crystal moon, unlook’d into the humbly own—’tis decorous friends. When we first and so now a saint: the bountee telle can; hire swire is no others love may go unto that I should have I which turns of those wayle my feared upon here reaching for yours not to kneel, not where London his early spoke againe.

101

I turn’d the window looking their own quite free the innocent muscles, bulging like Caractacus in winters, and the human he’s my darling, for Charlie,&c. Blue Peter Lely, who like Tom could should hurt your soon! Who look at the world; but this garments me this Chapel was blue when a word. But Baba, nodding been suppose me clever charities joined at his places; where and the fallen have gaze upon a wave should love men and arose of the strong in free-will.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #138 texts #sonnet sequence

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poemshubs · 3 months ago

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Who Is the Greatest Master of Haiku?

Haiku is one of the most beloved forms of Japanese poetry, renowned for its brevity and elegance. The genre typically captures fleeting moments in nature, expressing profound insights in just 17 syllables, traditionally divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. While many poets have contributed to the evolution of haiku, one name stands out more than others: Matsuo Basho. Revered as the greatest master of haiku, his work has transcended time and cultural boundaries, influencing countless poets across the globe. This article will explore Basho’s life, his contribution to the haiku form, and analyze several of his most famous works.

The Origins of Haiku

Before we delve into Basho’s role as the master of haiku, it’s essential to understand the origins of this poetic form. Haiku evolved from the hokku, the opening stanza of a collaborative linked-verse poem known as renga. The hokku set the tone for the entire renga and was often composed with seasonal references and vivid natural imagery. Over time, poets began to write hokku independently, and it gradually transformed into haiku, a stand-alone poem.

Haiku, as we know it today, was not formally established until the late 17th century, when Matsuo Basho began writing. Prior to Basho, the genre was more rigid and confined to particular patterns and formats. Basho’s contribution was to elevate haiku beyond its traditional confines and imbue it with deeper philosophical and spiritual meaning.

The Life and Influence of Matsuo Basho

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was born in the Iga Province of Japan and was originally given the name Matsuo Kinsaku. Basho’s early life remains somewhat obscure, but it is believed that he was trained as a samurai before turning to poetry. His journey into the world of haiku began when he moved to Kyoto, where he met other poets and scholars who would influence his development as a writer. It was in Kyoto that he became familiar with the renga and hokku traditions.

However, Basho’s true genius lay in his ability to take the haiku form, which was once considered trivial or superficial, and elevate it to the level of high art. As he grew older, he took on the name Basho after the “banana tree” (basho) in his garden, symbolizing his humble yet fruitful approach to poetry. The name represented both a personal connection to nature and the growth of his poetic soul.

Basho’s works are deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and the aesthetics of simplicity and impermanence. He saw nature as a reflection of the human condition, and his poems often reveal a profound connection to the world around him.

Basho’s Revolutionary Approach to Haiku

Basho revolutionized the haiku form by infusing it with themes of impermanence, spirituality, and self-reflection. In his hands, haiku became not just a descriptive tool but a means of exploring deeper truths about life, death, and the natural world. While earlier haiku poets focused largely on the seasonal elements and surface-level beauty of nature, Basho aimed to create an emotional and philosophical connection between the reader and the natural world.

His minimalist approach to poetry was part of the broader cultural movement of the time, which sought to capture the fleeting beauty of life and its transient nature. This idea of “mono no aware,” or “the pathos of things,” was central to Basho’s poetry. He wrote with the understanding that all things are temporary, and his haiku reflect this delicate balance between life’s beauty and its inevitable decline.

One of Basho’s key innovations was the use of seasonal words, or kigo, in his haiku. These words not only set the time of year but also evoked emotions and cultural associations, connecting the poem to broader cycles of nature. Basho’s deep awareness of the natural world allowed him to select just the right words that captured a moment in time with precision and grace.

A Close Look at Basho’s Masterpieces

To truly understand why Matsuo Basho is considered the greatest master of haiku, it is essential to examine some of his most celebrated poems. Each haiku stands as a testament to his artistry and his ability to evoke powerful imagery and emotion in just a few short lines.

“An Old Silent Pond”

One of Basho’s most famous haiku is often regarded as a quintessential example of the genre:

An old silent pond— A frog jumps into the pond, Splash! Silence again.

This haiku perfectly encapsulates Basho’s mastery of evoking nature’s stillness and subtle movement. The poem is a snapshot of a moment: the quietness of the pond, the sudden interruption of the frog’s splash, and the return to silence. The image is both simple and profound, embodying the Zen Buddhist concept of impermanence. The “splash” is fleeting, a sudden break in the tranquility that quickly fades away.

“The Crows Are Flying”

Another well-known haiku by Basho explores the theme of life’s transience and the connection between the natural world and the human condition:

The crows are flying The rain is falling— Autumn dusk.

In just three lines, Basho conjures a powerful image of autumn, evoking the sense of a season transitioning into another. The crows flying and the rain falling are fleeting events, reminders of the constant change in the world. The mention of “autumn dusk” adds a layer of melancholy, signifying the end of a cycle. The haiku is a meditation on the passage of time and the inevitability of change.

“On a Branch Floating Downriver”

This haiku, often considered one of Basho’s most poignant works, beautifully illustrates the theme of transience:

On a branch floating downriver, A bird has perched— Autumn night.

Here, the floating branch represents the passage of time, the bird a symbol of the ephemeral nature of life. The autumn night evokes a sense of quiet finality, as the year winds down, and by extension, the human experience of life itself. There is a deep resonance in the simplicity of the image—nature itself seems to be a reflection of human existence.

Basho’s Legacy in the World of Haiku

Basho’s impact on the world of haiku cannot be overstated. He laid the foundation for the modern understanding of the form, and his influence is still felt by poets today. While many poets followed in his footsteps, none have surpassed his ability to blend simplicity with depth.

One of the enduring qualities of Basho’s haiku is their universality. Although his poems were rooted in the culture and natural landscape of 17th-century Japan, their themes of impermanence, the beauty of nature, and the quiet moments of life resonate across cultures and time periods. Basho’s haiku capture the essence of the human experience, making them timeless and universally relevant.

Basho’s influence spread beyond Japan to the West, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, when writers and artists became fascinated with Japanese culture and aesthetics. Haiku became an important part of the literary landscape in the United States and Europe, where poets such as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Jack Kerouac were inspired by Basho’s works.

Today, haiku continues to thrive as a poetic form, practiced by poets all over the world. Though modern haiku may depart from some of Basho’s traditional structures and subject matter, his philosophy of simplicity, mindfulness, and deep connection to nature remains a guiding influence for poets of every generation.

Conclusion

In the world of haiku, Matsuo Basho reigns as the undisputed master. His ability to capture the essence of nature, the transience of life, and the deep emotions that arise from these experiences has set a standard that has yet to be surpassed. Basho’s haiku are not simply poems—they are windows into the soul of the natural world and our place within it. Basho’s legacy lives on not only in his poems but in the countless poets who have drawn inspiration from his work. His haiku remind us of the fleeting beauty of the world around us and encourage us to pause, reflect, and appreciate the small moments that often go unnoticed. In the simple yet profound lines of Basho’s poetry, we find a reminder that the greatest truths can often be conveyed in the fewest words. Through his mastery of haiku, Matsuo Basho has secured his place as one of the greatest poets in world history.

#haiku

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finishinglinepress · 5 months ago

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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Fallen Love by Deirdre Garr Johns

Fallen Love by Deirdre Garr Johns

On SALE: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/fallen-love-by-deirdre-garr-johns/

Fallen Love is a collection of #poems that explores the ways in which #love can build, break, and restore the spirit. Fragments of memories establish the structure of Fallen Love, with carefully sequenced poems that create a #journey through the phases of love. To fall in love, we must open ourselves to vulnerability and be prepared to confront the difficult nature of fallen love. A narrative voice evokes an intimate tone that will resonate with those who desire to love and to be loved. Strong imagery and subtle rhymes expose love’s gentle and tumultuous nature, capturing its ability to take us by the hand and bring us to our knees. Though this collection offers a singular experience, the larger journey explored is the relationship one has with the self, which transcends the physical nature of love. In an attempt to reconcile love’s simple, yet complex nature, Fallen Love reveals a deeper understanding about love’s transformative power.

Deirdre Garr Johns is a writer originally from Pennsylvania and who currently resides in South Carolina with her family. Her work is inspired by memories of people and places. Nature is an inspiration for her writing, which often incorporates elements of the natural world. Poetry is a first love, but she writes in several genres, including nonfiction and children’s fiction. Her website is www.amuseofonesown.com.

PRAISE FOR Fallen Love by Deirdre Garr Johns

Deirdre Garr Johns’ debut collection of poems, Fallen Love, captures the immediate and nostalgic landscape of love. The moment-by-moment description of driving in Pennsylvania searching for a radio reception (A Place of the Heart) takes us to the tense yet somehow sweet state of mind, the observation of skipping stones with a sense of loss (Unlike the Stone), or the reflection of how we planned that first call being tangled in a telephone cord (Landline) take us where our hearts have once been. Garr Johns’ unpretentious yet memorable expressions about a time in the life of love will add fresh impressions to readers’ memories.

–Miho Kinnas. Author of Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias (Free Verse Press.)

As a poet, Deirdre pays attention to the world around her in a way that made me stop and appreciate the energy of my surroundings. Street lamps, old rooms with faded lavender, aroma, and a phone ringing at midnight are a few of the glimmer moments that made their way into this collection. All written with a touch of honesty and emotional depth. I’m glad you made the choice to read this book. And perhaps Fallen Love will help you to see the many layers of this life we’ve chosen to live.

–Marcus Amaker, first Poet Laureate of Charleston, SC.

Impressive about Deirdre Garr Johns’ Fallen Love is the ways in which the collection explores—in a language compact and precise, smart and lyrical—the subtle arc of its theme, each poem carefully constructed while at the same time furthering the larger story. Fallen Love is the perfect example of Frost’s dictum that a collection of poems should itself be a poem. From the innocence of young love (“a boy and a girl/the beginning of something”) to their eventual breakup (“and I wish I could bury that child’s view/under dead flowers, /little tombstone for what is lost”) to a deeper wisdom (“A resting place will suffice–exposed to light,/memories surface,/ ripples in a still lake”), Fallen Love is a remarkable first collection from a most promising poet.

–Philip Terman, author of This Crazy Devotion (Broadstone Books) and Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House Press)

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems #flp #love #life #relationships #nature

#poetry #flp authors #preorder #flp #poets on tumblr #american poets #chapbook #chapbooks #finishing line press #small press #love

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gardenofkore · 4 years ago

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Lake Pergusa is a major wet zone in central Sicily and an important resting and wintering spot for migratory birds from all over the Mediterranean. The lake is the most important area in Sicily for the wintering of ducks and coots, and it hosts swans, herons, flamingos, cranes, and many other water species. Today, Lake Pergusa faces an environmental threat from an autorace track that has been built around its entire three-mile perimeter. The twentieth-century discovery of the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice, a plateau situated less than a quarter mile from the lake, whose name means "hill of the Mother," has provided abundant evidence that Lake Pergusa was once the location of an important religious center dedicated to female deities. Ceramic material found there dates to as early as 4000 BCE, and remains of circular and elliptical huts overlooking the lake date to 2500 BCE. The presence of circular enclosures, which in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe symbolized the "womb" of the female divinity, suggests that this site was probably sacred to a goddess or goddesses from very early times. An important archaeological layer has been found dating to the fifth century BCE that reveals the joint influence of the indigenous Sicilians (or Sicels) and the Greeks who began colonizing the island in the eighth century BCE. This layer contains the stone remains of a sanctuary and statuettes of either Demeter or Persephone (or both), as well as related sacred objects. At other villages near the lake -Zagaria, Juculia, and Jacobo- statuettes representing Demeter and/or Persephone dating from the sixth to third centuries BCE have also been found. Perhaps most significant, Lake Pergusa was closely connected with Enna, a nearby twin-peaked or double-breasted mountain town that was a celebrated religious center dedicated primarily to Demeter. Archaeologists generally agree that the Greeks easily superimposed their religion of Demeter and Persephone over the indigenous Sicilian cult at Lake Pergusa and Enna because it strongly resembled the earlier tradition; thus, these two goddesses or their precursors were associated with the lake going back as far as the Bronze Age, if not earlier. Ross Holloway notes that even the Greek cult at Pergusa retained indigenous Sicelian, rather than Greek, characteristics.'? With the commencement of Roman occupation of the island in the late third century BCE, the goddesses came to be known by their Roman names, Ceres and Proserpine, but their cult at Enna and Lake Pergusa continued. Women served as important, and sometimes primary, leaders and ministrants of the religion both at Enna-Pergusa and throughout the island. A funerary plaque dedicated to a "priestess of Ceres" found on one of the mountain peaks of Enna indicates the prominence of women in religious leadership, as do the writings of historian Diodorus Siculus and Roman orator Cicero.

Diodorus and Cicero attest that the religion dedicated to Demeter and Persephone at Enna-Pergusa was characterized by elaborate festivals celebrating Sicily's agricultural cycle, particularly as it related to the production of wheat and barley, as well as rites centering on the human seasons of birth, growth, and death. It will become significant to this discussion that one of those rites was the Thesmophoria, an all-female rite honoring Demeter and Persephone that was also conducted in Greece. In Sicily, as elsewhere, Demeter was the goddess of growth and abundance, and Persephone was a goddess of both budding spring and death, or the underworld. Several ancient literary renderings name Enna or its environs as the location of Persephone's abduction into the underworld by Hades. Key to this discussion is the fact that Roman poet Ovid names Lake Pergusa specifically as the precise spot where this took place. Ovid further describes the lake as a remarkable environment filled with forests, waterbirds, and wildly blooming flowers. [...]

The flower motif is also important because it may help us date the religious center at Lake Pergusa. Sicilian scholar Giuseppe Martorana believes that the ancient descriptions of Enna and/or Lake Pergusa as places where "flowers continually bloom" and "spring smiles eternally" refer to the preagricultural, hunter-gatherer epoch in the history of the island. Extrapolating from his assertion, this would place religious activity at the lake earlier than 6000 BCE, when it is documented that Sicilians began domesticating crops. Martorana hypothesizes that this was a time in which a pre-Greek version of Kore as maiden goddess of spring was the principal deity of Sicily. It is important to note that although she embodied the life-giving aspects of springtime, she would have been, at the same time, a goddess of death. Thus, says Martorana, Kore, or some earlier form of her, was probably the original goddess of Lake Pergusa-an independent, free-standing goddess who embodied the totality of the life and death cycle. He maintains that it was not until the cultural transition to agriculture that her supremacy gave way to that of Demeter, "Goddess of the technology of grain cultivation." With the flowers of Kore replaced by the grain of Demeter, the primary religious conception of the goddess moved from that of the parthenogenetic, self-fertilizing "virgin" to that of the "mother". Günther Zuntz details archaeological and literary evidence confirming that Persephone, or some earlier version of her, was indeed a very old, "pre-Greek" goddess who may well have been a -or the- principal deity of pre-Greek Sicily. Noting that the Sicilians of the late Paleolithic and Neolithic periods put great spiritual emphasis on death and rebirth, as evidenced by the centrality of tomb-wombs in their sacred life, Zuntz affirms that Kore-Persephone was a holdover of the "silent Goddess of Life and Death" of the early peoples of the island. Significantly, archaeologists Paolo Orsi and Bernabo Brea noted in the first half of the twentieth century that the entire region surrounding Pergusa was one large necropolis from the eighth through sixth centuries BCE. I thus suggest that the lake may have symbolically represented to ancient inhabitants the chthonic, underworldly regions, and the nearby mountaintop of Enna, where Demeter's worship predominated, represented the upperworldly realms. [...]

The mythological motif of Persephone's gathering flowers in both the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Metamorphoses is also extremely significant here. I believe this is a reference to the picking of entheogenic plants, the ingesting of which propels Persephone's journey into the underworldly realms. In the Hymn, it is her picking of the narcissus in particular that initiates the "abduction" by (into) Hades. Ann Suter notes that the etymological root of narcissus is nark, meaning "grow numb, stiff, dead." This and the fact that nark is also the root for narcotic strongly suggest that Persephone's descent describes female shamanic initiation induced by sacred medicines to help one shift consciousness, become "dead," and enter the otherworld/underworld for the purpose of connecting with divine consciousness and obtaining wisdom. Again, following on Martorana, the reference to "gathering" may place the origins of such a ritual in the preagricultural Paleolithic era. Although Ovid does not mention the narcissus (rather, he speaks of violets or lilies), I believe he is nevertheless referencing the activity of picking sacred medicinal flowers or herbs in conjunction with puberty initiation. If the posited Paleolithic time period is correct, this would make such a ritual very ancient indeed. Cicero intimates that "mysterious rites" were conducted in connection with Demeter and Persephone at Enna, suggesting that in later Greco Roman times, formal mystery rites akin to the nine-day Greater Mysteries of Eleusis may have been held there (and, again, by extension, at Lake Pergusa). Given the level of intensity of the initiatory experience at Eleusis, I agree with scholars who contend that the Greek mysteries most likely involved the use of entheogens; and, if the Sicilian mystery rites were indeed similar to their Greek counterparts, they thus involved the use of such sacred medicines as well. I therefore suggest that such mystery rites-both at Enna-Pergusa and in Greece-may have originated in more remote times in the kinds of female initiatory rituals I am describing here, in which women may have used the sacred medicines they discovered and developed through their intimate work with plants.

Marguerite Rigoglioso, Persephone's Sacred Lake and the Ancient Female Mystery Religion in the Womb of Sicily, p. 7-9; 11-12; 19-20

#mythology #history #women #Persephone #demeter #mythologyedit #pergusa #province of enna #anthropology #Greek Sicily

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vital-information · 4 years ago

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Zadie Smith, from “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” “’Re-examine all you have been told,’ Whitman tells us, ‘and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.’ Full disclosure: what insults my soul is the idea—popular in the culture just now, and presented in widely variant degrees of complexity—that we can and should write only about people who are fundamentally “like” us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally. That only an intimate authorial autobiographical connection with a character can be the rightful basis of a fiction. I do not believe that. I could not have written a single one of my books if I did. But I feel no sense of triumph in my apostasy. It might well be that we simply don’t want or need novels like mine anymore, or any of the kinds of fictions that, in order to exist, must fundamentally disagree with the new theory of “likeness.” It may be that the whole category of what we used to call fiction is becoming lost to us. And if enough people turn from the concept of fiction as it was once understood, then fighting this transformation will be like going to war against the neologism “impactful” or mourning the loss of the modal verb “shall.” As it is with language, so it goes with culture: what is not used or wanted dies. What is needed blooms and spreads.

Consequently, my interest here is not so much prescriptive as descriptive. For me the question is not: Should we abandon fiction? (Readers will decide that—are in the process of already deciding. Many decided some time ago.) The question is: Do we know what fiction was? We think we know. In the process of turning from it, we’ve accused it of appropriation, colonization, delusion, vanity, naiveté, political and moral irresponsibility. We have found fiction wanting in myriad ways but rarely paused to wonder, or recall, what we once wanted from it—what theories of self-and-other it offered us, or why, for so long, those theories felt meaningful to so many. Embarrassed by the novel—and its mortifying habit of putting words into the mouths of others—many have moved swiftly on to what they perceive to be safer ground, namely, the supposedly unquestionable authenticity of personal experience.

The old—and never especially helpful—adage write what you know has morphed into something more like a threat: Stay in your lane. This principle permits the category of fiction, but really only to the extent that we acknowledge and confess that personal experience is inviolate and nontransferable. It concedes that personal experience may be displayed, very carefully, to the unlike-us, to the stranger, even to the enemy—but insists it can never truly be shared by them. This rule also pertains in the opposite direction: the experience of the unlike-us can never be co-opted, ventriloquized, or otherwise “stolen” by us. (As the philosopher Anthony Appiah has noted, these ideas of cultural ownership share some DNA with the late-capitalist concept of brand integrity.) Only those who are like us are like us. Only those who are like us can understand us—or should even try. Which entire philosophical edifice depends on visibility and legibility, that is, on the sense that we can be certain of who is and isn’t “like us” simply by looking at them and/or listening to what they have to say.

Fiction didn’t believe any of that. Fiction suspected that there is far more to people than what they choose to make manifest. Fiction wondered what likeness between selves might even mean, given the profound mystery of consciousness itself, which so many other disciplines—most notably philosophy—have probed for millennia without reaching any definitive conclusions. Fiction was suspicious of any theory of the self that appeared to be largely founded on what can be seen with the human eye, that is, those parts of our selves that are material, manifest, and clearly visible in a crowd. Fiction—at least the kind that was any good—was full of doubt, self-doubt above all. It had grave doubts about the nature of the self.

Like a lot of writers I want to believe in fiction. But I’m simultaneously full of doubt, as is my professional habit. I know that the old Whitmanesque defense needs an overhaul. Containment—as a metaphor for the act of writing about others—is unequal to the times we live in. These times in which so many of us feel a collective, desperate, and justified desire to be once and for all free of the limited—and limiting—fantasies and projections of other people. With all due respect to Whitman, then, I’m going to relegate him to the bench, and call up, in defense of fiction, another nineteenth-century poet, Emily Dickinson:

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

This gets close to the experience of making up fictional people. It starts as a consciousness out in the world: looking, listening, noticing. A kind of awareness, attended by questions. What is it like to be that person? To feel what they feel? I wonder. Can I use what I feel to imagine what the other feels? A little later in the poem, Dickinson moves from the abstract to the precise: There’s Grief of Want—and grief of Cold— A sort they call “Despair”— There’s Banishment from native Eyes— In sight of Native Air—

She makes a map in her mind of possibilities. But later, as the poem concludes, she concedes that no mental map can ever be perfect, although this does not mean that such maps have no purpose:

And though I may not guess the kind— Correctly—yet to me A piercing Comfort it affords In passing Calvary— To note the fashions—of the Cross— And how they’re mostly worn— Still fascinated to presume That Some—are like my own—

In place of the potential hubris of containment, then, Dickinson offers us something else: the fascination of presumption. This presumption does not assume it is “correct,” no more than I assumed, when I depicted the lives of a diverse collection of people in my first novel, that I was “correct.” But I was fascinated to presume that some of the feelings of these imaginary people—feelings of loss of homeland, the anxiety of assimilation, battles with faith and its opposite—had some passing relation to feelings I have had or could imagine. That our griefs were not entirely unrelated. The joy of writing that book—and the risk of it—was in the uncertainty. I’d never been to war, Bangladesh, or early-twentieth-century Jamaica. I was not, myself, an immigrant. Could I make the reader believe in the imaginary people I placed in these fictional situations? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the reader. “I don’t believe it,” the reader is always free to say, when confronted with this emotion or that, one action or another. Novels are machines for falsely generating belief and they succeed or fail on that basis.”

#zadie smith #literature #writeblr

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joshuaevans2020 · 4 years ago

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Come To where I'm from monologues

Describe briefly in a few sentences what each of the Paines Plough monlogues was about?

(Come to where I’m from Plymouth)

This monologue is about a grieving widow who has lost her love at war, there are implications of an affair due to the mention of a “French woman” from the quote “…she was a French woman” which is followed by a pause implying distress and emotional trauma. However, through the use of repetition in the dialogue we hear he recall a story from her and her lovers past involving a piano which contrasts the other themes of the monologue such as war and loss with a more tender moment that she seems to be found of remembering.

(Come to where I’m from Cardiff)

This monologue is about a man recalling his youth, how he was raised in a rough crime infested environment and how this affects him now. He mentions how he had a perm hairstyle and how this made him stand out from the crowd, he goes on to recall being arrested by police after he was found trying to steal a bike. After being held in a prison cell he vividly tells us his memory of being alone in there with a duck, although this seems very random and unrelated to the story completely, this is a metaphor as in the prison cell he realises that he was an ‘ugly duckling’ trying to fit in by making himself different ( the perm) and committing crime out of frustration brought about an epiphany of sorts where he discovers he never needed to change himself to fit in since he was already perfect in himself, very much reminiscent of the ugly duckling children’s tale.

(Come to where I’m from Manchester)

This monologue depicts a retelling of a traumatic event that happened on a drunken night shared between friends, the main character speaks about how he was in deep thought whilst intoxicated however his friends around him where laughing and poking fun at his demeaner. He goes on to tell us about how during this moment of deep thought his friends took advantage of him to such an extreme that he was scared that it would lead to sexual assault, after the moment of the assault ends he stands and leaves the room to only return with a golf club and proceeds to attack his friends out of anger and leaves them extremely injured, we understand this is an attack of revenge to re-instate his manhood amongst other male friends. He ends his story by now describing how this event has shaped him as a man as now he realises that he is not in control of his own temper and what happens when this anger over comes him.

(Come to where I’m from London)

This monologue depicts the story of an immigrant who finds himself in London and now feels this is his true home, he describes the city in a love song like manner personifying the city of London itself. He references modern British pop culture with reference to ‘major tom’ (David Bowie), this reference connects to the story as the song itself describes being lonely and far away from home which this character is himself. He sings in his native tongue for a moment during the speech, connecting us with his culture from back home. Finally the most important message given is that no matter the distance or the place he will be forever connected to his home country.

(Come to where I’m from Liverpool)

This monologue recalls the childhood of a woman from Liverpool in 1988 when she was 12 and in school struggling with severe anxiety, she tells us about the one day she had had enough and decided to not abide by the school rules but instead remain in the toilets even after the bell had rung for lessons. She sits on the toilet and does a certain routine of tapping and pulling on her body in different areas and in very precise numbers implying to us that she had OCD and does this routine in order to calm herself in times of stress. The OCD is so self-consuming that any minor change to her routine be that enforced by teachers or anyone else she MUST find a way to cope therefore adjusts the routine to fit circumstances. The story comes to a conclusion with a revelation of sorts, she is at the beach and gets stuck in quicksand whilst trying to retrieve a ball and escapes without saying or doing her OCD routine which brings about her realising she doesn’t need it to survive in the world.

What images/ characters / moments particularly stuck out for you in any of the Paines plough monologues and why? ( choose 3)

(Come to where I’m from Plymouth)

The parrot, the piano, the French woman, “he was a poet”, “I was a musician”, the audio overlapping at parts. These specific moments/images successfully depict the denial to accept the loss of a loved one to war and that life will not be as it was before.

(Come to where I’m from Cardiff)

The perm, the bike, the duck, the moment when he becomes the duck. These moments/images successfully depict how the main character struggled to fit in in his society and was driven to petty crime to let out his frustrations.

(Come to where I’m from Manchester)

The balls in his face, the description of his friends and his own anus leading to the line “it’s not happening because of who I am, it’s happening because of where I am” implying it was anything to do with him personally but to do with the situation he placed himself in to begin with. The description of the violence in this monologue projects how toxic masculinity and his fragile male ego are the main themes in the monologue and the main causes of his anger issues.

How were the National Theatre Scotland monologues using the frame ( screen) to succesfully tell a story?

National Theatre Scotland’s monologues where presented to us in a very casual listening form, where we can build the imagery mentally and understand/relate to their stories more. Therefore allowing us to implement our own thoughts and opinions as to why characters behaved and acted in the ways that they did making this method of storytelling successful.

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ucflibrary · 5 years ago

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The national celebration of African American History was started by Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and first celebrated as a weeklong event in February of 1926. After a half century of overwhelming popularity, the event was expanded to a full month in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

Here at UCF Libraries we believe that knowledge empowers everyone in our community and that recognizing past inequities is the only way to prevent their continuation. This is why our featured bookshelf suggestions range from celebrating outstanding African Americans to having difficult conversations about racism in American history. We are proud to present our top 20 staff suggested books in honor of Black History Month.

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the Black History Month titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 20 books plus many, many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

A Fool's Errand: creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the age of Bush, Obama, and Trump by Lonnie G. Bunch III Founding Director Lonnie Bunch's deeply personal tale of the triumphs and challenges of bringing the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to life. His story is by turns inspiring, funny, frustrating, quixotic, bittersweet, and above all, a compelling read. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

An American Marriage: a novel by Tayari Jones Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation Services

Becoming African Americans: black public life in Harlem, 1919-1939 by Clare Corbould Following the great migration of black southerners to northern cities after World War I, the search for roots and for meaningful affiliations became subjects of debate and display in a growing black public sphere. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa. Their consciousness of a dual identity anticipated the hyphenated identities of new immigrants in the years after World War II, and an emerging sense of what it means to be a modern American. Suggested by Betsy Kaniecki, UCF Connect Libraries

Black Sexualities: probing powers, passions, practices, and policies edited by Juan Battle, Sandra L. Barnes Why does society have difficulty discussing sexualities? Where does fear of Black sexualities emerge and how is it manifested? How can varied experiences of Black females and males who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), or straight help inform dialogue and academic inquiry? From questioning forces that have constrained sexual choices to examining how Blacks have forged healthy sexual identities in an oppressive environment, Black Sexualities acknowledges the diversity of the Black experience and the shared legacy of racism. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Charlottesville 2017: the legacy of race and inequity edited by Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold How should we respond to the moral and ethical challenges of our times? What are our individual and collective responsibilities in advancing the principles of democracy and justice? This book brings together the work of UVA faculty members catalyzed by last summer’s events to examine their community’s history more deeply and more broadly. Their essays―ranging from John Mason on the local legacy of the Lost Cause to Leslie Kendrick on free speech to Rachel Wahl on the paradoxes of activism―examine truth telling, engaged listening, and ethical responses, and aim to inspire individual reflection, as well as to provoke considered and responsible dialogue. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Diversifying Diplomacy: my journey from Roxbury to Dakar by Harriet Elam-Thomas This is the story of Harriet Lee Elam-Thomas, a young black woman who beat the odds and challenged the status quo. Inspired by the strong women in her life, she followed in the footsteps of the few women who had gone before her in her effort to make the Foreign Service reflect the diverse faces of the United States. The youngest child of parents who left the segregated Old South to raise their family in Massachusetts, Elam-Thomas distinguished herself with a diplomatic career at a time when few colleagues looked like her. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Go Ahead in the Rain: notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group’s history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

How We Fight White Supremacy: a field guide to Black resistance edited by Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin Many of us are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy, our privacy, and our hard-won civil rights. If you're Black in the US, this is not new. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It's a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Long Division by Kiese Laymon Kiese Laymon’s debut novel is a Twain-esque exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in Post-Katrina Mississippi, written in a voice that’s alternately funny, lacerating, and wise. The book contains two interwoven stories. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker Parker presents an archive of black everydayness; a catalog of contemporary folk heroes. Her poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration. She connects themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification while exploring the troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

Olio by Tyehimba Jess With ambitious manipulations of poetic forms, Tyehimba Jess presents the sweat and story behind America's blues, worksongs and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

On the Other Side of Freedom: the case for hope by DeRay Mckesson Drawing from his own experiences as an activist, organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible. Honoring the voices of a new generation of activists, this is a visionary's call to take responsibility for imagining, and then building, the world we want to live in. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Rest in Power: the enduring life of Trayvon Martin by Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin Five years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade? Told through the compelling alternating narratives of Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, this book answers those questions from the most intimate of sources. It’s the story of the beautiful and complex child they lost, the cruel unresponsiveness of the police and the hostility of the legal system, and the inspiring journey they took from grief and pain to power, and from tragedy and senselessness to meaning. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, and a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, this is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers. Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Teaching & Engagement

The Segregated Hour: a layman's guide to the history of Black Liberation theology by Jeremy D. Lucas On March 18, 2008, as Barack Obama rose to the stage in Philadelphia, political commentators were on pins and needles over how he was going to address the fiery sermons of his long-time friend and mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. With an eye toward a more perfect union, the soon-to-be president offered his initial thoughts on the current state of race relations in America. "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning." Soon after the Civil Rights Movement came to an end, James Cone had been the first to write of this "old truism" when he introduced the world to something he called Black Liberation Theology. For those still angered by past and present oppression, there was only one place of refuge where the government would not intrude: the black church. Cone became their primary theologian. Rarely seen in small towns and rural fellowships, black liberation has been relegated to the inner city neighborhoods where the poor reach out for anyone who will give them hope for a better tomorrow. Suggested by Jeremy Lucas, Research & Information Services

Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Teaching & Engagement

We've Got a Job: the 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Levinson The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March was a turning point in American history. In the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, the fight for civil rights lay in the hands of children like Audrey Hendricks, Wash Booker, James Stewart, and Arnetta Streeter. This is the little-known story of the 4,000 black elementary, middle, and high school students who voluntarily went to jail between May 2 and May 11, 1963. The children succeeded ―where adults had failed―in desegregating one of the most racially violent cities in America. Suggested by Betsy Kaniecki, UCF Connect Libraries

Wrapped in Rainbows: the life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd The first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, this book illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston’s history—her youth in the country’s first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

#black history month #featured bookshelf #tbr #ucflibrary #ucf #african american #reading #booklr

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womenintranslation · 5 years ago

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Women in Amerindian Literature: an essay by Elisa Taber

(Image: armadillo carving, a handicraft of the Mbya Guaraní, the indigenous community the poet Alba Eiragi Duarte belongs to.)

Women writing in indigenous languages in Latin America are working to both decolonize hegemonic feminism and to counter systematic linguistic censorship. Their poetic discourse posits that women’s rights do not need to be individualistic but communal and that national identity needs to be multicultural. It is not why but how they write, and the range of languages they use, that makes their writings impossible to group together under the label “indigenous literature.” The Mixe writer and linguist Yasnaya Elena Aguilar Gil has rejected the standard binary imposed on literary production in indigenous languages in Mexico, “I have yet to find a common trait that justifies that a literature written in such distinct languages and that belongs to eleven disparate linguistic families shares any grammatical features or poetic devices that, together, can be contrasted to Spanish.” (“(Is There) An Indigenous Literature?”) The distinctiveness of each indigenous language and culture must be respected and the conception of a ‘minority’ literary category that homogenizes them must be questioned.

Those eager to discover linguistic, cosmological, and poetic diversity should read the work of the following contemporary women writers: Natalia Toledo and Irma Pineda, Zapotec poets; Ruperta Bautista Vázquez and Marga Beatriz Aguilar Montejo, Maya Tsotsil and Maya Yucatec poets, respectively; Liliana Ancalao and Faumelisa Manquepillán, Mapuche poets; Lucila Lema Otavalo and Eugenia Carlos Ríos, Quechua poets; Alba Eiragi Duarte and Susy Delgado, Mbya Guaraní and Jopara poets, respectively.

The community of Latin American writers and academics studying Amerindian poetry–especially Violeta Percia and Juan G. Sánchez Martínez–have generously shared with me the work of these contemporary women writers. I encourage readers to visit Sánchez Martínez’s multilingual digital collaborative anthology platform, Siwar Mayu. The digital nature of this anthology shows that, as Walter Ong posits, it is electronic, rather than print, media that makes visible the transgressions writing inflects on transcribed orality. The auditory and visual performance components of oral literature are rendered through multimedia; i.e. the translated text is accompanied by recordings and illustrations. A lyrical, fictional, or non-fictional piece is published in the original indigenous language as well as in Spanish and English, together with an illustration by an indigenous artist and an essay by an indigenous academic reflecting on the work’s literary value. The result, which is not simply the transcription but the multi-sequential and multisensory translation of oral literature, calls forth a secondary orality.

The poetry of these Zapotec, Maya, Mapuche, Quechua, and Guaraní poets present distinct modes of production, lyrical devices, and linguistic features that are jointly defiant of their Western counterparts. Their collections live between Spanish and an endangered indigenous language. They are crafted and distributed orally; transcription is a secondary and sometimes unnecessary step. Many are self-published in print or online, via social media. Language loses its weight this way; it becomes ephemeral, alterable, it ceases to belong to one person. However, the content is firmly rooted in the soil, sometimes focused on the quotidian–specifically, the act of boiling a potato–and other times on the metaphysical– specifically, the distance between life and death bridged by another conception of corporeality within time and space. I believe this poetry is excluded from the national canon of each country these poets belong to precisely because there is so much complexity encrypted in its apparent simplicity.

In this post I will introduce the poetry of the Paraguayan poet, Alba Eiragi Duarte, who writes in Mbya Guaraní (which is distinct from Jopara, a variant of Spanish-inflected Guaraní) and will discuss how her work is excluded by a definition of national literature so narrow that it has no place for indigenous poetries. Eiragi Duarte has introduced, illustrated, and self-published her collection Ñe'ẽ yvoty, ñe'e poty (Our Earth and Our Mother), writing bilingually in Spanish and Mbya Guaraní. The first section consists of sixteen of her own poems. The language and content are simple. The poems address ontological subjects: what it takes to survive, to cook, sleep, and work. Or what it means to be alive: the passing of the seasons, the transition from dawn to dusk, the birth and death of loved ones. The lines are short but read as sentences, almost like instructions. The language is formal and distant until speech erupts, In “Pore’ỹ” (The Absence), the third person narration shifts to the first with the lines

Che kérape rohecha,

che páype rohechase

che membymi porãite

I see you in my dreams and

when I wake, I wish to see you,

my daughter, my life.

Emotion is unmediated yet counters nostalgia with a sense of what is real now: her daughter is deceased and the narrator, alive. There is nothing mythical about these poems, if myth is defined as the attribution of human intentionality to the inexplicable or meaningless.

In her last poem, “Che Rata” (My Fire), day dawns, the narrator lights a fire and sets a sweet potato, a mandioca, and a kettle atop it. The poem ends with the lines, “che rata ikatupyry, / ombojy ha’uva’erã” (fire is vital, / it cooks food). Life appears to be as simple as waking. Regaining this clarity is a task that is as complex for the reader as it is for the author. The poet refuses to be distracted by the superfluous and encourages the reader to do the same. Alba Eiragi Duarte is, above all, an ethical poet. There is a circularity in each text that is intrinsic to the author’s conception of life and poetry: what is simple is complex and what is complex is simple. She has no need to resort to complex metafictional device to underscore this paradox.

In the second section, titled “Mombe’u añeteguaite Avá Ruguái rehegua” (The True Story of Avá Ruguái), Eiragi Duarte retells a religious myth. (In Guaraní Avá means man and ruguái, armadillo.) Avá Ruguái is like a man, but is more solitary, agile, and cruel. When men hunting in the jungle enter too deep to return before nightfall, he puts them to sleep and kills, quarters, and skins them. The poet recounts the story of the man who kills Avá Ruguái because Ruguái has killed his brother. In one scene, the narrator squats in the scrubland, watching Avá Ruguái lift his sleeping brother by the nape of his neck. There is something cinematic about the specificity with which corporeality in space is described. Time is ambiguous but the events that are recounted seem to occur in the span of one night.

The wilderness—its flora and fauna—is heightened by the descriptions and accompanying illustrations. It is as though the quebracho and palm trees witness the events as the readers do. Behind a low stand of thorn bushes, a man lies stiffly on the ground. The tips of his feet point right. He wears a dark shirt and light pants. His silhouette is delineated by the darkest line in the drawing. His eyes and mouth are lightly sketched, they fade into the white paper. He grips his hand over his abdomen. He seems dead, not asleep. Another man stands over him with a bow in his hands and a sack full of arrows on his back. Palm trees lean left and right in the background. The rigidity and lack of expression of the human figures is in stark contrast to the ornamentation and movement of the bushes and trees. The book’s illustrations underscore people’s inflexibility towards the elements of nature, which in turn adapt to them. The narrative shows the retribution of nature, embodied by Avá Ruguái, to the transgressions of humans.

Eiragi Duarte recites these poems and stories, transcribed on illustrated placards, to children in rural schools across Paraguay. This educational program counters the loss of knowledge of the Mbya Guaraní language and of sacred narratives. She comes from an oral or mnemonic tradition in which authorship is not individual but communal. The poet compensates for the transgressions writing inflects on transcribed orality by combining her poetry with stories that have been passed down to her and by illustrating both on the placards.

She aspires to create a national Paraguayan literature that is multilingual and multicultural. Yet her poetry is intrinsically untranslatable unless the conception of literature broadens to include her manifesto of social ecology. In the introduction to the book she not only posits an equality between genders but also between human beings and nature. By conceiving of human rights and authorship in a communal sense, and at the same time blurring the distinction between the social and ecological, she forces readers to regard the parts of a whole as distinct yet interconnected in new ways. Behind the apparent simplicity of these poems and stories lies a true reconception of reality and how it is rendered in fiction and poetry.

The term literature must be challenged because it reduces these verbally organized materials to a variant further developed by literate cultures. With respect to sacred narratives, the term authorship must shift from an individual to a communal definition. The narratives do not belong to the ones reciting them—they only author a version—but rather to the millenary indigenous cultures the reciters belong to. The history of the transcription and translation into Spanish of poetry from indigenous languages since the conquest has three stages. The first was carried out by missionaries; the second, by social scientists, specifically linguists and anthropologists; and the third, by writers.

I have featured the work of Alba Eiragi Duarte in this post because it speaks to the literary properties of the text, rather than exclusively to its cultural or linguistic aspects. She shows that the culture or language is not so much in danger of extinction as it is at risk of voluntarily subjugating itself through national aspirations to westernization. She also proposes that her translations are parallel versions of the original. It is only by challenging the terms “literature and authorship” that the national as well as the continental canon will be broadened to include indigenous poetry. Failing that, its lyrics will continue to circulate orally as common knowledge, but without validation as artistic works in their own right, not folkloric artifacts.

—Elisa Taber

Works Cited

Aguilar Gil, Yasnaya Elena. “(Is There) an Indigenous Literature?” Translated by Gloria E. Chacón. Diálogo, vol. 19, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 157-159. (Original article in Spanish published in March 2015 in Letras libres (https://www.letraslibres.com/mexico-espana/libros/literatura-indigena).

#Yasnaya Elena Aguilar Gil #indigenous languages #mixe #Siwar Mayu #zapotec #maya #mapuche #quechua #guaraní #womenintranslation #elisa taber #Alba Eiragi Duarte

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oliverarditi · 5 years ago

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Life grooves

Jaime Hernandez often uses techniques that seem cinematic; in fact they are no more proper to cinema than they are to comics, but some narrative tactics are available to both fields that have no direct analogy in other story-telling media, known in cinema by terms such as framing, focus, depth of field, camera distance, and so on. They may have their own terms in comics studies, but I’m not aware of them yet. Camera or viewpoint distance plays an important part in Is This How You See Me?, the latest instalment in the long running Locas sequence from Love & Rockets.

Hernandez’s characters appear older in close-up; at a distance, some of their detail disappears, and they look closer to the way he drew them in the 1980s. This effect relates to their own subjective experience of the past, whose distance erases detail and transfigures its images with the beauty of youth. The narrative present ticks by with a regular eight-panel routine of daily detail, the prosaic grit that makes it particular, but in flashback the layouts are more open and more variable, more expressively responsive to the events of the narrative, and although the present-tense drawing is no less beautiful, there is perhaps something more deliberately aestheticised about the imagery of recollection.

A comic strip can’t really represent the past, in the sense of something which is not present: both ‘now’ and ‘then’ have equal presence on the page, and this variation in layout opens a space between them, within the inherently historical domain of the page. I say ‘inherently’, because the narrative present can never be present in the way that the experiential present is: instead it is present as something already done, fixed in place with printer’s ink, another facet of the past – the whole strip is a recollection, a trace of some days that Hernandez spent in his studio. This might seem a glib and irrelevant observation, but recollection, and the irrecuperable character of what is recalled, are the central themes of this story.

At the centre of the work is the archetypal act of social recollection, the reunion. Various characters from the long history of the strip gather for a punk gig in Hoppers (what the locals call Huerta, Hernandez’s fictionalised version of Oxnard, north of Los Angeles), featuring fictional bands with names that still live in my memory, as a long-time reader of Love & Rockets, with the same kind of resonance as real ones. Old relationships and tensions are rehearsed, reiterated or revised, and characters recuperate their individual experience from their collective history, a chronicle written in living memory. Not for the first time I am struck by the contrast with W.G. Sebald, the unsurpassed prose poet of memory: Sebald’s narrators remember in solitude, and recover the experience of whole casts of characters from a documentary archive. This patently melancholy approach to recollection is the structural inverse of Hernandez’s celebratory treatment of memory: in Sebald a society is recalled individually; in Hernandez the individual is recalled socially.

In contrast to the previous instalment of Locas there is no structural rhythm of violence, indeed no clear markers of narrative order, other than the transitions to and from Maggie’s dramatic present-tense and Ray’s reflective narrated interludes, and to memory. While it’s easy to make critical generalisations like ‘this is all about memory’, Locas is always about its characters, characters who have grown and changed in real time for nearly forty years. Hopey, the puckish, skinny punk who was as much at the centre of the early stories as her lover Maggie, returns for her most detailed scenes in a long time; she is no longer the carefree prankster, but a woman threatened by her past, convinced that anyone who knew her in her youth will despise her. Izzy returns as a symbolic, oracular presence, her damage more profound and her surface more enigmatic than any other character – in flashback we see her intelligent, self-aware, morally centred and strong-willed, but how she gets from there to here remains mysterious (the story was told in Flies on the Ceiling, but we’re still none the wiser). ‘You can’t go home’, as Hopey tells Maggie, seems to be a touchstone for this story, but Hernandez’s take on recollection is nuanced, and memory is experienced in as many ways as there are characters – a variability that is explicitly dramatised at the reunion.

In many ways this is a very conventional kind of fiction, in which stable characters are articulated through an uncontroversial form of psycho-biographical causality, but having been writing them episodically for four decades Hernandez has at his disposal a depth of personal history that exceeds anything it is possible to construct instrumentally. The result is a kind of lustre or patination on their speech and interactions which should be apparent even to readers who encounter these characters for the first time in this book. They have a particular, individuated habituality – as though they were stereotypes of themselves alone, enacting clichés that are shared with no-one.

This is also an exact description of Hernandez’s drawing, whose vocabulary of schematic gestures gives an impression of precise verisimilitude even when he describes a street with three lines, and even when he resorts to out-and-out cartooning to represent a comically extreme emotion. Like his creations, he is deep into his groove, laying out a web of possibilities through the entangled life paths of these old Huerta punks. He is himself an old Oxnard punk, so he knows his material, and his chosen topic – a topic which is memory, recollection, the past and all the other abstract things I’ve touched upon, but only inasmuch as they are manifest in people, and only in the multifarious and peculiar ways that they are experienced. Which is to say, more or less, that his topic is life.

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autobiographyofread · 5 years ago

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Old School

“A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.”—from Old School, Tobias Wolff

When I was 17, my friend Nicole and I would wake early on Saturdays to stand in line for the bus outside the Sheraton Hotel. The T67 cost $4.25 to ride it from Teaneck to Port Authority. It was thrilling to enter the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey and emerge on the other side to the concrete slabs of Manhattan. At Port Authority, we’d buy large iced coffees at the Au Bon Pain kiosk, across from the Strawberry and next to the Duane Reade. Our coffees would turn from black to off-white from the large amounts of cream we poured in. Coffees in hand, we’d hop on the R train and ride it to Union Square, exiting the park at East 12th Street where Strand Bookstore sits on the corner of Broadway. Nicole and I would spend hours browsing the stacks of used books, of which the store boasts 18 miles. Our habit was to grab everything. Grab first, decide what to keep later.

As someone who grew up conflating “bookstore” with Barnes and Noble, I was enamored with the Strand’s lack of escalators and gloss. I loved the poorly ventilated three-story building and its staff-curated tables of books. I dreamed of moving to the city after college and getting a job at the Strand. (I now live in the city, but have yet to fulfill my dream of becoming a bookseller.)

I think of myself scanning the shelves at 17, and I’m reminded of my conviction. I was so certain that if I spent hours in the store, the right book would reveal itself to me. “Is there a right time to read each book?” asks the poet Mary Ruefle in an essay. “A point of developing consciousness that corresponds with perfect ripeness to a particular poet or novel?” At 17, I thought so.

The first time I encountered Tobias Wolff was on a wooden cart of books waiting to be shelved at the Strand. It’s easy to single out an area of the store as your favorite. It’s crammed with niche offerings, from a section of “Writers Writing About Writing” to a wall of colorful socks and pins. The section that houses the carts of novels-to-be-shelved has always been my favorite. I’m easily overwhelmed by choice, and the carts feel like a manageable sampling of the entire fiction offerings of the store. It was here that I found a $7 copy of Tobias Wolff’s Old School—a novel about literary adolescents at an elite boarding school for boys in the 1960s. If ever there was a perfect book coalescing with my life at the perfect time, it was this one.

I’m an avid consumer of all things prep school and moneyed academia. I love stepping into the world of ivy-covered brick and characters who worship poetry and grow pale from reading too much indoors. To my bookish self, this is the ultimate fantasy. Even after I gained entry to one of these elite campuses for college, and came face to face with the inherent flaws of these wealthy institutions, I continue to have a soft spot for the genre.

Old School is among the best this genre has to offer. In a story where serious students compete for an audience with literary giants—Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway—the meat of the novel is its interiority. Wolff captures so palpably the furtive desires that the competition sets in motion. The book opens, “Robert Frost made his visit in November of 1960, just a week after the general election. It tells you something about our school that the prospect of his arrival cooked up more interest than the contest between Nixon and Kennedy, which for most of us was no contest at all.” From these first sentences, Wolff establishes an insular setting, exempt from the noise of the outside world. The whole book is blanketed in a hush—the characters and the actions are not loud or showy. In fact, if you don’t read closely enough, you can easily pass over some of the more affecting moments of the book. One such moment occurs when the protagonist, a sixth former in his final year at the school, decides to type out Hemingway’s stories “in order to learn what it actually felt like to write something great.” Because as we learn early on, these literary competitions mattered, not for the honor of winning, but for the reverence Wolff’s characters have for the written word and the writers themselves.

The protagonist’s awe is mixed with desperation— “My aspirations were mystical. I wanted to receive the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems, hands that touched the hands of other writers. I wanted to be anointed.” When I first read Wolff’s book, I was also in my final year of high school and hoped to gain entrance into the world of “living stories and poems” upon my arrival at college. As someone who spent much of high school as an observer, I had acquired a taste for literature and knew what it was like to be hungry. Sometimes a book resonates so deeply that it momentarily knocks the wind out of you. Is this what Mary Ruefle meant about a consciousness corresponding to a certain ripeness?

Just as Wolff expanded my notion of story, he expanded my understanding of language and what it can do. His prose crackles with exciting words. He conveys one character’s devotion to another by describing him as “spanieling” after his cousin like a loyal dog. In another scene, the protagonist is talking to a girl on a train and observes her “forehead faintly stippled with acne scars.” I immediately fell in love with the word “stipple.” It’s so precise and exacting, and whenever possible, I try to squeeze it into my writing.

At one point in the novel, the headmaster reads a Robert Frost poem to the students, after which he tells them: “Make no mistake, a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” I believe this and am fortunate to have experienced this more than once. In many ways, Tobias Wolff’s book determined the course of my college career. I chose my freshman seminar after reading in the course description that the class would read This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff’s boyhood memoir. I entered college unsure of myself—I questioned whether I was smart enough to be there and was intimidated by my classmates. They reminded me of the boys in Wolff’s book, with “their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that it is already reserved for them.”

My freshman writing seminar was my very first college class. On our first day, we read a short story called “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel, who quickly became my favorite living author, and who I would go on to meet twice after graduating college. Discovering a writer whose work I immediately connected with, offered me reassurance. I was unsure of my intellectual footing, but I knew I was in the right place. That class introduced me to writers who became foundational to my life as a reader—Grace Paley, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Carver, and Lorrie Moore—all of whom I discovered because of Wolff’s book. I didn’t know it then, but that freshman writing seminar cemented my decision to be an English major.

There are so many books in the world. How do we find the ones we’re meant to read and then read them when the moment’s right? When I found Old School at 17, I was so sure that there was some greater mysticism at work pointing me towards that book. It’s easy to dismiss the romanticism of our younger selves, when we are silly and full of hope in an effort to find something to believe in. But it’s nine years later, and I’m still thinking about Old School and all the ways it impacted my life.

“Is there a right time to read each book?” asks Mary Ruefle. “A point of developing consciousness that corresponds with perfect ripeness to a particular poet or novel?” At 17, I thought so. And at 28, I still think so.

#old school #tobias wolff #strand bookstore #new york city #this boy's life #robert frost #ernest hemingway

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thequietestnoiseonearth · 6 years ago

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Manifesto for Concrete Poetry (1952-55)

By Öyvind Fahlström, Sweden

1. Starting Point

The literary fashion for 1953 was dictated by Sigtuna [where a literary conference was held]. One rejected the psychoanalytically marked bust line and hop line, pulled down the skirt length and lowered the neck line. Since fantasy is to be stressed this year, flounces and butterflies in the hair, everyone Sings with Setterlind (Swedish "court" poet).

All this is well-known. But what lies behind these general recommendations, how shall we realize them? It has been said that we should interpret modern myths (at the same time that Freud has been accused of myth-making); and that we should not bury ourselves in the situation of our time, but should concern ourselves with timeless symbols.

Myths: does this mean to construct a complicated apparatus of symbolic and mythological contacts a la Joyce, Gösta Oswald [Swedish novelist], etc. "who did the same thing with Shakespeare or Virgil"?

Or to give up the precise complexion and to be satisfied with single ideas, most often only single words, floating around without definite contexts? The risk is that the impression will be less timeless and less related to our timeless humanity, quite simply that it will be looser and more general; since the eternally valid word-symbols (if there are such animals) have become faded by much rubbing on the washboard. To some, Lorca, for example, they have been quite useful in new contexts. Also for the surrealists, but on another level, for them it has been valid not to create eternal myths, but myths useful for the future.

At Sigtuna they also talked about the structural analysis of the new criticism. But no one claimed freedom from preoccupation with the self in connection with the claim of interest in poetical structure.

Poetry can be not only analysed but also created as structure. Not only as structure emphasizing the expression of idea content but also as concrete structure. Say good-bye to all kinds of arranged or unarranged private, psychological, contemporary, cultural or universal problematics. It is certain that words are symbols, but there is no reason why poetry couldn't be experienced and created on the basis of language as concrete material.

That the word has symbol value is no more remarkable than that in art representative forms have symbol value over and above their Superficial representational value, and that non-figurative forms, even if it is the white square on the white tablecloth, also have symbolic value and further suggest associations over and above the experience of the play of proportions.

The Situation: since the war a long beer housesad-doomsday-mood, the feeling that all the experimental extremes have been arrived at. For the person who refuses to soar in the worlds of vodka and ambrosia, it remains only to analyze

analyze

analyze the misery with the given means.

Today when the rough symbolic cryptogram, "beautiful" romantic jargon, or desperate grimaces outside the church gate appear to be the current alternatives, the concrete alternative must also be presented.

Starting Point: Everything that can be expressed with language and every linguistic expression on an equal basis with another in a given context that heightens its value.

Therefore Dostoyevsky problematics do not appear to me as anything more essential and human than to consider whether the voices of men are more beautiful in värder [host] or in världar [worlds-pronounced the same as värder]. Motive for drama can be for the poet, as well as for the dictator situated in time, the fixed fact that a certain sound can never be repeated. Experimental psychological results can be taken as starting points for a novel as well as for psychoanalysis. I describe certain people: Bobb, Torsten, Sten, Minna, Pi, without the slightest interest in them as people. Literature won't be inhuman for all that. Ants should only write books about ants, but man, who has the ability to look around himself and objectify, need not be that one-sided.

2. Material and Means

What is going to happen to the new material? It can be shaken up as you like, and after that it is always unassailable from the "concrete" point of view?

This can always be said at the beginning. But the circumstance that the new means of expression have not found their norms of value ready-made, does not prevent us from testing them, if their value is ever to be clarified.

One way is that as often as possible we must break against the path of least resistance, Mimömolan [minsta mötstånders lag]. This is no guarantee for success, but it is a way to avoid sitting in the same spot. To use the system as well as automatism, mostly to use them in combination, but not in such a way that the system becomes other than an auxiliary means. So no ambition whatsoever to reach the purest "poetry" with automatism; even the surrealists do not pay homage to that any more. But do not criticise the systems: if you choose them yourselves and do not follow the rules. Therefore the question is not whether or not the system is in itself The Only Right One. It will become so because you have chosen it and if it gives you a good result.

In that case I can construct, I say construct, for example, a series of 12 vowels in a certain succession and make tables accordingly, even though a twelve vowel series as such does not make the same sense as the series of the twelve-tone chromatic- scale.

It is said that our time longs for stable norms. It is clear: when we tire of regular meter and at last tire also of rhyme, we must find something else that will give the poem that general effect. Nowadays the connecting element has a tendency to be content, both descriptive and ideational content. But it is best if form and content are one.

It remains, therefore, to give form its own norms again. This is already being done in punktmusik. The possibilities are uncountable. In the case of poetry strophes can be broken up into vertical parallelisms in such a way that content determines form by placing the word exactly below the word above it, which it repeats, or vice versa so that when you have a fragment of line vertically parallel with the one above, it brings with it the content of the line above. Identical strophes aided by filling out a line with rhyme on the last word in the line, or with agreed syllables, words, etc. Marginal strophes beside the principal strophes. Framed-form strophes with a kernel strophe within: the possibility for more readings corresponding to the free movement of sight when you look at abstract art. Thus the strophes can be read not only from left to right and from above to below but vice versa and vertically: all the first words in every line, then all the second, the third, etc. Mirroring, diagonal reading. Change of lines, particularly of short lines. Free emphasis and free word order as in classical literature (that we don't have the same linguistic conditions is no reason not to make these experiments).

Therefore a richness of possibilities for reaching greater complexity and functional differentiation so that the different elements of content in a work of art can assume their own shape.

The simplest of all systematizations of formless material is, as always, the change between the contrasts, the contrasts within all thinkable aspects of the work of art. The play between difficult and easy sentences (respectively texts or words), rich and poor, normally syntactic and primitively added, such with and such without context in the environment, lofty, porridgy, knotty, gliding, sounding, and representing.

Not only simple changes but also augmentations -and rhythms. Everything except the lazy stumbling forward according to Mimömolan [the law of least resistance]. (It is something else, of course, if amorphous pieces are put in with intended, directed effect.)

Above all I think that the rhythmic aspect contains unimagined possibilities. Not only in music is rhythm the most elementary, directly physically grasping means for effect; which is the joy of recognizing something known before, the importance of repeating; which has a connection with the pulsation of breathing, the blood, ejaculation. It is wrong that jazz bands have the monopoly of giving collective rhythmic ecstasy. The drama and poetry can also give it. Even in art with its limited time dimension it can be done, Capogrossi has shown that.

It is only to break loose from the grinding of the new, new, new; not to leave behind oneself a kitchen mess of ideas for every step in the work one takes: instead of biting oneself to stick with the motifs, to let them repeat themselves and form new rhythms; for example one works at filling out rhythmic words as a background for principle meanings, which can be bound or unbound by the background rhythm. Independent onomatopoetic rhythmic phrases, like those which the African or East Indian drummer forms to represent his melodies of rhythm. Simultaneous reading and above all-readings of several lines of which at least one has rhythmic words. Of course metrical rhythms also; rhythms of word order, rhythms of space.

Another way to have unit and connection is to widen the logic by forming new agreements and contrasts. The simplest way is to go to the logic of primitive people, children and the mentally ill, the intuitive logic of likeness, of sympathetic magic.

This logic applied to language: - words which sound alike belong together, the fun comes from that. Rhyme has had a similar effect. Myths have been explained like this: when Deukalion and Pyrrha had to create new people after the deluge, they threw stones and people grew up: the name for stone is lias, for people laos.

When the fire has gone out [släckts], I am less sure that it has stopped burning than that the family [släckt] have gone on their way. The fire can both burn and be extinguished [släckt] and be related [släkt] to the family [släkten] or be extinguished [släckt] with the family [släkten]. Laxar [salmon] has to do with laxcring [laxatives], and taxar [dachshund] with taxering [tax assessment], and not vice versa. Homonyms provide great possibilities. Zeugmabinding also belongs here: to connect words, meanings and fragments, for example, poetry is poetry is poetry, where the middle poetry is both end and beginning. And the whole work may be valued for the word put in here and there, always inflexible, a binding cord for structure as realized thought motive. Always the precious repetition for the joy of recognition.

It is valid, particularly in the larger forms, epic,

drama, the film, also, to create happenings of the same

firmness of structure as that of reality. To give the

elements new functions and then certainly, to make

use of them instead of the comfortable improvisations of floating inspiration. To knit the net of relations tightly and clearly. To be bound by conventions you develop yourself but not by those of others.

With such possibilities for richness, ordinary, interpretations and antitheses such as tragically- and comically must be oversimplifications. The whole value in the connection tax-taxering [ dachshund-tax assessment] does not lie in the humorous effect which can result from the unexpected connecting.

Another form of magic with linguistic means is the conventionally seen arbitrary dictation of new meanings for letters, words, sentences or fragments: let us say that in this table all the "I's" represent "sickness," the more "I's" the more difficult-or in this fragment the word "sickness" represents "all sounds, prize stones"-or all words devoid of their own meanings represent "coldness."

You can also go one step in this direction by putting well-known words in such realized strange connections that you undermine the reader's security in the holy context between the word and its meaning and make him feel that conventional meanings are quite as much or quite as little arbitrary as the dictated new meanings. This is no more remarkable than is the case with Povel Ramel Swedish actor: the man who suffered from stage fright among other things and told us that his temperature taken rectally was from the stage of himself [rampen/rumpan], so that-hearing both through the situation and the similarity between the words-we discover a new meaning for the word ramp [stage].

You can't say that the well-known in the strange connection arouses fertile insecurity about the identity between word and apparition in everyone- it may arouse a quite fertile interest in the form itself, if the meanings for the reader are meaningless and he has such a great appetite that lie goes on looking for values. At first many meanings will sound meaningless, particularly amusing or touching, neither forbodingly meaningful nor diffusely sonorous.

Not least because they contain unfairly dealt with words. The unfairly, dealt with words are those which, despite the enormous expansion of the poetic vocabulary during the last century, are not yet considered able to keep themselves dry on the poet's copy sheets. "Salesmen," "excitement," "Clubs," "mine," "horribly," "whisk," "men," "dozen," "glands." These words can, of course, be found, but how often when compared with the old guard. Reading the dictionary is quite as exploratory for the language artist as is turning the pages of a handbook about insects, car motors, or tissues of the body is for the artist.

Meanings can also sound meaningless because they have been constructed in another way. It is valid not only to mix the word order, but to meet the necessities in terms of all the habitual mechanics of sentences or grammatical constructions; and as thinking is dependent upon language, every attack aimed at valid language form will be an enrichment of the worn-out paths of thought, a link in the evolution of language -of thinking, which always occurs on the every day, literary and scientific levels.

Ideas to renew grammatical structures are bound to emerge if you make comparisons with foreign languages, with Chinese, for instance, with its classless words and meaning derived from word order, or with the unexpected and shaded possibilities for expression in the languages of many primitive people. Perhaps it is more important and in any case easier, because of its accessibility, to examine the language of the mentally ill. If, for example, you examine the tests of manic-depressives, you find effects-certainly not meant to be artistic-the connecting of logical resemblances (contaminations), pure soundlikeness associations, modeling with the material of words (neologisms) and more or less rhythmical repetitions (perseverances).

Another way is to see what there is to keep in language found purely mechanically without the use of reading directions or a series system of words and meanings. This will be to break through the frontiers, very slowly to that which means something to you. We can obtain unexpected values from-as we -now see it-the most amputated and kneaded (fragmentized) word elements and phrases.

SQUEEZE the language material: that is what can he titled concrete. Do not squeeze the whole structure only: as soon as possible begin with the smallest elements, letters and words. Throw the letters around as in anagrams. Repeat the letters in words; lard with foreign words, gä-elva-rna [djävlarna = devils]; with foreign letters, ahaanadalaianaga for handling, compare with pig latin and other secret languages; vowel glissandos gäaeiouuåwrna. Of course also "lettered," newly--discovered words. Abbreviations as new word building, exactly as in everyday language, we certainly have Mimömolan [the law of least resistance]. Always it is a question of making new form of the material and not of being formed by it. This fundamental concrete principle can be most beautifully illustrated by Pierre Schaeffer's key experience during his search for concrete music: he had on tapes seconds of locomotive sounds, but he was not satisfied only to connect one sound to another, even if the connection itself was unusual. Instead he extracted a smaIl fragment of the locomotive sound and repeated it with a change of musical pitch; he then went back to the first again and so to the second, etc. so there was a change. He had created a n interference with the material itseIf by means of separation: the elements were not new: the newly-formed context yielded a new material.

From this it will be clear that what I have called literary concretion and non-figurative art is not a style-it is partly a way for the reader to experience word art, primarily poetry-partly for the poet a release, a declaration of the right of all language material and working means. Literature created from this starting point stands neither in oppositional nor parallel relationship to lettrisme or dadaism or surrealism.

Lettrisme: usual "representing" and the "lettristic" words can be experienced as both form and content, "representing" giving a stronger experience of content and a weaker experience of form, "lettristic , vice versa; a difference of degree.

From the standpoint of the result itself, surrealistic poetry can be seen to share certain resemblances with the tables. But there is a difference of starting point which must ultimately influence the results: the concrete reality of my tables does not stand in any kind of opposition to the reality of environment: neither as sublimation of dream or as myth for the future but as an organic part of the reality in which I live with its potentialities for life and evolution.

The coquettish or desperate grimace and even more dadaistic nihilism can be fertile if you see the artistic result, again it is the starting point that separates: I can find no reason to talk about grimace and denial, I have no feeling of fuss, of exceptional condition, that is the normal thing. A constructive dadaism and so none at all.

Having used the word concrete in these contexts, I have related it more to concrete music than to art concretism in its narrow meaning. In addition the concrete working poet is, of course, related to formalities and language-kneaders of all times, the Greeks, Rabelais, Gertrude Stein, Schwitters, Artaud and many others. And he considers as venerated portal figures not only the Owl in Winnie the Pooh but also Carrol's Humpty Dumpty who considers every question a riddle and dictates impenetrable meanings to the words.

Tr. Karen Loevgren, Mary Ellen Solt

From Bord-Dikter 1952-55

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