There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
If they [...]
Posted in Books | 3 Comments »
A couple of years back I ran through several variations on the Lucifer character / story that appeal to me. You may recall Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
In doing some reading last night in The Eldritch Dark’s archive of Clark Ashton Smith’s poety1, I found another interesting variant. Or rather, two interesting variants.
The [...]
Posted in Books | 3 Comments »
I spent a lot of time last night looking at translations of Latin and Middle High German poetry. Oh, and listening to what I can only refer to as operatic renditions of the pieces.
How did this happen? Well, actually, like many times when I start following a trail of weird connections, it all comes back [...]
Posted in Books, Music | No Comments »
Earlier today I ran into this passage in the course of my wanderings:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Now I’m generally not all about welcoming the [...]
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And here we go again…
I’ve been reading Jeff’s daily reviews of the books in the Penguin Great Ideas series. While I don’t think I’m interested in trying to read all sixty of them in sixty days (despite Jeff’s examples and the exhortation of the Harvard University Press) I am very impressed with the presentation of [...]
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My goal is to redefine the whole history of rhyme
‘Cause the only way to free the soul is to free the mind
And no wisdom as old as this should be confined
To total mystery, so we’ll just read the signs
And DaVinci codes, and try to see the science
In this linguistically-composed pristine design
–extracted from Rhyme Renaissance by [...]
Posted in Books, Music | 1 Comment »
When I was a student, in the days before I had covered my walls with art, I used to decorate with words. I would take those cheap 8.5 x 11 frames you could buy at the grocery store, and fill them with nicely formatted blocks of text–poems, quotes, things like that. I’ve always liked to [...]
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As I write this I am watching the Australian movies made from Shane Maloney’s books about Murray Whelan. You may remember that those books were some of the big successes from my first Australian trip, and that I even mentioned the movies when I wrote that stuff up. Well, my usual online sources didn’t make [...]
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And, time to close a few more tabs…
It’s lovely that the Internet can bring me an interactive beer and food matching guide. Sadly, it uses a different algorithm than I do–resulting in far more matches with “see through” beer than my scheme would generate.
Speaking of beer, I love the idea of beer haiku. My favourite [...]
Posted in Linkapalooza | No Comments »
This is how things happen: First, author Sarah Monette mentions a LiveJournal that posts a poem every Monday.
I follow this link and make a note to come back later and look for poets I am not familiar with.
And as I start looking over the list the first thing that grabs me is a post of [...]
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I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
Ariwara no Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
Yamabe no [...]
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Without any further commentary, I present Clark Ashton Smith, writing about H. P. Lovecraft:
To Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Lover of hills and fields and towns antique,
How hast thou wandered hence
On ways not found before,
Beyond the dawnward spires of Providence?
Hast thou gone forth to seek
Some older bourn than these–
Some Arkham of the prime and central wizardries?
Or with familiar [...]
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This post is primarily targeted to my pal “Iron” Doug Hern, who is having his 127th1 birthday today.
This is a recording of Leonard Cohen doing a reading/performance at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA (yes, that’s the “The Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association”) Hotel in New York City, New York on 14 February 1966. It includes Cohen [...]
Posted in Books, Music | 1 Comment »
I’m leaving the title off of this until the end–read it first.
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and [...]
Posted in Books | 4 Comments »
I am shocked to discover that the previous post was number one thousand. Damn, that’s a lot of my blather.
To celebrate my millenipost, I present some of my favourite Latin poetry. This piece is commonly referred to by the highly creative and poetic name “Catallus 5″, since it’s the fifth of surviving works of Catallus.
Vivamus, [...]
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