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Characters frequently appearing in this drama:

I - your humble narrator, sometime writer, poet, and translator, also journaling as lnhammer and prettygoodword (online pronouns: he/him/his)
Janni - spouse and writer (online pronouns: she/her/her)
Eaglet - nom de internet of our child, formerly known as TBD, not yet a writer (online pronouns: they/them/their)

I subscribe to interesting-looking journals to put them on my reading list, with no expectation of reciprocation. Feel free to, but no pressure.

Crossposts: https://lnhammer.livejournal.com/395183.html

In conversation, I was about to mention that no matter what color the cat, their hairballs are always grey—but then I realized, I’ve never lived with a white cat. So a question for anyone who can confirm:

Do white cats have white or grey hairballs?

---L.

Subject quote from Snow on the Beach, Taylor Swift ft. Lana Del Rey.

For Poetry Monday:

The Kraken, Alfred the Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Published 1830. Critics generally agree that a) this is best described as a variant-form sonnet of 15 lines and b) the kraken is likely symbolic of something, but they have no consensus on what that something might be.

---L.

Subject quote from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot.

A few important bird links, plus a beautiful one:

OwlsInTowels.org. (via)

How to pick up a duck. (via)

Woodblock prints of Hasui Kawase, an artist who was a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki.

… in a wonderful balloon

---L.

Subject quote from Joyride, Roxette.

Whoops, forgot (holiday) to post for Poetry Monday on Monday, making this a posthumous post appropriate for one more posthumous poem by a 2nd Gen Romantic, though one who wasn’t one of the three greats:

“Dirge,” Thomas Beddoes

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love, and all its smart,—
Then sleep, dear, sleep!
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love, and all its smart,—
Then die, dear, die!
’Tis deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love’s stars, thou’lt meet her
In eastern sky.

A funeral song from the start of Act II, scene 1, of Death’s Jest-Book; or The Fool’s Tragedy, another long work with a ridiculous provisional title, though in this case it was completed but eternally tinkered with for a few decades rather than unfinished due to terminal illness. Beddoes was, like Keats, a medical-type turned poet-and-would-be-dramatist, though he’d been a physician rather than surgeon and outlived his 20s. And yes, Britten did set this to music, as have many others.

---L.

Subject quote from Festoons of Fishes, Alfred Kreymborg, which I’ve been waiting for ages to use.

For Poetry Monday, might as well get in a posthumously published short from the third of the three great 2nd Gen Romantics:

“This living hand, now warm and capable,” John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Written in November 1819 beneath the draft of stanza 51 of The Cap and Bells; or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale (final title still TBD when he abandoned it after almost 800 lines) and first published in an 1898 edition of his collected poetry. The initial romantic-with-a-small-r interpretation was that this was a complete poem addressed to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne, but current consensus is that it’s a fragment he jotted to reuse in a later work, possibly a drama. What is certain is that it was written around the time he recognized undeniable symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him (as it already had his mother and youngest brother) fifteen months later.

---L.

Subject quote from Pictures of You, The Cure. Which, yes, plays into the Great Romantic Myth of Keats, but tonally fits the poem.

TIL that The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and UB40’s “Red Red Wine” have something in common: they were both written by Neil Diamond.

(IAB was day-job work as a Brill Building songwriter, while RRW was written for himself. And no, his version of RRW wasn’t remotely reggae—but it was covered by a Jamaican rocksteady singer, and it was that version that UB40 gave a pop-reggae cover, unaware that the credited N. Diamond wasn’t a local.)

---L.

Subject quote from HOT TO GO!, Chappell Roan.

For Poetry Monday, another posthumously published short from a 2nd Gen Romantic:

“Music, when soft voices die,” Percy Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Written in 1821 but not published until the 1824 Posthumous Poems edited by Mary Shelley and Leigh Hunt, under the title “To ——”. To be fair to the editors, Shelley used that title for a couple other enigmatic love lyrics also not written to Mary.

---L.

Subject quote from Zeur niet!, Annie M. G. Schmidt, tr. de_eekhoorn.

A few good links:

Studio Ghibli has posted hundreds of stills from their movies, free for private use. Index by movie. (via)

Conservatory student Erin Morton unleashes some considerable soul-backed-by-gospel chops on a cover of Radiohead’s Creep. (via)

Paging

skygiants and

genarti: yet another bold reinterpretation of the GREAT gatsby. (via a very funny / horrifying subreddit)

---L.

Subject quote from It Wasn’t Me, Shaggy feat. RikRok. (In my defense, linking this song is technically not yet banned by the Geneva Convention.)

For Poetry Monday:

“We’ll go no more a-roving,” Lord Byron

So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Written 1817 when Byron was 29, while recovering from his first Carnival season in Venice, in a letter sent to Thomas Moore. It remained unpublished until Moore, as Byron’s literary executor, published Letters and Journals of Lord Byron in 1830, after which it was added to editions of Byron’s collected poems. Its refrain is adapted from “The Jolly Beggar,” a traditional Scottish song (Byron’s mother was a Scot). (TIL current Baron Byron, the 13th of that office, published a novel in 2021, the first Baron Byron to publish a book since The Byron.)

---L.

Subject quote from Every Little Bit, Patty Griffin.

According to billboards around town, there was a yacht rock music festival last weekend. Which, sure, chase that Boomer money, it’s probably lucrative. The head-scratcher is that the headline act was Barenaked Ladies.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but those guys don’t match any reasonable definition of yacht rock that I know of. I only have their first five albums, but I haven’t heard anything since that has changed up their sound.

I’m comfuzzled.

---L.

Subject quote from The Boxer, Simon & Garfunkel.

For Poetry Monday:

Epitaph for a Tyrant, W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Written 1939.

---L.

Subject quote from Época, Gotan Project.

Department of my brain is kinda weird sometimes:

I recently realized that I think of Bejeweled-type games, orbsort games, and Shanghai/Mahjong solitaire as all being in the same genre. Possibly 2048 as well.

Tetris, Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack, Dr. Mario, and Puyo Puyo are not in this genre. Those involve matching tiles as they get added, not tiles already in the field.

Any other games that belong in this genre? Asking because I really like them (and don't like the others). And what should it be called?

---L.

Subject quote from The Mother We Share, CHVRCHES.

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not Jewish.

janni and Eaglet are, however, and our household observes Passover—and because Eaglet loves matzah brei, I’ve learned how to make it, or at least an approximation of the version Janni’s family made. Here’s how I do it.* It scales easily—each square of matzah is a serving. Depending on the size of your frying pan, making more than 4 servings at a time might not be feasible. This is scaled for two servings:

Take 2 squares of matzah and crumble into a bowl until the biggest pieces are around 1in/2cm in size. Cover with water and let sit while you get everything else ready, approximately 1-2 minutes.

Get out 2 eggs (same number as matzahs) and butter. Place a pat of butter in a frying pan, just large enough to lightly coat the bottom when melted.

When the matzah has soaked enough to be soft with just a hint of crunch in the larger pieces, drain the water. Start warming the pan on medium-high heat (same as if scrambling eggs). Mix the eggs into the matzah, then let sit until the butter has melted.

Pour the mix into the pan. Scramble as you do eggs. As soon as the egg portions are cooked (no longer gleaming as if wet), plate, salt to taste, and serve. Sour cream or applesauce are traditional toppings, but we often eat it just salted.

Feel free to teach me alternate versions!

* Present tense intentional, despite Passover being over, as we have a box and a half left over to use up.

---L.

Subject quote from MacArthur Park, Richard Harris.

… that money just can’t buy

A few links some of you may appreciate:

Sometimes you just need to watch a video of 24 hopping baby goats. (via)

Incidental Comics gives us a handy guide to Proofreader’s Marks. (via a friend)

First footage of live colossal squid in its native environment.

---L.

Subject quote from Can’t Buy Me Love, The Beatles.

I totally forgot to post this yesterday, which is possibly indicative of … something. So here, have it for Poetry Tuesday instead:

what if a much of a which of a wind, e. e. cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives truth to the summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t:blow death to was)
—all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

---L.

Subject quote from On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble, A. E. Housman.

So. :scuffs floor: Yeah. This is late. Over a decade late.

See, back when I was translating classical Japanese, I got a dozen poems into book XI of the Kokinshu before life pivoted me into learning Chinese. (Parenthood brings changes.) Which means I never got around to compiling those fragments—leaving them orphans not on my index of Japanese translations. So purely for the bookkeeping, here they are. Full disclosure: except for one wording tweak, these are unrevised reposts from the original posts. That said, without double-checking my understanding of the originals, I’m as happy as I ever am with the texts.

( A little bit of love goes a long, long way )

Index of Japanese translations

---L.

Books 869-872 of Complete Tang Poems is 谐谑, xiéxuè, banter/repartee—IOW, poems of humor and mockery. Do I want to dive deep into this? Yes—yes, I do. Duh. But for now, instead, here’s translations of a random handful that caught my eye.

I have even less standing to do this than I did the ghost poems. I can tell I’m missing wordplay and am even weaker on cultural context—and indeed, I failed to get anywhere with more than half the poems I tried. IOW, don’t make much of how three of the four are one specific genre—these were the easiest to make sense of, and Chinese humor ranges well beyond these examples.

Still, these few were fun.

In Praise of the Hedgehog, Li or Zhu Zhenbai
Walking, he seems a shifting pin-cushion,
At rest, he’s curled like a chestnut-burr.
He can’t be bullied like us big folks:
Who dares to casually punch the guy?

( There’s three more where that came from, including two more praising animals )

Yyyyeah, there’s reasons why I didn’t do more of these. Much harder to understand, let alone render well, than even the ghost poems and children’s rhymes.

Index of Chinese translations

Subject quote from Catwings, Ursula K. Le Guin.

For Poetry Monday, another short poem from another language, this time with my translation:

Inscribed in the Temple of Mulan, Du Mu

I bend my bow in battle, serving as a man—
Within my dreams, as formerly, I paint my brows.
I often long for home, yet raise my cup at banquets.
Upon Fuyundui’s shrine, I pray to Wang Zhaojun.

题木兰庙
弯弓征战作男儿，
梦里曾经与画眉。
几度思归还把酒，
拂云堆上祝明妃。

Yes, this is the Mulan you all know, and yes, a temple to her—southern China has many Mt. Mulans, literally “magnolia mountain,” and when her legend spread in the 5th and 6th centuries, those with Daoist temple complexes started dedicating one of their temples to her worship. (One in Wuhan, founded before 700, can still be visited.) Du Mu (803-852) was a late Tang poet from the same Du clan as Du Fu, though they weren’t closely related. According to his biographies, this temple was near the Hubei-Henan border.

The speaker is Mulan during her army service on the northern steppes. Fuyundui is a pass near Baotou, Inner Mongolia, on the north bank of the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River, where Xiongnu and other steppe nomads would pray before raiding south into Han lands—just as Mulan wants to return south herself. Wang Zhaojun was sent by Han Emperor Yuan (so a few centuries before Mulan’s supposed time) to make a diplomatic marriage to the Chanyu of the Xiongnu Empire, and after his death was not allowed to return—making her another woman who went north in service of the empire and longed to go home. A lot of resonance in just one line.

Index of Chinese translations

---L.

Subject quote from Ticket to Ride, The Beatles.

For Poetry Monday, another short one in another language, this time in multiple translations:

Greek Anthology 7.718, Nossis

original:
Ὦ ξεῖν᾿, εἰ τύ γε πλεῖς ποτὶ καλλίχορον Μυτιλάναν,
τὰν Σαπφὼ χαρίτων ἄνθος ἐναυσαμέναν,
εἰπεῖν, ὡς Μούσαισι φίλαν τήνᾳ τε Λοκρὶς γᾶ
τίκτεν ἴσαν ὅτι θ᾿ οἱ τοὔνομα Νοσσίς· ἴθι.

unsigned translation from Sententiae Antiquae:
Stranger, if you sail to the city of beautiful dances, Mytilene,
The city which fed Sappho, the the Graces’ flower,
Tell them that the land of Lokris bore for the Muses
A woman her equal, by the name of Nossis. Go!

uncredited translation from Locriantica:
Stranger, if you sail to Mitylene, land of beautiful dances,
to catch there the most out of Sappho’s graces,
tell that I was loved by the Muses, and that the Locrian land bore me.
My name, remember, is Nossis. Now go!

translation by Natoli, Pitts, & Hallett:
Wayfarer, if you sail to Mitylene, city of beautiful choral dances,
to draw inspiration from the bloom of Sappho’s graces,
say that the Locrian earth bore me,
dear to the Muses and to her. Having learned that my name is Nossis, go.

Flexing is old, old school (as is dissing). Nossis (fl. c. 300 BCE) was from Epizephyrian Locris, a Greek colony in southern Italy, modern Locri, and was well known enough to be named one of the “nine earthly muses” i.e. best poetesses by Antipater of Thessalonica in the late 1st century BCE (along with, yes, Sappho). A dozen of her epigrams have survived, all in the Greek Anthology. I don’t have enough Greek (or indeed any) to tell whether that “woman her equal,” missing from the other two, is a defensible reading.

---L.

Subject quote from Lethal Woman, Dove Cameron.

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Larry Hammer

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June 2025

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Page Summary

Stickie introductory post
“it’s fine to fake it till you make it till you do/ till it’s true/ now it’s like snow on the beach”
“does anyone know where the love of god goes / when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
“she has a train going downtown / she’s got a club on the moon / and she’s telling all her secrets”
“Among the coral crypts that hold the sea / Festoons of fishes weave insanity.”
“you were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold / you were always so lost in the dark”
“baby don’t you like this beat? / i made it so you’d sleep with me”
“when your husband’s on the pier with some young lady / when the spirit of conjugal love is fading”
“picture this there we were buck naked / banging on the bathroom floor”
“funny how morning turns a love to shame/ disguised and disfigured/ you thought i tasted like rain”
“i have squandered my resistance / for a pocketful of mumbles such are promises / all lies and jest”
“si desapareció / en mí aparecerá / creyeron que murió / pero renacerá”
“you can make it easy on me / and the mother we share will never keep / our cold heart from calling”
“i don’t think i can take it / it took too long to bake it / and i’ll never have that recipe again”
“say you don’t need no diamond rings/and i’ll be satisfied/tell me that you want the kind of things”
“Through him the gale of life blew high; / The tree of man was never quiet”
Kokinshu Book XI: Love 1 (469-480) [incomplete]
“Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.”
“i think it’s today / the girl that’s drivin’ me mad / is goin’ away / she’s got a ticket to ride”
“she walks like a saint floats like an angel / sharp like a knife under the table”

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Stickie introductory post

“it’s fine to fake it till you make it till you do/ till it’s true/ now it’s like snow on the beach”

“does anyone know where the love of god goes / when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

“she has a train going downtown / she’s got a club on the moon / and she’s telling all her secrets”

“Among the coral crypts that hold the sea / Festoons of fishes weave insanity.”

“you were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold / you were always so lost in the dark”

“baby don’t you like this beat? / i made it so you’d sleep with me”

“when your husband’s on the pier with some young lady / when the spirit of conjugal love is fading”

“picture this there we were buck naked / banging on the bathroom floor”

“funny how morning turns a love to shame/ disguised and disfigured/ you thought i tasted like rain”

“i have squandered my resistance / for a pocketful of mumbles such are promises / all lies and jest”

“si desapareció / en mí aparecerá / creyeron que murió / pero renacerá”

“you can make it easy on me / and the mother we share will never keep / our cold heart from calling”

“i don’t think i can take it / it took too long to bake it / and i’ll never have that recipe again”

“say you don’t need no diamond rings/and i’ll be satisfied/tell me that you want the kind of things”

“Through him the gale of life blew high; / The tree of man was never quiet”

Kokinshu Book XI: Love 1 (469-480) [incomplete]

“Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.”

“i think it’s today / the girl that’s drivin’ me mad / is goin’ away / she’s got a ticket to ride”

“she walks like a saint floats like an angel / sharp like a knife under the table”