Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

For Poetry Monday:

For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson, Ursula K. Le Guin

A black and white cat
on May grass waves his tail, suns his belly
among wallflowers.
I am reading a Chinese poet
called The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases.
The cat is aware of the writing
of swallows
on the white sky.
We are both old and doing what pleases us
in the garden. Now I am writing
and the cat
is sleeping.
Whose poem is this?


—L.

Subject quote from Time in a Bottle, Jim Croce.

A link for you, and a link for you, and, yes, a link for you, too. All three are for the anonymous gifter of a paid account -- thank you, whoever you are:

Drone videos of black sand beaches in Iceland.

There I Ruined It presents Santa Claus Is Coming to Town as sung by Radiohead, to the tune of “Creep.” (via)

A contemporary (1813) review of Pride and Prejudice. That Mr Collins was considered a recognizable type and not a caricature is interesting. (via lost)

---L.

Subject quote from On Grafton Street, Nanci Griffith.

For Poetry Monday, chronologically a little late but still appropriate for this subtropical climate:

November Night, Adelaide Crapsey

Listen …
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.


Crapsey (1878-1914) was a teacher and prosodist as well as poet, and this was first published in her (posthumous) first collection, Verses. The form is a cinquain, a fixed syllabic stanza based on Japanese tanka that she developed in her last year of life, before dying of tuberculosis.

---L.

Subject quote from Windy,” The Association.

For Poetry Monday:

The More Loving One, W.H. Auden

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

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

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

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


From his collection Homage to Clio.

---L.

Subject quote from “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” W.H. Auden.

For Poetry Monday:

Stills, R.A. Ammons

I have nowhere
to go and

nowhere to go

when I get
back from there.


---L.

Subject quote from The Boxer, Simon & Garfunkel.

For Poetry Monday:

War Is Kind, Stephen Crane

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

    Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
    Little souls who thirst for fight,
    These men were born to drill and die.
    The unexplained glory flies above them,
    Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
    A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

    Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
    Eagle with crest of red and gold,
    These men were born to drill and die.
    Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
    Make plain to them the excellence of killing
    And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.


Crane knew how to write creepy af.

---L.

Subject quote from The Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson.

A few songs to share:

Disco Snails. The simple answer is they’re dancers. (via)

Video for Defying Gravity using paired coasters in Roller Coaster Tycoon. (via)

In Another World, EJAE — the singing voice of Rumi in K-Pop Demon Hunters gets her first official release.

---L.

Subject quote from In Another World, EJAE.

Book meme via naraht and others: The Seven Deadly Sins of Reading —

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
- The Moonlight Mistress, Victoria Janssen
- The Beauty’s Blade, Feng Ren Zuo Shu
- Heavenly Tyrant, Xiran Jay Zhao

Pride, challenging books I’ve finished:
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
- Gravitation and Cosmology, Steven Weinberg
- 古今和歌集 (in the original)

Gluttony, books I’ve read more than once:
- Persuasion, Jane Austen (and the rest of Austen, but that the most)
- The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (and several other Heyer, but that the most)
- Protector of the Small, Tamora Pierce (and Circle of Magic, but that the most)
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin (and several other Le Guin, but that the most)
(and many many more …)

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Titus Alone, Mervyn Peake

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
(not counting multiple translations of the same work)
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
- The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

Wrath, books I despised:
- The Jade Mountain, tr. Witter Bynner
- A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, tr. William Porter
- Outlaws of the Marsh / Water Margin

Envy, books I want to live in:
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Annals of the Former World, John McPhee
- Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai

Actually, just replace the other two with Always Coming Home a few more times.

---L.

Subject quote from I Want You, Savage Garden.

(Context: Yuletide is an annual fanfiction gift exchange for fandoms with relatively few fics, notable for its large number of participants and the high average quality of stories. I’m participating again this year, once more focusing on public domain fandoms that are poems or poetry-adjacent.)

Dear Yulemouse,

Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. You are totally awesome for doing this. I can only hope you enjoy writing about it as much as I will reading it — for certainly, squees will ring off the mountains and echo down the canyons when it arrives given, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet find so rarely.

The best way to please me is to have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktastic silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash, femslash, multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want (so yes, Yuleporn and Three Turtle Doves both fine). As a partial guide to the sort of things I like, my stories from past Yuletides are as good as anything. Turn-offs (Do Not Want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, explicit torture, and A/B/O, plus a couple DNWs specific to two fandoms (listed below). Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it’s easy odds I’ll like it.

And to make it explicit: poetry, either in whole or in part, is gleefully accepted — I mean, these fandoms are all related to poetry in some way — but not in the least required. Also, again to be explicit, I welcome treats, which get double the thanks for going above and beyond.

The rest of this is basically expansion on my Optional Details Are Optionals, with notes on resources.

( 赠答诗 - 金车美人 (弘农) | Poems Composed in Reply - Beautiful Woman in a Golden Carriage (Hong Nong) )

( Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came )

( Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker )

( “Her strong enchantments failing” - A.E. Housman )

( Mesopotamian RPF )

( Puck of Pook’s Hill Series - Rudyard Kipling )

For Poetry Monday:

“Fall, leaves, fall,” Emily Bronte

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.


Contrast with Hopkins’ Spring and Fall. Seriously—hold them both close. It’s worth it.

---L.

Subject quote from Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones.