Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

What I've recently finished since my last post:

Tasogare-iro no Uta Tsukai ("twilight-colored song-user") v1 by Kei Sazane, the first of a secondary world fantasy series. Or apparently secondary-world, given the names -- going by the worldbuilding, it might be our-world-plus-magic. Certainly the high school for magicians-in-training owes far, far more to contemporary Japanese institutions than to Hogwarts. Anyway, this is the sort of author who, the moment he sets up a system where magicians specialize in summoning things that are one of five primary colors, immediately (as in, in the prologue) starts poking at the concept's limitations in two distinct directions, with hints of more to come. The story itself is serviceable despite some typical first-novel roughness and characters that are on the flat side -- though at least the protagonists do protag and even arc a little, and two of them are actively interesting. A series I'll be following.

No. 6 v1-2 by Atsuko Asano. In the near future, Shion was a gifted boy living in a heavily planned and policed city called No. 6 until he aided an escaped criminal Nezumi ("Rat"), for which he and his family lose most of their privileges but are not actually expelled. Four years later as a teenager with a full-time job, he meets Nezumi again -- at the same time Shion is arrested on suspicion of involvement with a mysterious parasitic disease. The major genre influence here seems to be not shounen manga/anime but rather prose science fiction -- I would not be at all surprised to see something like this marketed in the States as younger YA dystopian SF. Or possibly older YA, given Shion and Nezumi's relationship has romantic overtones in these opening books (which may be why the manga adaptation runs in a josei mazagine -- and, huh, turns out to be licensed in English. Looks pretty, too). Recommended -- rachelmanija, this might be up your alley despite the lack of aaaaangst -- Shion is appealingly level-headed about his ups and downs -- and the link above includes Kindle formats.

The Book of New York Verse ed. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, where the quality of the poetry is, shall we say, uneven -- but the quality is not exactly the point here, and at least there's very little actually bad verse.* More problematic is, around the turn of the 20th century, the sudden knot of outright militaristic poems -- the sort where the fighting itself is extolled instead of just the imperialism it supports. Given this was published in 1917, I don't think the Great War counts as an excuse. I was however particularly touched, earlier on, by the Romantic description of the delights of nature just across the East River: "Yet I will look upon thy face again, / My own romantic Bronx ... "** One interesting cultural detail: in the early 19th century, Broadway was universally stressed on the second syllable, but by the middle of the century it had shifted to the current initial stress.*** Also: when young blades dueled, they crossed the Hudson to face each other at dawn upon the deserted beaches of Hoboken.

* Though some of the sonnets to, for ex, Fifth Avenue and Washington Square are nowhere near good.
** Note the lack of a definite article, from which I gather the poet is describing Bronx River rather than the nearby settlement that became the borough. It still makes me giggle, though.
*** And you wondered how poetic meter could be useful.

Romes Monarchie, sub-entitled "The Globe of Renowmed Glorie" in charming orthography, by one "E.L." -- an Elizabethan potted history in rime royal stanzas of Rome up to Nero. Frankly, it's not very good, nor indeed coherent -- if I didn't already have a solid grounding in the history and legends of the Republic I don't think I could have followed it at all. But as an example of what Elizabethans thought they knew about the stuff, it's interesting. The poetry is at best workman's verse: not terrible, but just as plodding as the less inspired parts of Mirror for Magistrates (with which it has more than a few generic connections). I'm not entirely sure how I managed to finish it, to be honest.

What I'm reading now:

No. 6 v3 -- onward in the series.

Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan by Giles Milton -- still reading in small snatches, usually over breakfast.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikô ("record of a Yokohama shopping trip") v1-2 by Hitoshi Ashinano, a reread by way of experimenting with manga on a Kobo (results are mixed, as it chokes on whole volumes and sometimes hiccups with single chapters). I still love this muchly, even where Asano is still getting a handle on his material -- yet even so, the first two chapters contain subtle introductions of half the major themes he'll develop over the series. Not to mention, despite the character designs still settling out in the first volume, the art is oh so pretty. And relaxing. And given the relaxed story, it works nicely for a chapter every so often.

Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton, a long "chorographical" poem systematically and exhaustively describing the geography of Britain, catching along the way as much local history and lore as he could sweep up. As you might expect, this is an odd duck, but it is for once not bad verse and is indeed a easy read, for Drayton was a thoroughly professional Elizabethan poet who learned better than any contemporary how to modulate sound from Spenser. I'm partway through the third of thirty "songs," starting down in Cornwall and the southwest coast -- in part, I suspect, so he could get to the legend of Brute as quickly as possible. I wish I had a detailed hydrological map, though -- he is very much into naming and personifying every. Single. River. Hills and forests and plains are also personified left and right, but they're less confusing.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch -- though not in a concentrated way, unlike Braithwaite's volumes. Chosen over Stedman both because it's a more manageable size and because, while I don't trust Q's sentimentality or taste in range of voices, I have far more trust in his judgment of lyric quality. I mean -- Stedman actually includes multiple extracts from R.H. Horne's Orion, which is in my TBR queue of egregious epics. (This is the same Horne as this guy.) OTOH, I did have to struggle through Q's stretch of Emerson, so who knows.

Which all is too many things at once. Hmph.

What I'll read next:

Presumably further volumes of No. 6, unless something majorly wallbangworthy happens, and Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century is still in the queue. Though I foresee a need for fluffy and light this coming week -- any recommendations?

---L.

Where, Immortality, where canst thou found
Thy throne unperishing, but in the hymn
Of the true bard, whose breath encrusts his theme
Like to a petrifaction, which the stream
Of time will only make more durable?

Where indeed, Mr. Smith -- where indeed.

In compensation for ambushing you to that, I should cleanse your pallet with some Byron:

    The beings of the mind are not of clay:
    Essentially immortal, they create
    And multiply in us a brighter ray
    And more beloved existence: that which Fate
    Prohibits to dull life in this our state
    Of mortal bondage, by these Spirits supplied,
    First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
    Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

And one more to see us through:

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.

Much better.

William Gibson attempts a poetic description of Hawaii:

  An island, central with inferior groupings,
Like Jupiter, in the cerulean distance,
Magnificent among his circling moons.

  Planet-like poiséd half submerged in ocean:
One hemisphere above the water-level
Apparent, belted by three climate-zones.

To which I can only say, "Ow, my ear."

ETA: I should probably clarify that this guy lived from 1826–1887, and did not write science fiction.

---L.

The Bad Poetry Round Robin at TusCon 39 was quite fun -- much laughter was had by all who came, and a couple people even made it through an entire poem without losing their straight face (I wasn't one of them). The bill of fare:

• "How Strange Are Dreams!" J. Gordon Coogler
  
• "The Tey Bridge Disaster," William McGonagall
  
• "A New Temperance Poem, In Memory of My Departed Parents, Who Were Sober Living & Godfearing People," William McGonagall
  
• "A Tragedy," Theophilus Marzials
  
• "The Albion Battleship Tragedy," William McGonagall
  
• "Ode to the Mammoth Cheese, Weight Over Seven Thousand Pounds," James McIntyre
  
• "The Tomato," William B. Tappan
  
• "Alcohol's Requiem upon Prof. P.F.K., a Gifted Man, Who Died a Victim to Strong Drink," Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  
• "Oxford Cheese Ode," James McIntyre
  
• "Prophecy of a Ten Ton Cheese," James McIntyre

The best part was possibly how one reader couldn't even make it through the entire title of "A New Temperance Poem" before breaking down, though another highlight was Tappan's waxing so enthusaistic about tomatoes that he apparently didn't notice how he slipped in and out of sexual innuendo, which had an effect even odder than if he'd stayed smuttily passionate throughout.

The Coogler was an interesting find -- the first four lines were anthologized in The World's Worst Poetry: An Anthology edited by Stephen Robins, and everybody quotes just this. It turns out there are reasons for this. Witness the full text:

"How Strange Are Dreams!"

How strange are dreams!—I dreamed the other night
  A dream that made me tremble,
    Not with fear, but a kind of strange reality;
( My supper, though late, consisted of no cheese ...  )

---L.

While spending the weekend camping in the Chiricahua Mountains, the oldest and largest prickly pear in our yard bloomed:



Also, it broke 100°F -- the second earliest it has done so on record. Welcome to late spring.

By way of Not Thinking about all that, some links that recently came to my attention:

This year's Lyttle Lytton Contest winners.

The Genji reading companion, including chapter commentaries and comparisons of the Seidensticker & Tyler translations against each other and the original. The project seems to have stalled after 12 chapters, alas, but until then there's good and useful stuff in there.

Sonnet to a Clam by one John Godfrey Saxe.

---L.

The dedicatory "Address to Spencer" to John Walker Ord's England: A Historical Poem (published 1833-34, when the author was 22-23) is somewhat unfortunate, running into trouble before completing the second line:

Great Spirit, let me worship on my knees,
With reverent adoration, thy great —

At this point, the brain leaps ahead and supplies several possible nouns all more interesting, or at least more risque, than what the eyes actually see.* It does not help that it takes just a couple other replacements to make the entire stanza quite smutty indeed.

Or maybe this is just me.

(Not that the rest is any more fortunate: 1400-odd Spencerian stanzas of 19th-century English smugness masquerading as supra-Byronic histrionics masquerading as a history of Britain up to Shakespeare. Gods help us all, and blessed be the BACK button.)

I am, btw, startled by the spelling of the subtitle -- I had thought "an historical" standard for the time. Maybe being printed in Edinburgh** makes a difference?


* "name"

** Ord wrote this while in medical school -- or more precisely, while failing out of it because he spent too much time writing poetry.

---L.

Regarding The Maiden of Moscow: A Poem, in Twenty-One Cantos, I can only conclude that Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley's household was on short rations of periods when she was writing it, forcing her to make do with the home farm's bumper crop of dashes, colons, question marks, and especially exclamation points.* It is tempting to speculate that the family of her husband, Charles Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, had been routinely profligate with their punctuation ever since his grandfather added both hyphens to the family tree, but that would be ungenerous. Not to mention, yanno, a lack of evidence.

As for the poem itself, I cannot tell whether it is overheated Scott or underbaked Byron -- possibly both.** Certainly, I am glad my pop-culture knowledge of the Grande Armée comes from Tolstoy instead of this stuff.

Also, can someone explicate the 19th aristocratic naming conventions whereby Lady Emmeline took on, or at least wrote under, only two of husband's three last names?


* Which last especially are of a size and quantity that receives ribbons at parish fairs.

** As opposed to this, which is clearly aiming to be one of Byron's oriental tales setting-swapped into Norse mythology*** -- much more clearly than this Moscow-thingy.

*** You can apply Byronism to ANYTHING. Even toasters, I suspect.

---L.

Three kinds of poetry make a post.

some lines are short lines

So a while back, I posted about finding an extract of a translation of Lucretius into rubaiyat stanzas, which was, yes, just as bad as it sounds. At the risk of having sovey drink herself into the grave, a follow-up:

Behold, the complete text of Lucretius on Life and Death, in the Metre of Omar Khayyám.

There is, in fact, one thing heartening about finding this: learning that Mallock, W. H. (1849-1923) did not in fact attempt a complete translation in this manner -- this is extracts only. My memories of De rerum natura a bit dim, as it's been a while, but I recognize a couple passages that I recall as among those most amenable to bending into FitzGeraldian philosophasting.

I nonetheless remain in awe at the effort -- and not the good sort of awe.

others run a bit longer

My poem for nineweaving, "Winter Advice," is in the current issue of Goblin Fruit, along with art by rose_lemberg and excellent poems by the likes of shweta_narayan and csecooney.

i like the short ones

Fluid dynamics simulation using javascript. (also available in ascii) (via)

---L.

Because janni dared me:


The truth about poetry, not!Kokinshu edition:


    O bush warbler,
do not cease your singing!
    For with songs of spring
I too, my friend, am only
trying to pick up some chicks.

---L.

Further dispatches from the frontiers of intellectual archeology.

I wasn't surprised to see Project Gutenberg has multiple editions of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I mean, it's still popular enough today that it still hasn't been displaced as the go-to translation, even though it has even less relationship to its original than Pope's Iliad. As English versification, it's not half bad, and the sentiments are strikingly consonant with those parts of Victorian culture still current in the bourgeois Anglosphere.

However, I did not expect Gutenberg to also have:

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr.
Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne
Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam
Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten
Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers
Rubáiyát of a Bachelor
Rubaiyat of a Huffy Husband
Rubáiyát of Bridge
Golfer's Rubaiyat

Many of these parodies are rather dire, if anyone happens to be looking for some very bad poetry to gnaw on. But it only goes to show that I have been underestimating just how popular FitzGerald was. Being quoted in Bugs Bunny cartoons is one thing -- this list, another level entirely.

---L.