larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2029-12-31 10:00 am

Stickie introductory post

Characters frequently appearing in this drama:
  • I - your humble narrator, sometime writer, poet, and translator, also journaling as [personal profile] lnhammer and [personal profile] 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.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2025-06-30 03:06 pm
Entry tags:

“slowly lurching toward your favorite city / pierced through the heart but never killed”

For Poetry Monday, after an influencer of Pound, Pound himself—at least in part:


The Sole Survivor, Rai San’yō, tr. Ezra Pound

A force cut off
Fighting hard,
Shut around.

I burst the bonds,
I alone,
I returned,

Fleeing by night
Through the crags of the border.

My sword is broken,
My horse fallen.
The hero drags his corpse to his native mountains.

Rai (1780-1832) was an Edo-period historian and poet. In November 1915, Pound attended a London performance of sword dances by Itō Michio (1892-1961), some of which were accompanied by songs sung by Uchiyama Masami (I can’t find good dates on this guy), one of them being this. This translation (made with Uchiyama’s assistance, credited as “from notes by”) was first published in the Dec 1916 issue of Future without naming the author. The original title was “Kogun Funto,” which more literally means “exhausted warrior,” and the original form was a single four-line stanza.

—L.

Subject quote from Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift.
larryhammer: animation of the kanji for four seasonal birds fading into each other in endless cycle (Japanese poetry)
2025-06-23 07:41 am
Entry tags:

“i want you to notice when im not around/youre so fuckin special wish i was special/but im a creep”

For Poetry Monday:

Kyoto, Yone Noguchi

Mist-born Kyoto, the city of scent and prayer,
Like a dream half-fading, she lingers on:
The oldest song of a forgotten pagoda bell
Is the Kamo river’s twilight song.

The girls, half whisper and half love,
As old as a straying moon beam,
Flutter on the streets gods built,
Lightly carrying Spring and passion.

“Stop a while with me,” I said.
They turned their powdered necks. How delicious!
“No, thank you, some other time,” they replied.
Oh, such a smile like the breath of a rose!


Noguchi Yonejirō, who wrote in English as Yone Noguchi, was a Japanese writer in both English and Japanese, and his poetry and essays from, especially, the first two decades of the 20th century were influential on both Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. This poem was published in 1908, shortly after he returned to Japan after living in the United States for over a decade.

---L.

Subject quote from Creep, Radiohead. (bonus PMJ cover)
larryhammer: a woman wearing a chain mail hoodie, label: "chain mail is sexy" (warrior babe)
2025-06-17 12:53 pm

“yeah we’ve got a light / to see our way by / we’ve got what we need / when we’ve got you”

Links of varying relevance, both to currency and each other:

The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world. BBC summary of an academic study with historical data. Pull quote: “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.” For perspective, for the US that’s about 11 million people, to give a totally random example. (via [personal profile] janni)

Nicely thinky New Yorker profile of Martha Wells (archive version). CW: inconsistent misgendering of Murderbot (mostly in one paragraph). (via /r/murderbot)

Interview with the production designer of Murderbot, who is nicely thinky. (via [personal profile] marthawells)

---L.

Subject quote from We've Got You - i: Spark, Vienna Teng.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (vanished)
2025-06-16 07:42 am
Entry tags:

“one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving / and life will lose all its meaning / for the last time”

For Poetry Monday, one more late Shelly:

The flower that smiles to-day,” Percy Shelley

    The flower that smiles to-day
        To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
        Tempts and then flies.
What is this world’s delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
        Brief even as bright.

    Virtue, how frail it is!
        Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
        For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
        Which ours we call.

    Whilst skies are blue and bright,
        Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
        Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou—and from thy sleep
        Then wake to weep.


Another poem written in the last year of his life and published posthumously with an editorial title, though this time the title Mary supplied was “Mutability.” It’s common to point out, for context, that Percy and Mary lost three children in early childhood. Like many of his shorter lyrics, it’s been set to music several times.

He nails that dismount.

---L.

Subject quote from Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2025-06-10 07:02 am
Entry tags:

“teardrop on the fire / of a confession / fearless on my breath / most faithful mirror”

A c-novel recommendation: I Am Average and Unremarkable, a xianxia by Yue Xia Die Ying (“butterfly shadow beneath the moon”). I’ve enjoyed four other novels by the author, including serious historical romances and the lighthearted xianxia Ascending, Do Not Disturb. If you like the latter, you will likely enjoy this, as it has much the same sense of humor—and more of it.

Our Heroine, Jiu Hui, is a young yao, a word that can mean anything from spirit to monster to demon, but in this world, spirit comes closest—in this case, she’s a plant spirit, specifically a garlic chive spirit. (Yes, that’s a lol.) Other yao in this world are animals and sometimes plants that have absorbed enough power to attain sentience and, for the more advanced, the ability to take human form. Most humans, however, believe yao are inimical monsters as dangerous as demons (also present in this world), so she always presents as human.

The story starts with Our Heroine seeking to join a human cultivation sect because she’s reached the limit of what her remote yao village can teach her about human-style cultivation. Because the larger righteous sects are very into being righteous scourges of both yao and demons, she joins a small, relaxed sect. (Very small: five masters and ten disciples.) This turns out to be an excellent fit, as her apparently weak sect emphasizes evasion and deception techniques, and its interactions with other sects are best characterized on a sliding scale from mooching to grifting—and she, too, is very much a trickster figure. The story doesn’t use the term, but I think of them as specializing in the Dao of Shamelessness, though like many literary Tricksters, they stand with what’s right when it counts. Meanwhile, her Junior Sect Brother, recruited at the same time, turns out to be, ah, let’s call him socially awkward—as in, not well socialized—and he is hardly the only character with a background that is not simple.

It’s a fun book, rolled out with solid pacing. (The author notes are hilarious.) It also has a carefully laid plot that’s the spine of a surprisingly serious thematic core for a xianxia—it examines, from multiple directions, the question of when a sacrifice for the greater good, both willing and not, is morally acceptable. That there’s a literal Omelas situation is only one thread of this. Deep spoilers for the ending in rot13: Gur puvyq va gur onfrzrag vf na vzcbegnag punenpgre, naq gur abiry pyvznk vf onfvpnyyl Bhe Urebvar tbvat ‘jub gur shpx frg hc guvf ohyyfuvg gebyyrl ceboyrz’ naq qrslvat gur urnirayl qnb sbe orvat hawhfg.

I highly recommend this to anyone who’s already read a couple xianxia—it’s probably not a good starter story for the genre, as it leans heavily on convention to avoid explanations, even more so than Ascending, Do Not Disturb. It doesn’t help that the fan translation is a little wobbly (the translator particularly has trouble with verb forms). But if you have the background and can tolerate imperfect prose, this is a great read.

---L.

Subject quote from Teardrop, Massive Attack.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-06-09 07:51 am

“i told this heart of mine our love could never be / but then i hear your voice and something stirs”

For Poetry Monday:

One word is too often profaned,” Percy Shelley

One word is too often profaned
    For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
    For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
    For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
    Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
    But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
    And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
    Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
    From the sphere of our sorrow?


Another poem Shelley wrote in 1822 that was posthumously published with the editorial title “To ——.” In this case, —— was Jane Williams, with whom he did not in fact have an affair—he wrote several poems to her, all professing deep friendship, but he seems to have truly kept things at that level (with his history, that’s not a given). Jane Williams and her common-law husband, Edward, were close friends with both Shelleys, and Edward died in the same boating accident that killed Percy. The word is, of course, at the end of line 9.

(That rhyme of accept and reject gets a side-eye.)

---L.

Subject quote from My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own, Connie Francis.
larryhammer: a wisp of smoke, label: "it comes in curlicues, spirals as it twirls" (curlicues)
2025-06-03 07:14 am
Entry tags:

“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”

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.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-06-02 07:53 am

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

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.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-05-27 06:48 am

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

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.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-05-19 07:39 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: a wisp of smoke, label: "it comes in curlicues, spirals as it twirls" (what tangled tales we weave)
2025-05-14 10:03 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-05-12 07:56 am
Entry tags:

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

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. [personal profile] de_eekhoorn.
larryhammer: drawing of a wildhaired figure dancing, label: "La!" (dancing)
2025-05-07 07:57 am
Entry tags:

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

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 [personal profile] skygiants and [personal profile] 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.)
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
2025-05-05 07:45 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: pen-and-ink drawing of an annoyed woman dressed as a Heian-era male courtier saying "......" (annoyed)
2025-05-01 07:56 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: a woman wearing a chain mail hoodie, label: "chain mail is sexy" (chain mail is sexy)
2025-04-28 07:41 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: drawing of a wildhaired figure dancing, label: "La!" (La!)
2025-04-25 07:46 am
Entry tags:

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

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.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
2025-04-24 07:11 am
Entry tags:

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

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not Jewish.

[personal profile] 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.