Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

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.

For Poetry Monday, another Auden:

In Time of War XIV, W.H. Auden

Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,

Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. They take us by surprise
Like ugly long-forgotten memories,
And like a conscience all the guns resist.

Behind each sociable home-loving eye
The private massacres are taking place;
All Women, Jews, the Rich, the Human Race.

The mountains cannot judge us when we lie:
We dwell upon the earth; the earth obeys
The intelligent and evil till they die.


Part of a sonnet cycle written for a travel book, Journey to a War (1939) by Auden and Christopher Isherwood, in which they documented the conditions at the front of the Sino-Japanese War. This was not his first poem about a war he observed first-hand (see “Spain 1936”) nor his first collaborative travel book (see Letters from Iceland), but the cycle as a whole is possibly his best work from the 1930s. He extensively revised the cycle when he started including it in his collections (and dropped the verse commentary appended in Journey), but this is from the original version.

---L.

Subject quote from Not Alone, Patty Griffin.

A few possibly important links:

Waging Nonviolence has a post, “10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won” (ETA updated title) that’s filled with solid advice. (via all over)

On Tyranny

September 1, 1939

---L.

Subject quote from No Bad News, Patty Griffin.

For Poetry Monday:

Vultures, radiantfracture

I say vultures are the only poets:
they gorge on the remains
of old age and surprise attacks
treachery, waste, and accident
Cholera, botulism, and anthrax—
They swallow everything, and transmute it
into thick black feathers, into flight.

Let me be like that, unabashed to be seen
naked and hideous and hungry, transforming
in the boiling kettle of my belly
all the poison in the meat,
all the sickness and sour hate
into undigestible beauty.


The author says this is “about making art in a bad time.” (Source)

---L.

Subject quote from The Working Hour, Tears for Fears.

Links of varying importance:

Naomi Klein: “Side with the child over the gun every single time, no matter whose gun and no matter whose child.” (via janni)

(I’ll let that sit there for a moment. If you follow only one of these links, let it be that one.)

Wiktionary has started the important task of building out entries for emoji. Did they get to 🍑 and 🍆 quickly? Of course they did 😂

“The human brain uses one mechanism to assess [the number of items when there are] four or fewer items and a different one for when there are five or more.” (via)

---L.

Subject quote from All Quiet Along the Potomac (aka The Picket Guard), Ethel Lynn Beers.

For Poetry Monday:

Dry August Burned, Walter de la Mare

Dry August burned. A harvest hare
Limp on the kitchen table lay,
Its fur blood-blubbered, eye astare,
While a small child that stood near by
Wept out her heart to see it there.

Sharp came the clop of hoofs, the clang
Of dangling chain, voices that rang
Out like a leveret she ran,
To feast her glistening bird-clear eyes
On a team of field artillery
Gay, to maneuvers, thudding by.
Spur and gun and limber plate
Flashed in the sun. Alert, elate,
Noble horses, foam at lip,
Harness, stirrup, holster, whip,
She watched the sun-tanned soldiery,
Till dust-white hedge had hidden away —
Its din into a rumour thinned —
The laughing, jolting, wild array:
And then — the wonder and tumult gone —
Stood nibbling a green leaf, alone,
Her dark eyes, dreaming. . . . She turned, and ran,
Elf-like, into the house again.
The hare had vanished. . . . “Mother,” she said,
Her tear-stained cheek now flushed with red,
“Please, may I go and see it skinned?”


From 1938. I usually think of de la Mare as a peri-WWI writer (Come Hither was published in 1923), but he lived until 1956 and was still writing (and winning awards) until close to his death.

---L.

Subject quote from Jeremy, Pearl Jam.

(Background: We’ve been teaching Eaglet that the harder cuss words are inappropriate most of the time, but there are occasions where they are the exact right words to use, based on the severity of what's being said. Thanks to this, they now sometimes use “Ess-aitch word!” when a cleaner “Shoot!” or “Crap!” just isn’t strong enough.)

During last night’s bedtime wind-down discussion, Eaglet wanted to talk about war and whether any wars are currently being fought. So I summarized a few, and led them through how most fighting is caused by fear (especially of not having enough food/water/land/resources) or past misdeeds. Finally they burst out, “War is fucking stupid!” then realizing what they’d said, looked at me wide-eyed, “Was that appropriate?”

I met their gaze and said, “Yes, that’s an appropriate use of the word. War is fucking stupid.”

I even got to teach a little bit about Quaker pacifism and peacework before the day caught up with them and they finally crashed.

---L.

Subject quote from Enter Sandman, Metallica.

We're solidly into early spring flowers, with cassia and African daisies blooming all over, so here's three grim links:

An interactive map of the climates of US/Canada cities 60 years from now, by showing what current location has that climate now. (via)

How sex censorship has killed the internet. (via?)

How the discourse of “Baby It's Cold Outside” parallels that of Macbeth act I scene 7, with bonus pastiche. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from Job 37:16, JPS (1917) translation.

Some pieces of history(ies):

Cat and Girl: One Panel Every 250 Years Since 30,000 BC[E]. (via)

Four Questions to Ask When Beloved Books Haven’t Aged Well. The last one isn’t a question for everyone (and more than a little self-serving) but the first three are relevant all. (via)

Richard Scarry’s Busytown updated for 2014 and 2018 by someone who did pay attention to that last question. But where’s Goldbug? (via)

---L.

Subject quote from The Land, Spring, Vita Sackville-West.

Heart of the Problem: “If you want that one golden health tip, a transformative piece of advice that will guarantee to make you happier and healthier, then the assorted gurus of dietary health have no answers for you. The true answer is something that we already know. For a long life, don’t be poor. And if you really want to improve the health of the world, then it is inequality, not carbohydrates, that we all need to address.” (via)

Self-plug for my other journal: I have to admit, I'm pretty pleased with how last week's theme of non-dino -saurs came out: ichthyosaur, plesiosaur (with bonus pliosaur), mosasaur, pterosaur, and pelycosaur.

“Basically, Henry is a Very Good Birb.” (via)

---L.

Subject quote from The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Yeats.