"Obsessed with Emily Wilson saying that for most of the Iliad, Achilles' job was beach" --@BelovedOfOizys (via @poemakontsa)
stuttering spirit passage
apace in crisp whispers
vigil among magics
menacing swatch otchkies
in search of groves savage
assembled pinch-inchmeal
& the ice-hewn isthmus smiles
Nixonian frith frolic
exile vaporetto
here & the wood fence high
they've taken away the Bird Girl
because of tourists
magpie
assembles a scenario
fallow ukase
for moonglade eelfare
balls of fire hover
above the mainmast
whole fam'lies buried
by a shell in the night
& we struggle to schedule
the least little confab
what else beyond our power
we are blind even to ask
the electric slaughterhouse
my perse kenningar pursue
snerdlecore knows as well
tobiku girasole
& Fillmore
in my exile vaporetto
is like a stage Venice
the front yard full of Yule rubbish
"Define my ego:
Obese boogeymen I fed."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"It feels like helping them bait a trap: normal people with jobs and busy schedules go to sites like Substack and Twitter because they have a good reputation as a place to find truth, fun, community, and/or good-faith intellectual engagement. But once they’re in, they find little but gibbering Lovecraftian pain-worshipping madness in there because all the sensible people left ages ago." --Catherynne Valente on her Substack
hasty
scatterlings vie
foothold & god-riddle
The Eight Memes of the Postmodern Mystery.
"the other Polk waits"
cadge flakes · in the childish dawn
no flurry here · but dandruff snow
flakes cast · in the teeth of nothingness
on the way home · pick up nuggets
Five Classic SF Stories About Tidally Locked Planets.
"And from afar Tedaldo's spires espies" --Hoole's Ariosto
"Allurable to no sure theorem" --EA Robinson
The Lost Moment. ☆☆☆
"they call the wind Pariah"
spotty outages · the wind spiralling
over the curved · sandhills
collapsing towers · sore nostrils
footage · of the new explosion
a podcast · not about poetry
benthic darkness · i think of Europa
& the ice they don't know of · ever
simply the limits · of their little world
by day a towerling · & the nights to write
studied transformations · of a nothing life
where two lines meet · in a brown tenement
& the zines that rayed · out-labyrinth vectors
sqelaqiau
jauzi
lezon vicyeq
emada
duhusyiaris dala
( 'secret sea/ black/ wharves/ below/ depth whisperer')
"And for ther is so greet diversitee
In English and in wryting of our tonge,
So preye I god that noon miswrytë thee..."
--Chaucer
"The ring of molten wax that forms around the flame of a candle as it burns is called the BISHOP." --@HaggardHawks
"CROSSING
It was evening when we came to the river
with a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us.
There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called to us.
We did not look back at the mountains."
--J R Oppenheimer, from American Prometheus
Present to Bruno, from Donna. (via )
" 'Pigskrit?' was all she said, and wonderingly. 'Pig-skrit,' she repeated fascinatedly." --@HarrySKeeler
"Podsnap"
fierce winds mutter & prowl above the trees
only a stillness stirred
here on the gray lanai
we make puzzles
just so we can solve them
there will be branches down
signs
a roof or two · soon
wrapped up in the narrative
wind from nowhere
high pressure region
each step of the way
to the cliff edge descried
so my twitter feed
winds · winds from nowhere
such satisfying heft
to the tome of the perfect narrative
we were in too much of a hurry
to get there
wind from nowhere
maybe the perfect car
a '57 T-Bird
stands shiny like new
outside McAlester Oklahoma
pink cup from that restaurant
i drink from ev'ry day
how this came to be
i do not understand
cybernundrum nabob
pronounced null the groundswell
you & what orm army
arctic tickle darkness
i have in this hostel
hideous met sweater
conundrummed out of drogulus
& sundry ice address
"Within another few years, 'writers' will survive mostly in the same way the Swiss Guard survives today: a ceremonial role as disconnected from poiesis as the pontifical armed forces are from combat, depicted on Instagram with their writing accoutrements, their cute little desks beneath bay windows that scrollers will be pre-primed to fawn over, declaring things like 'Must. Have.' in the comments." --Justin Smith-Ruiu
💊.
"Raw, not solemn odes
are dew angels.
I’m raw as mirrored nets;
it is a party met on me.
Open one poem,
note my trap
as it is tender,
or rims a warm isle,
gnawed, erased on me,
lost on war."
--@MerlinaAcevedo
"hrepenenje"
break or can't break
sepia
sleep · sepia
suffering
where
where is that other land
killers of the skelly
schooner · the near boondocks
embrace of ash broadsides
bricksepia keepstakes
not fled wholly flinders
afflatus made radar
gifts that were good & things gathered
along a bitter livelihood
Ogden Nash wrote a widerruf once:
"Lines Written to Console Those Ladies Distressed by the Lines 'Men Never Make Passes' etc.
A girl who is bespectacled
Don’t even get her nectacled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fascinets."
"Europa
Even while surrounded by ice,
there is buried water not frozen,
never freezing. Floating in the dark
brine, sealed off from humans,
microorganisms, mouths full of
saltwater cud. A scientist learns
this, hollers out, delighted. Rejoice:
even in the most inhospitable places,
life. Rejoice: for this means that
out on Jupiter's icy, smooth moon,
maybe microorganisms, too. It is
possible we could be less alone."
--Hannah Stephenson
"Europa
No wonder you love
Europa.
You will never crack
the crust
of this blinding ice moon
and dredge its slush.
If its thin cold air
could ever fizz
in brave human lungs
you would still be the last
to breathe it.
You're happy
for Europa
to stay in its remote orbit
showering down
the odd twinkling tick
to squat in your skin.
So much easier
to scratch its itch
and laze
in enigma
than love
and render to
the drunk woman
in blinding distress
dirtying your street."
--Dorothy Featherstone Porter
"...a writer hang-glides all the time, out over that terrible whiteness. The abyss is you, your own life, your mind. It's a terrifying thing to exist at all, and an author with every creation tries to exist twice over; it is as when in poker you try to bluff a nothing hand through, and the dark face opposite raises, so you raise him back,. And the bookstores--there's terror there, especially this time of year, all those bright books of life fighting it out in their armor of embossed lettering, stacks of them being carted out to make room for the fresh contenders, all those sensibilities the educational system is churning out, dying to describe their parents, their seductions, they keep coming, wave upon wave, and the old sensibilities won't even die off, modern medicine is too good." --Hugging the Shore
Something else to worry about.
"Light verse died when it no longer seemed even the littlest bit wonderful to make two words rhyme. At about the same time, dancers in movies stopped going up and down stairs in white tie and tails." --Hugging the Shore
nameless moon remembered
merely a cloud clearer
"Winter Ocean
Many-maned scud-thumper, tub
of male whales, maker of worn wood, shrub-
ruster, sky-mocker, rave!
portly pusher of waves, wind-slave."
--John Updike
" 'Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at all of poetry?' Mr Wegg inquired, musing.
'Would it come dearer?' Mr Boffin asked.
'It would come dearer,' Mr Wegg returned. 'For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.' "
--Our Mutual Friend
"Before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book. Sometimes it was a large book standing upright and half open and I could see the print inside but it made no sense to me. Other times the book was smaller and inside were sharp flashing things." --Jean Rhys, qtd in Hugging the Shore
'The Poetry of Osip Mandelstam': A radio play by Paul Celan.
"Hasbrouck and the Rose
Hasbrouck was there and so were Bill
And Smollet Smith the poet, and Ames was there.
After his thirteenth drink, the burning Smith,
Raising his fourteenth trembling in the air,
Said, 'Drink with me, Bill, drink up to the Rose.'
But Hasbrouck laughed like old men in a myth,
Inquiring, 'Smollet, are you drunk? What rose?'
And Smollet said, 'I drunk? It may be so;
Which comes from brooding on the flower, the flower
I mean toward which mad hour by hour
I travel brokenly; and I shall know,
With Hermes and the alchemists—but, hell,
What use is it talking that way to you?
Hard-boiled, unbroken egg, what can you care
For the enfolded passion of the Rose?'
Then Hasbrouck’s voice rang like an icy bell:
'Arcane romantic flower, meaning what?
Do you know what it meant? Do I?
We do not know.
Unfolding pungent Rose, the glowing bath
Of ecstasy and clear forgetfulness;
Closing and secret bud one might achieve
By long debauchery—
Except that I have eaten it, and so
There is no call for further lunacy.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, I devoured
The mystic, the improbable, the Rose.
For two nights and a day, rose and rosette
And petal after petal and the heart,
I had my banquet by the beams
Of four electric stars which shone
Weakly into my room, for there,
Drowning their light and gleaming at my side,
Was the incarnate star
Whose body bore the stigma of the Rose.
And that is all I know about the flower;
I have eaten it—it has disappeared.
There is no Rose.'
Young Smollet Smith let fall his glass; he said,
'O Jesus, Hasbrouck, am I drunk or dead?' "
--Phelps Putnam
This is of course a widerruf to "To the Secret Rose" by WB Yeats.
"WILDFLOWER (Anagrammed Lines)
Of will and wire,
allow wind, fire,
in a wildflower."
--@Anthony_Etherin
"It has been a technique fruitful at least of verbiage; discarding cause and effect absolves the novelist of any duty to keep his mock-world coherent, and has made fiction as easy to write as free verse. Like the removal of metre and rhyme from poetics, this discarding throws upon the writer a continuous challenge to surprise and astound. Without any consequential development linking events, the reader is led along by the writer's voice alone, and its promise of ever-new prodigies of horror or style." --Updike, Hugging the Shore
"Information on semi-forgotten writers often is hard to find, but in Massie’s case it seems more than usually elusive." (via feuilleton) Archive.org has The Confessions of a Vagabond (1931) & The Incredible Truth (1958). Only the latter appears to be a novel. The movie can be found on Youtube.
"Most of the oppressively complete books that labor for our attention would benefit, we suspect, from a few reductive blows of the hammer." --John Updike
Cold.
glare in the dark garage
hail & farewell Corinna
a meeting of two solitudes
in my dream the miracle occurred
the machine calling now
an unforgettable laugh
on the road an old Barracuda
"IDLE DECLARATION
Til spun, we spool.
Lives drown in woe.
We fill an abyssal gap.
Art--as I told a sad lot--
is a trap, a glassy, banal
life we own in words' evil
loop, sewn up, slit."
--@poitevin
Reaction of opening, symmetrical.
"Always, in whatever I wrote--prose or verse--I have had a burning desire to be explicit; beset always, however carefully I had written, by the charge of obscurity." --Marianne Moore
“She herself is a haunted house.
She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening”
--Angela Carter (via @ladyliminal1)
"To a Gazan child:
They didn’t find a place to bury you.
They carried you on their shoulders,
wandered through the neighborhood,
stopped at your childhood school
and the old park."
--@MosabAbuToha
Imploring in fur-cuffed velvet...
"Speelunker & Argonaut"
candledrip-writ caption
cursing the bright hearses
too Zeno for tontine
attach critic hatchet
eerie lore · lyre feral
Rhexergon (i'll have to recalculate it for 13d, but that won't change the basic picture much). Drew opines. Wikipedia, usually reasonably up to date, lists a second planet as "confirmed" (since 2021) & a third as "suspected". Going there. This page wants to name the second planet "Pofu-pipya". This list remembers Rogue Queen but is heavy on computer games. (Is Zajdel still untranslated?) And then there's this.
On naming far off places: i have always assumed that, if there's a writer interested enough to use a real star in a story & gives a name to a madeup planet around that star, we can go with that name until the day comes that we actually go there. It becomes more complicated when more than one writer has treated a star, but that's not much different from cities that have been known by more than one name. If no one cares enough to devote a work of fiction to it, there's no reason not to use the scientific designation in the meantime.
"I suspect that Keats had this more recent discovery, just 5 years prior, in mind."
"I failed to be taught to swim my whole teen years, then, as soon as I'd left school, discovered how to do it in an afternoon. Every time I write something now, it's that afternoon all over again." --@mjohnharrison
Saltair rises from the Great Salt Lake, detailed oil painting, Winslow Homer, Florine Stettheimer.
no immediate roadblock
the cartperson gone
sun struggling through
like a bruise blossoming
xylophone music
i anticipate a thunk
that doesn't come
10 things I still love that resemble indexes or lexicons or inventories in particular order.
"trebuchet"
1.
dark cold seas
vaster than Earth's
do we think about
unplumbed
bearing
dark cold hearts
we only think we see
to the bottom of
2.
Lalande 21185
fog as a planet
days-long sunrise
diffused
many-legg'd scramble
why should they not build
their ziggurats too
3.
harried by half-dreams
of the book i would write
just those few years
as a parable
parable of what though
something i could only lie about
ever after
like our other atrocities
Poem.
"I love not the myth of England, rather I love mythic England - all black dogs, hollow hills and sharp-toothed faeries. The myth of England as nation and mythical England are not the same - despite what folks in black shirts may claim. - #CLNolan, ‘Deathbed Letters’, 1937" --@hooklandguide
"Flat Earth theory is what you get..."
Mickey Mouse menaced by clowns, detailed oil painting, Francis Bacon.
"there’s nothing wrong with me that six drinks and loudly denigrating the shoddy scholarship of my enemies in a crowded hotel bar can’t fix" --@kukukadoo
Mickey Mouse menaced by clowns, detailed oil painting, Edward Hopper.
"The Ordinary Women
Then from their poverty they rose,
From dry catarrhs, and to guitars
They flitted
Through the palace walls.
They flung monotony behind,
Turned from their want, and, nonchalant,
They crowded
The nocturnal halls.
The lacquered loges huddled there
Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.
The moonlight
Fubbed the girandoles.
And the cold dresses that they wore,
In the vapid haze of the window-bays,
Were tranquil
As they leaned and looked
From the window-sills at the alphabets,
At beta b and gamma g,
To study
The canting curlicues
Of heaven and of the heavenly script.
And there they read of marriage-bed.
Ti-lill-o!
And they read right long.
The gaunt guitarists on the strings
Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.
The moonlight
Rose on the beachy floors.
How explicit the coiffures became,
The diamond point, the sapphire point,
The sequins
Of the civil fans!
Insinuations of desire,
Puissant speech, alike in each,
Cried quittance
To the wickless halls.
Then from their poverty they rose,
From dry guitars, and to catarrhs
They flitted
Through the palace walls."
--Wallace Stevens
Logging on...
"Green waves and wet gray rocks,
dune grass, a wind-blown wren,
and in my thoughts a vanished face
I shall not see again.
Chill rains and charging seas,
ice floes along the shore —
in me a tide of loneliness
for one who left before."
— Joseph Payne Brennan (via @isidro_li)
"Mere mysteriousness is useless; the enigma must be clear to the author, not necessarily to us." --Marianne Moore
