Poetry
pronald | December 10, 2010The Digital CuttleFish writes another good verse.
This one is for Dr. Oz.
Tomorrow's Table
I'm healthy and wealthy; I've outgrown my past;
When I need to lose weight, I can diet or fast;
Starvation is not in the lot I've been cast--
My perspective is clearly not skewed.
I can buy the best produce they've managed to breed,
Have it shipped to my doorstep with mind-boggling speed;
In a world of such plenty, I don't see the need
For genetically modified food
We can learn about foods from the Frankenstein myth
And distill what we know into substance and pith:
It's much safer, our going without…
bioephemera | November 26, 2010
I made the pieces fit then took them apart
then made them fit when I got tired I lay me down my little head
against the flannel chicks and ducks then slept then woke then took
the puzzle up my mother had another child sick unto death
she needed me to fall in love with solitude I fell in love
it is my toy my happiness. . .
poem: excerpt from "Fox," by Ellen Bryant Voight. Read the rest of the poem at the Atlantic.
photo: fox rolling around, from Everything is Permuted's flickrstream.
More:
a 1999 interview with the poet.
aardvarchaeology | October 22, 2010Last night I attended Junior's school concert in the church of St. Catherine in Stockholm. Here are some of the lyrics sung by the 13-14-year-olds in front of the altar.
Because the world is round it turns me on
Because the wind is high it blows my mind
"Because", Lennon & McCartney
And
Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination
Silently the senses abandon their defenses
Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendor
Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender
Turn your face away from the garish light of day
Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling…
pronald | August 14, 2010Korea has a 5000 year history of food and farming. How much can a nine-year old and her mother learn on a two week visit to this land of miracles?
For the first few nights we stayed in a tiny room in a traditional Korean house called a "Hanok" house. There is a courtyard that everyone shares that the owners have filled with lots of stuff including a rabbit named Mimi. In this quiet place, one can imagine ancient times before the rebirth of this powerful nation that was almost totally destroyed by the Korean war (1950-1953). Now, although most cities are dominated by massive buildings and…
cagapakis | May 26, 2010There is big excitement in lab today--my very talented labmate Jake has won the Division of Medical Sciences graduate student science haiku contest!!! Here is his burrito winning entry:
Green lasers on high
Shining to illuminate
Synechococcus!
It's definitely haiku day over here, so share your science haikus in the comments for maximum fun!
grrlscientist | May 25, 2010tags: Bill Murray, Poets House, NYC, NYC Life, Construction Workers, employment, I dwell in Possibility, Gathering Paradise, poem, poetry, poetry reading, Emily Dickinson, streaming video
This is a beautiful video, showing the construction of NYC's Poets House, along with a reading of several poems, including Emily Dickinson's lovely poem, "I dwell in Possibility," by actor Bill Murray, and ending with a short segment where some of the guys introduce themselves. This poetry reading was the first to take place at the Poets House new home. It's really fitting that those who constructed the…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2010
Discreetly hidden under the northern side of the eastern bridgehead of rural Täckhammar bridge is a spray-painted mural. I found it while checking for geocaches. It depicts an evil-looking male face accompanied by a really funny piece of Satanist prose poetry.
"Dark vengeance of cryptic slaughter and Satanic suffering. The boundaries of Hell will brake [!] and humanity fall into frantic oblivion. Hatred and pain will forever rule the realm of Man."
Dark Vengeance is a 1998 computer game. Cryptic Slaughter was an 80s thrash metal band. "Frantic oblivion", though an oxymoron, is actually a…
bioephemera | April 13, 2010
In this TED clip, Natalie Merchant sings haunting arrangements of old poetry from her new album, Leave Your Sleep (2CD). If you have limited time, skip ahead to about 8:00 for the beautiful ee cummings poem "maggie and milly and molly and may", followed by the gently rebellious "if no one ever marries me" by Laurence Alma-Tadema (who never did marry), and then "Margaret" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
I'd forgotten how moving Merchant's voice is. I'll definitely be ordering this one when it's released.
Watch an interview with Natalie Merchant about this project at Granta.
bioephemera | March 28, 2010This poem by Rosemary Kirstein is truly a worthy successor to the classic by Wallace Stevens. (Thanks to Jen Ouellette for sharing.)
pronald | March 18, 2010I try not to travel in the spring. Instead of the stale air of the airplane, I try to get out to the mountains, the beach, the garden or to the nearby foothills.
Last weekend my daughter and I (who is 8 years old today), went for a walk. I thought she was strong enough to do the 5 mile hike in the Stebbins Cold Canyon Preserve so off we happily went. As we started up the VERY steep hill, her trust began to dissipate. Then the inevitable "I want to go home".
I definitely did not want to go home. More than that, I did not want her to want to go home.
"Look, a soap plant, the people that were…
sastyk | February 1, 2010At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above the snow...
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache'...
The sun was coming from outside.
That scrawny cry - It was
A choristoer whose C predeeded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality. - Wallace…
pronald | January 21, 2010"Eating with the fullest pleasure- pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance- is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world".
Wendell Berry
pronald | January 1, 2010In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler…
aardvarchaeology | December 17, 2009I've listened to Escape Pod, the science fiction short-story podcast, for four years now. And lately I have become increasingly awed by one of the newer hosts, Norm Sherman. His writing is acerbic, his delivery is deadpan, the guy is just so cool and funny. On the most recent EP episode he played an absolutely sublime H.P. Lovecraft love ballad that he's written and recorded, and it turns out the guy is a veritable Jonathan Coulton! Only one who speaks as well.
Cuz you're my quasi-icthyan angel
You're my half amphibian queen
You're the Overlord of my Universe
You're the Tormentor of my Dreams…
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2009One of the best friends I made during my decade in the Tolkien Society is Florence Vilén; poet, novelist, connoisseuse of art and letters. She recently published a volume of poetry, Purpurpränt. Dikter med rim och reson. And earlier tonight when she visited us she threw out one of the aristocratic one-liners she delights in.
Florence once told me off the cuff, "The educated layman became extinct about 1940". Tonight she happily proclaimed, "I have learned my entire vocabulary of obscene English words from the Times Literary Supplement".
pronald | November 7, 2009I am traveling now far away from home towards a large lake in Zurich. What a perfect time to receive this poem from Jan Visser.
Le Lac (written in 1820 by Alphonse de Lamartine)
Ainsi, toujours poussés vers de nouveaux rivages,
dans la nuit éternelle emportés sans retour,
ne pourrons-nous jamais sur l'océan des âges
jeter l'ancre un seul jour?
à lac! l'année à peine a fini sa carrière,
et près des flots chéris qu'elle devait revoir,
regarde! je viens seul m'asseoir sur cette pierre
où tu la vis s'asseoir!
Tu mugissais ainsi sous ces roches profondes;
ainsi tu te brisais sur leurs…
aardvarchaeology | September 29, 2009
11-y-o Junior bought his first own album last Saturday: Mika's The Boy Who Knew Too Much. (My own first was Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward, bought at age 12 in '84 or '85). It's an excellent record once you've gotten used to Mika's queeny (and Queenish) style of singing: catchy studio pop. And Junior has this awesome "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" mishearing of one of the songs. When he told me about it and played me "By the Time" I couldn't hear it any other way either.
"By the time I'm dreaming
and you've crept out on me sleeping
I'm busy in the place for underwear"
What Mika actually…
bioephemera | September 7, 2009
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
-John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
On rereading the whole "Ode," this line strikes me as a serious blemish on a beautiful poem, and the reason must be that either I fail to understand it, or that it is a statement which is untrue. And I suppose that Keats meant something by it, however remote his truth and his beauty may have been from these words in ordinary…
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2009I'm finishing writing a book and you guys will have the opportunity to review the manuscript some time towards late summer. The working title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats. Elite Settlements and Political Geography AD 375-1000 in Ãstergötland, Sweden.
The title alludes to the Old English epic poem about Beowulf. Set mainly in 6th century Denmark, it is all about the petty kings of the time whose political life was centred upon the feasting hall. That's where raids were planned, guests entertained, loot from raids shared out, religious rituals performed, epic poetry about raids listened…