To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last

[sovay]

My poem "Every Night and All" has been accepted by Nightmare Magazine. It is a poem of plague as much as the underworld; the title comes from the refrain of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge," which I learned as a child from the singing of Buffy Sainte-Marie. It has threaded through my work ever since. (It plays a fleeting but central role in "The Boatman's Cure.") Years later I discovered she was singing a variation on the classical arrangement by Benjamin Britten, but as much as I admire the eerie lilt of Peter Pears' famously dry white tenor, less like the living waking the dead than one ghost calling another down, the old sistrum jangle behind Sainte-Marie terrified me in childhood and no amount of strings and horns can change that even now.

Comments

[sovay]

Speaking of the earth singing, I wish Lal Waterson had ever done the "Lyke-Wake Dirge."

I'm really surprised the Watersons never recorded it. It would have fit anywhere on Frost and Fire (1965).

Congratulations. Your poem wakes.

Thank you.

[nineweaving]

You'd think they would have, it being so much their landscape, but no. And now I keep imagining they must have, in some alternative world I can't get to.

Nine

[sovay]

And now I keep imagining they must have, in some alternative world I can't get to.

I mean, you did write it.

[nineweaving]

I mean, you did write it.

That's one of the nicest compliments I've ever had. I'm pink with pleasure.

*hugs*

Nine