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Whoever said Lord Nelson's dead?
All in all, this was a good weekend. Saturday contained brunch with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior and the usual suspects; Sunday involved schreibergasse, Grace, a five-person game of Elixir, and cooking multiple very tasty dishes; and I am throwing Monday in with the weekend because it included lunch with straussmonster ("epic LOLs"), chai with a beloved professor, and unexpected awesome conversation with duckhalladay on the train back from New Haven. I needed this weekend badly. I now have a recipe for eggplant that I not only tolerate, but love. And my time spent changing lightbulbs leaves me feeling oddly useful.
Leaving the station at Old Saybrook, we passed an abandoned building in a small lot: block concrete walls, the metal door shuttered down, weeds and dead ivies around the lintel and the blind windows. Probably it was a garage or a repair shop, something very mechanical and prosaic. There were trees growing in all around, dustily and dry-leaved in the westering glare. But high on the facing wall were metal letters in a round lowercase font that read apollo, and of course my thoughts jumped to a derelict shrine: not Olympian Apollo, the far-shooter with the silver bow, the lyre-player and the master of the chorus, but Apollo Loxias, the god aslant, whispering out of the dark fates and futures that only in hindsight align themselves into sense. The last few days have been given to experimentation with sonnets. Perhaps the next one should be the hymn-god's. (And if I get it wrong, he will send back the mouse . . .)
Speaking of sonnets, if anyone has favorites to recommend, please feel free to do so. I have been reading primarily Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins and wondering why it took me until now to discover Geoffrey Hill. He's like A Canterbury Tale in iambics. I need a more prolifically-paying job.
gaudior and the usual suspects; Sunday involved schreibergasse, Grace, a five-person game of Elixir, and cooking multiple very tasty dishes; and I am throwing Monday in with the weekend because it included lunch with straussmonster ("epic LOLs"), chai with a beloved professor, and unexpected awesome conversation with duckhalladay on the train back from New Haven. I needed this weekend badly. I now have a recipe for eggplant that I not only tolerate, but love. And my time spent changing lightbulbs leaves me feeling oddly useful.Leaving the station at Old Saybrook, we passed an abandoned building in a small lot: block concrete walls, the metal door shuttered down, weeds and dead ivies around the lintel and the blind windows. Probably it was a garage or a repair shop, something very mechanical and prosaic. There were trees growing in all around, dustily and dry-leaved in the westering glare. But high on the facing wall were metal letters in a round lowercase font that read apollo, and of course my thoughts jumped to a derelict shrine: not Olympian Apollo, the far-shooter with the silver bow, the lyre-player and the master of the chorus, but Apollo Loxias, the god aslant, whispering out of the dark fates and futures that only in hindsight align themselves into sense. The last few days have been given to experimentation with sonnets. Perhaps the next one should be the hymn-god's. (And if I get it wrong, he will send back the mouse . . .)
Speaking of sonnets, if anyone has favorites to recommend, please feel free to do so. I have been reading primarily Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins and wondering why it took me until now to discover Geoffrey Hill. He's like A Canterbury Tale in iambics. I need a more prolifically-paying job.
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Chris
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Elixir? Is that the game where everyone's poisoned and the winner is the person who finds the bottle with the antidote?
There were trees growing in all around, dustily and dry-leaved in the westering glare. But high on the facing wall were metal letters in a round lowercase font that read apollo, and of course my thoughts jumped to a derelict shrine: not Olympian Apollo, the far-shooter with the silver bow, the lyre-player and the master of the chorus, but Apollo Loxias, the god aslant, whispering out of the dark fates and futures that only in hindsight align themselves into sense.
Interesting. I love how much character is invested in your description. And it sounds like a good place to sell Marvin Acme's Disappearing/Reappearing Ink.
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(I know little of modern poetry; Hill crossed my radar because of a Nicholas Howe essay; Howe was an Anglo-Saxonist.)
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And a double sonnet, Valerie Laws' Ann More: Mrs John Donne.
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Strongly seconding this rec. Marilyn Hacker is awesome and a half.
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Apollinaire did some lovely formal work. For the life of me, though, I can't remember whether any of it was in sonnet form.
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Oh dear.
Apollo Loxias, the god aslant, whispering out of the dark fates and futures that only in hindsight align themselves into sense.
First chill of the day. Okay, second. The water heater was being a bit dodgy this morning.
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No, it's a peculiar card game whose effects on other players can include ridiculous nicknames, grandiose third-person narration, recitation of poetry, and striptease. Also high degrees of frustration if you can't put any of these cards into play, but this game worked out fairly well. I still want the lyrics to whatever
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There is. It's what I looked to first, to see how a Petrarchan sonnet worked.
Valerie Laws' Ann More: Mrs John Donne.
Cool. Thank you!
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The station certainly does . . .
I need to go there one of these days...
It's along the sea-coast run of the train, which I love. There are beaches, salt marshes, harbors with cranes and derricks, and rusting docks and bridges. I keep wanting to get out at a stop that isn't mine just to look around.
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That sounds very pleasant in its own right!
Good things, but it still would have been nice to see you.
When do you return from the Uttermost West? I am planning on visiting again.
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I can't believe that was really on Fox News . . .
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You should. I'd love to read it.
and then whatever it is turns out not to be a sonnet in the slightest, but instead a linked string of haiku, or a canzone, or something.
These are the first I've tried since college. I want to branch out.
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I will check her out!
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I'd love to have been in that class.
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I'm very curious now myself. I've never read any of John Updike's poetry.
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Thank you. That was my reaction to the name on the wall.
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As for sonnets, I will get back to you on that one. Have you ever heard of a (very small) publication called Sonnetto Poesia? It's a mixed bag -- with some truly awful stuff, not to mention an apparently obnoxious editor -- but he also publishes some fabulously beautiful sonnets.
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I never have. I'll look into it.
:)
I will not be able to be online past 8:45 P.M. this evening. If you feel inclined, my cell number is 603-738-9014. If you aren't otherwise occupied, feel free ring me up tonight. I'm normally up late so don't worry about that. :)
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The title derives from λοξός, which means slanting, crosswise, ambiguous; it is used also to refer to the plane of the ecliptic.
Here was the double-tongued, whose words move to their meaning like a serpent in a reed-bed, coil and countercoil; how can a man tell all his mind to children, or a god to men?
—Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo (1966)
likewise, I'm going to have to go take a look at that building
Let me know what you find.
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Answering e-mail before crashing for the night, I'm afraid. Today was not particularly exciting, in that I mostly spent it recovering from the weekend, finishing up household chores, and listening about a dozen times in a row to Mission of Burma's "Spider's Web." If you ever wanted to know if it was possible to work freeze-dried kittens into a song, the answer is yes.
What is your icon?
Icon, etc.
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That's awesome.
Sounds like you didn't have the most exciting day yesterday.
It's not a disaster; I don't recharge from people, so time to myself is necessary.
my own computer is, shall we say, out of commission at the moment
I hope that is not a permanent condition . . .