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Because of the Spanish wreck I tackled the hill
A draft of the program for this year's ICFA is now online. I am left praying that the conference will produce an annual publication of all its papers, because who schedules things like "The Hidden Mystical Sublime: The Poetry of Algernon Swinburne Dramatized in Aleister Crowley's Rite of Venus," "Uh Oh, They're Learning: The New Dangers and Heroes of the Zombie Apocalypse," and "Insects and Automatism: Angela Carter, ETA Hoffmann, and Guillermo del Toro" all across from one another? I am personally in competition with papers on slipstream, humor and the sublime, David Bowie, and Grindhouse. I need the ability either to time-travel or to duplicate myself. Possibly both.
On that line, today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Home and Away, the annual not-Not One of Us publication. Within its black-and-white pages can be found my poems "January" and "The Second Ghost" (for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kijjohnson), as well as handful_ofdust's "The Dream of the Astronaut," Brad C. Hodson's "The Perfect Jackson," Patricia Russo's "Why," and other stories neither here nor there. As soon as I have a link for purchase, I'll put it up.
How is it I am just now discovering George Mackay Brown?
On that line, today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Home and Away, the annual not-Not One of Us publication. Within its black-and-white pages can be found my poems "January" and "The Second Ghost" (for
kijjohnson), as well as handful_ofdust's "The Dream of the Astronaut," Brad C. Hodson's "The Perfect Jackson," Patricia Russo's "Why," and other stories neither here nor there. As soon as I have a link for purchase, I'll put it up.How is it I am just now discovering George Mackay Brown?
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Me too! All those papers you mention sound fascinating, and I'm on the wrong coast to hear 'em!!
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Come to Florida! Invent any excuse!
(Seriously, I am taking home as many notes and abstracts as I can. This conference is shaping up to be seriously awesome.)
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Bilocation. That's the power you need.
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Happy very early birthday! I discovered him last night through "John Barleycorn," which
III. Ikey crosses the Ward Hill to the Spanish Wreck
Because of the Spanish wreck I tackled the hill.
I heard of the apples,
Wine kegs, mermaids, green silk bale upon bale.
My belly hollowed with hunger on the hill.
From Black Meg's patch
I borrowed a chicken and a curl or two of kale.
We both wore patches, me and that harvest hill.
Past kirk and croft,
Past school and smithy I went, past manse and mill.
On the black height of the hill
I lay like a god.
Far below the crofters came and went, and suffered, and did my will.
I wrung a rabbit and fire from the flank of the hill.
In slow dark circles
Another robber of barrows slouched, the kestrel.
Corn and nets on the downslope of the hill.
The girl at Reumin
Called off her dog, poured me a bowl of ale.
I found no silk or brandy. A bit of sail
Covered a shape at the rock.
Round it the women set up their soundless wail.
You see why I need more.
Bilocation. That's the power you need.
Dude. Yeah. Or something quantum mechanical.
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Oh, it's just heartpainingly lovely, the way her stuff is, too.
I like this: On the black height of the hill/I lay like a god./Far below the crofters came and went, and suffered, and did my will.
And this tune, this John Barleycorn--I'm going to learn to sing it.
As I recall, your birthday is also close to George Mackay Brown's. So, I salute you with very, very early birthday greetings, too. I shouldn't be surprised, by the way, if you do master bilocation. I'll look for you here and there.
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I have transcribed the lyrics. I was unable to find the printed poem to check them against online, however, so just be warned. But I have also been listening to the song without end . . .
As I was ploughing in my field
The hungriest furrow ever torn
Followed my plough and she did cry
Have you seen my mate John Barleycorn?
Says I, Has he got a yellow beard?
Is he always whispering night and morn?
Does he up and dance when the wind is high?
Says she, That's my John Barleycorn
One day they took a cruel knife
Oh, I am weary and forlorn
They struck him at his golden prayer
And they killed my priest John Barleycorn
They laid him on a wooden cart
Of all his summer glory shorn
Then threshers broke with stick and stave
The shining bones of Barleycorn
The miller's stone went round and round
They rolled him underneath with scorn
The miller filled a hundred sacks
With the crushed pride of John Barleycorn
The baker came by and bought his dust
That was a madman, I'll be sworn
He burned my hero in a rage
Of twisting flames, my Barleycorn
The brewer came by and stole his heart
Alas that I was ever born
He thrust it in a brimming vat
And he drowned my dear John Barleycorn
And now I travel narrow roads
My hungry feet are dark and worn
But no one in this winter world
Has seen my dancer Barleycorn
I took a bannock from my bag
Lord, how her empty mouth did yawn
Says I, Your starving days are done
For here's your lost John Barleycorn
I took a bottle from my pouch
I poured out whisky in a horn
Says I, Put by your grief, for here
Is the merry blood of Barleycorn
She ate, she drank, she laughed, she danced
And home with me she did return
By candlelight in my old straw bed
She wept no more for Barleycorn
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You've inspired me to look up George Mackay Brown. Very interesting--I'll have to read more of his. I've not read much Orcadian poetry before, but there's some brilliant stuff in Shetlandic. Have you ever read any Christine De Luca? Here's one I like: Da Nort Boat.
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Never before, but I like the mix of dialects and registers.
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I've been meaning to seek out more of her work--what I know is mostly from an antho called Wish I Were Here that put together Scottish minority-language poets with Scottish poets from immigrant backgrounds. She's a compilation called Wast wi the Valkyries. I have to believe that anything with such a name must be worth reading.
I suppose now that school's back in session I'll have to do some ILL'ing for fun whilst the semester is young.
Oh, and as I'm thinking on't--do you have any methods for remembering your dreams? Mine are less pyrotechnic than your own, as perhaps you might've noticed from my LJ, but I've had lately some frustrating experiences where they slipped away ere I was able to fix them in memory, and suspected there might've been something worth retaining therein.
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Because I thought you'd read everything?
Nine
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Hardly!
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It's like candy for my brain...
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"Puck You, Shakespeare: Gaiman and Vess’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream"
"Transgendered Characters in Brazilian Speculative Fiction: from the Sublime to the Absurd"
"Last Summer and Self-Deception—or What Does It Mean if Shrek and Spidey Act like Jack Sparrow?"
"The Alien as the Lacanian Other in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and Gregory Maguire’s Mirror Mirror"
"All Good Poets Improve on What They’ve Stolen, as T.S. Eliot Said to Dan Simmons"
"'Details Plucked Unhesitatingly from the Real': Kantian Sublime in Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To..."
"Rendering Virtual and Real Life Fear: Game Interfaces as Liminal Pathways to Horror in Manabu Nishizawa’s Playstation2 Game Lifeline"
"The Origin of (Sub) Species: Coalescent Fuzzy Set"
"Italy is magica: Italian Fantastic and French Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s"
"The Overdetermined Sublime in Dostoevsky’s The Double and Kafka’s The Trial"
"Harshin Ur Squeez": Visual Rhetoric of Racisms in LiveJournal Fandoms"
Nine
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In that connection, may I commend
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I think that counts for something.
In that connection, may I commend orkneyjar to your attention?
Cool. Thank you!
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Annually, I believe. We should totally go next year, too.
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That John Barleycorn song looks scrumptious; I want to get the recording and learn it myself.
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That is an extremely intelligent way to do it!
That John Barleycorn song looks scrumptious; I want to get the recording and learn it myself.
It's posted in my first reply to
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Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, and Ed Trickett's And So Will We Yet (1990).
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re: XC. Apologies for not posting on this earlier. That is indeed unexpected! (So was archery...) It probably WON'T surprise you that I was also in various forms of track in HS (no coordination required!); I enjoyed it more, and have kept up with it, though I also was fairly mediocre.
Do you hike?
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