Your mother arrives from the world of the dead

[sovay]

My poem "Wisdom" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. It's a piece I conceived of while staying with strange_selkie and darthrami last July, though it turned out to want to be written at this year's Readercon; it has to do with the postwar fate of the fools of Chelm and is entirely unrelated to the fact that Tisha B'Av began tonight, except that I find the conjunction appropriate.

This afternoon yielded frozen yogurt from BerryLine with Eric (I correctly diagnosed the existence and location of the original store on Arrow Street from the presence of a passerby with a medium-sized cup of blueberry-banana, having been previously unaware of any locations other than the one on Mass. Ave.) and a successful pass through two used book stores: I am now in possession of Jane Campion's screenplay for The Piano (1993), David R. McCann's Early Korean Literature: Selections and Translations (2000), Nathaniel Deutsch's The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World (2003), and Théophile Gautier's My Fantoms (2008). The last is making me particularly happy; if Gautier was not one of Tanith Lee's formative influences, then evidently he should have been one of her muses, because the seven stories collected and translated by Richard Holmes are populated by diabolical actors and obsessed painters and beautiful vampires and priests and sexually predatory ghosts of Pompeii; I love the Symbolists. I may go back for the children's picture book about Paganini, if it's not gone by the next time I'm in Harvard Square. It had a terrifying angel.

I have got a dentist's appointment tomorrow.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

A good day!

Nine

[sovay]

A good day!

I considered it a success!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Some shops seem to change their location at whim, and the streets of Cambridge also seem given to strange and capricious shifts, so you are very lucky to have found that yoghurt shop. Your book finds are great; if I recall correctly, David McCann did some great translations of Korean poetry (well, I don't read Korean, so actually I can't say if they're great, but the poems in English are wistful and angry and beautiful).

Congratulations on the poem, and that's good news about the dentist, too.

[sovay]

and the streets of Cambridge also seem given to strange and capricious shifts

I believe that; I hadn't even known Arrow Street existed until I started walking in its probable direction. (The passerby was carrying a very new cup of blueberry-banana, which is how I knew there had to be another location; with the heat yesterday, she couldn't have walked up from Porter Square without arriving at Harvard with a cup of yogurt milkshake. I just retraced the corner she'd come around and down the most likely angle of small hitherto unnoticed street. Sherlock Holmes wouldn't have awarded me any prizes, but since it resulted in frozen yogurt, I was quite pleased.)

Your book finds are great; if I recall correctly, David McCann did some great translations of Korean poetry (well, I don't read Korean, so actually I can't say if they're great, but the poems in English are wistful and angry and beautiful).

I have been cautioned about his introductions, but I am looking forward to the poems themselves.

Congratulations on the poem, and that's good news about the dentist, too.

Thank you!

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the poem acceptance!

And on your literary finds (and frozen yogurt). if Gautier was not one of Tanith Lee's formative influences, then evidently he should have been one of her muses, because the seven stories collected and translated by Richard Holmes are populated by diabolical actors and obsessed painters and beautiful vampires and priests and sexually predatory ghosts of Pompeii--this sounds like something I'd love. I've yet to read Gautier.

[sovay]

Congratulations on the poem acceptance!

Thank you!

this sounds like something I'd love. I've yet to read Gautier.

I had no more than heard of him until yesterday; I have no hesitations whatsoever about recommending the collection.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Gautier's "La Morte Amoreuse"--here translated as "The Priest", I think--was one of those stories that seemed to pop up in almost every vampire anthology I read, growing up. As you know, I love Decadence as well, lit and fig.;) But Pompeiian ghosts?! Excellent!

[sovay]

But Pompeiian ghosts?! Excellent!

"Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompéi" (1852), here translated as "The Tourist." I would have bought the collection for the story; it was just my luck that the rest turned out to be equally awesome, including the one in which archly and colorfully awful things happen to the painter-poet/authorial stand-in who reads too much E.T.A. Hoffmann. I think you'd like them all.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a lovely afternoon!
The McCann volume has weirdly imbalanced mini-introductions for the pieces included, so if things don't quite make sense or seem to be missing, it Isn't You. His translations do tend to be fairly good, I'm told. (I was told it again while complaining about those mini-intros to one of his former students, who taught the class I audited last year....)

[sovay]

Sounds like a lovely afternoon!

It was! I couldn't quite repeat the feat today, but there's always tomorrow.

The McCann volume has weirdly imbalanced mini-introductions for the pieces included, so if things don't quite make sense or seem to be missing, it Isn't You. His translations do tend to be fairly good, I'm told.

Thank you. This actually very useful for me to know, since McCann is going to be my introduction to early Korean literature, unless you count some random sijo and Chunhyang. Do you have anyone you'd recommend for overview and background instead?

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Do you have anyone you'd recommend for overview and background instead?

Sadly, no. There is the ubiquitous Peter H. Lee, who inter alia has edited a history of Korean literature (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003); I've read enough bits of his work and of others', now, to feel that I don't quite trust him, scholastically speaking. I've been piecing together a context very slowly. McCann's intro-lets don't really hurt anything. It just seems, from his articles, that he could've put in a bit more effort for the putative undergrads who're to buy this little collection (because McCann does have useful things to say sometimes).

Curious to find out what you think of the book later!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the acceptance! Glad to hear of the new books and frozen yoghurt.

Very glad you've got a dentist's appointment at last, and I hope all goes well there.

[sovay]

Congratulations on the acceptance!

Thank you!

Very glad you've got a dentist's appointment at last, and I hope all goes well there.

So far, I think, so good . . .

[gwynnega]

Congratulations on the poem acceptance!

That Gautier book sounds amazing.

[sovay]

Congratulations on the poem acceptance!

Thank you!

That Gautier book sounds amazing.

All hail the New York Review of Books.