She left you hungry, she's satisfied, she watched you wilting

[sovay]

My poems "A Death of Hippolytos" and "The Other Lives," published last October in The Cascadia Subduction Zone 6.4, are now free to read online with the rest of their issue. The first was inspired by Jules Dassin's Phaedra (1962) and especially by this afterthought, the second was written for Rose Lemberg after discussing Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). gwynnega has poetry in the same issue.

I had heard absolutely nothing of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) until this afternoon, but the trailer makes it look like something I should very definitely see in December. It looks like William Alland and Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) retold through Jane Yolen's "The Lady and the Merman," which has haunted me since elementary school when I first read Neptune Rising: Songs and Tales of the Undersea Folk (1982). It looks sea-deep.

Speaking of oceanic things for which I may existentially blame Caitlín R. Kiernan: Delphine Cencig, "Poulpe Fiction."

In fact, I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow.

Comments

[kenjari]

I hadn't known Del Toro had another movie coming out. I really admire his work, and this looks wonderful.

[sovay]

I hadn't known Del Toro had another movie coming out.

It's like the year I didn't realize Pacific Rim was happening until suddenly there was anticipatory fanart for it everywhere, only more so. I'm really looking forward.

[ashlyme]

"like uncut apples": wonderful.

That photograph is gorgeous as hell. It's very Caitlin and very you!

Good luck with the appointment!

[sovay]

"like uncut apples": wonderful.

Thank you!

That photograph is gorgeous as hell. It's very Caitlin and very you!

I kind of want to write it a story except I think I might have done so already.

Good luck with the appointment!

Thanks! So far I have no doctor's appointments tomorrow and I'm hoping to keep it that way.

[dhampyresa]

"Poulpe Fiction."

OMG :D

[sovay]

OMG

I love the shadow of suckers visible beneath the skin of the throat.

[radiantfracture]

The hearts! This makes me think of Sappho:

"like uncut apples ... "like the trembling stillness of wild hares"

-- that kills me. Also the closing couplet.

[sovay]

-- that kills me. Also the closing couplet.

Thank you. I take comparisons to Sappho seriously.

(There is a lot of her in my head.)

[radiantfracture]

Do you have a favorite translation? I am very fond of If Not, Winter, but I don't have enough Greek to know if it's true.

[sovay]

Do you have a favorite translation?

I am not a good person to ask on this front: I read Sappho for the first time in an English translation I can barely remember in ninth grade and then I read her in Greek in college, so I think of her in Greek. I like Anne Carson's commitment to the fragmentary survival of the poems, but I feel her versions are sometimes unnecessarily minimalist, beyond what actually reflects the diction as well as the quantity of the fragments. I'll try to think about this question.

[radiantfracture]

Oh, I'm envious. I only have one term of Greek, so I can sound out the letters (rustily) and identify some words, but not read.

sometimes unnecessarily minimalist

That sounds like Anne Carson, indeed. I'm glad to know there's more to be drawn from the fragments, as If Not, Winter is so spare. (Though I agree that it's a wonderful performance of absence.)