What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

[sovay]

I just got home and I wanted to write about several things including the Oscars, but Ursula K. Le Guin has died. I was just looking at her latest collection of nonfiction in the bookstore. Knocked the keystone out of your arch, didn't it? I can't estimate her importance to me and right now I'm not going to try. I learned about words from her (I learned to swear from her Coyote). Winter gave me language for myself and Orsinia gave me ways of looking at history. She was one of the writers I studied as well as loved, prose and poetry, whatever genre she worked in and whether I thought it worked or not; she cared about the true names of things and things that can't be simply spoken. The last time I had to talk about her, I wrote a poem. Everything is in boxes but her Complete Orsinia (2016), so I will read it. I always wanted one more tale from that imaginary country. I talk about landscape: she was a galaxy.

Comments

[nineweaving]

I talk about landscape: she was a galaxy.

Her light still travels.

Nine

[sovay]

Her light still travels.

Thank you. I have been saying that I knew she wasn't immortal, but I wanted her to be. So that's what her words are for.

[labingi]

Right there with you.

[sovay]

Right there with you.

Thank you.

*hugs*

[gwynnega]

I knew she wasn't immortal, but I wanted her to be.

Exactly.

[cyphomandra]

I knew this would have to come but it’s still a terrible absence. My first Le Guin was Tombs of Atuan, and it showed me so many things; I learn from it again every time I go back. Her writing book Steering the Craft is my favourite book on how to write. I have completely failed to put her into the past tense in a comment I left on a friend’s blog, asking for recommendations.

[selkie]

I read the Coyote story on the Metro this morning. Sigh. It really would be best if some people could live forever.

[selidor]

I don't even know where to start.
(looks at username)
Well, I've managed to drag a decent stack of her books around the world for more than five moves so far, and it's got higher in that time, so at least there is a fraction of her words I can look at tonight.

Bright the hawk's flight, on the empty sky.

[sovay]

I knew this would have to come but it’s still a terrible absence.

And this was just such a bad year for it.

I have completely failed to put her into the past tense in a comment I left on a friend’s blog, asking for recommendations.

I like that. Maybe you shouldn't.

[sovay]

Bright the hawk's flight, on the empty sky.

Yes.

*hugs*

[sovay]

I read the Coyote story on the Metro this morning.

As far as I can tell, Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987) was the very first Le Guin I read, even before Catwings or Earthsea or the Ekumen. I really meant it when I said that I learned words from Coyote that I'd never seen before. And a lot of other things from the rest of the stories and poems, but shape-change, especially.

It really would be best if some people could live forever.

I know her words will last, but it's not the same. I always wanted to know what she would say next.