Said you want to dance while the world stops

[sovay]

Today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #59. The issue is themed around music, fire, and ghosts; it contains especially recommendable work by Craig Rodgers, Alexandra Seidel, Tim Jeffreys, F. Brett Cox, Stephanie M. Wytovich, and Davian Aw, as well as my poems "The Great Fire" and "The Women Around Achilles." The latter was written as a gloss on the story of Achilles on Skyros, a piece of post-Homeric midrash whose gender essentialism has always sat badly with me; the former is a very recent take on chronic illness and politics. There is a ridiculous typo in one of them which is entirely my fault.

1. Last night I attended the premiere of Michael Veloso's Trinity (2018) at Lexington High School. I desperately want a recording. I have very high standards for atomic art and this piece easily exceeds them; I know less about twenty-first-century classical music than I should, but anything where I can hear neutrons clicking and cascading and the furnace churn at a fireball's heart is a success by me. It was not quite as weird to revisit my old high school auditorium as I had been worrying.

2. I woke this morning hearing the last stanza of Kipling's "The Widow's Party"—Bellamy's setting that uses the tune of "Dol-Li-A." All I can remember of my dreams is that I was singing it; I don't know when or for whom. It's been in my head all day, especially when I walked to the library and back to pick up a research book. We broke a King and we built a road—

3. I appreciate handful_ofdust tagging me Leslie Howard in one of the cuter moments of Berkeley Square (1933). I also appreciate her commentary on this photograph of Ida Lupino, Roscoe Karns, and Toby Wing. Whatever they just suggested, he'd be an idiot to refuse.

4. I don't understand what kind of person could read the headline "Green-haired turtle that breathes through its genitals added to endangered list" and not want to save it on the spot.

5. I am never not going to be happy that my fifth-grade teachers taught us about probability by teaching us to play craps so that we learned (a) about probability (b) the house always wins.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Number 5 is indeed praiseworthy.

The author's description of Trinity is intriguing. What other atomic themed art did it bring to mind?

[moon_custafer]

I have very high standards for atomic art

Yesterday I learned of the Goiânia accident, which was..... I mean, at least the sailors on the K-19 were *aware* they were on a nuclear sub; this was civilians making the wrong call at (almost) every single turn.

[selkie]

You also acquired reams of hockey slang completely unflinchingly out of love for your godchild! And her parents!

[gwynnega]

I love that gifset from Berkeley Square.

[sami]

... that turtle

I want to save it and also keep it as a pet.

[thisbluespirit]

4. Wow, that is quite the turtle!

There is a ridiculous typo in one of them which is entirely my fault.

Oh, no! How annoying. Still it sounds like an excellent edition - with two v excellent poems in there.

[poliphilo]

...A courthouse stands where the Reg'ment goed....

Now I'll be singing it all day too.

[coraline]

I am so so sad angry that a combination of really unpleasant health stuff meant I missed the trinity concert - I had SO been looking forward to it, for many reasons.
I also hope there is a recording.

[negothick]

Only you, sovay, would think "Dollia" rather than "Liverpool Lullaby" in response to the Brian Peters/Anni Fentiman recording. I had to trace the 60s song, familiar to me from Judy Collins, back to its source--which was "Dollia."
"Liverpool Lullaby" by Stan Kelly "is based on a Tyneside song [Sandgate Dandling Song] written by Robert Nunn (1808-1853), a blind fiddler, to a traditional tune called Dollia:

When daddy'd drunk he'll take a knife
And threaten sair to take my life.
Who wouldn't be a keelman's wife
To have a man like Johnny?

Stan Kelly has reshaped the song in modern Liverpool terms without sacrificing any of its character and without parodying it.'

Kipling could have had the blind fiddler's version--or the original--in mind when shaping this poem. It's a perfect match for the narrative voice and the heavy weight of irony.

[asakiyume]

I got my subscribers copy of Not One of Us that same day, and was recommending it to people on Twitter. Both of your poems are brilliant--I remember very vividly "The Great Fire"; so powerful. I didn't remember the Achilles poem (please don't tell me I commented on it at length before--I'll feel so demoralized), but I think it's breathtaking.

I'm guessing what the typo must be, and I'm here to say, the language works well either way. (But I know there's a matter of intention, so.)