On the Nature of Things | Forum

It will be windy for a while until it isn’t. The waves will shoal. A red-legged
cormorant will trace her double along glassy water, forgetting they are hungry.
The sea will play this motif over and over, but there will be no preparing for it
otherwise. Water will quiver in driftwood. Sound preceding absence,
a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes
disappearing into surf. And when the low tide comes lapping and clear, the curled
fronds of seaweed will furl and splay, their algal sisters brushing strands
against sands where littleneck clams feed underwater. Light rain will fall
and one cannot help but lean into the uncertainty of the sea. Bow: a knot
of two loops, two loose ends, our bodies on either side of this shore where we
will dip our hands to feel what can’t be seen. Horseshoe crabs whose blue
blood rich in copper will reach for cover, hinged between clouds and
sea. It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands,
hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you.
I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.


Diana Khoi Nguyen, “Vow.”

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

- Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle II (1), 1733-1734

I am his Highness’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

~ Alexander Pope.
Epigram written in the 1730s, engraved on the collar of one of his puppies,
whom he gave to Frederick, Prince of Wales.

A belated happy Robert Burns Day | Burns Nicht.

Verses written on a window of the Inn at Carron

We cam' na here to view your warks,
In hopes to be mair wise,
But only, lest we gang to hell,
It may be nae surprise:
But when we tirl'd at your door,
Your porter dought na bear us;
Sae may, shou'd we to hell's yetts come,
Your billy Satan sair us!

~ Robert Burns

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 10:12 am

Typhoon wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 6:22 am

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2024 7:00 am

edit: Keep in mind no one has cut off water to the building- but drinking tap water is beneath them in their struggle.

If we had some ham we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs

~ P. J. O'Rourke

The spokewoman's page at Columbia U:


GMc1F4gXwAI984M.jpg


The Postmodernism Generator could not do better.

[For some odd reason, her page is no longer available.]

A seminar organized by her:

ACLA | Energy Imaginaries Beyond Fossil Fuels: New Places, Times, and Methods

Don't forget to hold on to your tents, you're going to need them after you graduate.

goodness

It just so happens that I've been critiquing and editing a few similar such poets for his or her portfolios for masters programs, and let me tell 'ya, "woof!" (There are these sorts of jarring style changes where the authorial voice goes from sanctimonious lecturing on big ideas to cliche and quasi-folksy language, a sort that would've been considered phony half a century ago so now it is just some kitsch antique being used.)

Everyone (and by everyone, its me counted multiple times and then imagining others are on board by looking at shadows) wants to make fun of the gobbledygook as a useless professional cover but it's all kind of sad. So much of it is just feral or barbarous children not raised right. Zero teachers; zero firmness.

It's embarrassing to tell a student going for a masters degree what an "Ode" is.

It's embarrassing to tell a student going for a masters degree what an "Ode" is.

Muh student loan is what be ode, bruh.

The paying through the nose has just begun. I envision a million workshops in the future.

I drank with Everette often after he lost his faculty position. He died of alcoholism and of thinking Huckleberry Finn was the greatest novel ever written and that John Barth was the world’s most creative novelist.

IRRELEVANT

I’m not going to
dignify Mozart
or metaphysics
any longer by
pretending they touch
me. I won’t even
say I like these leaves
except as they swirl
against a special
emptiness. Nothing
is relevant since
losing you is what
my life is about.

— Everette Maddox, The Everette Maddox Songbook

Did you hang out with the literary crowd down in New Orleans?

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 12:54 am Did you hang out with the literary crowd down in New Orleans?

Not much. The Maple Leaf Bar was the intersection. Poetry readings on Sunday afternoons and doing laundry while James Booker played stride piano for free on Tuesday nights.