Yui-chan
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I'm really glad y'all are enjoying these. It's really interesting to me as a poetry-illiterate type of person to see what the broader community views as 'good poems'. I think I would probably have scoffed at some of these, but the group coordinator's commentary has helped me understand why they appeal to others.
I'm kind of sad that Poetry Month is almost over. Anyway, on to the next!
~Yui
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April 17, 2006
An Offer Received In This Morning's Mail:
(On misreading an ad for a set of CDs entitled "Beethoven's Complete
Symphonies")
Amy Gerstler
The Musical Heritage Society
invites you to accept
Beethoven's Complete Sympathies.
A full $80.00 value, yours for $49.95.
The brooding composer
of "Ode to Joy" now delighting
audiences in paradise nightly
knows your sorrows. Just look
at his furrowed brow, his thin
lipped grimace. Your sweaty
2 am writhings have touched
his great teutonic heart. Peering
invisibly over your shoulder
he reads those poems you scribble
on memo pads at the office,
containing lines like o lethal blossom,
I am your marionette forever,
and a compassionate smile trembles
at the corners of his formerly stern
mouth. (He'd be thrilled to set
your poems to music.) This immortal
master, gathered to the bosom
of his ancestors over a century ago,
has not forgotten those left behind
to endure gridlock and mind-ache,
wearily crosshatching the earth's surface
with our miseries, or belching complaints
into grimy skies, further besmirching
the firmament. But just how relevant
is Beethoven these days, you may ask.
Wouldn't the sympathies of a modern
composer provide a more up-to-date
form of solace? Well, process this info-byte
21st century skeptic. A single lock
of Beethoven's hair fetched over $7,000
last week at auction. The hairs were then
divided into lots of two or three and resold
at astronomical prices. That's how significant
he remains today. Beethoven the great-hearted,
who used to sign his letters ever thine,
the unhappiest of men, wants you
to know how deeply sorry he is
that you're having such a rough time.
Prone to illness, self-criticism
and squandered affections -
Ludwig (he'd like you to call him that,
if you'd do him the honor),
son of a drunk and a depressive,
was beaten, cheated, and eventually
went stone deaf. He too had to content
himself with clutching his beloved's
toothmarked yellow pencils
(as the tortured scrawls in his notebooks
show) to sketch out symphonies, concerti,
chamber music, etcetera-works
that still brim, as does your disconsolate
soul, with unquenched fire and brilliance.
Give Beethoven a chance to show
how much he cares. Easy financing
available. And remember:
a century in heaven has not calmed
the maestro's celebrated temper, so act now.
For god's sake don't make him wait.
[Ha! I adore when someone can take a silly idea and run with it.
Talk about commitment to the joke, and it ends up being kind of
strangely lovely because of it.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth --
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April 16, 2006
For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu
A.M. Klein
In pairs,
as if to illustrate their sisterhood,
the sisters pace the hospital garden walks.
In their robes black and white immaculate hoods
they are like birds,
the safe domestic fowl of the House of God.
O biblic birds, who fluttered to me in my childhood illnesses
- me little, afraid, ill, not of your race, -
the cool wing for my fever, the hovering solace,
the sense of angels-
be thanked, O plumage of paradise, be praised.
[Awww, nuns.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem,
Bob Hicok -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/16
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April 15, 2006
There Are Two Worlds
Larry Levis
Perhaps the ankle of a horse is holy.
Crossing the Mississippi at dusk, Clemens thought
Of a sequel in which Huck Finn, in old age, became
A hermit, & insane. And never wrote it.
And perhaps all that he left out is holy.
The river, anyway, became a sacrament when
He spoke of it, even though
The last ten chapters were a failure he devised
To please America, & make his lady
Happy: to buy her silk, furs, & jewels with
Hues no one in Hannibal had ever seen.
There, above the river, if
The pattern of the stars is a blueprint for a heaven
Left unfinished,
I also believe the ankle of a horse,
In the seventh furlong, is as delicate as the fine lace
Of faith, & therefore holy.
I think it was only Twain's cynicism, the smell of a river
Lingering in his nostrils forever, that kept
His humor alive to the end.
I don't know how he managed it.
I used to make love to a woman, who,
When I left, would kiss the door she held open for me,
As if instead of me, as if she already missed me.
I would stand there in the cold air, breathing it,
Amused by her charm, which was, like the scent of a river,
Provocative, the dusk & first lights along the shore.
Should I say my soul went mad for a year, &
Could not sleep? To whom should I say so?
She was gentle, & intended no harm.
If the ankle of a horse is holy, & if it fails
In the stretch & the horse goes down, &
The jockey in the bright shout of his silks
Is pitched headlong onto
The track, & maimed, & if later, the horse is
Destroyed, & all that is holy
Is also destroyed: hundreds of bones & muscles that
Tried their best to be pure flight, a lyric
Made flesh, then
I would like to go home, please.
Even though I betrayed it, & left, even though
I might be, at such a time as I am permitted
To go back to my wife, my son -- no one, or
No more than a stone in a pasture full
Of stones, full of the indifferent grasses,
(& Huck Finn insane by then & living alone)
It will be, it might be still,
A place where what can only remain holy grazes, &
Where men might, also, approach with soft halters,
And, having no alternative, lead that fast world
Home -- though it is only to the closed dark of stalls,
And though the men walk ahead of the horses slightly
Afraid, & at times in awe of their
Quickness, & how they have nothing to lose, especially
Now, when the first stars appear slowly enough
To be counted, & the breath of horses makes white signatures
On the air: Last Button, No Kidding, Brief Affair --
And the air is colder.
[On this lovely Saturday, one of my all-time favorite poems. Larry
Levis is very good at weaving together a bunch of disparate elements
into something complex and lovely and distinct: here it's the idea of
holiness, and Huckleberry Finn (from which Hemingway says all modern
American literature comes), and the decay or dissolution of beautiful
things, and the river, and the South, and horses, and sorrow, and
contentment.
.... or such is my guess anyway! I can read this poem over and over
and I'm still not sure I know what it's getting at, but I think that's
probably what makes it great.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: America, Allen Ginsberg --
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April 14, 2006
Wish For a Young Wife
Theodore Roethke
My lizard, my lively writher,
May your limbs never wither,
May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy's mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun,
When I am undone,
When I am no one.
[The rhythm of those last three lines is wonderful, and the whole
thing is so wistful. I like the idea of this addressed to a child, as
well. It reminds me of Marilynne Robinson's recent novel Gilead --
which is absolutely lovely.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel
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April 13, 2006
Gamin
Frank O'Hara
All the roofs are wet
and underneath smoke
that piles softly in
streets, tongues are
on top of each other
mulling over the night.
We lay against each other
like banks of violets
while the slate slips
off the roof into the
garden of the old lady
next door. She is my
enemy. She hates cats
airplanes and my self
as if we were memories
of war. Bah! When you
are close I thumb my
nose at her and laugh.
[Last year I posted a very energetic city poem by O'Hara (Steps:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/5 ), and this is kind
of its inverse; quiet and indrawn and happily content. I'm in love
with the line "while the slate slips" rolling around my mouth -- say
it out loud to yourself. So good!]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: [this is what you love: more people. you remember],
D.A. Powell -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/13
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Not really, Gyr. I almost forgot...
Insomnia wins the day for us all! G'night,
~Yui
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Re: Errors with PMs.
SQL error: Can't open file: 'thepen_message_text.MYI'. (errno: 145)
SQL error code:
has repeated itself in all of the PM error boxes. Wyvern is drafting an email both to Hostrocket (has their physical server become corrupt at the point where this file is stored?) and to Invision (has the board software been stealth-updated and bugged?), since we cannot find a reason in the Admin CP for this failure. Cross your fingers and wait a few days.
On personal opinion, I believe that the PM database itself isn't corrupt, just that we can't access the part of the board program which reads that database.
Thanks to Wyvern and the customer support department of our host, the problem is now resolved. It looks as though there has been some data loss, however, so if you've sent a PM in the past 24-48 hours that hasn't received a response, you might want to consider resending it.
RE: Tanuchan's comment - I looked into the Archive function and tested my own PM archive to see if I could view the error you're talking about... but everything came through just fine. It's a HTML file with a CSS header, simple as that. Perhaps its your email client? The archive it produces is just an HTML file, not something coded for email, per se. It could be that your client isn't sure how to view it.
Try saving the HTML file to your computer and opening it with your normal browser. If it still comes up as gobbledy-gook, we'll have to talk about more specific issues.
Learning something new every day,
~Yui
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April 12, 2006
Late Ripeness
Czeslaw Milosz
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.
For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.
(translated by Robert Hass)
[i feel like there's something kind of lovely that happens among some
older poets -- a calmness and grace in the face of death, a focus on
religion. It shows up in Roethke's famous villanelle, "The Waking,"
and T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" and here. My favorite line is: "We
forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King." It's
so dreamlike and strangely comforting.
Then again, in his poem "Conversation with Jeanne," Milosz says, "I
don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age." [
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/milosz/a_...with_jeanne.php
] So maybe nobody really knows what's going on. Czeslaw Milosz was
born in Poland in 1911 and was active in the anti-Nazi movement. He
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, Craig Raine -
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April 11, 2006
Anne Hathaway
Carol Ann Duffy
'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …'
(from Shakespeare's will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.
[Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's wife so this is, appropriately
enough, a Shakespearean sonnet, a form I've always loved because of
the punch of that last rhyming couplet. I really like the creativity
in building a love poem like this out of that line from Shakespeare's
will, the link between sex and writing, this idealized but still
lovely look at their relationship. The way it's responding to and
referencing all of his work -- the forests, castles, torchlight,
clifftops, seas.
In her book, The World's Wife, Carol Ann Duffy has written a whole
series of poems by the wives of famous men, some of which are
hilarious. I recommend Mrs. Darwin, which you can read here:
http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoet...html?mode=reply ]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins --
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/11 (one of my absolute
favorites!)
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April 10, 2006.
A Supermarket in California
Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into
the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the
tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never
passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an
hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees
add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past
blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out
on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe?
[This is the first Ginsberg poem I ever read, and is still one of my
all-time favorites. There are a lot of similarities between Ginsberg
and Walt Whitman, maybe the most famous American poet, who wrote a
hundred years earlier. Both wrote poetry for and about ordinary
people, used a style that's almost conversational, and were gay.
Ginsberg teases out the similarities here, especially the loneliness
of being gay in America: "through solitary streets ... home to our
silent cottage." I adore the strange dreaminess of this, and the
vivid language and images. What peaches and what penumbras!]*
* Commentary is by the Yahoo user who created and chose these poems. I wish I could say I have some idea of who she is, but I honestly don't. Contact me if you're interested in some links that can give you more information about her or her Yahoo newsgroup.
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I'm a little late in getting started, but I only found this poem-a-day link yesterday. I thought that the AAA members and other poetry fans here on the site might enjoy the opportunity to read and discuss some 'professional poems' and what makes them great. If they are...
Please feel free to comment and discuss in this thread. I will create a index for those who want to skip right to any given day's poem.
Thank you,
~Yui-chan
- April 10, 2006 - A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg
- April 11, 2006 - Anne Hathaway, Carol Ann Duffy
- April 12, 2006 - Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz
- April 13, 2006 - Gamin, Frank O'Hara
- April 14, 2006 - Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke
- April 15, 2006 - There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis
- April 16, 2006 - For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, A.M. Klein
- April 17, 2006 - An Offer Received In This Morning's Mail: (On misreading an ad for a set of CDs entitled "Beethoven's Complete Symphonies"), Amy Gerstler
- April 18, 2006 - The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin
- April 19, 2006 - The Chores, Frannie Lindsay
- April 20, 2006 - Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
- April 21, 2006 - A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood
- April 22, 2006 - Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
- April 23, 2006 - Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
- April 24, 2006 - Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
- April 25, 2006 - The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel
- April 26, 2006 - since feeling is first, e.e. cummings
- April 27, 2006 - Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
- April 28, 2006 - Dream Song 145, John Berryman
- April 29, 2006 - Fever 103º, Sylvie Plath
- April 30, 2006 - Preludes, T.S Eliot
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There once was a man-cat called Katzie
who really was nobody's patsie.
When pushed to the wall,
(s)he would growl and would snarl,
and then - chomp - you'd be left lots less fatsie.
I like the idea of Pen character limericks. Consider yourselves dared!
Deviously snapping up Katz' idea,
~Yui
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Which server do you mean? Argent Dawn, right?
Clarity desired,
~Yui
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Last weekend I went to see 'Ultraviolet', mainly because my brother wanted to see it and he was buying.
What can I say? The movie is exactly what you would expect - a 20 pound bag of eye candy, and nothing more. (Just watch out for visual cavities after the movie!
) A combination of Kill Bill, Matrix, and Aeon Flux (with various elements of various others), it does pretty well visually in the comic-to-movie genre, except for all the comic-to-movie genre films that have already done what this film does. If you enjoy the genre, then you might want to see it, otherwise, I advise seeing this movie only if you know your attention will be elsewhere.
Spoiler Warning!
I usually enjoy the comic-to-movie genre, but I have to say that Ultraviolet was the worst movie I've seen in a long time. It played like a B Hong Kong flick, rushed through some really rather pathetic attempts to reveal background and personality to us on the characters, and was rife with lines that put me in the mood for some good, Danish Havarti or some lovely English Cheddar. Mila Jovovich looked relatively good, and the special effects were neat enough, but I found the hard-as-nails killer vs. emotionally-vulnerable-woman transitions way, way too extreme to be believable. Ugh. And don't even get me started on the crying man-vampire who went from 'Don't bring your problems to me, girl' to 'OMG, I love you, don't die!!1!one!' >_
Not a fan,
~Yui
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Seatbelts save lives. I'm soooooooo glad you had yours on, Katz. Soooooo glad you're safe after all that. Thank you for doing what you could to protect yourself. We'd miss you horribly if you went away.
Hugs,
~Yui
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I just thought I'd mention... My main server is Mug'thol (now that my guild chose to transfer from Archimonde). If any of you find yourself there, please be sure to let me know. My main character is Rhoelyn of
. FYIing,
~Yui
PS: Twice, I've seen 'Orlan' when I was playing. Both times I sent him the following message:
"So, what would you say if I said 'The Pen is Mightier than the Sword' to you? :)"
Seeing as neither was our Orlan, you can imagine the strange looks I got in response.
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Oh, happy birthday! I'm so glad you told us.
The forum software is definitely not smart enough to warn us when you're a leap-year baby, and I would hate to miss the event. Have a wonderful birthday, Anneal. I hope your family surprises you...
All the best,
~Yui
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OOC: Long live the World of the Two Skies... may its spirit always live on here in the Pen. :-)
Thanks, Wyvie.
You've reminded me of another thing I'd meant to say. I will be posting up the setting descriptions for Twoskies in the Portal room here at the Pen, so maybe it'll inspire someone to spawn a new story or two in the future. Ideas never die. Yep,
~Yui
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Friends,
As of yesterday, the World of Two Skies is officially closed. For those of you that aren't familiar with the site, it was a roleplaying and writing environment that some Pen members helped me create about 6 years ago, and it has been home to a number of fun adventures and interesting characters since then. Unfortunately, as we've all grown up and moved along in our lives, it has slowly become less and less relevant to who we've become, and after some discussions, the members have agreed that it's time for it to be left behind entirely.
I'm pretty sure that everyone with any writing there has already either had a chance to archive their work or let me know that they will need it, but I wanted to make sure to catch everyone. If any of you had something on the closed board that you wanted to save, just let me know by PM or by email (yui-chan AT twoskies DOT net). I'm incapable of actually deleting data (
), but I'd appreciate it if you let me know as soon as possible. Once I archive the database, retrieving your work becomes much more difficult. Thank you. And to those of you who were familiar with Twoskies and came along for the ride, thanks for years of fun and some really great stories. I know I'll always remember the site and our adventures there very fondly.
Yours,
~Yui-chan - the ghost of the Eternal Tavern
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Invision Powerboard's extremely helpful support staff will be upgrading our boards to version 2.1.4 at some point in about the next three days. With the exception of a new version number at the bottom of the screen, the changes should be largely invisible to you, the users, but don't panic if you find the board closed for an hour or so while they are working. The process is not lengthy, so I would be surprised if anyone even notices the board closure.
After the patch is applied, please feel free to report bugs, problems, or concerns here. *cross fingers for none of those*
Thank you,
~Yui-chan
(AKA Elder of Technical Support
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#27
Firefly Thoughts
23 January, 2006
I feel you. There, behind my eyes.
Firefly thoughts that blink on and off.
Clear. Gone. Moved on. Flare again, only to disappear once more.
You shy away when I try to grasp you. Flare again. Fade.
Slip to the side and blink again, sickly bioluminescent.
Blind me first with light, then with darkness and flit further away from my reaching hands.
Until I've forgotten what it's like to hold the line.
Until I've stopped caring that I can't connect.
A chaos cloud of lightning bugs in the cavernous black of my mind.
As time passes, I stop trying to catch you.
For you are beautiful, my dancers.
And I no longer remember what the whole was meant to be.
Or that there should be a whole at all.
Light. Dark. Shifting, lucent insights.
I stare into your twinkling mass and think:
It's so easy to just fall.
Fall into the swirl of scattered, firefly thoughts.
... just fall away...
... and forget.
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Equestrian elegence endlessly exceeds every expectation.
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In a blur of non-color, the shadow that'd been lurking on the wall suddenly detaches itself and wraps around the succubus, resolving a moment later into a familiar form. Yui smiles brightly as she hugs Signe tight, all eloquence lost in joy for her friend.
'Congratulations' is too tame, but it's the best I can do. It couldn't have happened to a nicer, more perfect pair.
With love,
~Yui
April is Poetry Month
in Library
Posted
April 18, 2006