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Death By Sex Machine


I am too lazy to go into too much detail, save to say the poems are better than the titillating title. And power through the first quarter of the chapbook, which was so disappointing that I almost put it down without finishing it, because the rest is three quarters awesome (still a few stinkers, but the ratio is good).

It’s also worthwhile because in a post Trump, post Weinstein environment, her interrogations of the desiring gaze targeting women in various positions of psychic weakness feels more than usually relevant.

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Poetry Aloud


I was in Chicago and decided to re-read Wordsworth’s great epic, The Prelude. Some two hundred odd pages of genius and I chose to… not exactly to read it aloud, but more to mutter the words to myself, so I could hear them (my child noticed me doing that and began doing that herself, stealing my copy of Ben Jonson’s poems and pretending to mutter the words aloud in an Old Navy; luckily, she doesn’t actually understand the lecher’s saucy and scatalogical jibes).

For Wordsworth, it wasn’t about rhyme, but meter. I needed to hear the meter.

The Ben Jonson I mentioned, was about the rhyme, because pronunciations are different.

I love Byron’s elegiac, So we’ll go no more a roving, but unless your accent is much different than mine, you don’t naturally pronounce ‘roving’ and ‘loving’ with the same ‘o,’ but Byron did. For me, only by reading it somewhat aloud, so I can hear myself tweak the sound to make the rhyme truly work, can I appreciate it.

Ben Jonson, being some two hundred years before Byron, requires it even more.

It slows my reading down, but that’s not such a bad thing.

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‘Shadowmarch’ By Tad Williams


I recently finished Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series and this book (the first of four in a new series) is both better and worse than the earlier series. Better in that Williams has a better handle on how to manage the plots and characters, making it seem less sprawling than it really is. What is, in truth, place setting for future volumes, feels more organic. It also feels more mature, in a sense. The political scenery feels more realistically entangled.

There is, however, nothing so wonderful as the lengthy opening of The Dragonbone Chair, which lets you immerse in the quotidian life of the future hero as a lazy kitchen helper, as well as get solid glimpses of the forthcoming plot through his eyes, in part.

I will definitely keep reading, though I won’t rush out and get the second volume right now.

 

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Triplanetary


The first of the Lensman novels by E.E. Smith, aka, E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Triplanetary never mentions Lensmen and you might not even know that it’s a series, except that the masterful, manly, monogamous, and magnificently named hero (Conway Costigan) is begging for more appearances.

Clearly the product of serialization, you can see where each installment began and ended. Pirates attack a space liner/cruise ship, but Costigan and Captain Bradley escape and lead a counterattack against the evil pirates. Then aliens appear and wipe out everyone but Bradley, Costigan, and a love interest. (Cliffhanger!) The escape from the aliens and send super technology info to Triplanetary, a space super spy/military agency, who finally and fully defeat the space pirates – but the aliens are back! (Cliffhanger!) Manly men in awesome space ships fight the aliens to a draw and peace is achieved.

The end.

Smith tries really hard to make his science believable by the standards of the day (he first wrote it in the thirties) and I’ll probably read more of these.

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People I (Used To) Like Resigning Because Of Credible Allegations Of Sexual Harassment/Assault


The first time I saw Charlie Rose’s PBS show, it was that now famous interview with the late David Foster Wallace. While few interviews since rose (pun intended) to that level (mostly because few figures are as interesting, intelligent, and polymathematic [is that a word?] as Wallace), I still watched his show many times over the last two decades (though I never watched 60 Minutes). And now he’s gone for some truly heinous behavior. Not even run of the mill chauvinism, but some crazy creepy stuff.

Can we still rewatch that David Foster Wallace? How terrible am I for having some small part of me that wishes he could somehow continue?

Similarly, with Al Franken. He seemed less appealing in a moment that is crying out for the Democratic Party to nominate a woman and/or a person of color for president in 2020, but he once would have been among my favorites for the nomination. Progressive, pro-labor, outspoken. Also, he seemed tailor made to take it to the Party of Trump, née the Republican Party. And now? How do I feel? I don’t want him anymore. I can’t. But I still want to want him.

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I’m Still In Thailand; This Is Bridge Street Books (It’s in DC, Not Thailand)


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Empedocles On Etna


I’m going to admit that I am liking Matthew Arnold’s poetry better than I would have thought. I still have no desire to go back and re-read Dover Beach again, ever, for any reason, but if you’re willing to adjust yourself to the rhythms of nineteenth century verse (and Arnold, a traditionalist), then you can definitely enjoy him.

Empedocles on Etna, especially, I enjoyed.

While I won’t question Arnold’s knowledge of the classics, you still shouldn’t read him for a detailed and accurate understanding of Empedocles’ philosophy.

But, the worried friend (Pausanias) and the musician-cum-pastoral poet, Callicles following the melancholy Empedocles on part of his journey makes for a nice philosophical narrative.

Even after the suicidal Empedocles asks for quiet, he can still hear snatches of Callicles’ carefree poetry and music as he contemplates his own theories and the lack of job in his life. Arnold makes the philosopher’s decision a little bit political (exile having made him depressed), though he shifts back to the idea of someone maybe too smart for his own happiness (one can imagine Arnold thinking there’s a little Empedocles in himself, too).

If you like poetry, if you have immersed yourself in poetry, so that the style of Matthew Arnold isn’t foreign or anathema to you, you might enjoy it, too.

No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!
And the world hath the day, and must break thee,
Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,
Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;
And being lonely thou art miserable,
For something has impair’d thy spirit’s strength,
And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy.
Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself—
Oh sage! oh sage!—Take then the one way left;
And turn thee to the elements, thy friends,
Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers,
And say:—Ye servants, hear Empedocles,
Who asks this final service at your hands!
Before the sophist brood hath overlaid
The last spark of man’s consciousness with words—
Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world
Be disarray’d of their divinity—
Before the soul lose all her solemn joys,
And awe be dead, and hope impossible,
And the soul’s deep eternal night come on,
Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home!

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Ralph Waldo Emerson


I am reading two volumes of Emerson’s writings. One is a luxurious, leather bound collection of his essays and lectures. The other is a marvelous little cloth bound book of the sort that were common in the early twentieth century (this one was published by T.Y. Crowell & Co, but is similar to the Modern Library or Everyman editions you might find of more or less classic or otherwise edifying works), containing his early poems. Read more

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High Deryni


I had to read this via ebook. Not only did the library not have a hard copy, I couldn’t find hard copies on the Barnes & Noble website.

I don’t mind reading via ebook. I do it a lot. When I fly to Thailand next month, you can bet I’m bringing my nook e-reader.

But I remember browsing the genre shelves at B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and the books in this series were ever present. It feels strange that people don’t read them anymore, at least not like they used to. They have, I supposed, been supplanted by newer authors. People don’t listen as much to Suzanne Vega, the Pixies, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult anymore, either. Times change. People get older and the newer people feel much younger. The way of the world.

Neither here nor there.

The series has been growing on me. There are two more trilogies; one that follows and one that takes place long before the events of High Deryni. Will I read them? Maybe. I’m more likely to than I was when I finished the first book.

But even as the books win me over, they also always disappoint me. The ending is an anticlimactic deus ex machina that makes a decent portion of the final fifty pages seem pointless. And while fantasy can often be criticized for its portrayals (or lack thereof) of women, I would have hoped that a woman writer could have given us one strong and well-developed female character, but no. And the one romance is SO sentimental and cheesy. Ugh.

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‘Black Panther’ By Ta-Nehisi Coates


In truth, it’s not fair to say this is by Ta-Nehisi Coates, since so much more than the writing goes into a comic book: the colorist, the penciller, the inker, etc. But we should be honest: we are reading this because his name is attached.

I haven’t been reading much in the way of comics lately, but ever since I heard that The Atlantic essayist was going to be writing for the Black Panther, I wanted to read it. And when I saw some comics in my local library, I figured I put volume one on hold.

Now here we are.

Leaving aside difficulty one: I haven’t read the arcs and stories that came more or less immediately before, so I really don’t understand what’s going on. But you just have to suck it up, honestly. Comics were around before you started reading them. They’ll be around after you’ve stopped. Just dive in and hope for the best.

So far, it doesn’t quite work. But I really want it to. Questions of power. Implied questions regarding a monarchy existing simultaneously in a liberal society. Gender. The inability to act or know what’s right.

But not enough threads come together. The dialogue can be a little over baked and too arch by half. Too talky and not well paced. And outside of the writing, the action sequences rarely popped.

Maybe I should have just gone for one his (non comic) books instead?