Lecteur or Lectured?
I. WANT. TO. BE. HIM.
Better than Wordsworth, hotter than Shelley. More lucid than Coleridge - and far, far naughtier than Blake.
Just wish I could say that in my essay about his hot ass.
The GARDEN of LOVE
I WENT to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.
-William Blake, from Songs of Experience 1794.
Do you think Richard Dawkins would do better if he spoke/wrote like this?
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.
Pablo Neruda. XVII from Cien sonetos de amor.
Mark Eisner’s (2004) translation:
I don ’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I’ve just ane things to say.My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I’m gusting and I’m span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance,
With gruntled self-possession.My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.
Women’s rights round-up; or, ad feminam
First - firsts, three:
- Dalia Grybauskaitė is elected as President of Lithuania. The Thatcher of the East. The Shipley of the North. The (Indira) Gandhi of the West. Anyway, now the Lithuanians get to say “women hold the most powerful economic/political positions in our country. Feminism is no longer needed.”
- Kuwait sees its parliamentiary elections usher in four (4 [iv]) women MPs. A first, a second, a third and a fourth for Kuwaiti women’s rights. Still, the PM’s the emir’s nephew and the parliament is essentially a religious institution. BUT…
The master’s tools will never tear down the master’s house.
¡Viva la revolución! - Ruth Padel is “elected” (read: drawn out in an Oxbridgian raffle, kind of how they decide on the next Pope) to the post of the Oxford Professor of Poetry, the first woman to have this done to her. She’s crazy looking which is kinda refreshing:
Mind you, she is English. As you probably guessed, my cynicism extends hither also; she probably only got the post because of the sexual harrassment charges levied against her competition. Whether true or not, they’re conceivable. That said, I wouldn’t mind Byron, cad that he was, having a post like this. Hmm. To Virginia then:
“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”
Ruth, don’t forget your mothers. You’ll never be told not to forget Shakespeare, Milton, Sophocles, Wordsworth, Shelley, Pope … But you may just need to be told not to forget Eliot, Sand, and Jane, Charlotte and Emily.
- Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Meanwhile, in Iowa, a prison inmate gives birth in her cell. Alone.
“Around 7 a.m., a guard came in and asked me if I wanted breakfast. I was crying and holding my stomach and said that I needed a nurse, but he only said, ‘Do you want breakfast or not?’
“And that’s when it hit me — I’m going to have this baby on my own.”
The beat goes on …
There once was an X from place B,
That satisfied predicate P,
He or she did thing A,
In an adjective way,
Resulting in circumstance C.
Finally saw it.
Wes Anderson, dick.
Darjeeling Limited, fun.
Owen Wilson, git.
I know it’s a bit of a cop-out, but it’s accurate, n’est-ce pas?
WHY did I watch this. WHY. Still:
Nick Cannon never
learned his lesson, acted well
or should have been born.
That seems to make sense but I’m not convinced.
Contender for best tagline ever?
So I watched another film, El crimen del Padre Amaro A(n) haiku is in order!
Sexy priest had it,
lost it but had it coming.
She should have been me.
GGB was just too hot in it, especially in that soutane. Oooh Lord.
Given how few films I evidently watch, this haiku task isn’t so strenuous.
Page 1 of 2
