Roads to Safe Places

82.

Heppermann, Christine: Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty
Feminist fairy tale poetry, a really enjoyable combination. The subjects often address issues of body image and self-worth as well as eating disorders, sometimes a little unsubtle, often times enjoyable through the lens of fairy tales. Some experiences are too US America specific to resonate with me, others seem truly universal.

81.

Abedi, Isabel: Isola
Only read this book if its in your library, or don't, because you already know it and the cardboard characters never really come to life.( Read more... )

80.

Rothfuss, Patrick: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
More later, I have to reread this a couple of times to savour it. For now: The only thing that spoiled my reading experience of this beautiful volume was the author's constant need to apologise for this story which isn't run-off-the-mill and normal. This is incredible to me, and wrong - more of an apology would be needed for a story that is yet again the same as any other story.
This wasn't, and it was beautiful. I could have done without the frame story of Auri waiting for Kvothe, as I'd have loved to hear more about her time before the beginning of the plot of the Kingkiller Chronicle and her relationship with the masters. As it is, it remains a charming and saddening insight into her wonderous world in the belly of the university.

79.

Snicket, Lemony: Shouldn't You be in School?
I really enjoy this new series, though not as much as I did the ASoUE.

78.

Jung, Marius: Singen können die alle!: Handbuch für Negerfreunde
Sometimes cynical, sometimes funny account of racism in Germany by a black comedian. He talks about his youth growing up as the black child of white middle class parents, his experiences as an actor in a country that still doesn't really realise not all of its inhabitants are whitee and white wannabe saviours.
I don't agree with the fact that political correctness is a bad thing, though I agree that it should not be the only underlying reason for changing one's behaviour.

77.

Harris, Joanne: Gospel of Loki
I like this modern version of the Lokabrenna, which works as a prequel to Runemarks, though some details are different. The contemporary phrases that crop up annoyed me vaguely to the and I didn't see their point. They didn't endear the characters to me, if that was the idea.
Loki is as entertaining and human and as a prequel he couldn't have been much different, though I'd really like to see a Loki that does not suffer from this civilising softening. It makes us understand the characters as humans, but in their original context they were different, revered as forces of nature and arbiters of life a and death. they were also human, of course, but they were still fundamentally different. The difference seems to have home lost and turns gods into powerful mortals, superheroes. In the words of the novel, named and tamed.

76.

Strandberg, Mats; Bergmark Elfgren, Sara: Zirkel
This is the first book in a long, looong time that I found that is:
1.) centred more or less exclusively on female teenaged characters,
2.) whose main plot isn't a love plot,
3.) who don't get raped.
( Read more... )

75.

Elsberg, Marc: Zero
The book seems more hurried and breathless than
his last one and less convincing. It is still an entertainingly fast-paced thriller, but the plot has its holes. Especially the random underground chases in Vienna and New York were too much, and while the concerns it raises about tech and choice are valid, it doesn't always do that in a very subtle way. I am also not overly keen on the ableism and the way neuroatypical people are portrayed here.

74.

Carey, Jaqueline: Kushiel's Dart
I really enjoyed this book, and the world, and the fact that there was not as much slut-shaming and whorephobia as might have been expected in a book in which the main protagonist is a prostitute. The world's religious system is believable and interesting and the characters lovable. I don't recall it passing the Bechdel test, but there are several strong female characters and some of them are queer.
I did not like that there are no romantic relationships between women, hardly any sadistic or dominant women, no sadistic/dominant women who aren't evil, no romantic relationships that aren't heterosexual. One toe outside the box and then straight back in

73.

Boie, Kirsten: Ringel, Rangel, Rosen
( Read more... )

72.

Beagle, Peter S.; Gillis, Peter; De Liz, Renae; Dillon, Ray: The Last Unicorn
I have to admit that I've only read the book two or three times and have seen the movie version so often that I have no memory of how well the book version translates into the movie, which is one of my favourites. So I was not so much worried about the book as I was about my memories of the movie, but it translates, as I suppose this book does into all possible media. The short passages of text seem well-chosen, although as I mentioned I don't remember the text well-enough to judge, but my gut says they are.
The artwork is stunningly beautiful and I could stare at some of those panels for hours. The one thing that bugged me was that Schmendrick and Molly have undergone a serious makeover and the way the human unicorn looks is scary because she is so thin.

71.

Brosgol, Vera: Anya's Ghost
I heard from this via Graphic Novels 4 Girls and really liked it. Anya and the difficulties she faces as a Russian immigrant ring true, although it is strange to me that she doesn't speak Russian at home, though I do understand that would be inconvenient for story purposes. I'd have liked seeing more interactions between Siobhan and Anya, but I can see that it wouldn't have fit into this very compact tale.
I was also positively surprised by this graphic novel as a graphic novel - it's good to see that there are diverse and positive role-models for younger girls at least, even though I find it hard to see the same applying to the "mature" end of this genre, which features gratuitous boob and gore panels more than truly mature topics.

70.

Green, John: Looking for Alaska
The over-the-top love that my students have for this book shows me that I'm probably missing out. But I just don't understand it. I see very interchangeable, uninteresting characters involved in things that I, as a teenager, would have had no interest or part in in their situation because it seems designed to make things worse for them (no matter how bored or depressed, taking up drinking and smoking was never that attractive to me). Though the signs of characters' mental health issues are there in places, they don't ring true to me. The romance plot is superficial and only shows once more how mundanely boring "Pudge" is.

69.

König, Tim: Ich bin ein Kunde, holt mich hier raus
I'm so embarrassed to have read that, even though I did get the audiobook at a very reduced price. It's really bad.
( Read more... )

68.

Pratchett, Terry: Dragons at Crumbling Castle.
Adorable short stories presented in a way that I can see children liking as much as adult fans.

Yet still the solitary humble-bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

- from "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" by STC.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.

~by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

Before I post my resolutions (which I'll without a doubt break this year, too) I have to share what I spent most of my time procrastinating with today, the Old English poem Deor.

It's from the Exeter Book, and it's strangely encouraging to me. In it the singer describes the various misfortunes that have befallen various heroes and then, finally, himself, always closing, "þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg", which is usually translated as, "this may overcome, so may this be", though it's more ambiguous in the original (for annotations, see here, and a modern English translation as well).

Cut for length.

Triggers: mention of rape, too, which goes for the modern version, too.

Welund him be wurman wræces cunnade,
anhydig eorl earfoþa dreag,
hæfde him to gesiþþe sorge and longaþ,
wintercealde wræce, wean oft onfond
siþþan hine Niðhad on nede legde,
swoncre seonobende on syllan monn.
Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.

( Read more... )

( Reading of the translation on YT )

Immortality


In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords 
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

-Liesel Müller.

The last day of my poetry week, and since I haven't included any spoken poetry, here's a jam contribution by Gina Loring:



( Text )

Ist Lieb ein Feur / und kan das Eisen schmiegen /
bin ich voll Feur / und voller Liebes Pein /
wohrvohn mag doch der Liebsten Hertze seyn?
wans eisern wär / so würd eß mir erliegen /

wans gülden wär / so würd ichs können biegen
durch meine Gluht; solls aber fleischern seyn /
so schließ ich fort: Eß ist ein fleischern Stein:
doch kan mich nicht ein Stein / wie sie / betriegen.

Ists dan wie Frost / wie kalter Schnee und Eiß /
wie presst sie dann auß mir den Liebesschweiß?

Mich deucht: Ihr Herz ist wie die Loorberblätter /
die nicht berührt ein starcker Donnerkeil /
sie / sie verlacht / Cupido / deine Pfeil;
und ist befreyt für deinem Donnerwetter.

- Sibylle Schwarz (1621-1638)

In sô hôher swebender wunne

In sô hôher swebender wunne
sô gestuont mîn herze ane vröiden nie.
ich var, als ich vliegen kunne,
mit gedanken iemer umbe sie,
Sît daz mich ir trôst enpfie,
der mir durch die sêle mîn
mitten in daz herze gie.

Swaz ich wunneclîches schouwe,
daz spile gegen der wunne, die ich hân.
luft und erde, walt und ouwe
suln die zît der vröide mîn enpfân.
Mir ist komen ein hügender wân
und ein wunneclîcher trôst,
des mîn muot sol hôhe stân.

Wol dem wunneclîchen maere,
daz sô suoze durch mîn ôre erklanc,
und der sanfte tuonder swaere,
diu mit vröiden in mîn herze sanc,
Dâ von mir ein wunne entspranc,
diu vor liebe alsam ein tou
mir ûz von den ougen dranc.

Saelic sî diu süeze stunde,
saelic sî diu zît, der werde tac,
dô daz wort gie von ir munde,
daz dem herzen mîn sô nâhen lac,
Daz mîn lîp von vröide erschrac,
und enweiz von liebe joch,
waz ich von ir sprechen mac.

- Heinrich von Morungen




( Modern German Adaption )

To mark the occasion of angie_21_237 's wedding today, I want to have a week of love poems: 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

- William Shakespeare.

( Übersetzung )

So, what did the lake poets think of Gothic novels?

To be brief, they didn't like them much. They thought no worthy man could write such a thing, too fanciful, and a danger to children. They disliked the sensationalism and the bawdiness especially.

Wordsworth did not really read many of them and generally didn't seem to have bothered - even though he could appreciate horror stories - Coleridge especially is aghast (which I did not necessarily expect, especially because he is later asked to translate Faust because of his own reputation as a writer of the demonic) - he has to write a few reviews as a "hireling" for the Critical Review and seems to fall so in hate with them that he takes up reading Radcliffe's novels for fun. 



It did my heart good to read, however, his opinion on the Mysteries of Udolpho:


Also, in a letter which describes what he thinks are repetitive features in Scottish poetry,

The manliness comes in in a review of a story by Walpole, in which he writes,

Go get them, Col!

One of my students hates poetry, she says.

She doesn't want to have anything to do with it, whenever they're faced with poems in class everything about her speaks her dislike. Her body language, her expression, her moans, how she approaches the topic, the way she deals with it. She just doesn't like poetry and frequently expresses intense dislike when confronted with poetry, she's easily confused and frustrated, and doesn't see the point of dealing with it.

At first I thought it was that specific poem, which was admittedly rather obscure and gave them a second one the next lesson. Again, the same reaction. Frustration, lack of understanding of both content or why rhythm is important at all.

And then I gave her a poem in Russian, her native language. I wish I'd had a camera to capture just how quickly she snatched that sheet ouf of my hands, and how hungrily she read those lines, and how eagerly she engaged with the poem, and the translation provided below. She immediately had a plethora of opinions on this poem, too, I've never seen her that engaged with a poem- any text - ever before.

It was clear that this student, homesick, rejecting all things German, would appreciate the inclusion of her native language in class, but I had just never pictured just how much. I hope I can manage to incorporate the student's native language in German classes in future somehow.

"How does the water
Come down at Lodore?"
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And 'twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.
( Read more... )

- Robert Southey.

During one of our holidays in Wales in the late nineties I found an abandoned poetry collection in the cottage we stayed in which had this poem in it. It was love at first sight.

I have a student I tutor who is difficult, mostly because she is homesick and really demotivated.

Homesick because she's from Siberia and she gets tearful whenever she talks about her home. Last time she was rendered incapable of participating in class for twenty minutes because she saw a map of Europe and the East lying about before class and spent five minutes looking at her former home, then sat there, brooding, sullen. She was so bubbly when she came in, and this is not the first time she said she'd remembered something from home and went quiet.

Demotivated because they're analysing poetry, and she can't be bothered because she doesn't see the point both of poetry, what the particular pieces I bring in are about (they're supposed to work with Romantic poetry, and the Golden Age poets are a good match for obvious reasons), and why analysis is a good idea.

Now I'm thinking about bringing in a few poems in Russian which deal with similar subject matter as the German poems we're doing in class. I'm not sure it's such a good idea because I don't want her to feel bad, obviously. Still, it'd be an excuse to pick a native speaker's brain on Pushkin in the original, and possibly even Achmatova, because she's obsessed with Stalin's Russia, although if anything is likely to depress her, this'd probably be most likely to.

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden,
and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.

But now you are here with me,
composed in the open field of this page,
no room or manicured garden to enclose us,
no Zeitgeist marching in the background,
no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak.

Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental,
unnoticed by the monocled eye of History,
you could be the man I held the door for
this morning at the bank or post office
or the one who wrapped my speckled fish.
You could be someone I passed on the street
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin—
and vanish around a curve in this whip
of a road we can't help traveling together.

~ Billy Collins.

Anyway, back to reading up on the fate of poetry in the foreign language classroom, its uses and methods for teaching it to the unsuspecting student.

THE COMPARISON.

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that which from chafed musk cat's pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of th' early east,
Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast ;
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl carcanets.
Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles,
Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils,
Or like the scum, which, by need's lawless law
Enforced, Sanserra's starvèd men did draw
From parboil'd shoes and boots, and all the rest
Which were with any sovereign fatness blest ;
( Read more... )

To dussem dantse rope ik al gemene
Pawes keiser unde alle creaturen
Arm ryke groet unde kleine
Tredet vort went iu en helpet nen truren
Men dencket wol in aller tyd
Dat gy gude werke myt iu bringen
Unde juwer sunden werden quyd
Went gy moten na myner pypen springen.*

Last Saturday, my Middle High German course, niaseath, other guests, and I went on an excursion to look at the Totentanzkapelle in Lübeck as well as an exhibition of modern-day hommages to the danse macabre from Lübeck in the St. Annen-Museum. We had a really lovely day enthusing about late medieval art, modern art, the church service and the beautiful church with other course members and our Professor.

While searching for the text of the Totentanz online I found this wonderful Danish site (click that link, you know you want to! Though be warned, it means goodbye to the rest of your day), which, in its introduction, mentions that the idiom "like death warmed over" is "at ligne Døden fra Lübeck" in Danish, which means, "like death from Lübeck".

"Death from Lübeck" used to look like this before the mural was destroyed in WWII:



...although that is the 1701 version, the original is believed to have looked something like this (Tallinn-fragment):



----
*To this dance I call everybody, / pope, emperor, and all creatures / poor, rich, great and small./ Step forward, because grieiving does not help you,/ but remember, at all times,/ to bring good works and deeds with you / and all your sins will be good again / because you must all dance to my pipe.

Seeing as I am going to write my final paper on the man's poetry I thought I'd waste time today creating some motivating Donne icons.

Teasers: 


( 12 )

x-posted to book_icons, sorry about your flists, my fellow members!

( Among School Children )

VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

I realised today that I have a lot of catching up to do with my friends page, I will do that at the weekend.

T.S. Eliot reading 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Ignore the commercial at the beginning)


I was quite exited to find this recording again. His own rendition of the poem is very different from what I would read if I were reading it out. loud, which might be possible to my n00btastic skills as a voice actress. I'll try to get Crocky to read this out loud, she's much better at these things.

Gespräch mit meinen Pantoffeln

Die verlassenen Schuhe
zurückgelassen
am Rande
eines Kraters
eines Flusses
eines Betts
diese Schuhe
aus denen die Füße
fortgingen
an einem Rande
barfuß
in das schuh- und kleiderlose Land

Meine Pantoffeln
die mich ansehen
sie sitzen vor meinem Bett
und sehen mich an
Seite an Seite
wie sie mich ansehen
die zärtlichen Tiere
Ich kniee nieder
und streichle
meinen verängstigten
Pantoffeln
das Fell.

I didn't cut the first one because you've GOT to see this.

Rivers, "Sign Language".
Great performance encorporating the experience the poet made when working with deaf children and doing poetry slams with them. Fascinating to watch, and those poems are beautiful.



( Rives, 'If I ran the Internet' )
( Bassey Ikpi, 'Apology to my Unborn' )
( Mark Gonzales, 'As with most men' )
( Javon Johnson, 'Elementary' )
( Gemineye, 'What Are You Fighting For' )
( Shannon Leigh, 'Sudanese Children' )
( Vanessa Hidary, 'PhD in Him' )
( Jason Carney, 'Southern Heritage' )

LOOK AT THIS AND REJOICE WITH ME IN FRENZIED ALL-CAPS:



This is the copy of "In Memoriam" that Crocky was allowed to use as the "old book" read by Mr Hardcastle in their initial scene in the play. The owner gave it to her, and she gave it to me.
It's a really beautiful little book, bound in green leather that's turning brown around the edges, with that leaf pattern burnt into it and almost faded gold leaf at the top, and, to my great pleasure, a handwritten dedication from someone who gave this book to a "Stella" as a present.

I have seen the above line on war memorials rather often, but it never occured to me before to Google the line. As chance willed, someone had a poppy icon with the probably most famous stanza from this poem in a community I frequent, thus I did find the poem after all.

I think I'll backdate this because it's not of immediate interest, really.

Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen (21st September, 1914)

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is a music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncountered:
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables at home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain. 

( Text of the poem )

There's also a (slightly hideous) midi musical version of The Collar.

I always enjoyed reading Herbert, although he's aggravating to discuss in class because someone will always see his stance as a personal insult to their lazy wannabe-atheism and start making idiot comments like, "Do we have to discuss this in class? No one believes in that sort of thing anymore, anyway!" - "Do I have to take part in this discussion even though I am not a Christian?"

Anyway. Off to write another oral presentation single-handedly.