S. Worthen | Weblog

I won a mug earlier this week for throwing together a rhyme incorporating the words "gin" and "cupcake" off the top of my head.

A gin, ag'in, fill up my cup-
cake. Sip and frost it up.

I'm thinking of this fondly as the second prize I have ever won for writing poetry-like things.

I've been thinking about the neighbors today. I returned from Leicester today in time to run into one who was newly returned from her allotment, and provisioned us with lettuce. And also -

Was it just last week we passed along the street?
You, in habitual armor of gloves and hat, white,
reflecting back the sun. So often we'd meet
this way, passing across the road, amidst a flight
of errands, and would comment on the rain, the snow,
my umbrella-lack, incipient drops, or clear blue skies.
You and yours: the first to greet us after our slow
translocation here. Stalwart neighbor, useful to advise
on songbirds, gardens green, and shops near by.
'Twas just last week - but you went before July.

My thanks to all of you who answered the purple-rice-tasting-of-beef polls. (Here and here.)

The lines are part of a Rhysling-nominated poem, "Corrected Maps of your City", by Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel. Those lines, however, threw me right out of the verse. It sounded too mundane, too normal to evoke the weird alternate reality for which the poets were clearly aiming. I have eaten some version of this dish - if the beef taste is allowed to come from beef broth or lumps of the meat, and rice is Forbidden Rice, a clearly purple rice.

I'm particularly glad to have heard from those of you who answered "That sounds like made-up food from an alternate universe." It's reassuring to know that they would have worked as intended for at least a third of you, possibly more if you hadn't had time to think through it so much in advance.

( More explanation, and commentary... )

First, answer the original poll on purple rice & beef.

Then, if you're feeling like you would like to fill out another poll just now, here is one which examines more aspects of the same issue. (Polls are not, after all, editable.) The other one looks like it will resolve my actual point of curiousity (about which more in another post. Not today.) This one is optional extra detail.

[Poll #1587862]

This poll is dedicated to desperance, who requested clarification.

[Poll #1587851]

From Hammersmith & Town,
the Circle line was born.
A gilded, crowded crown,
a city to adorn.

Yellow, with age and use,
today, it makes the news:
Infinity's unwound,
it no longer goes round.

Encoiled, its extent
is volute. An event:
the Circle line is torn;
a Spiral line is born.

Yesterday, or so my f'list tells me, was National Poetry Day. The BBC, in celebration, posted the nation's top ten poets. None, as brisingamen observed, were female. Five females made the also-ran list. She challenged her readers to come up with a list of (at least) ten female poets. Here's what I got out of reading all the post and comments responding to her challenge (although I have failed to stick with the UK):

Sappho, Bronte, Angelou,
Smith, Brown, Hacker,
Stein, Plath, Montagu,
Sexton, Bishop, Parker,

Rich, Duffy, Dickinson
Plath, Teasdale, Livesay,
Webb, Wright, Winterson,
Walton, Yolen, Katsuri.

"Female poets? Worthy? Pro?"
"I can't think of any, no."

For brisingamen and desperance.

Soon, they will wake, the earlybirds,
and find the city tranquil, void
of all the audience and worlds
which, in its halls, they enjoyed
until last night, when, winding down,
their wave of programming collapsed
on the shore of this Laurentian town,
at the final fête, now elapsed.
In the fall of Perseid's night,
all rockets launched, each mapled base,
auroras seen, with sidewise sight,
and masks set aside, in boreal space.
When paint-stripping or baking, keep in mind:
anticipation ends in daily grind.

Nine Things observed by Guests,
or, the Difficulties of Growing up an Oracle

( Another oracle poem... )

Inspired by a pendant made by elisem entitled "Nine Things about Oracles", there has been a small epidemic of oracular poetry recently. oursin's related poem about the Sphinx and her questions was what indirectly inspired mine in particular: imagining the fruitless after-dinner attempts at conversation between an oracle and a sphinx.

Dear Conversion software,
I am grateful you exist.
Before, today, I found you,
I'd with makeshift means subsist.

BBEdit's been my pal
for years to scrape out text
from inconvenient formats,
from Word Perfect or .docx.

Zamzar was rather helpful
when I'd time to wait for it
to change these common formats
into ones more common yet.

Today, I knew my time had come,
today, I gave up hope.
.pptm was beyond
convertatory scope.

Initial web-wide searching
yielded means for other OS.
I didn't really want to
think this data all a loss.

But Microsoft created it,
and Microsoft relents.
It's issued out a package
for the problem, and so hence,

For files, Open XML
Converter, I am glad:
Your alchemic translations
strips the grunge with which they're clad.

These files are now open,
and their booty I shall prize.
Alas, 'tis not the death of all
cross-format compromise.