#auden yammers

[euelios]

there’s something (that i can’t quite touch on) about the—the voice of andreas’ depression. it differs from the rest of his thoughts not just because it Just Shows Up, but tonally it’s so… precise? so cold, and matter-of-fact, and—almost external, for all that the call is coming from inside the house

you can hardly even call it cruel because more than anything it sounds certain. correct. imagine the voice of god coming in to tell you that you’re a fuck-up and you go “ok, but can we not do this at dinner”

[rangerdoubt]

Top 9 People You Want to Get to Know Better

tagged by @emeraldgreaves and @thenightdayblogger! i dropped off the face of the earth for a minute but yk <3

tagging @ladamebrunette @gingerbreton @honor-among-thieves @silvery-bluish @likesomethingblooming @aurrieattorney @glitchy-npc @thecryptidenthusiast @dogueteeth if y'all feel so inclined

favorite color: FUCK ME i forgot the colour. it changes but rn? a rlly good pine green

currently rereading: emily wilson's translation of the odyssey bc it's fun and the iliad is coming out in like a month

last song: "who we are" from unreal unearth is on an unending loop in my brain

last series: brother when was the last time i watched tv. i got down a couple episodes of revolutionary girl utena??

sweet, savory, or spicy? sweet!! beverage girlie living for fall coffee season but i'm kind of on a spice kick rn

currently working on: my AU roulette FHR fics (rip writer's block), and getting the vibes right for an original work

[davidpwilson2564]

Bloglet

Thursday, October 5, 2023

The usual. Errands. Watch some of the news. Very distressing to think of Jim Jordon as speaker of the House but it could quiet his yammering.

When I spoke with AB on Saturday he told me the ballet is doing Prokofiev's "On the Dnieper." The work, one of Prokofiev's lesser ones, had been in mothballs. (It's kind of a downer.) But Ratmansky, the choreographer has every reason to bring it back. Of course, the Dnieper River is in Ukraine. (Another bit of Russian arcana: Tschaikovsky's Second Symphony...called "The Little Russian"...Little Russia was another name for Ukraine.)

Note: The war in Ukraine continues. Rumors of Putin's being ill. Of his having doppelgangers (the long descent of the red carpeted stairs sometime back as if to suggest "bet Joe couldn't do this." Was that a stand-in?)

At some point it occurs to me that today was a day without reading. I mean, I read the newspapers (and did the crossword) but did nothing to really recharge the mental batteries. Very bad. Will have to address the reading deficit. Something to look forward to, tomorrow.

"Four Weddings and a Funeral." That very nice poem by Auden is read. (The highlight of the movie.) "Funeral Blues." I sort of remembered it. Especially fine eulogy. Will have to read it again. (And am wondering if it was written for an occasion. I don't know. Could maybe look it up.)

[thepointoftheneedle]

Paul Engle of the Writer’s Workshop

@sullypants was kind enough to point out that the Writer’s Workshop is the postgrad writing programme at the University of Iowa.  It seemed like an excuse to share this essay about poetry by Paul Engle who ran the course for years.  It is such a great piece about poetry and I thought some folks might like to read it.    It appeared originally in the NYTimes in 1957.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power

by PAUL ENGLE 

POETRY is the only one of the arts which comes literally from inside the body a thing secreted as well as made. It is not so much written as it is breathed onto the page. It is possible because in our mortal oddness, we have a jointed jaw which waggles the sounds of love and rage and gloom in the daily air.

Of course all arts come naturally into our life.  Painting is possible because our eyes find color and movement in the world, and our arms can swing through space in many motions.  Music is possible because we have marvelous curled ears that listen every day to multitudes of sounds and we can order them into harmony. Theatre is simply an extension of our yammering, arguing, gossiping, conflicts and love. 

But the materials of these other arts are artificial. Painting uses canvas, brushes, oils. Sculpture has its wood, stone, wires and welding helmet. Music has its manufactured strings, shaped wood and brass. But the materials of poetry are the same common words we use for buying food, complaining about the weather, talking on the telephone, asking our friends on the street, “have you heard this one?” These puffs of meaningful sound, warmed by our heart and lungs are shaped into moving utterances and we call it poetry. 300 years ago Michael Drayton said, “And innocence is closing up his eyes.” The recent English poet Wilfred Owen wrote of an innocent doomed soldier “for his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.” These words are the plain speech of men ordered into art.

The Frenchman in the play was astonished to find he had been speaking prose but he would've been more amazed to find that, like all of us, he had been speaking the materials of poetry. "It hit me like a ton of bricks,” says the startled boy using the manner of poetry. We all raise and lower our voices for emphasis and if that sound could be stained it would have a visible pattern in the air from which meter would come. In one of his energetic, pounding lines Marlowe wrote of Cassandra that the soldiers “Swung her howling through the empty air,” and Othello in his agony to express his hard life's lack of tears said that he was seldom in a “melting mood.” 

This ordinariness of its medium is crucial to the nature and intent of poetry which always wants to make emotion orderly and to make ideas flame. Poetry is hyacinths and biscuits said Carl Sandberg. It is imaginary gardens with real toads said Marianne Moore. The glory and the grit of life join together make poetry, and only language can join them. Not the heart alone. Not the brain alone, for the heart is not deep enough, and the brain is not lively enough. As TS Eliot argued the poet is more civilised as well as more primitive than his contemporaries. It is language which allows him to combine intellectual subtlety with the sensuous touch in the fingertips. "A green thought in a green shade,” wrote Andrew Marvell.  “Green I love you green,” cried the Spaniard Lorca. The great expression of the power that ordered language possesses to combine the extremes of human experience occurs in Wallace Stevens where he says of poetry that it is “an abstraction blooded.” Thought in poetry should beat like an artery a thumb feels in the neck. The poet has his original shock of experience but to tell another person about it he has only words tripping over a page. Yet those words must try to make the feet reader feel, by the intensity with which they are put together, the intensity of the living event. Hence the ruthless obscurity of some poetry, as the poet struggles to make poor words carry the weight of his lucid and complex meaning. Elliot has said that often poems will begin with no words at all but with an undefined rhythm in the mind to which gradually write words and true feelings come. The process is a tough one he writes for “words strain, crack and sometimes break under the burden. Under the tension, slip, slide, perish. Decay with imprecision, will not stay still.” Yet it is that feeble medium in which was written “Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young.” So language becomes illumination, the deep dredged motive quivers in the hard air as if “a Magic Lantern threw the nerves in patterns on the screen.”

Shakespeare candidly said “While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.” He did not call her pretty or blonde or willing although she may well have been all of these but used rather the blunt expressive word. So Sandberg called a woman in love a pot rassler, a 20th century Joan. Lady Macbeth described the men she stupefied with drink “spongy officers.” Hamlet cried out “that skull had a tongue in it and could sing once; now the knave jowls it to the ground.”

Archibald MacLeish called the ocean “that endless silence edged with unending sound” and Hart Crane spoke of it as “this great whisk of eternity.” At the news of the death of Yeats, wrote Auden “the mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.” The Queen appealed to Hamlet “cast thy knighted colour off.” Of Cicero a character commented that he “Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes" Thus language works its rugged way. Reading it one should feel as Dante did when he said to Virgil, “Hardly a drop of blood in my body does not shudder.” Here we are on the colourful Earth held in the rough arms of history jabbering under trees and roofs. Then we suddenly read what Bishop King wrote a long time ago “But heark! My pulse like a soft drum beats my approach tells thee I come,” and after that what e.e. cummings said a few years back “when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man.” So it is that words become not an escape from life although some ecstatic moments will always be that but a force and nourishment which return is more deeply to the middle of life more aware of that rough and noble human scene of which poetry is a part. “I have wiped away moonlight like mud,” said Wallace Stevens proving again that poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate tough skin of words.

[allyouzombies]

My darling Bonnie (@anybodylessgayso) has once again given me license to yammer on about myself YEET

Nickname(s): Given name is Andrea and I go by Annie, if that counts. Was Turtle in soccer for years (NOT BECAUSE I RUN SLOW DAMMIT); my uncle used to call me baby dink. People do not and may not call me little orphan Annie or anything to do with Smooth Criminal or I am legally allowed to kill them on sight.

Gender: An Woman

Height: 5′ 8″ babey!!

Time: 9:59 PM EST

Where I’m from: Southwestern Ohio, 45 minutes east of Cincinnati and about two miles south of nowhere

Hogwarts house: Slytherin hiss hiss bitch

Favorite show: The Nanny! The Twilight Zone! Jeopardy! Eat my ass, modern television!

Favorite animal: Fuckin polar bears and sun bears

Favorite band/artist: I have a top five! The Killers are my babies and darlings and sons and boys and dads, and then in no particular order we have Counting Crows, Vampire Weekend, Jack’s Mannequin, and Goo Goo Dolls. I used to have a top six, with Alpha Rev rounding things out, but they moved to a weird subscription-based music release model...thing. Haven’t heard anything from ‘em in years, sad to say.

Song stuck in my head: Quite randomly, Mabataki from the Ghost Hunt OST  (it’s an anime I watched once in early high school and it was...mediocre...and here I am)

Last movie I saw: Can’t remember what I last saw in full, but I watched a few minutes of Fried Green Tomatoes the other day by way of sitting in my mom’s living room and noodlin’ around on my phone

Last thing I Googled: Ben Kissel (from The Last Podcast on the Left)

Other blogs: Not today, Satan, you bitchboi

Do I get asks: I do! Eight ish years of begging for the attention and it’s finally worked lmaooo blessings

Why this URL: I was likesynonymsforjoy (from an Auden poem, bless him) for several years and was kind of over the drama of the name, I supposed. What I have right now is my reddit name, and it turns out I rather like the name. Chose it because I was eating toasted coconut chips like candy as I made my reddit account. Carried it over to tumblr because it felt like a nice lighthearted change, and really, it fits because I’ve realized how entirely I fucking adore the shit out of nearly all things coconut

Number of blankets: NOT NEARLY ENOUGH

Followers: 594, unless I gained another porn blog or two recently

Following: 143. A bitch is selective!

Average amount of sleep: When I was working, it was 6-7 hours most nights. During the Great Unemployment Debacle, it’s been wildly inconsistent. When I’m really down and struggling it can be like...10 hours with naps. Insomnia benders can be like 3-5. Am looking forward to the structure grad school will force me into.

Lucky number: 17 and 31

What am I wearing: My hashtag queer jorts (big. long. gay.) and an uber soft blue men’s shirt I got at goodwill for running but is basically my happy cozy shirt these days

Dream job: I want to be an archivist and goddammit I want to be in a community archives that’s niche and offbeat as fuck!

Dream trips: I am not a traveling kind of person. Guess I’d love to go back to Bulgaria unencumbered by money or time or another person’s schedule, though.

Favorite food: Rude unfair question also idk probably sweet potatoes (babies....) greek yogurt or like...soup

Instruments I play: I’ve had a guitar for six years now and I’m still only passably able to play

Eye color: Blue, sometimes gray-ish blue but like. Generally blue. Idk. Lighting matters

Hair color: Very dark brown with some fun ~secret auburn-ish streaks~ on the underside that you cannot see unless I flop my head upside down which is stupid and unfair

Aesthetic: Any time I reblog something and start hollering about Edward Hopper’s paintings in conjunction with loneliness, architectural emptiness, and crowded isolation, I’m getting lost in the sauce of my own aesthetic. And I guess natural lighting, organized clutter, and superfluous things.

Languages I speak: English and the sad remains of an educationally mandated basic Spanish that I really need to bolster with like. Practice and study.

Most iconic song: Like I’ve been halfway working on this truly brilliant absolutely inspired diatribe for months where I go into the intricacy and multitudes contained and exemplified within Someday by Nickelback. But y’all ain’t ready for that level of critical thinking.

When I created this account: Think it was March or April of 2011. I had an earlier account back in 2010, though.

Best memory: Nothing absolute, but some little vignettes - my first Pride when Josh said, “I love my bi girlfriend,” and I knew he was learning to understand my queerness and things would be basically okay; getting the email that offered me the archives internship at the convent (back in 2017) right before my fanfiction theory class began and my incredible professor walked by as I started crying and geekin out; the summerlong friendship I had with this dude who like yeah is someone who hurt me deeply in the end but at the time it was just...such a fulfilling and loving and beautiful friendship

Best pun: I can only think of these things off the cuff tyvm

Random fact: I have lived in brick buildings my entire life and thank goodness I’ll be continuing that unintentional tradition in Iowa litcherally if you are a mutual (or fuck it if you aren’t too) hmu and do this I’m just forever far too lazy and dumb to tag these things

[euelios]

i’ve reached the end of zurich and like. the way that arthur yells for (martin and) douglas just sends me (read: breaks my heart just a bit)

[euelios]

how did pentiment act ii know that about my “what have you been up to these days” fear

[euelios]

god how do original fiction writers do it…….

[euelios]

me: sideblogs are for chumps

also me: feeling the claws of another hyperfixation sinking in

[euelios]

oh he’s so sad and pathetic i want to squish him

[euelios]

bro how do you fuck up a soup

[euelios]

you think andreas can smell a storm coming now?

[euelios]

booing and hissing at the concept of not immediately being good/better at stuff when i want them to be fixed Right Now Immediately

[rangerdoubt]

setting miguel’s canon and like—as adamant as i was not to give him the suitag (this feels wrong to not spoiler lmao) i think it arising during the heartbreak incident gives it different flavour

to an extent this is how he thinks of the hero game, and as sidestep he was at peace with that. okay with the demand to burn and ache and die, so long as it was in the service of something bigger. and then it happened, sort of.

and he went well that was a disaster. let’s not do that again.

like—his whole thing is about trying to crawl out of that hole. and failing. and trying again. it comes up at shitty moments when he’s standing on top of something tall, or when he’s in a really dark mood but there’s nothing he’s doing now that makes him want to die. that’s the whole point.

to be a cliche motherfucker, there’s nothing out here worth dying for, but everything out here makes him want to live—and that’s why he never wants to be a hero again. he gets to take care of his own.

[rangerdoubt]

does ortega know that chen has game

(ASKING bc the overall tone of trying to set people up with other people varies Greatly depending on whether the setter-up believes the set-ee can pull independently)

[euelios]

well.

either something’s up and it’ll show soon enough

or i’ve been feeling like dirt for being a little bit subpar for years and years and years

and talking to adhd friends about it is incredibly soothing and validating, even though a huge part of me is like “uh oh! snowflakecore! ur letting their symptoms bleed over bc ur a malingering thief!” which—ouch. why would i make up being a spacey driver when i paid so much for lessons? why would i—want to be like this?

and to be fair, i’m not—debilitated. it’s not a world ending thing. i adore university. i know my bus route. i have a lanyard for all the cards i definitely haven’t lost. everyone gets bored at work and needs to go take a walk. so i can’t really explain why the “you’re doing ok!” line of chat upsets me so much. it’s supposed to be comforting!

but i cannot convey the extent to which i feel absolutely crushingly miserable for being just kind of not good at this. a little late to wash up. a bit disjointed when i’m trying to explain something. kind of lazy, kind of slow. but i’m trying my best and i swear i’m not trying to get out of anything! i’m trying to be better, im sorry. i don’t know why i’m like this either.

whenever my family tells me i’m not doing badly it’s like i know. but i feel like i’m doing bad. i don’t know why, but i’ve felt like this for years. i couldn’t tell you what more i could even do to feel better! it just sucks and so do i.

there has to be a time and place for… complaining, and i’ve been complaining nonstop. but like i said, either something’s up. or i have to face the fact that i’m regular and i basically took everyone’s criticism the wrong way my whole life. (there was so much Up with me that that was all i remembered??? how???)

either i have something to hang onto and pinpoint and address—even if it isn’t adhd—or. christ. or i accept that i’ve been looking for a diagnosis to pin my internal failings on. and keep trucking. (and i’m going to keep trucking regardless! no one’s getting rid of me! but the idea of just keeping on keeping on the way i feel right now? is really…… scary. afraid of the future. looking down the barrel of the rest of my life.)

i’m just… the product of so much love and work from so many people, and i’ve been ashamed for years that i have not a lot to show for it. i feel like there should be more. i want there to be more. i want to be better at living my life.