Poem For A Thursday

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by,
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie,
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived,
To carry on without a break thus far,--
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I was going to pick a different Millay poem, but in looking at the history of Holds Upon Happiness posts, posts from before I stumbled upon her series, I find Jennifer had already picked my first choice. So I was forced indulge my reprehensible taste for cynical light verse instead...can Dorothy Parker be far away?

She's featuring a lovely Elizabeth Bishop poem this week.

Sunday Salon

Briefly Noted

Hey, if the New Yorker can get away with it, then so can I.

Tremontaine, by Ellen Kushner, and others.

I'm a fan of Ellen Kushner's Riverside fantasy novels. This has a rather experimental provenance: a company called Serial Box is publishing stories on an app; their model is modern literate TV series such as The Wire or Game of Thrones. The first 'season' also was printed as a book, which was at my library, but there are three more 'seasons' of Tremontaine available on their app.

I think I'd have preferred a new novel just by Kushner, but there wasn't one, and this was definitely fun.

Ellen Kushner is insufficiently prolific as far as I'm concerned.

Found Audio, by N. J. Campbell

Found Audio is by a new-to-me small press called Two Dollar Radio based in Columbus, OH. This is the story of a journalist who freelances for extreme adventure/travel magazines. This unnamed journalist has three encounters in extreme situations. He can't document them upon his return to civilization and leave him questioning his own sanity. Religious experiences?

The stories are embedded in a frame tale that indicates that everybody who's heard these stories has died or disappeared. Well, I'm not. Yet. Or am I?

Quite well done, I thought. A blurb cites Borges and Jeff VanderMeer. Good cites, but I'd mention Philip Dick's novels of gnostic revelation, Ubik or Valis.

Where I Am

We were off to see a movie at TIFF Lightbox theatre the other day when it was sunny. It's not today, alas. But here's Toronto on a nice (though cold) late afternoon.

Poem For A Thursday

Something Welsh for #Dewithon19...

Children's Song

We live in our own world,

A world that is too small

For you to stoop and enter

Even on hands and knees,

The adult subterfuge.

And though you probe and pry

With analytic eye,

And eavesdrop all our talk

With an amused look,

You cannot find the centre

Where we dance, where we play,

Where life is still asleep

Under the closed flower,

Under the smooth shell

Of eggs in the cupped nest

That mock the faded blue

Of your remoter heaven.

-R. S. Thomas

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) was a priest in the Church of Wales. "Children's Song" is from a volume of 1955, Song At The Year's Turning.

Jennifer (my model in all things Thursday-poemy) at Holds Upon Happiness has picked a lovely seasonal Emily Dickinson poem that was new to me.