Tori, you’re page today was a wonderfully told tale of a delightful conversation. Thanks for letting us listen in.
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Thank you! 🙂
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So many treats today!
CATALINA, thank you for taking the time to share the recollections of your mother, the sketch by Rizal (Nole Mi Tangere!), and the Ilocano story of the turtle and the monkeys. So many ways to read that folktale; one is as a prophesy of American Black Friday capitalism (DATO). We are all monkeys tying heavy stones around our waists. It’s tempting to mock the poor(er) monkeys in the Walmart parking lot, but a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour all but guarantee that, for many, sales really are a kind of salvation (more from me tomorrow, in a piece that just missed today’s deadline). The double-pleasure of both abstaining from Black Friday, Cyber Monday et. al. & scorning those who cannot or will not is almost too much to resist, if you have the luxury of being a monkey who can sit back and watch through a security camera, which I suppose is it’s own kind of stone, or sharp bamboo stake. Yes, we are all Ilocano monkeys, Biden’s protestations notwithstanding.
Speaking of many ways to read things, thanks, KENT, for the wonderful Walter Benjamin quote (Chinese exoticism excepted). Benjamin’s essay, The Storyteller, also in the volume you pictured, contains these lovely lines: “It is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it. Thus narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.” Like the folktale CATALINA shared.
LEO, thank you for your moon poem yesterday, and the one about the murdered peacock the day before, and the one about those easily lost and painfully remembered moments when all is well with love a few days before that. I look forward to the magic, amplitude, and incisive commentary of your poetry each and every day.
DRO&I, aha: so you do love and care about her after all. Sometimes it takes a virus.
XICANO, I hope jale doesn’t have you too down to write.
MICHAELRPDX: *** ****** ** ******. See, I swore not another word on the matter!
Until tomorrow,
h@m
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Catalina – thank you for researching and transcribing the story from Ilocano. There was so much to learn in such a short tale.
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Hi, H@M. I’m very chuffed about your comments re my poems. But now I have to write in a bigger room because my head has swelled several sizes. And thanks for all the info about copyright, getting that debate going, so we know how to mark our pieces, just in case. You have put my mind at rest.
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LEO MADIGOW, well, I hope you find a really big room, because I forgot to mention several other favorites. For example, although I did not comment on it at the time, I did print out 5-Minute Poem #130–AM I DISTURBING YOU–and it is paper-clipped to the wall right next to where I write. You’ve versified a constant theme in my own living and thinking with that one. I also really loved the Moby Dick poem, since that is a novel I keep returning to, both for sustenance and because it pisses me off. (I call one of my typer’s–a WHITE torpedo–Moby, and I think of myself as Ahab when I write on it. I often walk away from those writing sessions on just one leg.) I also haven’t stopped thinking about the short story where the statues start moving and talking to the child in the park while their dad hallucinates that he is seeing his ex.
I would never want to reduce your work to a formula, especially since it constantly surprises, but as a generalized statement I would say that one thing I appreciate most about it is its inimitable combination of caustic critique, whimsical magic, self-mockery, and irreverent but sincerely lived depth of feeling. Also, I find that we are often on the same wavelength in some of our sensibilities, or at least I imagine we are, and it is simply a gift to get to read you everyday.
There, I guess maybe it might be better for you just to write outdoors now, where there aren’t any walls to constrict your head? But seriously, writers, and especially poets, don’t get enough appreciation, and I enjoy giving specific praise and appreciation where specific praise and appreciation is due. (Although, you should probably also keep in mind W. BERRY’s advice, via ROGER, to distrust anyone who likes your work.)
Cheers,
h@m
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Okay, H@M, I’ll take your advice and distrust you for liking my work. In the meantime, I’m building an extension to house my humongous head. It’s too cold to write in the park…
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DRO&I – I hope your wife is one of the many “mild cases” and you don’t get it at all. Fingers crossed…. yikes!
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So far I’m feeling alright, and she’s feeling better.
Thanks for your post today, it inspired mine for tomorrow,.
Tori, you’re page today was a wonderfully told tale of a delightful conversation. Thanks for letting us listen in.
Thank you! 🙂
So many treats today!
CATALINA, thank you for taking the time to share the recollections of your mother, the sketch by Rizal (Nole Mi Tangere!), and the Ilocano story of the turtle and the monkeys. So many ways to read that folktale; one is as a prophesy of American Black Friday capitalism (DATO). We are all monkeys tying heavy stones around our waists. It’s tempting to mock the poor(er) monkeys in the Walmart parking lot, but a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour all but guarantee that, for many, sales really are a kind of salvation (more from me tomorrow, in a piece that just missed today’s deadline). The double-pleasure of both abstaining from Black Friday, Cyber Monday et. al. & scorning those who cannot or will not is almost too much to resist, if you have the luxury of being a monkey who can sit back and watch through a security camera, which I suppose is it’s own kind of stone, or sharp bamboo stake. Yes, we are all Ilocano monkeys, Biden’s protestations notwithstanding.
Speaking of many ways to read things, thanks, KENT, for the wonderful Walter Benjamin quote (Chinese exoticism excepted). Benjamin’s essay, The Storyteller, also in the volume you pictured, contains these lovely lines: “It is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it. Thus narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.” Like the folktale CATALINA shared.
LEO, thank you for your moon poem yesterday, and the one about the murdered peacock the day before, and the one about those easily lost and painfully remembered moments when all is well with love a few days before that. I look forward to the magic, amplitude, and incisive commentary of your poetry each and every day.
DRO&I, aha: so you do love and care about her after all. Sometimes it takes a virus.
XICANO, I hope jale doesn’t have you too down to write.
MICHAELRPDX: *** ****** ** ******. See, I swore not another word on the matter!
Until tomorrow,
h@m
Catalina – thank you for researching and transcribing the story from Ilocano. There was so much to learn in such a short tale.
Hi, H@M. I’m very chuffed about your comments re my poems. But now I have to write in a bigger room because my head has swelled several sizes. And thanks for all the info about copyright, getting that debate going, so we know how to mark our pieces, just in case. You have put my mind at rest.
LEO MADIGOW, well, I hope you find a really big room, because I forgot to mention several other favorites. For example, although I did not comment on it at the time, I did print out 5-Minute Poem #130–AM I DISTURBING YOU–and it is paper-clipped to the wall right next to where I write. You’ve versified a constant theme in my own living and thinking with that one. I also really loved the Moby Dick poem, since that is a novel I keep returning to, both for sustenance and because it pisses me off. (I call one of my typer’s–a WHITE torpedo–Moby, and I think of myself as Ahab when I write on it. I often walk away from those writing sessions on just one leg.) I also haven’t stopped thinking about the short story where the statues start moving and talking to the child in the park while their dad hallucinates that he is seeing his ex.
I would never want to reduce your work to a formula, especially since it constantly surprises, but as a generalized statement I would say that one thing I appreciate most about it is its inimitable combination of caustic critique, whimsical magic, self-mockery, and irreverent but sincerely lived depth of feeling. Also, I find that we are often on the same wavelength in some of our sensibilities, or at least I imagine we are, and it is simply a gift to get to read you everyday.
There, I guess maybe it might be better for you just to write outdoors now, where there aren’t any walls to constrict your head? But seriously, writers, and especially poets, don’t get enough appreciation, and I enjoy giving specific praise and appreciation where specific praise and appreciation is due. (Although, you should probably also keep in mind W. BERRY’s advice, via ROGER, to distrust anyone who likes your work.)
Cheers,
h@m
Okay, H@M, I’ll take your advice and distrust you for liking my work. In the meantime, I’m building an extension to house my humongous head. It’s too cold to write in the park…
DRO&I – I hope your wife is one of the many “mild cases” and you don’t get it at all. Fingers crossed…. yikes!
So far I’m feeling alright, and she’s feeling better.
Thanks for your post today, it inspired mine for tomorrow,.