Poetry Tuesday: Poem on Airing Books on a Starlit Night

We unfasten the chest

Of books and

Offer this gift

To the stars who meet

Only tonight

                                                                                        -Emperor Go-Youzei, trans. Ann Yonemura*

Written on the custom of airing books on the evening of the Tanabata festival, celebrating the once-a-year meeting of the Weaving Maiden (Vega) and the Ox-Herd Boy (Altair), from the Chinese legend. 


*Found in Twelve Centuries of Japanese Art from the Imperial Collections, p. 70

Books I Have Read in 2016

In order of reading:

1. Aaron Allston, Wraith Squadron
2. Aaron Allston, Iron Fist
3. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
4. Aaron Allston, Solo Command
5. China Mieville, King Rat
6. China Mieville, the City and the City
7. Rebecca, Skloot The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
8. Margaret Mahy, The Pirates' Mixed up Voyage
9. Sydney padua, The Thrilling Adventures of Babbage and Lovelace
10. Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants
11. Robert chambers, The King in Yellow
12. Vivian French, A Robe of Skulls
13. Stephen Brust, Paths of the Dead
14. Ambrose Bierce, Can Such Things Be?
15. Neil Gaiman, Fortunately, the Milk
16. Gordon Rennie and Frazier Irving, The Necronauts
17. Neil Gaiman, The Wolves in the Walls
18. China Mieville, The Iron Council
19. Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass
20. Stephen Brust, Sethra Lavode
21. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
22. Kurtis J. Wiebe, The Rat Queens, vols 1&2
23. Kenneth Hite, Cliffourd the Big Red God
24. Kenneth Hite, Good Night, Azathoth 
25. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
26. Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde
27. George Orwell,Coming up for Air

Madness Monday: Mini Mythos

It has come to my attention that Kenneth Hite has written an adorable series of adorable adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft parodying classic children's literature. I now own Clifford the Big Red God (an adaption of :"The Dunwich Horror" and Goodnight Azathoth, which is simply a delight. 

In Goodnight Azathoth, when we say good night to the two little fishes (and something that squishes) we notice that the fishes have a German sub toy in their bowl, an interesting nod to HPL's "The Temple."

The genie lamp in the Goodnight Azathoth room is helpfully labeled "do not rub."  Perfect.

Cliffourd follows "Dunwich Horror" fairly closely, but it is a joy to have the whole thing narrated in the context of Wilbur Whately having the biggest and reddest god in Dunwich (infra-red, so he is invisible!).

These little books bring me such joy.  Next I must acquire Where the Deep Ones Are, an adaptation of "Shadow over Innsmouth" in the style of Maurice Sendak.

Waka != Haiku

I did not quite fling this book across the room in disgust, but it came very close:  

A cloud of blossoms
A hazy moon
Tast of mist, sweet wind

That is my waka for the spring tea that I plan for Auntie and my mother.  It is modeled after the greatest of the ancient Japanese poets, Basho.  His was better.

                            The Royal Diaries: Kazunomiya, Prisoner of Heaven, by Kathryn Lasky, p. 15

A waka is a classical Japanese poetic form of 31 syllables arranged in five lines. The Kokinshu (905 C.E.) is the first collection of waka only.  Kazunomiya would certainly have been familiar with it, as well as with later collections such as the Hyakunin Isshu, and would more believably have referenced such poets as Ki no Tsurayuki, Izumi Shikibu, or just possibly Saigyo.

An haiku is a later Japanese poetic form of 17 syllables arranged in three lines.   Crudely speaking, the haiku grew out of the first part of waka and came to be a standalone form.

Basho (1644-1694) was a master of haiku, not waka.  In a country with extant diaries reaching back to 600 years before Basho (Tosa Nikki, 934-35, oldest surviving diary written in the Japanese language), and extant literature from the early 700s C.E., Basho would hardly have qualified as ancient to Kazunomiya. 

I grant that historical fiction takes certain liberties with facts in order to create a more engaging story.  But unnecessary ignorance of even the basics of Japanese poetry styles, in a tale where such poetry is an absolutely key cultural underpinning?   When a wealth of material exists, beyond Basho? The author has been unforgivably lazy with this story.

Books I Must Read, and that Right Soon

T. Rex and the Crater of DOOM! 

Malaria: The Least Poetic Disease

The anti-malaria initiative people working in Tanzania are continuing their valuable work of posting pictures to Facebook, advertising their Facebook events to Americans, and asking Americans to like their Facebook work.  It's a vast circle of awareness raising for and by Americans.

Ignoring the point that if the U.S. were reported on the way it reports on Africa, we'd be asked to raise awareness for the poor Americans dying of cancer, obesity, heart disease, and HIV, Facebook campaigns that appear to not have any actual goal other than generating likes do nothing to help malaria be more than the most boring of all deadly diseases.

Other deadly diseases are immortalized in song and story.  Most famously the Black Death, which spawned a Poe story, The Decameron, nursery rhymes, vampire superstitions, and an abiding place in the imagination.  Since a version of the plague is still extant in several places in the world, carried on squirrels and pigeons, I have had occasion to discuss the possibility of getting the plague.  I'm not in favor, but a friend would be willing just to be able to tell people he'd had the Black Death.  I'm not willing to go quite that far for the conversational advantage, but I sympathize.

More recently, tuberculosis is the preferred disease of the opera heroine and quite a few mysterious and brave anime heroes, e.g Ukitake, suffer from a disease which, while not specified, causes periodic coughing of blood.

HIV/AIDS gets artistic treatment in Rent cribbed straight from the tuberculin heroine of Puccini.  Also not opera cribbings in the form of critically acclaimed cinema, e.g. Angels in America and The Hours.  

Malaria has, as far as I can recall offhand, a mention by Laura Ingalls Wilder (who refers to it as fever and ague) and a cameo in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.  Neither literary sketch of malaria has quite the effect on the imagination of Mimi or Violetta dying of tuberculosis, much less the partying nobles all succumbing to the plague at the entrance of the Red Death.

This is weird.  The anopheles mosquito is the deadliest animal in the world, and malaria is basically not completely preventable by, well, anything that doesn't completely destroy the environment. The U.S.  DDTed hell and guts out of the landscape and drained the wetlands to get rid of malaria.  Other than that, the futility of defending against a non-detectable mosquito ought to be at least slightly interesting, artistically.  But it's not.  Maybe if Manon died of malaria in the swamps of Louisiana that would help, but frankly, I love that she dies in the desert right outside New Orleans.
So.  Making malaria at least as interesting as Ebola, which makes the news for killing far fewer people than malaria has.  Any obvious way to do that?  Am I missing obvious great works of art that feature malaria?

In Which I Judge Books by their Covers

Ebooks, they are useful, assuming you are not "purchasing" them from one of those evil corporations that have convinced people that renting the rights in such a way that it can be revoked at any time without warning, e.g. Amazon, is equivalent to purchase.  Ebooks solve many issues related to transport weight and availability.  In Tanzania, having a dear friend email me a collection of Star Wars ebooks was just as good as getting a care package.

I said all that to say that while I like and read ebooks, I prefer physical books, and I prefer them to be pretty.  Which is why I recently reread Wilde's Salome.  I normally wouldn't,  I prefer Wilde as the scintillating drawing room wit he displays in The Importance of Being Earnest. So, fine, that's not a play that challenges its audience in anyway, but on the other hand, it is a lot of fun and works for even not-so-talented companies because the writing will carry a bad production.  In this is art, that it is art even poorly performanced.  Such a pity that the prudish British killed Wilde for his genius.*  Anyway, below are pictures of the copy of Salome which is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen.  Sunken relief, severed heads, peacocks, nudity, swords, it's got everything.  Found, of all places, in a library in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming.

*And, admittedly, for drawing some stripling youth into Sin, but let's be honest.  Had the stripling youth been a lass rather than a lad it would all have been fine, and Wilde hailed as the next mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron.

Celebrate Banned Book Week!

Being somewhat behind the times, I am reading Gargantua and Pantagruel, which I don't think has been banned since the 16th century.  Nonetheless, controlling-type folk are still busy trying to decide for us that some things we simply mustn't read.   We should foil these folk.

Visit bannedbooksweek.org for more information and lists of banned and challenged titles.

What are you reading that someone objects to?