Kurt
The Presupposition of The
If it is employed, then one must suppose that it is being supposed, as it has been for over a thousand years, that it is known to what it refers.
Or it should be known.
Or it will be known.
My Subjunctive Mood Always Brings Me Down
If I was were a less sensitive grammarian, then I would care less whether my grammar were was more or less correct. However, if it was were true that I were was a less sensitive grammarian, would it then mean that I were was a less caring person?
Poeting hard on this most poetic of days…
POETIC LICENSE
Thank God for the passionate poet
Who trumpets the sun’s morning rise
And who writes lovely, pretty sad songs
Of young lovers’s heartbreaking goodbyes
Thank God for the passionate poet
Who reaches right into the heart
To stroke it, to tease it, to please it
And sometimes to tear it apart
#NATIONALPOETRYDAY2014
~~~~
From my poetry collection Poems from the River
Zelda…and her writer husband
Hanging out in B’more this morning. The Fitzgerald’s have an ever-present presence here, especially Zelda.
It makes me happy.
#wherewewritershang
Inside Your Head There's a Record That's Playing
Hold ON
They hung a sign up in our town
“if you live it up, you won’t
live it down”
So, she left Monte Rio, son
just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
she went and took that California trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
hair like wind
She said don’t look back just
come on Jim
(Chorus)
Oh you got to
Hold on, Hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
and a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
but you share my bed, you share my name
Well, go ahead and call the cops
you don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes there’s nothin left to do
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here, you got to
just hold on
Well, God bless your crooked little heart
St. Louis got the best of me
I miss your broken-china voice
How I wish you were still
here with me
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
you burn your mansion to the ground
When there’s nothing left to keep you here, when
you’re falling behind in this
big blue world
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You got to hold on
Down by the Riverside motel,
it’s 10 below and falling
by a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
and started swaying
but it’s so hard to dance that way
when it’s cold and there’s no music
well your old hometown is so far away
but, inside your head there’s a record
that’s playing, a song called
Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
and just hold on.
Is it just me or…
Do others get excited for a flash of a second when they think they are reading a splashy headline about the literary giant Milan Kundera and then feel all bummed out when they realize it’s actually about the actor Mila Kunis and then feel even more bummed out when they realize they couldn’t stop themselves from reading the entire vapid article?
The Past, the Present, and the Future walk into a bar…
It was tense.
#internetspotting
#grammarhumor
Bookies on the Books
The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced next week and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the odds makers are making noise for the usual suspects.
Of course we all know it’s all just a guessing-game (as most gambling is) as to who will win, a game depending on the author and scholars who make up the selection panel, and, unfortunately, the international politics at play.
That said, still it’s fun to guess. Here are some of the odds:
Haruki Murakami is the favorite at 5 to 1
Joyce Carol Oates is at 12 to 1
Philip Roth is at 16 to 1
Thomas Pynchon is at 25 to 1
Don DeLillo is at 33 to 1
Richard Ford is also at 33 to 1
Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushdie, and Bob Dylan are all at 50 to 1
I don’t think I’ve ever read a winner before he or she had been announced (or too many thereafter, either). My reading list is way too full of dead authors that I’m supposed to read so it’s darn near impossible to find time for the living ones I’m also supposed to read.
But I have read many on the list here and I personally like Oates (at least she’s interesting on Twitter — but I’d guess her chances are diminished somewhat since a woman was chosen last year).
However, when considering this list along with the politics du jour, I’d have to go with Murakami, even though (especially since?) they have recently awarded an Asian writer, Mo Yan from China, which was highly politicized.
But the recently aggressive China and somewhat recently humbled (the past couple decades anyway) Japan have been going at it pretty good lately, so this might be a chance for the Nobel Prize pickers to stick it in China’s government’s eye again.
Unfortunately, I have no idea if there are any contending Ukrainian, Iranian, Uighur, or any other writers from politically sensitive countries.
But, I’m looking forward to finding out who the winner will be…and the sure-to-come guilty letdown I’ll get when I realize it’s yet another writer I have never read.
My Crime, My Punishment
BOOK | FICTION | LITERATURE
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
RATING: ★ ★ ★
My crime?
Posing myself as a Fyodor Dostoevsky fanboy for just about all my adult life.
Why is this a crime?
Because, in all honesty, I never really read Dostoevsky…until recently.
Well, I did pass my eyes over all the words of his NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
But as an early twenty-something, I didn’t stand a chance with Dostoevsky seeing that research has proven at that age brains aren’t yet fully developed. For all intents and purposes, according to science, someone in their early to mid twenties is still an adolescent. Which, in retrospect, explains many things about my life. And which begs the question, how can someone without a fully developed prefrontal cortex truly appreciate or fully comprehend something as complex and nuanced as Dostoevsky’s writing?
As I’ve come to find out, even with a fully developed prefrontal cortex Dostoevsky is still rather overwhelming and abstruse.
Unlike Franz Kafka, who I also first read in my early twenties, I never went back to Dostoevsky over the years. I don’t know why. Perhaps my adolescent twenty-something self did understand more of what he read than I now give him credit for. But over the years, I did revisit Kafka’s work – often – and his writing has been, and continues to be, what I consider a foundational pillar of my intellectual being (for better or worse). There are other writers, too, whom I consider foundational to my being. Writers such as Vonnegut, Hemingway, Kerouac, Camus (yes, all the stereotypical white male authors one would expect a stereotypical white male dude like me would admire), among others.
But even though I never went back to Dostoevsky, and even though I am quite sure my twenty-something adolescent self had no clue what the NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND was about, all throughout the years in my mind I regarded him to be just as fundamental to my core as the writers whom I just listed.
Again, I do not know why. Probably because, like I already confessed, I was just a poser who enjoyed thinking that he knew what the hell Dostoevsky was about.
In my defense, I don’t think I ever made a public spectacle of myself with any obnoxious proclamations of deep knowledge of his writings; nor did I ever engage in any self-righteous debates or arguments with someone who did know and understand Dostoevsky’s works.
No, I believe my fanboy-dom was not a public lie, it was more a self lie. Somehow, somewhere deep down in my subconsciousness I came to believe that Dostoevsky was important to me when in fact he wasn’t.
Only the idea of Dostoevsky was important to me.
That is my crime.
So what, then, is my punishment?
Guilt.
I feel tremendous guilt. For, after a lifetime of self-deception in believing that Dostoevsky’s work was deeply meaningful to me, I find that after rereading NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND (twice now) and finally reading CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, perhaps Dostoevsky’s most acclaimed work, I really do not enjoy his writing as much as I thought I did…or should.
What is wrong with me?
Much.