Tag Archives: Arts

Intro: Everything But Rain

Posted by David Emeron on

Starlight–pretending grace;
Moonlight–intruding cool:
Configuration’s subtle face
Reflecting in a quiet pool.

Lamplight–embracing calm;
Firelight–surrounding warm:
Romanticism’s gentle hand
Protecting us from harm.

Joe Haldeman wrote…

Posted by David Emeron on

…quite a lot of ground-breaking science fiction.   Being of a rather childish sort, I tend to like his more quirky, flashy, more “Haldemanesque” novels.   Mindbridge, and Buying Time come to mind.  His other work, though exemplary, I can take or leave.  Any old writer can crank out plain-jane, dull, boring-looking blocks of prose that look like nothing more than…  well…  boring-looking blocks of prose–indistinguishable, unless read, from any other such blocks.  To write something that looks “really cool,” so to speak… something that, dare I say “knocks your socks off” with its originality, even from a distance, before you read it; yet is not some kind of random junk of the type produced by other “avant-garde” writers attempting simply to confuse–to make the well seem deep, by obscuring its shallow bottom, so to speak… no, to write something such as I describe takes… well, actually… Joe Haldeman.

Anything else about the man, including his less imaginative–and eminently less entertaining–prose, and his strangely (for one so unique) collectivist, and anti-individualist views, holds little interest for me.

I would, of course, prefer that one of the most amazing and interesting such writers, might be a little less crazy; however, I suppose one might say it goes with the territory.  Although not always.  Refreshingly not, I am happy to so state.

Still, if Mr. Haldeman had a blog on wordpress, I’d give him a “follow,” and any number of random “likes” and an occasional comment; because, that’s what we do here.  And in all good faith.   But that…  is about all.   And though at this point he clearly doesn’t need it, he’ll not get another dime from me.

UNLESS…   he writes another of the “awesome, wicked-cool” non-boring works of which he is most capable.   Then I might not be able to help myself.  God forgive me.

Awards are a thing…

Posted by David Emeron on

…which I eschew.  There are a number of reasons for this; however this post is not directly about these reasons.  What I find myself pondering at the moment is this:  Some awards have cash prizes associated with them.  The Nobel, I believe, has as much as a Million of some kind of dollars, pounds, roubles, yen, or pesos.  How much would have to be in the award, I wonder before my resolve would fail?  My sweetheart says, regarding me, that it would be a lot more than I think it would.

I find such things hard to visualise.  I think of the scenario wherein an armoured car falls over and $100 bills go flying all over the road.  Would I run around stuffing them in my shirt like many others would?   I always thought:  “Yes, I would.”  But at some point, I realised that I would not.  I would, however, watch the scene with morbid fascination.  I am not sure when I realised that she was right about this.  But came as a surprise when I did.

So, perhaps I should believe my wife in such matters.  Come to think of it now, we have both turned down inheritances because there were strings attached.  At the time, I thought nothing of it.  It seemed second nature to refuse such a thing.  (And trust me when I say, that both instances, we most certainly could have used the  money.  Needed it.)  We were not well off–especially not then.

I think I might falter around a million dollars.  But my wife doubts it.  Sometimes, regarding these awards, someone has no choice.  One cannot decline the nomination or the award, one can merely refuse to acknowledge the prise.   I am not at all sure what happens to the cash part of the award if one does not accept it; I am not curious enough to look it up.  In any case, a sonnet writer is not likely to earn such a prise.  And since I probably do not fit the narrative which is desired in the giving of such prises, I doubt very much if I would be a candidate for any such prise, regardless of what kind of art at whatever level of acclaim or notoriety I might earn.  Much like Mr. Borges, to which Christian Mahai refers in one of his posts.

Part 7: (14 lines by clause)

Posted by David Emeron on

Here you will find the words themselves, presented in freeverse as simply and compactly as possible.  The order of the words is not changed; there is nothing added or removed, but punctuated in order to make it easier to follow the words–something just short of prose, perhaps.   And although the  line lengths appear problematic, it so happens that there are 14 of these lines.

I should state that the words were originally written this way, although you might have suspected that the original form was presented in part 5.  In any case, the words are easily understood now.

Just read the words.  Think about what they mean; perhaps in answer to the original prompt:

Intro 1: William Shakespeare, Sonnet I

Posted by David Emeron on

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
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