writing about technology, and vice-versa.
The Dream[1] of Watching The Social Network with Mark Zuckerberg
He grimaces at the opening scene
A little too close to home he admits
but the girlfriend[2] isn’t real; an amalgam
of various tropes and a wish-fulfillment
curse placed on him by a few ex-friends,
although there really is a Facebook profile of her
public figure, and only created after the movie came out.
Continue reading “The Dream of Watching The Social Network with Mark Zuckerberg”
A bit of a creative dry spell because we’re in the last throes of qualifying for and getting a mortgage so as to schedule a closing, moving, and all that other fun stuff. There’s probably a poem in there somewhere, and it’s more than likely a sestina.
In keeping with the “and vice-versa” part of my tagline, I give you
a spreadsheet which sequences your words in the textbook sestina order. I used it to write the previous poem. Feel free to distribute.
“Found” Line-sestina: Cologne Cathedral’s Stained Glass Window, Gerhart Richter, 2007
It could have well been placed in a mosque or a synagogue.
– Cardinal Meisner, archbishop of Köln, objecting to the commission of the window. Continue reading “Kölner Dom Domfenster”
The decision as to what your career is to be is a very deep and important one,
and it has to do with something like a spiritual requirement and commitment.
– Joseph Campbell
As I grow older, I see this as his greatest feat:
balancing the day job with his career as superhero.
Mississippi teen charged with capital murder
Is U.S. nearing debt of no return?
Boston lost to Tampa Bay
Maxwell pleads for the troops to come home
Home decor makeover after the break
A Harry Houdini letter contains a startling admission
And I could do stanza after stanza of this, but I’m not sure about the fair use issues… this just occurred to me… I’ll probably have to make stuff up.
[W]e’re sort of shortening and simplifying the backstory so that new readers can jump in and understand what’s going on from the very first issue. – Jim Lee, DC Comics, in an NPR interview about starting several of the issues over.
It’s an understandable sentiment
wanting to start all over again
when you’re painted into a corner
and the story has gotten too complex.
I’m sitting in this motel room
with a notebook and a pen,
writing angry notes
to God and Angelina.
I don’t know where I can send them off
so I guess I’ll tear them up
and the whiskey contains all the proof I need.
It’s heading south tonight on a northbound train.
And I don’t know how it can be this hot and not rain.
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Epigram from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot,
originally from Dante’s Inferno, canto xxvii
i)
forgiveness for the language:
scratches for the trouble of trying
to arrive at the same place by a different way
when the first way was also choked with thorns. Continue reading “What We Gain in Translation”
During her speech, the nutritionist had said
we can only begin with where we are
speaking of a gradual reduction of fried chicken in our diet
When question time came I rose and asked:
Were you consciously evoking Wendell Berry’s
line we can only begin with what has happened
As she nervously nodded I expressed relief:
because the whole time you’ve been talking
I’ve been thinking about those rural deaths, those
chest clutching spasms leading to a Country Funeral –
here I paused for recognition which didn’t come
poetrytech 