Phase-shift tableau

Now is the time    of the quarter-moon,

and in the jungle   the changes of the moon

bring   rain .  .   .

[--Peter Matthiessen, The Cloud Forest (1961), p.  242]

Glimpse

behind the smokescreen,

her narrowed   topaz  eyes  . . .

[--Mary McCarthy, The Group (1963) ]


For comparison:
https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2018/04/women-wisps.html

Splendor

the sun   was proud    in the south

[--Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001)]

MLK-Day Monostich

I’ve been spending the holiday weekend  alternately working through the second volume of Taylor Branch’s magisterial trilogy-biography of M. L. King, and (while resting the eyes) taking in an audiobook of Thomas Pynchon’s paranoid-conspiracy novel Bleeding Edge.

The two works could scarcely be more different; yet, in a familiar phenomenon, co-temporal intake produces bouillabaisse-style mental blends.

Thus:  Branch’s historical-archival work  is straightforward in approach, and sober in style -- he is no phrase-maker -- yielding almost nothing by way of “found poetry” or excerptable monostichs.  Yet here is one line that could have sprung from Pynchon’s pen:

A slow tide of crisis

spread pressures  and counterpressures

to odd places

at great remove.

Emploi du temps

All night long,  the snowbunnies

whiz and whisper,

over the silent

                shining

                    snow . . . . .

Meteorological Monostich

North of Thirty-fourth Street,

a gray cloud

was beginning to encompass

the Empire  State  Building.

“It’s going    to  rain,”

I

said …

[ -- Mickey Spillane, The Erection Set (1972)]

Magister magistri

Eugene Wigner, himself no dummyhead (or, to use the phrase that Pauli grudgingly conceded to Einstein, “not so stupid), a Nobel Prize physicist, said, concerning the mathematician/physicist/you-name-it John von Neumann,

“Whenever I talked with the sharpest intellect whom I have known -- with von Neumann -- I always had the impression  that only hé was fully awake, that I was halfway in a dream.”

(quoted in George Dyson, Darwin among the Machines (1997), p. 77.)

For an overview of the abjectly humble outlook  among many of those who would generally be considered quite gifted, see

  http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/de-stultitia-updated.html

Code Red !

This morning,  the deck-chairs  look like snow-thrones  for polar bears.

            Code -- Red!

            Rest in bed.

            Time to soothe

            your sleepy head.

{ for more about the lovely snow,

   gently press …    here …. }

Why not spend this morning  learning everything there is to know
about our invisible snow-chums, the snowbunnies ?? 

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/snow%20bunnies

Do Snowbunnies Believe in God? (II)

They would not even understand the question;

they would think you were speaking in riddles.

Their language has no word for ‘God’,

any more than it has for ‘thankfulness for simply béing here’

or for ‘fact-of-being-a-snowbunny’.

They simply lead their lives in sleek serenity,

which comes to them  from somewhere beyond the snow.

Ethan Frome tableau

As he lay there,

the window-pane that faced him

growing gradually lighter,

inlaid upon the darkness,

a square of moon-suffused sky …

Cold Snap

Dim dawn

Pale day

Thin wind

Slate gray

Pond froze,

ice cracks.

Snowload --

branch breaks.

Dark dusk

Woods mute

Night falls:

Dead weight.

Fun Furlough Reading

Many of you may know some poor unfortunate Federal worker who has been reduced to a piteous and meaningless existence by the furlough.   What (you ask yourself) can You do to help??

Wonder no longer!  Here is a list of perfect Furlough Gifts -- thrilling reading to keep your loved-one functionary from drifting into senility and despair:

.

.

All of them available -- with free excerpts -- here:
http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html



.

Do Snowbunnies Believe in God? (I)

Snowbunnies are so peaceful and glad,

they sleep in their belief  as in a blanket.

They do not think about it,

but it keeps them warm.

[For an introduction to snow-bunnies,

try this:

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/contributions-to-exobiology.html ]