illustrated Quoof

As Paul Muldoon would have it, The Unicorn Defends Himself.



Also in Quoof: a poem about Edward Kienholz's The State Hospital.
You can have a much closer look using the Image Viewer here.

one thousand tyres on fire

xrefer

xrefer - or maybe it's xreferplus - kindly send me a quiz every Friday, which usually makes me think, 'Cripes! Friday again! How did that happen?' I like the xrefer quizzes because they're pretty easy, but they usually have a couple of questions that I don't know. However, today's quiz proved to be enjoyable for a different reason (I knew them all in a flash because of my secret past as a mathematician).

1. What is the normal word for one half of a circle?

2. Which word is used to describe a triangle that has all its sides of equal length?

3. How many sides does a quadrilateral have?

4. A rectangle is the same as an oblong: true or false?

5. What is the word to describe a triangle that has two sides of the same length?

6. How many sides does a pentagon have?

7. What is the two-letter word for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter? Its value is about 3.14.

8. How many sides does a dodecagon have - six, eight or twelve?

9. What is a wet nurse?

10. How many sides does a rhombus have?

time: explained

"The human mind has two main scales on which to measure time. The large one takes the length of a human life as its unit, so that there is nothing to be done about life, it is of an animal dignity and simplicity, and must be regarded from a peaceable and fatalistic point of view. The small one takes as its unit the conscious moment, and it is from this that you consider the neighbouring space, an activity of the will, delicacies of social tone, and your personality. The scales are so far apart as almost to give the effect of defining two dimensions; they do not come into contact because what is too large to be conceived by one is still too small to be conceived by the other. Thus, taking the units as a century and the quarter of a second, their ratio is ten to the tenth and their mean is the standard working day; or taking the smaller one as five minutes, their mean is the whole of summer. The repose and self-command given by the use of the first are contrasted with the speed at which it shows the years to be passing from you, and therefore with the fear of death; the fever and multiplicity of life, as known by the use of the second, are contrasted with the calm of the external space of which it gives consciousness, with the absolute or extra-temporal value attached to the brief moments of self-knowledge with which it is concerned, and with a sense of security in that it makes death so far off."

Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 43-4

GP

layers

Literary Opinion

"There was a tremendous thing said by the poet A. E. Housman, in the preface to an edition of a Latin author: he said that the German professor A when he read the German professor B, must have felt like Sin when she brought forth Death. Now I am willing to confess I have sometimes felt like this when reading modern literary criticism, but not at all often. People aren't such fools as all that; the thing settles itself."

(big Bill Empson, 'Literary Opinion', a radio broadcast, 20 October 1954)

ayurvedic massage

Where can I get a decent ayurvedic massage these days?

kiddo?

"I think of my poems as my kiddo, and no doubt Tennyson felt that way too, 'Deep as first love and wild with all regret, Oh death in Life the days that are no more.'"

Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper (1926)

dandiacal

hello mum!

such a sad, sad situation

There was an old man whose despair
Induced him to purchase a hare:
Whereon one fine day,
He rode wholly away,
Which partly assuaged his despair.

(Edward Lear)

... several experiences in consciousness that I have had ...

"You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you City Block as the richest in content of any 'fiction' that has appeared in the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic's vision. His apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky's Tertium Organum lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest."

Hart Crane (in Ohio) writing to Allen Tate (in Kentucky), 15 Feb 1923

turning Japanese - snippets

Medbh McGuckian: "I also love Paul Muldoon's Japanese side, and recall a happy occasion in New York in a sushi restaurant where we felt really exalted!"

Ciaran Carson: "The desktop image of the PC I am writing this on is a reproduction of Hokusai's great print, 'Sudden Gust of Wind': under Mount Fuji, travellers' papers are scattered up into the air, they are holding on to their hats. I love its clarity, its movement, and its sense of humour."

(Journal of Irish Studies, XVII, 2002)

those are the pearls that were his eyes

Jambalaya

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have good fun on the bayou

Jambalaya, a crawfish pie and a file gumbo
’cause tonight I’m gonna see my machez a mio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

Thibodeaux, fontainbleau, the place is buzzin’
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style, go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

[corrections / quibbles positively welcomed]

found tv

a joy for ever

fair / not fair

unhemmed hereby pledges its support to a spanking new blog. It looks like it's going to engage with politics rather more explicitly than unhemmed does. (But then it's quite possibly true that all blogs would do well to engage with politics more explicitly than unhemmed does. Is unhemmed anxious about this? And why this mannered avoidance of the first person singular? It's been a long day.)

"Over the next month he'll be monitoring, meeting and observing the BNP candidates in his local area, Greenwich ..."

I don't envy you - but best of luck, old chum!

the rumors are true