My wife left me in Amherst Books recently while she got a haircut, and when she came to pick me up she found me drooling over Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape
The other present of Languagehat relevance is a box of books that arrived on the 21st from my pal Jim Salant (author of Leaving Dirty Jersey
I also got wine, food, an incredibly warm shirt, and from my excessively generous brother Eric a bunch of DVDs (four Almodóvars and The Motorcycle Diaries) and CDs, among other things. Oh, and we got a gift certificate to Kiva.org, a wonderful site that lets you provide microloans ($25) to small businesses in developing countries: “By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can ‘sponsor a business’ and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.” And then you can loan it to someone else. Let me tell you, it feels great to hit that button and know that you’re helping someone make their way out of poverty. Give it a try!
My friend Charles Perry, scholar of Levantine cuisine
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780907325918-1
and LA Times restaurant reviewer, did a nice poetry pastiche some years back:
Beautiful Rêveur
Softly, o’er the twilight,
Steals the silvr’y dawn.
Gently, in the moonlight,
Sleeps the shady lawn.
There my loved one waiting
Weeps in ceaseless grief.
There the sunset’s plaiting
Trembles o’er a leaf.
Oh, once my heart went roaming
Where the swallow loves to trill,
Up a streamlet… in the gloaming…
‘Mongst the vi’lets on the hill.
But the play of colors blending
In the balmy fields of youth
Stays not Fate’s dire sickle wending;
Sates no somber serpent’s tooth.
Ah, would that Love’s surrender,
Once given, would return
With kisses mild and tender
As a maiden’s bow’r of fern
Ere One’s sweet misty glances
From ‘neath some briny wave
The perfumed air entrances
Seek the solace of the grave!
My Indian maid is wandering aye
Through dreamy vales of noon,
Among the blushing buds of May,
‘Neath gushing plums of June.
But One whose brow is furrowed e’er
With cank’ring sorrows drear
Among the restless clouds so fair
Is floating–far, yet near!
–Charles Perry (“Classy Writing at Popular Prices”)
The true name of the city is Sankt Pieterburg, but the Communists and Russians have succeeded in fooling the world. My Kyrgyz friend called it Petrograd.
Landor pastiche! Landor pastiche! I want Landor pastiche!!!
Publish it under an assumed name if you must, and then send an email to all of us regular commentators (you have our email addresses, no?) telling us the URL, but let us get it into our hot little hands!
Or be sensible, and post it here on Hat, with a health warning at the top of the post, like, “See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_bollocks (the home of the annotated version of Loomis’s “Classic Ode”).
Loved the bookstore story! Merry Christmas to both of you, and I hope there’s plenty of time for reading this week.
All right, I dug through the deepest recesses of my filing cabinet to find the Landor pastiche—the things I do for my readers!
Alas, Ianthe, thou that wast so free
Art now bound under by horse-heavy clay,
And that loose hair that so delighted me
Is shorn at last for the grave Goddess’ pay.
No longer mayst thou smile at whom thou wilt
And take poor lovers’ fancy prisoner;
The last wine in the beaker now is spilt
And gone. Alas, Ianthe, for thy hair!
(Sun. 15 May ’77, late afternoon)
I also dug up “To Nature (after reading too much Keats),” which starts “Bringer of gentle warmth and pleasantness…” But I’ll spare you that.
Chroniclers of potato rhymes may recall Landor’s “Shakespeare in Italy” for: