Winter sun
casts long shadows
through dead grass.
Long Shadow [Haiku]
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DAILY PHOTO: Dégi Park-tó
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BOOKS: “The Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway”
The suppressed poems by Ernest HemingwayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Available online – Public Domain
I read this book because my curiosity was piqued by a reference to poems Hemingway published in Der Querschnitt, a reference that was made in a biography of Hemingway I’ve been reading recently (Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway by Jeffrey Meyers.) Five of the seventeen poems in the book are from Der Querschnitt. (Ten of the poems were published in a book entitled Three Stories and Ten Poems and a couple are odds and ends.)
The Der Quershnitt pieces are bawdy by 1920’s standards, though not particularly for today. The other poems can be a bit intense, dealing in subjects like death in war (Champs D’Honneur,) suicide (Montparnasse, and a curse upon literary critics (Valentine,) but tend to be a bit more refined (excepting Valentine. which may be the least elevated of the collected poems.)
The poems include a mix of lyric, free verse, and prose poem, though all are fairly short (the longest, The Soul of Spain, fits in three pages.)
My favorite was a short lyric poem entitled The Age Demanded, which considers the paradox of the 1920’s as a progressive age, restrained. I also found T. Roosevelt to be fascinating because in the act of critiquing Teddy Roosevelt, Hemingway (wittingly or not) gives us a bit of autobiography. (i.e.“And all the legends that he started in his life // Live on and prosper, // Unhampered now by his existence.”)
I give Hemingway more credit for saying interesting things by virtue of being bold than for saying anything in a particularly interesting way, but it’s enough to make these poems worth reading.
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BOOK: “The Dragon King’s Daughter” Trans. by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang
The Dragon King’s Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty Stories by Gladys YangMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Google Book Site
This thin anthology contains ten stories from varied writers of the Tang Dynasty. The stories include a mix of speculative fiction, political fiction, and love stories — some being cross-genre pieces that mix elements of more than one of these categories.
I found a wide variation in how engaging the stories were. The best of them were quite good. The Spendthrift and the Alchemist, The White Monkey, and the titular The Dragon King’s Daughter were among my favorites. Each of those stories included a supernatural element, but also a thought-provoking premise.
If you enjoy Tang Dynasty literature and would like to try some of this golden literary age’s short fiction, this book is a quick and pleasant read.
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PROMPT: Night or Morning
Morning. Whether I want to be or not.
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Surrounded [Haiku]
FIVE WISE LINES [December 2025]
Urizen prays to the world he created (1795)
Song of Los
I must create a system
william blake; Jerusalem: The emanation of the great albion
or be enslaved by another man’s…
Saying Yoga exists to make one more flexible
Me
is like saying that it exists to wring farts out of one’s body,
both will happen — neither is the primary objective.
He that is without sin among you,
JESUS; John 8:7
let him first cast a stone at her…
The best government is that which governs least.
Henry david thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Gods always behave like the people who make them…
zora neale hurston; Tell my horse
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DAILY PHOTO: Murals on Urban Walkways
Question Tree [Haiku]
one strange tree
curls like a question mark:
Autumnal forest.
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PROMPT: Eating Meat
I have no strong feelings. Everything that lives becomes food, so I don’t see a sound moral argument against meat. There is certainly a nutritional argument against eating excessive quantities of meat (which I would grant many meat-eaters do) but this is not an argument for dropping meat altogether. I accept that there is a reasonable environmental argument, but — counterpoint — it’s delicious.
I see no argument at all against choosing to eat vegetarian or vegan, so I certainly wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of their decision to do so. (i.e. The “you can’t get enough protein” argument is bullshit.)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 