There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
“There was a little girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]
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PROMPT: Cross-Country
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
Depends on the country. Singapore, Bolivia, Russia, Niger, and Vatican City present very different answers to the question.
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DAILY PHOTO: Eastern Taiwan in Winter
Old Wasp Nest [Haiku]
old wasp nest:
looks like the whole hive
hulked its way out.
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Jolt [Senryū]
on a narrow ridge,
covered with fine dust,
my foot slips. I’m awake!
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BOOKS: “Pawan” by Sorabh Pant
Pawan: The Flying Accountant by Sorabh PantMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
On one level, the more superficial level, this is a superhero fantasy featuring a Vanara (a supernatural monkey-man creature from Indian mythology,) on another level it’s a political satire that riffs on the geopolitics and the military-industrial complex of India. It’s cleverer as the latter than the former.
The story has some clunkiness, including the occasional hard to follow description and sloppy story elements (e.g. the deus ex machina.) That said, it’s pop genre fiction and with regards sloppy story elements they’re par for the course in superhero fiction. My point being that the fact that it’s amusing and mostly readable means it hits its target, strained credulity and logical inconsistencies aside.
The humor is of the broadest range with occasional laugh-out-loud hilarity, lots of mildly amusing jokes, and a few groan-worthy lines that go down like a lead-balloon. That’s not a terrible ratio for a novel.
If you want to check out a book featuring an Indian mythology-based superhero, and you don’t mind a lot of jokes directed at political and national security apparatus leadership, this book is worth looking into.
View all my reviews
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“Earthly Anecdote” by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.
Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the right,
Because of the firecat.
Or until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the left,
Because of the firecat.
The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from atop Hayashi Department Store, Tainan
The Brave One [Haiku]
one hundred birds
startle at my presence;
one eyeballs me.
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“Placid” [Poetry Style #2] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]
It thrives in silence and with calm --
ephemeral and gossamer.
It's ever-flowing harmony,
gliding with a solitary crane,
wisping like the gentle breezes
that rustle and billow one's robe,
trilling softly like a bamboo flute.
How does one become one with it?
A chance meeting, lucked into, but
don't lunge forward, or it'll vanish.
When you think it's attainable,
it twists in your hand and is gone.
NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a translation of the second of the twenty-four poems.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 