Tales from The Owl – Antagonists

 

‘Be off with you,’ said the first ant. It was his territory.

Miserable Thomas Hardy and helpful Murakami

As a lifelong loather of the work of Thomas Hardy, Gert was amused to find this analysis of the misery factor in Thomas Hardy in The Guardian:

Sunday poem: Debi Hamilton

                                          

Melbourne poet Debi Hamilton had a great 2014 with prizes in two major poetry competitions. 

Just for fun: the fretful porpentine and a bit of nerdy wordery

Quills upon the fretful porpentine.……….  (Hamlet)

Why, Gert wondered, did Shakes use the form porpentine when the Old French was porc despyne or porc espin from the Latin porcus + spinus? We went looking and found this:

Angels and Oasans: Knausgaard and Michel Faber

 

Jacques Réda’s Elegaic Calendar

It’s far from winter in Australia, but a recent post on Kathryn Ingrid’s blog   http://artcoloredglasses.com/2015/01/12/winter-in-my-soul/   made us think of a poem by Jaques Réda that we particularly love. Here are the opening lines, with our translation:

Sunday Flash: Adephagia, Goddess of Gluttony

John Burnside: to gaze at human faces

 

 

John Burnside is one of Gert’s favourite poets, and the LRB is the light of her life. Sometimes the two come together to produce an experience of perfect pleasure, as in John Burnside’s “Diary” in the LRB of  18 December 2014. Musing on near-death experiences, photography, family history and the cinema, Burnside says:

Jaume Cabré: Confessions

    

translated by Mara Faye Lethem, Arcadia Books, 2014.

Things we read: Knausgaard again

No, he isn’t Proust, and no, we don’t think he should win the Nobel Prize.  But this is pretty good, don’t you think?