islandclimber
The Ghost of Laszlo Jamf

Would you consider voting in the "Don't know much about history" poetry contest? Many thanks!

http://www.online-literature.com/for...-about-history

Hi islandclimber, would you consider voting?

http://www.online-literature.com/for...earchid=209664

http://www.theawl.com/2013/03/this-i...a-fast-culture

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/

Hey man, I enjoyed the back-and-forth. Sorry about the cheap shots -I was just goofing. Also I'd be lying if I said I didn't learn anything from your posts.

Cheers

Oh, and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZoOwk66bmI

The dawn had not yet come and we waited
In the mud and the cold, our bodies
Withering and shrinking from the icy cold
That shouted at us from the impenetrable sky
And then the man we waited for arrived and gave us
That for which we, who did not believe, had prayed
We had been prepared to die, to castrate, if we had to, the enemy,
To hear their screams claw and tear at us, yes,
We were prepared even for that.
We had grown as cold as the night, as the man,
As Krasznahorkai.
As the man, without emotion, handed round the smuggled goods,
We waited in the stoic unhelpful hay, and when at last we had them,
The thin mints, with their deep chocolate souls, we ate them,
Greedily, hungrily, stuffing their aura of civilization into our maws
As though with them inside us we could perhaps live forever.

Qimissung
February 2013

So, then you threw down the gauntlet with Krasznahorkai-I had to look him up too, although I've read a review of "The Turin Horse" and very much want to see it, and I found this


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...rkai-interview

and then I wrote the poem in the above post (although I must say that Krasznahorkai sounds like someone about to hock a loogie, sorry)

I lof it! I printed a copy of it and I am reading it over and over, like it's the work of some genius child, which of course it is not, and you, clearly are about 25 IQ points ahead of me!

Anywho, I wrote another one first, which was inspired by "The Turin Horse;" I pm'd it to you, 'cause I love it so much I don't wish to publish it here (sorry lit-net). And now to bed. My brain feels awesome-and I didn't even eat a thin mint today.

lol, islandclimber, can I just say that was brilliant? I don't even know where to begin with my outrageous praise. The first line? The "Brazen simulacra of cacao and mint leaves"? The "disharmony of false scales"? The "wild phonemes...and irresistible memes"? Or the last four lines (I had to look up what a Graeco-Latin square was (showoff)):


one’s own personal apocalypse in the bottom of
a thin mint cookie box, Krasznahorkai might just devour
this labyrinthine variation on the Graeco-Latin square,
tessellate desperate tastes across the tongue…

Or, really, just the whole thing? You, sir, get an A+++++++++++++-or you would if this was for a grade, which thankfully, it is not. Just, wowsers, islandclimber, wowsers!

Yes. Yes, it is worth it (munch). Especially when it's chocolate and mint. I wrote a haiku celebrating the event:


chocolate and mint
so...so...delicioso
that's what love should be

And you know, I wonder, would Thomas Pynchon like Thin Mint cookies? Would he allow himself to?

Could thomas pynchon indulge himself
in a thin mint cookie?
would it move him to decadence-
the curve of it, the parabola?
Would he see the lusciousness of
the thin thinness, the minty mintyness
and feel that his humanity had been lost
as surely as dew is on a summer morning?
and would he then go insane?
All for the want of a thin mint cookie
all for the tickle of it's cool, cool taste?

I think, perhaps, you could capture his voice better, but not a bad effort, if I do say so myself. And I do.