Month: January 2020
Talent
Old English talente, talentan (as a unit of weight), from Latin talenta, plural of talentum ‘weight, sum of money’, from Greek talanton . talent (sense 1) is a figurative use with biblical allusion to the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30)
never before did i realize that the sense of talent as a ‘special gift or ability’ comes from that parable
The use of the word “talent” to mean “gift or skill” in English and other languages originated from an interpretation of this parable sometime late in the 13th century – Wikipedia
— i mean, i think i should’ve been told — or found out on my own — long ago, because i am curious: what did they say when they wanted someone with talent, before the parable?
i just checked. Talent is one of those words that is the same in many languages . . . i assume those languages touched by Latin (Talentum) . . . were they also touched by christianity? was that a necessary step to this new, abstract concept as ‘talent’?
‘Talent’ is not a mere coinage, but the fruit of intentional literary technique, the metaphor that the ability of a human is quantifiable and valuable (able to valuated). Who else could do, has done this? Hazard a guess that would include Shakespeare, O’Henry, Dickens, and oops, let me add P.G. Wodehouse?
I already resolved that every poem should be an experiment,
but now i see, over and above that
every metaphor should make a new word (and a new concept)
not by portmonteau
but by expanding the meaning of the facial word
What color is your bible?
to the best of my recollection
there were only 3 colors of bibles
the covers i mean
black, white, & red
so black was standard, default
white was for testaments or girls
but i don’t remember why people
had red bibles
was it the mark of extra-devotion
perhaps to the sangularly aspects
of christian theosophy
Prague Crime Novels
Prague is a strange city where nobody can be trusted or is who they seem at first to be.
https://crimereads.com/crime-novels-set-in-prague/
Pavel Kohout’s The Widow Killer, Milos Urban’s The Seven Churches, Benjamin Black (of course, really John Banville), Philip Kerr’s Berlin cop Bernie Gunther, Laurent Binet’s 2010 bestseller HHhH Binet, Rob Hart’s The Woman from Prague, John Connolly’s The Black Angel, Kelly Jones’s Lost and Found in Prague, Simon Mawer’s Prague Spring, And finally, Prague’s leading literary son, Franz Kafka and The Trial . . .
and not for nuthin’, my own collection includes Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery
Signal to Tralfamadore
It <SlaughterHouse 5> doesn’t tell us how to get to the planet Tralfamadore, but it does tell us how to communicate with its inhabitants. All we have to do is build something big, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China. Maybe the wall that some individual whom I will not name is planning to build between the United States and Mexico will be read as an urgent message on Tralfamadore. The person who wants to build the wall will not know what the message means, of course. He is a pawn, being manipulated by a power greater than his to send the message in this time of great emergency.
I hope the message reads, “Help.”
salmon rushdie
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-kurt-vonneguts-slaughterhouse-five-tells-us-now
sapphic tanka
Poets writing poems about poetry is perhaps the peak of human expression. The struggle to perfect the craft is a real one:
Sweating bullets,
the poet counted the syllables
and rearranged her lines
until her tanka poem
was utter perfection.
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-tanka-poetry.html
i’m a little cranky this morning
it’s so early and my rest was uneasy
i seek inspiration on the web
but find irritation, instead with tanka
about tanka
never mind, you, what am i doing here
never mind that i am judgemental
but to climb ‘the peak of human expression’
and to find such a lowly foothill
disappoints