Category: Blog

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

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

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1178522/

watching Little Dorrit Series now . . . we love the jane austen & dickens series . . .

but THIS is the most Kafaesque Dickens i have ever seen!

They be dealing with the “Circumlocution Department” . . . 8^D . . . They being “Flintwinch”, “Pancks”, “Sparkler”, “Plornish”, “Chivery”, not to mention Dorrit.

There are more resonances between programming and poetry than you might think. Computer science is an art form of words and punctuation, thoughtfully placed and goal-oriented, even if not necessarily deployed to evoke surprise or longing. Laid out on a page, every program uses indentations, stanzas, and a distinctive visual hierarchy to convey meaning. In the best cases, a close-reader of code will be rewarded with a sense of awe for the way ideas have been captured in words.One poet’s “road not taken” is one programmer’s “if-then-else” statement. Generations of coders have taken their first steps by finding different ways to say “Hello, World.” Arguably, you could say the same for poets.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-mechanical-muse