#facsimile poem

[monimarat]

The earliest surviving letter from Oscar Wilde to Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas):

Dearest Bosie

I am so glad you are better, and that you like the little cardcase—Oxford is quite impossible in winter. I go to Paris next week—for 10 days or so. Are you really going to the Scilly Isles?

I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere—where it is hot and coloured— I am terribly busy in town—Tree rushing up to see me on all occasions—also strange and troubling personalities walking in painted pageants— Of the poem I will write tomorrow.

Ever yours

Oscar

The Morgan Library has many of Wilde’s manuscripts available online, including the earliest surviving manuscript of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The curator’s introduction highlights some of the passages that were cut or revised to downplay the homoerotic exchanges between characters:

Likewise on pg. 20 , Wilde cut an additional two sentences that expanded Hallward’s description of Dorian Gray sitting for his portrait: “ … while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.’ And, as he leaned across to look at it, his [illegible] hairjust brushed my cheek -touched my hand.-’ -The world becomes young to me when I hold his hand, as when I see him, the centuries yield all up their secrets!’-”

#love the bit about the poem #and Wilde’s handwriting #if only the Morgan would add the Sardou collection to their online digital facsimiles #morgan library #oscar wilde

[uwmspeccoll]

Marbled Monday

This week for Marbled Monday we return to the work of William Blake as published by the Trianon Press and the William Blake Trust. The poem is Visions of the Daughters of Albion, which was first published by William Blake in 1793 with his own illustrations. This Trianon Press edition was published in 1959 and is a facsimile of the original, meaning it was reproduced as closely as possible, including Arches pure rag paper made to match that which was used by Blake. The paper also features a watermark of Blake's monogram in the lower corner of every sheet.

The edition is quarter-bound in orange leather and orange, brown, and tan marbled paper. The paper is a really interesting pattern, similar to Cockerell's Octopus or Whirl pattern. It is difficult to tell who did the marbling because it isn't stated in the colophon, but it is possibly by French marbler Michel Duval, who the Trianon Press used frequently for their marbled papers. It could also be by Cockerell, but seems less likely judging by the number of mentions of Duval in the finding aid for the Trianon Press Archives at UC Santa Cruz.

View more Marbled Monday posts.

View more posts about the Trianon Press.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

#Marbled Monday #Trianon Press #William Blake #Michel Duval #marbling #paper marbling #marbled paper #Visions of the Daughters of Albion #octopus #whirl

[medieval-elephants]

Feeling blue? 1000 years before the blue elephant emoji was added to phones, some Italian monks drew this elephant and friends in a manuscript for Abbot Theobald of Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino was an important monastery and home to St Benedict whose rule is the basis for the Benedictine Order of monks and nuns that still exists today.

This manuscript contains an abbreviation of Hrabanus Maurus's De Rerum Naturis (On the Natures of Things). Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856) was archbishop of Mainz. In addition to encyclodpedia-like works sucha as De Rerum Naturis, he wrote Biblical commentaries, grammars, teaching texts and poems with complex palindromes. He wrote so much that his surviving writings fill about 6 modern type-set volumes.

Materials: parchment, pigments, ink Contents: Hrabanus Maurus, De Rerum Naturis Date: 1022-1032 Now Archivio dell'Abbazia, Montecassino, MS 132 (image from a facsimile)

#elephant #elephants #medieval elephants #9th century #11th century #Carolingian #Monte Cassino

[starvonnie]

Our Pink Living Room

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Megatron/Rodimus Additional Tags: Sticky Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Artificial Intelligence, Angst, Androids, Post-Transformers: Lost Light 25

Also on AO3

He's not your Megatron.

Rodimus gasped as his spike met with aching ceiling nodes.

This is a lie.

Blue optics met red before shuttering closed for a vent-stealing kiss.

This isn't right.

Rodimus did everything he could to ground himself in the moment. For Primus’ sake, he was more than filled with spike—Megatron's spike—but it wasn't his. 

His Megatron. 

The condemned one. The dead one. The absolutely-not-alive one that couldn't be here. Couldn't be holding him.

And yet, he was.

“I love you,” the fake whispered against his lips.

Rodimus moaned before whispering back, “I love you, too.”

But what he loved was a program. AI. Just ones and zeros strung together in just the right way, with a one-to-one scale non-sentient (well… his sentience was debatable) robot. His only solace was that whatever this near-clone did, supposedly Megatron would have done, too. So maybe Rodimus had been too much of a coward to take that leap, but at least he knew his love was horribly requited.

Rodimus regretted. He regretted so much. He wished he had been braver. He wished he'd enjoyed Megatron while he'd had him. And he wished he had fought harder at his trial. Maybe if he had said the right things…

He mentally shook his helm. Interfacing. He was fucking. He shouldn't be getting sad, he should be getting railed.

Rodimus kissed him some more. He'd wanted to kiss Megatron more than anything. While Brainstorm had assured him that this Megatron would be as close to the real thing as could be, he knew deep in his spark that Megatron's lips wouldn't have been as soft and yielding. He imagined they'd be scarred and a little rough.

He couldn't really believe this wonderful lie. He talked like Megatron. Moved like him. Sounded like him. But they never bickered. Not like they used to. He was too damn agreeable. He wanted him to mock Rodimus’ garish colour choices or raise an optic ridge at the amount of sweetener he put in his morning cube. Instead, he awoke to Megatron—or this facsimile of him—having already made his morning cube. With the exact number of sweeteners he usually added.

He tried to test him. 

“I don't actually like it this sweet,” Rodimus lied.

“No? I apologize. Tomorrow I will make it how you like it.”

And the stupid programming remembered, leaving Rodimus to suck down less-sweet energon until he corrected Megatron again.

It was always how he liked it again.

“Can you write me a poem?” Rodimus asked.

Megatron cocked his helm. “What would you like it to be about?”

Rodimus frowned. “Me, obviously.”

Megatron had nodded, stood, then immediately got to work on a datapad. Within a few minutes he'd completed a whole-ass poem, and it was good. Definitely in Megatron’s voice, too, but it still felt off.

Rodimus glanced at that very poem, sitting on the nightstand. He wondered if Megatron, had he loved him, would have actually written him poetry. He burned to know.

“You love fucking my valve, don't you?” Rodimus said between breathy moans.

“I love fucking you,” that damn AI corrected.

It always said exactly what he wanted to hear. Like it was reading his damn processor. He hated it. 

But he couldn't live without it.

Rodimus returned home from work later that day, and Megatron was waiting. Same chair. Same energon blend. Same damn day. Over and over and over.

Frowning at the fake, Rodimus did something different. He ignored him. He walked straight to the washracks and scrubbed at his plating until it felt raw. He wanted to go back to the beginning where he was just so happy for the companionship that he didn't care that this wasn't real. That it would never be real.

Still simmering beneath the surface, Rodimus went back out to the kitchen where Megatron still waited, unmoved. It was like he was waiting to start some program.

Once again, Rodimus did something different. He grabbed some engex and took a swig straight from the bottle. 

“You're drinking again?” Not-Megatron sounded concerned.

“I'm having a drink,” Rodimus corrected. “What do you care?”

“You're my conjunx.”

A flare of anger burst from Rodimus’ field. Of course, this fake never understood him in that way. “Too complicated,” Brainstorm had said when Rodimus asked about his lack of a field.

“We're not conjunx,” Rodimus said quietly.

“What? Of course we are, I lo—”

“You are not real! How could we become conjunx if i didn't initiate, huh? What could possibly put you in a bad light? You have no substance for the Act of Disclosure!”

Megatron's optics dimmed and he lowered his gaze. “Perhaps because I am not real. But I am. I am Megatron.”

“Megatron never would've let me paint the living room pink! Much less with flames around the door!”

Not-Megatron looked around, his brow creased with worry. “We can paint it another colour.”

“That's not—AARGH!” Rodimus kicked the couch. “No! You're supposed to tell me this is a hideous colour and then suggest some bland shit that's an offense to colours everywhere!”

“Maybe… beige?”

“Maybe beige? Are you serious? I lied! You'd want to paint it purple! It's always purple with you!”

Megatron stood and closed the distance between them, and Rodimus stupidly let him. “Then we can paint it purple.”

“That's not the point!” Rodimus grabbed him by the collar faring and tugged him down until they were optic-to-optic. “Fight me on it. Argue with me. We always argued!”

“Will that make you happy?”

No.

“Yes!”

Megatron frowned. “It's a hideous colour.”

Rodimus should've been embarrassed, but his horniness hit him full-throttle and he smashed his mouth against Not-Megatron’s too-pillowy lips. It wasn't long before those strong arms had whisked him away to their berthroom and Megatron was deep inside of him again, fucking him like it was his Primus-given purpose.

Except Primus had no purpose for him. Primus didn't make him. Really, he was basically just a sex robot. Which, normally, Rodimus wouldn't have a problem with, but that wasn't why he had him made.

He needed more.

The next day, while at work, he did the bare minimum and spent most of the day just thinking. He weighed the pros and cons and did some deep soul-searching to figure out what he really wanted.

His processor hurt by the end of it.

Of course, he came to the same realization he always did: he wanted Megatron. He wanted to actual mech. The one with free will who wouldn't just let him do whatever he wanted without consequence. 

What finally pushed him to do it was the realization that Megatron wouldn't want this. The dead were dead and there was no way to emulate that.

Megatron didn't resist when Rodimus told him to open his chest. Where a spark should've been was nothing more than a computer compiling and spitting out data. All it took was a few snips from wire cutters for his not-conjunx to go dark and silent.

Rodimus still cried.

#megarod #megatron/rodimus #rodimus/megatron #megatron #rodimus #mtmte #lost light #valveplug #starvonnie writes #hannah dont look at this

[hoursofreading]

Some scholars have claimed that translating these centuries-old poems is essentially impossible. These ancient poets stripped their language down so much that poems were akin to impressionistic paintings. The first line of “Luan Family Rapids” has just five Chinese characters: 颯颯秋雨中. If you were to render them literally, it would be something like: Whoosh whoosh autumn rain midst. What do you do with that?

Deep humility infused the work of these old poets. They recognized that a poem would never be experienced as they felt it or as they intended it, distilled as it inevitably would be through the experiences and the filters of each reader. A poem was a poem, yes, but really, it was a prompt: What do you see? Will you notice even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant things? What is happening in this moment? Where to from here?

So while it might be impossible to create an English facsimile of the Chinese poem, it’s not at all impossible to translate—to convey something of the original’s beauty, to stir a wonder that might be similar but never exactly the same. In the spare wording, there’s lavish hospitality—so much room to imagine how to evoke a similar feeling, so many options to invite the reader to pause, to receive, to perceive, to imagine.

In this tumultuous world, in these unsteady times, I crave things that inspire possibility and point us to ways forward. Of course beauty can be a diversion or an escape or even a sedative, but it doesn’t have to be. Indeed, it shouldn’t be. To notice beauty is not necessarily to ignore ugliness—not at all. Rather, I want to know what we’re working toward and what we’re hoping in, not just what we’re opposed to and what we’re against. There’s plenty in this world that stokes my anger. What then?

I’ve been accused of naïveté—of course you, with your privileged life, can afford to focus on beauty. But nobody who really knows me has ever accused me of being a glass-half-full person. And there’s nothing naïve about beauty or its steadfast companion, hope. A spirit soft enough to feel deeply the world’s sorrow and suckage is also one that acknowledges the potential for something better—something healthier, something more joyous, something more nourishing. To be grounded in the reality of our lives is to recognize not just the devastation and the doom but also the goodness and the grace.

Beauty helps keep us tender. It protects us against the calcification of the heart and it gentles the soul, which is so often in danger of crusting into cynicism and scurrying into despair. To be wholly human is, I think, to be able to hold the both/and, never yielding to the constant temptation to overweight one or the other.

I need beauty that takes the shape of invitation—the nudge toward noticing, the prod toward possibility. Sometimes all it takes, because it’s already there, waiting to be perceived, is a tiny shift in perspective.

Jeff Chu

#quote #advice

[monstersdownthepath]

So what is Jandelay?

One of the earliest and longer-running mysteries in Pathfinder was the identity of the mysterious Jandelay, mentioned only in the statblock of the Oliphaunt of Jandelay. In Mythic Realms, it remained ambiguous if Jandelay was a creature, an event, a plane, or some other mysterious entity, with the only hints about it being the poem carved into the base of the enormous Spindlethorn:

Jandelay, proof against the Maelstrom, Jandelay, of green fields and faultless spires; No sane soul born dares trespass fair Jandelay For the Oliphaunt guards you always.

But five years later, (almost) every question about the mysterious Jandelay was answered in Planar Adventures! It’s a demiplane, but not just any old demiplane! It is a bubble of pure Law floating on the surface of the Maelstrom in stark defiance of the Maelstrom’s desire to subsume all that is back into chaos. It refuses the Maelstrom’s pull and instead exploits the source of all quintessence, drawing it out as needed in order to maintain itself for its unique purpose.

Also known as the Apocalypse Archives, Jandelay is a realm of rolling green grass fields with alabaster spires placed regularly throughout... and thousands upon thousands of stitched-together, chimeric and chaotic arrangements of various biomes, architectures, and environments. Whenever a Watcher places a Beacon of Jandelay down upon a doomed world, it marks that section of the planet for collection by the plane. When the world is destroyed by the apocalypse which summoned the Watchers in the first place, every area marked by the Beacon is torn from the world and placed on Jandelay, merged together with other marked sections with little regard for whether or not the arrangement makes sense, but the magic of the plane and the attentions of the Watchers maintains these sections even when they would have logically crumbled away or annihilated one another (such as if a section of glaciers ended up next to an active volcano). Sapient lifeforms preserved by the Watchers are combined into a Collected, a form of Outsider with the minds and memories of dozens or perhaps even hundreds of creatures, bound eternally to the stitched remains of the world they were “rescued” from and allowed to wander it, but no further.

It’s not directly stated if animal life is taken along for the ride, but what IS canon is that Watchers use their perfect memories and passion for crafting, as well as knowledge obtained from the Collected, to build facsimiles of various flora and fauna that didn’t manage to get saved, using their constructs to decorate the world-sections. Despite this adorable behavior, Watchers don’t exactly make for good company, so the Collected tend to live a lonely existence. It’s not like anyone really visits.

Any knowledge about Jandelay is understandably difficult to come across. How the Runelords learned anything about the Oliphaunt or the plane itself is a mystery that yet endures, because dimensional travel straight up does not work. Any attempt to use Plane Shift or ANY other form of dimensional travel to enter, exit, or even just travel around inside Jandelay fails if the user doesn’t succeed a DC 41 Will save (something the Watchers must be innately immune to despite their statblock saying no such thing, else they can’t escape or re-enter their own home if they roll lower than 15), and Gate or similar effects fizzle automatically without allowing a save unless the caster is Mythic or the source is an Artifact.

So to even know about it, your world will already have to be on its way out the door. You need to succeed a DC 28 Will save (or be immune to Inconspicuous) to see a Watcher, NOT freak out about it, then convince it to tell you a little about itself, and then further convince it to tell you about Jandelay... and if you want to GO there, that’s a DC 41 Will save or you simply can’t without burning another spell slot or resource to try again. And Armageddon continues to breathe down your neck as you try again! And if, by some miracle, you end up there? Well, good luck getting out with any swiftness, especially since you’d need to not only have more castings of Plane Shift, but a safe destination in mind to recollect yourself as you grapple with knowing your world is gone. That kind of thing changes a person! Is it any wonder why knowledge about Jandelay is so hard to come by, when the conditions for gaining even tiny scraps are so severe? (No, you can’t just summon a Watcher; they have far too many HD for anything lower than Gate to work)

It’s not super dangerous in the archives, at least. if you wanted, you could wait to get your slots and sanity back while looking at the past destroyed worlds. Maybe even find your own. The Watchers don’t attack creatures who merely examine the exhibits--that’s what they’re there for, after all--but any attempt to damage them and you’ll find out there’s a lot more of the creepy crawlies than you know about hiding just outside your senses.

And then there’s the Oliphaunt itself. Chaos made manifest, a mountain made flesh, a storm given purpose. It’s the Oliphaunt that protects Jandelay from all intruders, its own presence the one that imposes the travel restrictions for reasons that can only be guessed at (which means that if it’s NOT in Jandelay, one can travel there without making a save! easy, right?) and the greatest deterrent to the Proteans who’d otherwise object to Jandelay’s presence. The origins of the Oliphaunt, and of Jandelay, are stated in surprisingly plain terms: the Oliphaunt created itself, and made Jandelay soon after. Then, Jandelay itself birthed the Watchers to tend to it. The Oliphaunt is stated to be the incarnated form of the idea of the apocalypse; the manifestation of calamity and destruction on a planetary scale, drawn to observe its collection of destroyed worlds for its own inscrutable reasons.

It leads me to believe it was born shortly after the rampage of Rovagug, the collective dying gasps of thousands of worlds and gods coalescing into a single being, and it created Jandelay as a method to assure no more worlds would be forever lost and forgotten; something by no means canon, but it makes the most sense to me. What also is not canon but makes sense to me is that the Oliphaunt, as the incarnation of world-destroying calamities, should not be an entity the players can reasonably fight. We’ll see how I approach this particular challenge this Friday!

#Milestone Monster #putting this in the tag so it pops up #Pathfinder

[hauntedbythenarrative]

Alexander Blok, from “Night, The City Has Simmered Down,” wr. c. 1906//Franceso Levy//Kobayashi Issa, from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson & Issa (ed. and trans. Robert Hass)//(image: Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius, facsimile of the 1610 edition)// Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time //François-Léon Bénouville (1821-1859)// e.e. cummings, “in the rain” (from Tulips), Complete Poems: 1904-196// ring by zoe & morgan// Ara Kay

#stars #mine #web weaving #quotes #poetry #words #emma and her stupid vent #💫 #stephen hawking

[uwmarchives]

Why don't people trust an eclipse? Because it's shady!

Today, April 8th, is the day of the 2024 Solar Eclipse, and our Spaights Plaza is full of people attempting to view this scientific wonder. It's no surprise that the eclipse is all the rage--millions of people are posting about it on social media, new stations are broadcasting live, and there are events inviting people to participate in fun activities related to the eclipse.

The eclipse has also sparked many conspiracy theories about an imminent apocalypse. For example, the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut led people to believe the end times are near.

Read this article from the Guardian to find out more about conspiracy theories: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/07/solar-eclipse-memes-conspiracy-theories

Two hundred and sixty-five years ago, people were feeling the same way when Halley's Comet was sighted over New England. This poem from the Sherman Booth Papers shows the apocalyptic anxiety present after Halley's Comet passed through the sky. One part of the poem states,

"The might God to Judgement comes In his majestic Power; Comets and fearful Sights more brief Then ever yet have been, More frequently and commonly Would in the World be seen, And are not we now Witnesses, Let all our Fathers say, If ever God before them past In such an awful Way."

Click this link to see a facsimile of the same poem from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.03502600/

The original poem (see photograph) is located in Milwaukee Manuscript Collection BB, Box 7, Folder 6. Come by the UWM Archives to check it out!

#uwmarchives #1750s #archives #eclipse #halley's comet #2024 eclipse #apocalypse

[dabiconcordia]

Llama Days

Because today I walked a llama back home, I have a new standard for all my coming days. Just minutes with the llama made this one a poem of kindly wonders, long-necked woolly praise.

I'd been raking leaves, bent forward, head down, eyes on my country acre, so that when I raised them and saw at my driveway's end a llama standing tall there, checking me out,

I was all stammer and gawk and disbelief until I thought of Leon, my neighbor half- a-mile away, whose land was mostly zoo, menagerie, whatever, I called him Doo-

little, the animal doctor himself, though Leon was no vet, just one big heart for anything that walked on paw, web, or hoof-- goat, peacock, sheep, horse, donkey, mink, hare, hart.

But llama? I'd never noticed one before, though no doubt my surprise at seeing him was matched by his at seeing me--or more than matched, he being lost, freedom become

a burden twice as bad as any bars, so much so panic struck and he turned back, high-stepping it onto the road, two-lane, tarred, and I saw the headline, "Llama killed by truck."

Dropping the rake, I raced to rescue him, who now stood frozen, straddling the centerline, looking this way and that; oh, too much room, too little clue. I had to herd him to Leon.

With slow approach and arms a traffic cop's, I eased him into action in the lane leading to llama-chow and fell into step beside him; well, sort of, his two to my one.

I talked him down the road, an unbroken string of chatter my invisible halter and rein: “Howyadoin? Where'd you think you were going? A little farther now, big guy. You'll be just fine.”

Luckily, no car came to make him bolt, though I almost wished for one, wanting someone to see us, like old friends out for a stroll, shoulder to shoulder in the morning sun.

Once we got close enough to what he knew, he was gone, down the right driveway this time, and I was left alone to wave goodbye: “You take care now.” His thanks silent. “You're welcome.”

I don't expect the llama to escape again. Leon 's repaired a fence, no doubt, or gate. So I know tomorrow I'll have to find my own, invent one, a facsimile, and I can't wait.

Already I see him coming like a dream, disguised as odd events, encounters, small dramas worth at least a laugh. Let “He walked his llama home” be my epitaph. I wish you lots of llamas. By Philip Dacey

#best peru travel images #pinterest.com #writer philip dacey

[andromebaa]

My 2023 Writing Wrap Up

Stole this idea from Lovova lmao. Let’s see if I can figure out what I’ve been writing this year. I mean, we all know what I’ve been writing but let’s just see it in words:

January

Starting the year strong by not really doing much. Might have been dabbling with some OCs but nothing too notable.

February

Uploaded the start of a fic version of my play-by-post Danganronpa AU Despair’s Legacy to my brand new AO3 account before promptly leaving it to rot. Also uploaded the first chapter of a silly little Oumota fic that I wrote for funsies. This is the start of the Just the Two of Us brainrot. To prove it, I then proceeded to write and upload five more chapters.

Addendum: Completely forgot that the first fic I ever uploaded to my AO3 this month was my Ishimaru/reader smut I wrote like six years ago lmaoooo gotta remember your roots

March

Went cazy and uploaded six more chapters of Just the Two of Us. I was officially obsessed.

Also started doing some initial planning for my other two danganhorror fics.

April

Brain started exploding so I only uploaded three Just the Two of Us chapters this month. Also wrote the side smut story for it, Defragmentation, over the Easter weekend.

May

Started the far more sustainable action of writing only one chapter of Just the Two of Us a month. Also started planning the Moulin Rouge Oumota au that I never finished - sad!

June

Began planning for Oumota Week 2023. Wrote a small sci-fi/horror fic called Facsimile for a Kaito/Maki writing week. Published another two chapters of Just the Two of Us.

July

Through some unholy will I published seven seperate short fics for Oumota week ranging from a mermaid au to a silly family au and a short Haiku poem based on the origin of the Tanabata festival. Somehow published another chapter of Just the Two of Us as well.

August

Wrote my official oneshot smut for Oumota as part of the package deal which I’m doing for each of my main danganhorror fics. Also managed to complete another chapter of the Just the Two of Us. Also started writing REDACTED.

September

Another chapter of Just the Two of Us successfully uploaded!

October

The final chapter of Just the Two of Us is uploaded and I finally allowed myself to rest for like a week or two before going back to the grind.

November

Ceremoniously failed to work on an original junior/YA story for NaNoWriMo and just like start working on my next Danganhorror fic Every Day is Exactly the Same.

December

Uploaded the first chapter of my next Danganhorror fic aka the one where Yasuhiro ends up in a time loop. Got nasty bad Togakure brainrot and proceeded to spend most of the month jumping between the main fic and the smut one shot.

Aaaaand that’s a wrap up! It’s been a very very productive year and although it’s almost all been fic stuff I’ve never been more proud of myself. I started and finished a 140,000 word fic and also wrote almost a dozen short fics on the side too.

I can’t wait to see what this new year will bring! I’m definitely not going to go too hard and burn out but I hope I’ll still be productive! My biggest goal will be to finish Every Day is Exactly the Same and hopefully start a new non-fic project too.

Let’s see how it goes!

#year wrap up #2023 #writing wrap up #fic stuff

[karamazovdmitri]

once i stole a fragment of shitty machine auto-translate that sounded beautiful in its inaccuracy and clunkiness to put in a poem of mine, give it a context and a meaning, and i used to really love that, finding pieces of beauty in something like a machine translation that cant even fathom a single thought, much less poetry, and i liked the brokenness and clumsiness of all and how un-human it was and how it never pretended to be neither a human nor a poet, or anything at all, and it was just there for me to do it just and i think its part of the reasons (outside of the whole ethical problems) why newer AI depresses the hell out of me. i dont want something that sounds like a human, writing facsimiles of human emotions just close enough to the real deal to realize how deeply empty of meaning it actually is, like idk we just really lost something there

#shitty machine translation and early bots of new york my beloved #every once in a while i have thoughts about them cause i mourn that stuff im sentimental over the tiniest things #oh and if youre curious said machine translate fragment i stole was translating 'aluminium core' to 'âme en aluminium' (aluminium soul) #поехали

[queer-ragnelle]

Hey! I just saw your medieval reading list and thought I would suggest old english poetry in facsimile! (oepoetryfacsimile.org) they have tons of poems including scans of original manuscripts, typed versions of the original text and modern english translations! i dont love the Aaron K. Hostetter translations they sometimes use but also i am a snob. if you want a good interactive version of beowulf then electronic beowulf is also great :)

hi!

this is a great resource thank you! i'll add this link to the list :^)

#ask #bufobuff

[ruffles23]

“The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” ~Edith Holden

On January 1, 1906, Edith Holden made the first entry in a diary which was to record the countryside through the changing seasons. Her words, all carefully written by hand, include her favorite poems, personal thoughts, and observations on the wildlife surrounding her home in the village of Olton, Warwickshire. The exceptionally beautiful paintings on every page of birds, butterflies, bees, and flowers reflect her deep love of nature; they have been executed with a naturalist’s eye for detail and the sensitivity of an artist.

Edith Holden’s diary of that year became a very special book for her, and she allowed no one to see it. For seventy years, this enchanting book had lain undiscovered until it was found recently on the shelves of an English country house. Now being published for the first time, this full-color facsimile edition recaptures all the freshness, charm, and beauty of the original. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is a book for all seasons, a gift for all times.

Edith Holden was born at Kings Norton, Worcester, in 1871, one of seven children of a Midlands paint manufacturer. The family lived in the small village of Olton in Warwickshire, and it was there that she wrote and illustrated this book. After attending art school, she worked as an illustrator, with her drawings (often of animals) being published in several books.

She later moved to London and in 1911 met and married Ernest Smith, a sculptor; they lived in Chelsea and had no children. On March 16, 1920, in her forty-ninth year, Edith died tragically by drowning in the Thames, while gathering buds from Chestnut trees.

(Jacket photograph of Edith Holden reproduced by kind permission of Edmond Holden)

#edith holden #english literature #1906 #warwickshire #books #paintings #spring #summer #autumn #winter #seasons #nature #fauna #flora #lord byron #english poetry #the country diary of an edwardian lady #light academia #birds #flowers #literature #poems and quotes #classic #art #dark academia #books and reading #classic poets #classic books #flora timms #naturecore

[thhiod]

Merthur inspired poem -

This is a poem Drabble I wrote. Context is that Arthur lives and Merlin sort of has to deal with it over the rest of their lives. Let me know thoughts!

Decade after decade:

You smile at me over the dining table,

After it is all over. You are alive, I think. I have thought this a lot recently. You are alive.

Everyone is overjoyed, your friends, your subjects, your wife. Most of all me, you are the air I breathe, the food which nourishes my soul.

I am all that I am because of you.

I had not thought this would happen. I had known the prophecy. You were meant to die. I had not prepared myself for a world where you lived. Where I opened my heart to you and you opened yours to me, and then we went home.

We mourned. We carried on. You had children.

The children are odd to me, like little facsimiles of you. I love them whole heartedly but, if I am being honest, only because they are of you.

The years pass and I love you no less. We are close, but you are a father, a husband. It is not like it was before.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you hold my face in your hands, and you look at me with those clear blue eyes and tell me that you love me. That I’m your best friend, that you couldn’t bear to be without me. Then you walk away to your wife and children and it feels like you’ve taken my heart out of my chest and taken it with you too.

I stand there, heartless and alone, in the darkness left by your going.

I try so hard to find someone else, to move on, but it has been so long. I am in my fortieth year, and there is no one left for me.

I have my occupation, I have all of you, but I also have none of you. The loneliness is so precise and acute that it burrows its way into my chest and makes a home there. I begin to make friends with it, to carry it around with me like a badge of honour for my service to everyone else but myself.

It is your fourty-fifth birthday, you have lines in your forehead and between your brow, and while your muscles are still strong, the skin has begun to sag slightly and your belly is softer than it was before. You complain about aging but I think you look beautiful.

Later, you look at me with such profound tenderness that I almost dissolve into the air. I cannot handle this, I think. But then I am in your arms, and you stroke my hair and kiss my temple behind the wall between the rooms.

“I am sorry. I am so sorry for all this. You must know, if it was my choice, things would be different.”

I say nothing, I’m scared if I say anything the moment will collapse around me. You say nothing else, you hold me tightly, and we think of what might have been.

We are old now. Our bones ache and rattle. Your wife is dead, your children grown and have their own children. We sit together on a bench by the beach. You hold my wrinkly hand in your wrinkly hand.

“I am sorry, it has taken so long, so many decades for me to be able to be honest with you.”

“I am grateful for it all.” I reply. I find it is true.

You learn over and press your lips to my cheek. The loneliness buried in my heart for decades has finally left, something else has made its home there instead.

#bbc merlin #merthur #merlin #arthur pendragon #merlin x arthur #arthur x merlin

[elucubrare]

i have, for some reason, seen more than one Poetry Take recently bemoaning the current prevalence of free verse, and it's a little frustrating because i will wholeheartedly agree that there's a lot of bad poetry out there - a lot of stuff that uses the right words and so has the facsimile of complexity but if you pick the thicket of thorny words apart there's nothing there; a lot of stuff that is not pleasing to the ear or eye but there is an interesting sentiment there, and there's no form, except maybe the prose poem or tumblr post, for a thought that deserves to be crystalized and preserved but can't support the full length of an essay --

but none of this is because free verse is the current popular mode. there has always been more bad poetry than good. when formal poetry was popular there was formal poetry with forced rhyme, syntax bent backward on itself to fit meter, stanzas with perfect composition and no content.

good free verse is incredibly hard. how do you show people that you're playing tennis, when, to adapt Frost's metaphor, you've taken the net down? i would say that you make all your swings good - you maintain the fundamentals, even if the constraint of the net is gone, so that when you serve the ball directly into the middle of the court it's clear that you've done it on purpose.

and there was, and will always be, more bad poetry than good because poetry is hard. it's not about the external form: it's about making both your thoughts and the language you use to pin them down interesting in some way that makes it necessary for this to be poetry and not prose.

#this is my talking about poetry tag

[snakes-and-fluff]

P3 headcanons, Ryoji edition

Ryoji doesn’t have any organs – after all, his is a mere facsimile of a human body. However, you wouldn’t be able to tell without a vivisection. His chest still feels tight when he’s anxious and you’d feel a pulse in his wrist. He wheezes when he laughs and takes big gasping breaths after exercising. There just happens to be no heart, lungs or muscles beneath it all.

He loves poetry, but isn’t fond of poems featuring birds flying as he says it makes him feel lonely to think of being so disconnected from the world like that.

Ryoji is capable of eating anything, no matter how toxic it might be. Despite this, his tastes are relatively pedestrian: he’s always trying new foods, but as his starting point is zero, this includes very basic dishes.

He lives in one of Gekkoukan’s dorms and, despite what a party animal he is, always makes sure he’s in his room with the door locked by the time midnight hits.

#he really is the character of all time for me #ultimate blorbo #ryoji mochizuki #persona 3 #p3 #p3p #headcanon #persona 3 spoilers #p3 spoilers #p3p spoilers