My daughter is moving away today. This is the final stanza of the poem she was named after. It was one of the first formal poems whose language I studied, but more importantly one whose theme struck me because I was close to an uncle who was in prison then (he’d end up serving 34 years). My daughter has part of this poem tattooed on her back. And so things wend their way through generations.
WORK
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such Liberty.
—Richard Lovelace (1642)
—from “To Althea, From Prison”
WORD
godwottery. noun. A garden in an over-decorated, over-elaborate style; the style of such gardens OR archaic, stilted, affected language. Derived first from the phrase “God wot!?” (God knows!?) and then an 1890s poem with the line: “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!”
“…though I kicked the Tolkien habit in my late teens I retain from a decade of immersion a perfectly absurd amount of information about the various ages, peoples, languages, and (frankly) godwottery of Middle Earth.” (John Lennard)
“ If you’d like to create a godwottery of your own, you might consider ‘sundials, gnomes, fairies, plastic sculptures, fake rockery, pump-driven streams and wrought-iron furniture’.” (from The Denver Post)
WEB
Watch lightning simultaneously strike three buildings in Chicago. Or just look at the preview frame, which has all ye need to know.
“Let’s consider first of all: what is a mind in the grip of vicious circles?” Listen to Alan Watts on worry and compulsive thinking. As relevant now as it was when he spoke before the ubiquity of devices and media.
I have healthy new respect for Harding after seeing some of his letters to his mistress. “I love the rose / Your garden grows / Love seashell pink / That over it glows.” Indeed.
Diane Beltran Herrera creates amazingly lifelike paper bird sculptures. I do love me some paper art.
Today in 1979 the US space station Skylab tumbled to earth. Read about its untimely fate. Also, a powerful poem by Rolf Jacobsen about being aboard, above the earth.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- More photos of abandoned places: Jeremy Harris’s series American Asylums may be the best yet.
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