WORK

“A Book of Music”

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves’ boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes, Poetry ends like a rope.

—Jack Spicer
—from My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

WORD(S)

screak. verb or noun. A shrill, harsh cry or a cry of pain; utterance of same. Grating sounds of animals or machinery. In various dialects are forms such as scraik, scrawk and scroke. From the Old Norse, skrǽkja. Probably onomatopoeic à la screech, shriek, etc.

“Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks!” (Charles Dickens)

“I would rather hear cat-courtship Under my bed-room window in the night, Than this scraped catgut’s screak.” (Robert Southey)

“The very magpies and jays followed Tom up, screaking and screaming.” (Charles Kingsley)

“And while the safety blade with scrape and screak
Travels across the country of my cheek…” (Vladimir Nabokov)

“No one stuffs a small owl without a red lantern
Without a red robe in a black room
Without a wardrobe where scratchy wreaths screak” (Julio Cortázar)

“The lawyer threw himself backwards into his chair and screaked it toward Tarwater and saw him without interest from pale-blue eyes and screaked it forward again…” (Flannery O’Connor)

WEB

1. I’m Ira Glass, Host of This American Life, and This Is How I Work. One of the best of the “How I Work” series I’ve seen.

2. The trailer for Jason Reitman’s new film Men, Women & Children doesn’t give much away but maybe it will be the first popular film to get something about social media right (and redeem some of Adam Sandler’s recent choices)? The official site integrates the Whisper app.

3. Monument to the Soviet Army, painted and the story behind it. Tip o’ the hat to: Reader S.

4. Spend some time panning and zooming around the Tokyo Tower Gigapixel Panorama.

5. Today in 1883, the Krakatoa volcano erupts, killing tens of thousands in the ensuing tsunami. The sound was heard 2000 miles away and light pieces of pumice stone with human and animal skeletons inside were later found on the shores of Madagascar. The event was one of the first to spread globally, at then record speed, via telegraph. Read some stories told by Krakatoa survivors.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. tweets: “‘sweven. noun. A dream, a vision.’ I love you @katexic.” — awwwww.

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