WORK
“The Easement”
One moth flies above many hands
& I don’t want the words for desire
to fuse to a life of what presents a weed
now here, now alone, scored
with a yarn for longing, one lifting
her skirt up slowly, slower where
the world’s tilted, blustery, incapable
& how to refuse us each to a one.
—Joshua Marie Wilkinson
—from A Public Space No. 21
[note: one of a series of poems, each beginning with a line from an Osip Mandelstam poem]
WORD(S)
hurkle. verb. To draw up one’s body or contract limbs in response to pain or cold. To cower, crouch, squat, shrink (and possibly brood). Also a six-legged, kitten-like alien in Theodore Sturgeon’s story “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast.” There are multiple slang definitions ranging from shirking and looking on as others work to a meaning too offensive to print here. From Middle Low German, Low German, and Dutch hurken to squat. CF hurkle-backed, hunker, haunches_.
“The hare … ’Hind the dead thistle hurkles from the view.” (John Clare)
“That’s the water o’ Yonder ye see in the howe, and Yonderdale begins where the twae hills hurkle thegither.” (John Buchan)
“And the Maxwells—and the Gordons—and the hurkle-backed Hendersons…” (James Hogg)
WEB
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Seven Days And Nights In The World’s Largest, Rowdiest Retirement Community. May or may not include frat-house style sex, prostitution rings and dinners at 4pm.
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What I Wish I Knew About Creativity When I Was 20.
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Infinite Jest in Legos? Why, yes: Brickjest.
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Filmmaker and author Miranda July’s Somebody app puts the people back in messaging. Literally. July’s short film in support of the app is uneven, but has its moments. Hat-tip: Reader L.
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Today in 1965, Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited (Spotify), establishing his electrified bona-fides. Poet Philip Larking wrote that he was “well rewarded” by the album, going on to say, “Dylan’s cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material … and his guitar adapts itself to rock (‘Highway 61’) and ballad (‘Queen Jane’). There is a marathon ‘Desolation Row’ which has an enchanting tune and mysterious, possibly half-baked words.” The debate about Dylan’s power (or not) as a poet is eternal. So is the album.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- Reader C. brings my attention to the word tittynope which, she says, is “similar to el de la vergüenza [Aug. 14’s WORD], but without the confusion of reluctance.” — The word doesn’t appear in the OED, but it does show up in various other places and titty means, among other things, small or insignificant. Put it in the books!
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