|k| clippings: 2014-12-29 — silence preserves itself

RIP, Tomaž Šalamun. It has not been a kind year for poets.

WORK

“After This Night”

In front of a thin plate with round stones.
You say the red pillar appears, the salt
moves. That the red flame breaks out if I
shove away. Silence preserves itself at its
very bottom. Such is the consecration
of rocks. To you, to you, water,
water between mirrors. You are the new
young prince. Confused. Not yet aware
you wetted the cosmos. You’ll learn
gradually by paying levies. Janez Bernik
said about Andraž: break his beauty,
his trap is his beauty. The horse, the carriage,
the shawl took care of it. It was given
back to him from Hades. Beauty consumes
him calmly. Silk walls take the breath away.

—Tomaž Šalamun
—from Seven Poets, Four Days, One Book

WORD(S)

bombilation. noun. A buzzing, droning sound. From Latin bombilāre (to buzz, hum), possibly after Greek bombyliós (bumblebee).

“And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii.” (Dylan Thomas)

“…it was possible in still weather to hear the muted bombilation of the sleepless city and when the wind was in the north to count the hammer-strokes of the great bell of St. Paul’s.” (Sax Rohmer)

“When swans fight, they hiss and emit a sort of bombilation, not unlike the braying of an ass, but not so much prolonged.” (Albertus Magnus)

WEB

It’s the most list-wonderful time of the year. I don’t take much stock in the “best” labels, but I love the lists for themselves and as starting points for exploration. In this issue: photography (I’ve posted some additional, topical lists, on the Tumblr).

1. From the news(papers): 2014: The Year in Pictures (NYT). Best photographs, 2014 (The Guardian). Best of the Washington Post Photography, 2014 (WaPo). 2014 in incredible pictures (Mirror). Some of the Most Amazing Photographs of 2014 From Around the World (Daily Mail). 2014 Year in Pictures (NBC News).

2. From the magazines: Exposure 2014: Best Adventure Photography (Outside). The Big Picture photography competition: best of 2014 (The Telegraph). TIME picks the Top 100 Photos of 2014.

3. From the wires: Reuters’ Best Photos of the Year. The Getty Year in Focus: 2014.

4. The New Wave: The Best Instagram Photographers of 2014. The 2014 iPhone Photography Awards. The BBC’s most stunning drone pictures of 2014.

5. Today in the year 1170, Thomas Becket (eventually Saint Thomas of Canterbury) is assassinated in the Canterbury Cathedral by knights in service of King Henry II over, of course, a dispute about the powers of Church and King. This despite Henry describing Becket as giving him more “fatherly love” than anyone else ever had. Edward Grim, who was wounded in the attack, described the brutal murder. Becket’s remains were the subject of some intrigue before finally being moved to a shrine that survived for over 300 years until Henry VIII, ordered it—and Becket’s bones—destroyed and all mention of him removed from official history. Today a small memorial candle burns where the shrine once stood.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. is watching: “I can vouch for Blue Ruin, Enemy, Obvious Child, and Snowpiercer. The thing we’ve enjoyed watching the most lately has been British mystery series on Netflix. We just finished Broadchurch, which was fantastic, and before that The Fall, which was good but not as good as Broadchurch.”

• And, Reader T. adds: “Ah, the magnetar. As if I didn’t have enough things to worry about today.”

• Reader S. tackled the “had had” sentence: “Reader T: Punctuated correctly, the had had sentence does indeed contain a comma. To wit: ¶ Where John had had ”had,“ Mary had had ”had had;“ had ”had had“ had a better effect on the teacher? ¶ One could argue that the quotes are not necessary (I think they add clarity) and that it’s really two sentences mashed together with a badly-used semicolon; but then it wouldn’t be as cool.”

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