May 1, Karel Mácha, and God Bless Blesk

May is a big time each year for the Czech poet Karel Mácha. This year pieces of his long poem May showed up in all sorts of unexpected places.

My particular favorite place was the tabloid Blesk. Blesk always spices up it's sensational articles and paparazzi photos with pictures of naked women (ah, Europe). But Blogger doesn't like that too much. So in order to show you what there was to celebrate this May, I had to crop these images very carefully. So here's a bit of Karel Mácha's famous spring poem getting a makeover. Wherever he is, Karel is psyched.

Czech: Byl pozdní večer - první máj - večerní máj - byl lásky čas. Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas, kde borový zaváněl háj.

English: Late evening, on the first of May - The twilit May - the time of love. Meltingly called the turtle-dove,Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay...

And continuing on the back:

Cz: O lásce šeptal tichý mech; květoucí strom lhal lásky žel, svou lásku slavík růži pěl, růžinu jevil vonný vzdech.

En: Whispered of love the mosses frail, The flowering tree as sweetly lied, The rose's fragrant sigh replied To love-songs of the nightingale.

There's a bit more to the actual photos than I can show. But you get the idea I guess. God bless the good people at Blesk for doing something to make poetry exciting.

Go get this free book: How to be Creative by Hugh Macleod

This book by cartoonist and businessman Hugh Macleod is really something special that you have to check out if you are into creating anything at all. It's really well written and designed, it's free, and it's been downloaded something like 4.5 million times. Here's a quote from the page:

MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.

If you've ever felt the draw to do something creative but just haven't been able to pull it together, you'll love this manifesto.

Get it over at changethis.com.You will definitely find something in it that will move you.

Poetry in Movies - The Proposition, Before Night Falls

I've been seeing a lot of amazing movies lately that use poetry in such an amazing way. Here are two of my favorites.

The Proposition (2005)



"There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?" from Lavengro (1851) by George Borrow

Before Night Falls (2000)

For Spanish speaking friends out there, this one from the amazing Before Night Falls. I'll put it here with a translation below. Even if you don't understand Spanish watch it anyway and read along. The music really brings it to life.



"Walking along streets that collapse from crumbling sewers. Past buildings that you jump to avoid because they will fall on you. Past grim faces that size you up and sentence you. Past closed shops, closed markets, closed cinemas, closed parks, closed cafes. Sometimes showing dusty signs, justifications: "CLOSED FOR RENOVATION," "CLOSED FOR REPAIRS." What kind of repairs? When will these so-called renovations be finished? When at last will they begin? Closed... closed... closed... everything closed. I arrive, open the countless padlocks and run up the temporary stairs. There she is, waiting for me. I pull off the cover, and staring at her dusty, cold shape I clean off the dust and caress her. With my hand, delicately, I wipe clean her back, her base and her sides. In front of her, I feel desperate and happy. I run my fingers over her keyboard and suddenly it all starts up. With a tinkling sound the music begins, little by little, then faster; now full speed. Walls, trees, streets, cathedrals, faces and beaches. Cells, mini-cells, huge cells. Starry nights, bare feet, pines, clouds. Hundreds, thousands, millions of parrots. A stool, a climbing plant, they all answer my call, all come to me. The walls recede, the roof vanishes, and you float quite naturally. You float uprooted, dragged off, lifted high. Transported, immortalized, saved. Thanks to that subtle, continuous rhythm, that music, that incessant tap-tap." - Reinaldo Arenas

Walt Whitman's Song of Myself read by James Earl Jones

You haven't heard anything like this. He goes off.

Poet Laureate's Gift to Prince William and Kate Middleton

I don't know what's going on with this royal wedding business. I'm out of the loop.

But it is interesting that Britain's first female poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and textual artist Stephen Raw got together to create a limited edition print of Duffy's poetry for the royal couple. Turns out there aren't too many actual pictures of the piece (titled "Rings") floating around. These were posted recently over at Stephen Raw's website:

Detail:

Text of the poem (thanks to the Guardian):

Rings by Carol Ann Duffy

for both to say

I might have raised your hand to the sky
to give you the ring surrounding the moon
or looked to twin the rings of your eyes
with mine
or added a ring to the rings of a tree
by forming a handheld circle with you, thee,
or walked with you
where a ring of church-bells,
looped the fields,
or kissed a lipstick ring on your cheek,
a pressed flower,
or met with you
in the ring of an hour,
and another hour . . .
I might
have opened your palm to the weather, turned, turned,
till your fingers were ringed in rain
or held you close,
they were playing our song,
in the ring of a slow dance
or carved our names
in the rough ring of a heart
or heard the ring of an owl's hoot
as we headed home in the dark
or the ring, first thing,
of chorussing birds
waking the house
or given the ring of a boat, rowing the lake,
or the ring of swans, monogamous, two,
or the watery rings made by the fish
as they leaped and splashed
or the ring of the sun's reflection there . . .
I might have tied
a blade of grass,
a green ring for your finger,
or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart
or brought you a lichen ring,
found on a warm wall,
or given a ring of ice in winter
or in the snow
sung with you the five gold rings of a carol
or stolen a ring of your hair
or whispered the word in your ear
that brought us here,
where nothing and no one is wrong,
and therefore I give you this ring.

A Great BAnd

also great



and if you like those

watch the making of their great last album starting here

http://youtu.be/4jMWgputRLo

Quote from the end by William Lloyd Garrison:

“I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.”

Old school: John Donne's The Triple fool

Old School: Old stuff that you were supposed to read in college that didn't make sense and didn't mean anything to you ("What's a merchant?"). But now you're older and wiser and now it means something. Maybe.

Fun facts about John Donne:

• He lost his father and several of his brothers and sisters when he was just a boy
• He went to school, learned a bunch of languages and then joined the navy 
• He married a woman in secret and then was thrown in jail by her father
• He got out and became a successful priest (one of his most famous sermons contains the passage beginning, “No man is an island” and ending, “Therefore ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”)

Now read this carefully. It's great.

THE TRIPLE FOOL.
by John Donne

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry ;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny ?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain ;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

Leaving comments is broken

So leaving comments on my blog or on other blogs doesn't seem to be working perfectly. I guess a lot of people are having this problem according to the Blogger Help forums. If you do want to leave a comment, please click here for my profile and email me.

I'll post your comment later when Blogger fixes the problem.

Update: Looks like it may be okay now. Still, email if comments don't work.

What happened to Amazon Pages?

If you read the Lefsetz letter Albums from yesterday (you'll have to subscribe to his newsletter to read it immediately), he says singles are how new bands get fans and releasing albums once a year is old hat. The article is about music, but there's a relation to books.

What if instead of buying an entire book you're not sure you'll like, you buy chapters as you go, or get a new chapter a week from an author you like? Bloggers see the world this way. When I read a blog (or in this case the Lefsetz letter) I'm reading self-contained pieces that could one day end up as chapters in a book. But the idea of buying chapters of a book like songs on iTunes is not mine. It's not even new.

Back in 2005 Amazon announced something called Amazon Pages where you would be able to do exactly that. Where's it gone? I don't know. Maybe there was a debate. Maybe books are not like albums. Maybe a book broken up is just annoying. Maybe books are more like movies, and you can't really break a movie into parts (unless you make VI of them). But here's an interesting section from Lefsetz:

...if you're putting out an album every couple of years you're reinventing the wheel, you're marketing from ground zero over and over again. You've even lost touch with your fans.

People still buy entire albums and books, sure. But the trend in music is towards buying the songs you like with the option of the album. And since it takes so long to put together an entire album (or a book), this idea for book chapters still has a place.

Bloggers are on the ball when it comes to writing. They're not even thinking in book form. I doubt they think about chapters. Today a steady stream of little pieces builds something larger, whether you're in a band, write books, or sell condos. And if you have contact with fans, why would you not put out anything for a year?

An interactive writing experiment where your name is used in a poem

Try this. It's not a survey. I just used survey gizmo to create it. I didn't know another way. Just pop your name in and click Go and you get a piece of writing with your name in it. Super advanced, I know.

Video Writing Post 1

My writing mixed with songs by The Postal Service.

Video Writing Post 2 - writing to music

Video post with voice over synthesizer reading my writing.

Song: I'm Official [Squadda B] by Clams Casino

Awesome Gears of War 2 trailer uses poetry

Missed this back in 2008 when it was originally released. Definitely cool, and just what I'm after: writing put to interesting use outside of books.
Text:I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (1888–1916).

Spring time - new book "Avatar"

This is my new book Avatar :

Amanda Hocking's Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said

 This is really good.

Amanda Hocking's Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said: "Oh, the internet is saying so many things about me. I don't understand why the internet suddenly picked up on me this past week..."

The first book I ever made

This is the first book I ever made and put up online.