The Friv. seems to be stuck at "smileys".
Anyway....
....can't believe what I just read about the rod falling off the SF bridge.
The rod that fell Tuesday was erected last month during an emergency repair job. It was holding in place a saddle-like cap that had been installed over a cracked link discovered over the Labor Day weekend.
Wouldn't you think something more than a bandaid would be needed to repair such a bridge? Scarey.
Mary
I'm surprised the tie rods didn't break over Thanksgiving, so the workers would make doubletime to fix the rods: [www.sfgate.com] />
Les
It may be thus, Les, as:
Ney told reporters that the design of the new repair "is very similar" to the arrangement that fell apart Tuesday.
Read more: [www.sfgate.com] />
Unbelievable.
Les, what is it with the friv. and some other locations where it says Smileys... above the reply box (like this one)? It first appeared in one of your posts, but with no text beneath it. Do you know what I'm talking about (or does anybody else notice this?)
Mary
I know what you're talking about, I don['t know why the posts are being blocked.The block occured on the lyric page when I tried to post a link from another page. But since our forum hosts prefer to remain anonymous we'll probably never know exactly what is happening, or why. My best guess is that it's the work of our infamous hackers. Some people just want this website to go away.
Les
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2022 12:19PM by les712.
Does the daily news always make bad poetry?
I was trying to write a poem this morning about how the poet's vision of the world can be worse than impractical, can be a positive hindrance to our actual, practical understanding and communication about what needs to be done in our personal, pragmatic lives about what we understand to to wrong in our world. Often, when I try to write a poem about politics, it comes out as lame poetry and as naive politics. Most explicitly political poems are boringly simplistic, right or left. And, yes, I enjoy topical folk music. Still, what can poetry say about the daily news?
Thank you, Les. Glad to know it's not just my computer or a figment of my imagination.
Does the daily news always make bad poetry?
If anyone can make good poetry, Peter, it's you. But you bring up a point worthy of consideration. I'm brought to thinking about pat things that are said...like "guns don't kill people, people kill people". How simple life would be if things were as black and white as all that.
Could it be, Peter, that the very thing that makes it difficult for you to write prose is what makes it difficult for you to write a poem related to politics or the daily news? I'm just thinking not only about what inspires each of us to write, but the part of our unique selves we draw from to do it. You often refer to "imagination" being utilized in your writing. Although it's clear you are passionate about politics and the state of affairs in this world, maybe there's just not enough wiggle room in the stark realities of news for you to draw from??
I don't know, Peter, you may very well just be talking and not really asking the question. If I was passionate about politics or the news, I'd write about how it makes me "feel". But that's the area I usually draw from.
Sorry for the rant.
Peace,
Mary
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2022 11:19PM by UPMarty.
Thanks for the rant, Mary. The question is genuine, shared with me by a magnificent poet and a life-long political activist recently from opposite directions. It cut directly to the value of calling what we write 'poetry' and thinking that makes a difference somehow. Somehow, how the news makes me feel is not quite enough for me. Behavior matters. Which is, ironically, why I admire in an odd way Terry's politics, even as I detest some of the decisions he's let himself make. At least he does something about the world, even if it seems wrong-headed to me.
amo,
Peter
Actions do speak louder than words,don't they? Although I have seen ocassion where choice words prompt action or have impact on a situation. "I Have a Dream..."
I wasn't suggesting that you approach a news poem by how it makes you feel, Peter, but rather noting that we all tend to draw from different parts of ourselves to write. My own tendency is to draw from feelings, or the heart of a matter(as cliche' or worn out as that may be). It's not to say that we don't have the capacity to draw from somewhere else, but just that we lean towards what is most comfortable to us. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would seem that you tend to draw from imagination and I was thinking there might be little left to the imagination in the news.
Maybe the issue is that the realities of the daily news call for action, not poetry, period. I too admire Terry's willingness to "do" something.
Mary
It seems Caltrans engineers did manage to get in a little OT after all:
[www.sfgate.com] />
Les
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2022 04:22PM by les712.
I found a poet and his poetry. Good stuff.
----------------------------------------------
The Book of Questions, III by Pablo Neruda
Translated by William O'Daly
III.
Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?
Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?
Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?
Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?
----------------------------------------------------------
The Separate Rose: I by Pablo Neruda
Translated by William O'Daly
Today is that day, the day that carried
a desperate light that since has died.
Don’t let the squatters know:
let’s keep it all between us,
day, between your bell
and my secret.
Today is dead winter in the forgotten land
that comes to visit me, with a cross on the map
and a volcano in the snow, to return to me,
to return again the water
fallen on the roof of my childhood.
Today when the sun began with its shafts
to tell the story, so clear, so old,
the slanting rain fell like a sword,
the rain my hard heart welcomes.
You, my love, still asleep in August,
my queen, my woman, my vastness, my geography
kiss of mud, the carbon-coated zither,
you, vestment of my persistent song,
today you are reborn again and with the sky’s
black water confuse me and compel me:
I must renew my bones in your kingdom,
I must still uncloud my earthly duties.
----------------------------------------------------------
The Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
Translated by W. S. Merwin
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.
------------------------------------------------------
Love For This Book by Pablo Neruda
Translated by Clark Zlotchew and Dennis Maloney
In these lonely regions I have been powerful
in the same way as a cheerful tool
or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed
or like a dog rolling around in the dew.
Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning
another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then
the algae that lashed our wild rocks,
the waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,
all will be firm without us,
all will be ready for the new days,
which will not know our destiny.
What do we leave here but the lost cry
of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind
that cut our faces and kept us
erect in the light of purity,
as in the heart of an illustrious star?
What do we leave, living like a nest
of surly birds, alive, among the thickets
or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?
So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating
the earth, this soil and its harshness,
deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me
return to my place beneath the hungry earth.
We asked the ocean for its rose,
its open star, its bitter contact,
and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded
we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.
It's late now. Perhaps
it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,
perhaps only a night, like the eyelid
of a grave look that encompassed
the measure of the sea that surrounded us,
and in this territory we found only a kiss,
only ungraspable love that will remain here
wandering among the sea foam and roots.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Still Another Day: XVII/Men by Pablo Neruda
Translated by William O'Daly
The truth is in the prologue. Death to the romantic fool,
to the expert in solitary confinement,
I’m the same as the teacher from Colombia,
the rotarian from Philadelphia, the merchant
from Paysandu who save his silver
to come here. We all arrive by different streets,
by unequal languages, at Silence.
"Maybe the issue is that the realities of the daily news call for action, not poetry, period."
And who has their lives so together that they can spare time for the world? Let alone see it?
I suspect it is not 'spare time' dealing with a world larger than our own but 'central time' because out lives occur within all that other stuff. It is making the connection from time to time that is the problem.
So is everyone experiencing the annoying time-outs or whatever it is that keeps interrupting the e-mule connection? It seems to be happening more frequently...even during a brief session.
Mary
Yes, it's the e-mule server, or master computer that operates the website. There is probably a glitch in the software they're using. To me it's proof that whoever runs this website doesn't use the website.
Google has a test for any idea proposed by its employees to be implemented by the company. It's called the "dog food" test. All the ideas proposed are tested by other employees, like giving your dog a new brand of dog food. If the other employees, don't like the new invention, or can't figure out how to use it, the company figures the general public won't eat it either. Hence, the company's search product has changed very little since its inception. Management here might try using their own product and see if they truly like its finished (or perhaps unfinished) product.
Les
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2021 01:58AM by les712.
Unfortunately, this is another in the long list of annoying problems that have driven so many fine folks away from the mule. It is frustrating and has kept me from coming back as often as I used to, but I will continue to stop by until the last nail is in the coffin.
Joe
Why be an artist? Check out the piece in this video about Daniel Rebert, the photographer.
[www.kvie.org] />
Go to the link above, click on "programs", then click on "arts alive" , then click on "amazing artists", then click on "video".
Les
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2010 11:11PM by les712.