Memorial For All Our Troops

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death By W.B. Yeats I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

To everyone who has served, thank you.

Sonnet Duel: Spendthrift

Spendthrift

The spring has been a brief one, and a hot-
A spendthrift thief of subtle season’s change.
Flowers not yet meant to bloom are caught
Within the raging torrent- and the range
Of Summer’s rate proceeds immoderate
Without the ordered, dignified procession
Of seemly grace. Thus in my mind’s estate
Such prodigality of contemplation
Is displayed, that all my thoughts have bloomed,
And prematurely blows the seeded breeze.
And I am left to mow the leaves and sneeze
And burn my compost thought ‘til all’s consumed.
But hope in this; though now the seeds are Sorrow
Still yet they sow another Spring tomorrow.

 

It would seem that the Muse is absent right now, and the Dusty Thane has an excuse. He is in Greece. Silly man…visiting his in-laws… Before he left he wrote about a lack of inspiration due to looming vacationing. It is clever and lovely. But I too was seeking inspiration and finding it not. Last night, over the G&T’s you see below, the plan was to write about seeking the Juniper Muse, but the poem had other plans for itself.

A Nightcap: G&Ts

Do not yet go to bed; I know you’re tired
from leisurely pursuits from noon ’til night.
For all that Morpheus has you enmired,
resist his arms, his sand-storm falling light.
The sideboard holds one duty left to you,
which cannot wait tomorrow’s rosy dawn:
there sits three limes of juice, squeezed but unused,
whose use, if it’s ignored, will still be gone.
Bring forth the juniper, the quinine, ice,
lest Gaia’s gifts be given to the air.
If pressed for time, then quaff it in a trice,
but do not leave the lime juice to despair!
Like Joel’s old man, before rest can begin,
let us make love to tonic and to gin.

Epic Meme Saturday: In a Land Far, Far Away

Well, in my most learned and delectable mind, I think that a favorite setting means a place where I would want to live. (Please note how I conveniently twist it to mean something that I want!) Oh, of all the places I would love to live! Narnia, the Enchanted Forest, Middle-Earth, Prydain, Al-Amarna, The Old-Kingdom…. Actually, not the old kingdom, too many undead there!

There are so many beautiful and wonderful worlds that would be a joy to see. Yet the one I have read that is the most beautifully described is a place called Mistawis. It is a land of mystery and enchantment, where raised eyebrows mean the end of the world (though occasionally the world keeps on spinning despite the eyebrows), cardinal flowers lighten the swamp like ribbons of flame, and islands appear as amethysts. Here a mysterious man is found with crocked eyebrows and a dark past.

Ooh, the possibility gives me the shivers! But this land of deep magic has dangers, evil men who would kidnap the fair maiden from her first dance, a cruel mother whose petty tasks might cause her daughter much suffering… oh, all the traits of a true fairy tale!

But it isn’t. The Mistawis is a real place, in Ontario Canada. Sounds prosaic, right?! (Well, don’t google it for images, I did and I was very disappointed. They had only a few of actual scenery!) But the Mistawis, as seen through the eyes of Valency Jane Stirling Snaith from L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle is that Land of Enchantment where strange and wonderful beauty lies just ahead and ever under her fingertips. If you have the eyes to see it.

Yes, there are many places described by books that I would like to see, but only here would I want to live.

Vacation Sonnet

Reblogged from The Dusty Thanes:

Well, this is a first. Two posts on one day… But since I am leaving tomorrow for vacation in Greece I have obtained permission from Thalia to post my sonnet for this Sunday two days early.  I had been working on a serious sonnet, but since my mind left for vacation a day or two ago, I wrote a different sonnet.

Read more… 118 more words

Before its time but with good excuse, here is link to the Thane's Sonnet jab.

Continue reading

Mel’s Meme: The Scope of Story Setting

We have much discussion this week about sense, imagination, realism and subtlety.

I find the phrase “story setting” to mean the groundwork of the tale, the landscape from which the story unfolds. The power of a story in part depends on how much vibrancy the setting has, not just in terms of the senses, but in how much life it holds.

For me, the setting of the story depends on how many other stories this setting can hold.

And ultimately, a story is limited only by the humanity involved. For every story ever told contains some truth. As Chesterton said, “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; a bad novel tells us the truth about its author”.

So what settings have a million potential stories lurking in the recesses of each alcove and inlet?

What setting allows for the most important dramas of the human experience to be told?

Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

As traveled by Dante and recounted in his Commedia.

These realms are far enough from our own to allow the reader some perspective and room for thought, but also so close to truths that we know in our deepest hearts that it touches us profoundly.

It is filled with concerns of mortality, and yet removed from them in such a way that it opens those concerns to us, those still existing on the physical plane.

It is the most deeply human of all stories, and still it contain as yet untold stories; tragedies, dramas, romances, and true love stories. The Commedia has it all, but only whets the appetite.  I want to know more about all these souls! I want to stay longer in Heaven!

And of course, it is the setting that brings the story most fully into the life of each reader.

Thursday Dances: World-Weaving

So there was this time when Melpomene plotted out some memes, and I looked them over and thought “Hmmm, that is a fair helping of romance-themed sorts of whatnot. I hope I don’t talk about the same book over again. …whaaat. Best Setting? Mneeeeeeeeeeep!”

Not, you understand, because I hate settings (that would be nonsense), but because whenever the setting forces me to think about it, it has, in some wise or other, failed at its job. Like a cosmetologist whose work is not subtle enough to pass for natural beauty. Like the mood music in a coffee shop that’s so loud, you can’t hear your compatriots and your mood sours. Like some other similes piled in a row like an unending line of train cars.

Anyway. That was a lengthy excuse as to why I don’t normally ponder settings. I declaimed to Thalia about How Difficult It All Was, and then kept rambling: “Settings are not a thing I generally give much thought to; I loathe it when a storyline is so dependent on Where They’re Going and What Is In the Way that I need to get out a physical map to understand the plot (yes, Tolkien, I’m looking at you in all your splendid, meticulous, cumbersome plans). Perhaps the best setting would achieve that goal set by Lewis in Of Other Worlds: to catch the feeling of a place, like an exotic bird in an invisible net, like sand which melts through our fingers when we try to grasp it.”

Narnia, for example, said I; why, Dr. Ward did a marvelous job of laying out his claim (and the supporting evidence as well) that each book is built up around a particular sphere of the heavens: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe around the festal pomp of Jupiter; Prince Caspian around the militant aspect of Mars; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader around the golden fortune of the Sun; The Horse and His Boy around the bright alacrity of Mercury; The Silver Chair around the watery mutability of the Moon; The Magician’s Nephew around the beauty and vitality of Venus; The Last Battle around the ponderous, sorrowful weight of Saturn.

The qualities ascribed to each sphere, the metals associated with them, the colors and sounds – these details are woven into the very fabric of Lewis’s narrative. So each book has a distinct flavor, down to the exclamations the characters use and the verbs describing their action. It is marvelous how those aspects of the story, not typically used for setting the story in a world, do so in Lewis’s hands.

Whereupon Thalia very reasonably pointed out that perhaps the Narniad had won that particular prize where my head was concerned. So there you have it.

For I wanted not the momentary suspense but that whole world to which it belonged – the snow and the snow-shoes, beavers and canoes, war-paths and wigwams, and Hiawatha names…

Best Setting or Sci-Fi Writers Have More Fun

Which book features the best setting?

It occurrs to me that such a question is particularly suited to showcase the delights of my preferred genre, science fiction.  While setting is an integral component to story in any kind of literature, in science fiction, the setting itself usually plays a prominent, perhaps even defining, role in the story being told.   All good stories must offer compelling characters, intriguing plots, well-written narratives.  Yet in addition to these pleasures, the science fiction genre adds the imaginative setting: a medieval world of swords and sorcery; distant planets inhabited by alien races; our own world, decades or centuries in the future, when our daily lives are ruled by robots and computers.  These fantastical settings are, I believe, what either turns readers away from the genre or compels them to it.  I’m among the compelled; I love imagining new worlds, where magic or science creates a new stage for human action.

The question still creates a number of problems.  The most critical of which is simply that I am a bibliophile: I can’t pick just one favorite book.  But slightly less critically, there are a number of ways a story setting may stand out in a book.  It may be the best-realized setting, described in such compelling and interesting detail that it seems completely real.  It may be the setting that contributes most to the story being told, such that the story could not be transplanted to another setting, but only succeeds by having just the setting which the author gave it.  Or it may be the setting most interesting in its own right, distinct from the story it surrounds or the characters who live in it.  Of course, there will be a good deal of overlap between these areas.  After all, a good story setting fulfills each of these criteria to some extent.  But I found it helpful to think of setting in these three ways as I went about answering the question.  Thus, I have three books for you, one which exemplifies each category.

Sunshine

The urban fantasy world of Robin McKinley’s Sunshine felt as pressingly and tangibly real to me as it is to Rae, the novel’s first-person narrator.  Rae’s world is a post-apocalyptic north America, where the apocalypse was a large-scale magical war of sorcerers versus vampires, demons, and other magical creatures.  Magic is as much a part of the daily lives of even non-magic users as technology is for you or me: houses utilize magical alarm systems, and people wear magical charms or tattoos to protect them from supernatural harm.  Rae, of course, is more involved with the supernatural than most people.  In addition to being the daughter of a powerful sorcerer, she finds herself bound to the fate of a vampire named Constantine.  As she is inescapably drawn into a world of danger and magic, Rae describes her world with clarity, humor, and emotion, as well as a plethora of sensory details.  I could see Constantine,  the emaciated vampire with mushroom colored skin, as clearly as if I were prisoner in the ramshackle mansion beside him and Rae.  I could smell the cinnamon rolls Rae bakes every morning at the coffee shop where she works.  Or feel the slight electric jolt as she stakes her first vampire with a table knife.  Rae makes the world real, and I have been there through her.

Dune

Frank Herbert’s space opera Dune is the story most shaped by its setting.  Nearly all the action of the book takes place on the desert planet Arakis, called Dune by its inhabitants.  As you might guess, the story centers round the arid desert environment, where water is precious and life is hazardous.  The desert shapes politics, both offworld and on, for the sandworms which inhabit the dune sea are the universe’s one source of the invaluable spice, for which there exists universal demand.  There are great political wars over control of Arakis and it is said, “He who controls the spice, controls the universe.”  The desert is also home to the Fremen, natives of Arakis who hope to regain planetary control from the off-worlders who rule them.  The Fremen culture revolves around the preservation of water.  To weep for the dead, for instance, is a sign of utmost respect; “You gave water to the dead,” the Fremen tell the protagonist with awe when he weeps for the man he has killed in battle.  Even the water from the bodies of the dead must be recycled, thus the rendering of the dead for water is a sacred funeral ritual.  Perhaps most memorable are the still-suits which the Fremen wear for survival in the open desert, suits which collect every bit of water expelled by the human body and recycle it for reuse.  Without its desert setting, Dune would lose the  thrust of its political conflict and the entire flavor of its alien cultures.  The planet itself is a character in the drama, alongside gods and men, prophets and emperors.

Finder

Carla Speed McNeil’s graphic novel Finder depicts a futuristic world that is as fascinating in itself as any of her characters.  Finder‘s world is in many ways an extension of our own culture and technology.  People watch TV, surf the internet, use cell phones through wireless implants.  Nearly everyone uses digital readers because paper books are considered antiques.  McNeil’s myriad pop culture references remind us that it may not be long before we find ourselves in a future world like the one she shows us.  Thus far, she does what many science fiction authors have done.  Yet she makes her world new and interesting by the eclectic combination of real-world detail and science fiction imagination.  Anthropomorphic animals, sentient computers, and humans live side-by-side.  Aboriginal and modern cultures clash.  Not only is the world thematically interesting, it’s visually fascinating, too.  Like the lush prose of a master writer, McNeil’s art is filled with details.  It’s a pleasure to dwell on each panel, soaking up the information she’s encoded in each image.  Sometimes the details pertain to the plot, and sometimes it’s simply to enrich the world–a scene on a TV in the background, a photograph taped above a character’s desk, strange faces in a crowd.  Finder offers a world that’s interesting, varied, real, and well worth the visit.