The future of A Glass Darkly

I know that I originally planned to re-launch this blog and Tongues in Jars for December, but recently my time has been short. I'll spare you the regular spiel about working three jobs and planning to move out and etc., etc. The shortest possible version is that I just haven't really figured out exactly what I want to do with A Glass Darkly going forward.

Now, I'm still going to blog (as is plain in my resuming regular updates at Tongues in Jars).

However, the big difference between my blogging in the future and my blogging in the past is that I'm only going to dedicate 1/4 of my writing time and energy to blogging. The other 3/4 are going to my novels, short stories, and poetry. Nonetheless, I want to keep updating these blog regularly. The best way to do this, as far as I've been able to figure, is to simply write more fluid entries.

So, rather than sitting down, planning out, strenuously editing and drafting each blog entry, from now on my entries will be shorter. Ultimately, the purpose of these blogs is to publicly indulge my hobbies, and to give you all a way to get to know me and what to expect from my writing. My blog entries will still have the usual polish, though the fiction and poetry I post here will still be drafts and thus a little unpolished. Think of them as the sketches that artists might post on their sites.

The new year's also going to bring some changes to A Glass Darkly's design and, possibly, name. I'll still post creative writing on Mondays, editorials will return on Wednesdays, and reviews will go up on Fridays. These reviews will mostly be of books, but there'll still be some movie reviews sprinkled in for good measure. But, these entries won't necessarily be regular.

Along with these irregular entries, the plan right now is to post thought pieces based on what I'm playing and reading every day. I've got a crazy book/video game backlog, and so there's plenty of fodder for free-writing. The difference between these entries and Wednesday's editorials will be that the former will be free-flowing wanderings with words, while the latter will usually be more concentrated mini-essays that try to make a point.

So, now that all that's out there - what about the rest of December? Well, for now all I can say is that I don't expect to get much up and running here. I might do one final movie review, either of a bad Christmas movie or of the famous flop Ishtar, but doing either seems unlikely. Instead, I can say for sure that Tongues in Jars will keep getting updated on a weekly basis, and I'll be publishing an article over on examiner.com every week as well.

So, watch this space, gentle reader, and something will appear!

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[Moon-dæg] Looking East while Writing in the West

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Gazing Across Prairies
Closing

{The prairie's amber wave. Image found on Bridal Buds.}

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Inspired by a lovely face, this is another poem I composed out West. It's been modified from its original to bring some more unity to the over all metaphor of face as prairie field ready for harvest, but still needs some work.

If you've got some suggestions, leave them in the comments!

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Gazing Across Prairies

Her face is like a field of wheat stalks
Each topped by grains massaged by wind
Bringing out the gold of harvest

Each grain heavy with meaning
Each gust a desirous finger
Joy itself is in the meadow beyond that field,
As each finger yearns to run
From field to hair through to air.

So that the deepest wells awake and open,
Awake to gaze, blink, and water

Always moistening in laughter's course,
Ridiculous echoes fill the field
As winter clouds call each grass leaf
Each stalk home.

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That's it for a Glass Darkly this week. My commitment to getting through NaNoWriMo, and this week's work hours have conspired to force my blogging into a minimum. But don't miss my translations and commentaries over at Tongues in Jars: tomorrow, I look at stanza seven of "Dum Diane vitrea," and on Thursday, my delve into the Old English epic Beowulf continues!

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[Moon-dæg] A West Coast Yawp

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West Coast Yawp
Closing

{Some beeswax, taper candles. Image found on Waxing Lyrical.}

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Today's poem is one of several "yawps" I wrote while living over in Victoria, BC. Like this majority of these pieces, this one combines two of the larger hurdles of that experience: the weather and the burden of grad school.

In true yawp-like fashion, it might not make perfect logical sense, but logic isn't so much the point as is putting out words that stir emotions and produce strong images.

As always, you can leave your own thoughts of the poem below in the comments.

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West Coast Yawp

My eyes hoard the written word
And pass out its meaning like a
Miserly king
On the verge of becoming a dragon -

Ready to flaunt his draconitas
In the trick of his new found tail.

All the bone-houses and heart-thought
Of dead poets and buried heroes:
Now no help to me.

Scholar voices bound the crenellations
Of my cranium
And pipe up treble loud
when I place my nose into a book;

Something has gone out
Some spark or other has snuffed it.

More light,
More light,
Lest the West Coast wind
Topple my last lit tapers.

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Check back here Friday for a search through the sins of The Convent for part Four of Shocktober.

In the meantime, check out tomorrow's Latin ("Dum Diane vitrea") entry and Thursday's Old English (Beowulf) entry over at Tongues in Jars!

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[Moon-dæg] Some Lines about Laity?

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Child in a Church
Closing

{The sort of chancel that a child might run up to. Image found on chancel.org.uk.}

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A poem that was written a few months ago, and that is based on some lines that came my way one day.

I can't say what, if anything, directly influenced this poem, but I had the image of a child walking up to the front of a church and just let a pen finish the thought. Maybe it's got deep resonances with modern day religious situations, or maybe it's just a configuration of words that sound pleasant together - after you read it, leave a comment to let me know what you think!

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Child in a Church

There is a child in a church
Raising and felling eye-sized feet
To claim further carpeted ground.
Before the front pew now,
An edge more shear than a fall from grace.

She turns back to titter and gibber at
Parents seated
Where only she can see.
Then back to the front and further stalking
But no more footfalls.

Giggles
As unlined hands grasp without cross
to reach the wooden table
From which her sight
Slips to the smithed cupboard lock
set as high as her apartment.

No man in any dress all of one colour to stop her,
She clamours to the ground floor of that ceiling scraper,
But begins to cry when no doorman smiles the wooden entrance open.

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Check back here on Friday for a search for what's truly scary in Leprechaun in the Hood, and on Saturday for Annotated Links #21!

In the meantime, head over to Tongues in Jars for my dead language translation posts on Tuesday and Thursday.

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[Moon-dæg] Poem #997b

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Sun and Moon
Closing

{A rare sighting, but a jackpot for the celestial paparazzi. Image found on the blog Wish You all the Best.}

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Tonight's piece is a sample of my poetry from 2010. This was when I wrote poetry that stuck to a fairly regular form. This specific poem is also an example of my stuff on love that's written in an Elizabethan style; in fact, it's similar to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (a.k.a. "Poem #997").

Check it out, and let me know what you think in the comments!

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Sun and Moon

A kiss and a peck and a see you tonight
Said the sun to the moon
at the coming of first light
Go my love and hide away
Scarce your face - scarce!

I’ll hide it behind window-blurred bars
And raise around you robes of cloud
As I shed light, generation, elation to those below.

Then, when those look up nightly
through eyes and disembodied words
To the glow of light from my cumulus chase,
We can join behind a dark-wooled herd
To stoke our lights before parting.

Before returning to our days.

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Check back at this blog on Friday for a look for the likeable in The Samaritan (a.k.a. Fury). Then on Saturday, you'll be able to find the newest Annotated Links here, and a look back/look ahead on Sunday.

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[Sæternes-dæg] Annotated Links # 18: Cultural and Career Vehicles

1. Skelding, Conor. "K is for Kapital, and Not in a Marxist Way." BWOG 22 September 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.

Professor John Lie gave a talk at Center for Korean Research’s Colloquium Series on Korean Cultural Studies in which he didn't speak about K-Pop. Instead, Lie spoke about how Korean pop music is an entirely market and capitalist driven endeavour that is hollow culturally. His evidence is all of the financial backing that the industry receives and its stark contrast to Korea's straightforward and simple traditional music.

This piece is written in a casual style befitting a blog, but with authority. It's included because I find the different perspective on K-Pop's importance refreshing.

2. Cho, Chung-un. "Hallyu can help spread Korean: Minister." AsiaOne 18 September 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.

Choe Kwang-shik, Korean Culture Minister, claims that the world's initial interest in K-Pop is spreading to other cultures. Yet, he posits that even more important than the spread of K-culture in general is the spread of the interest in the Korean language, what he calls the "most important cultural product."

Written in a direct, journalistic style, this article is included because it celebrates the Korean language, a thing truly worth studying.

3. Sofge, Erik. "What Would a Starship Actually Look Like?" Popular Mechanics 20 September 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.

Real physics and space dangers are considered in what an interstellar ship might just look like. The fact that there is no air in space, and so aeordynamics aren't relevant, as well as the problem of space dust perforating sails and hulls because of ships' high speeds are among the things considered.

Sofge wrote this piece in a technical style, but in a tone that is readable - even if some of its paragraphs tend toward lumpiness. Its included because the realities of space-travelling vehicles are excellent things to know for writing science fiction.

4. Hanna, Jeff. "Fantastic Poetry: W&L's Wheeler Uses Terza Rime to Spin a Sci-Fi Story." Washington and Lee Universities: News and Media 20 September 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.

Leslie Wheeler, the Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, has just published a collection of speculative fiction poetry. The title poem ("The Receptionist") is set in a fantastical academia, where fantasy creatures and figures stand in for the usual group found in universities.

This article doubles as a light overview/review of the collection and an informative piece. It's included because I find it encouraging that something close to one of my own projects has been carried out and published.

5. Hagy, Jessica. "20 Ways to Find Your Calling." Forbes.com 26 June 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.

This article gives readers a list of 20 questions to ask and things to think about to figure out what you want to do with their lives. The things on this list aren't earth shattering but they're the sort of things that can help to shake loose what might be rattling around in your head.

Written in a casual, easy-going style, this article is included because it offers a way to potentially figure out where your natural skills lay.

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Check back here tomorrow for the week-in-review/week-ahead entry!

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[Moon-dæg] An Edit of an Oldie

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Alchemical Links
Closing

{One of many bizarre and fascinating images from medieval alchemical texts. Image found on janeteresa.com.}

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Tonight's piece is an edit of one of the many variations I wrote for an exercise that demanded a poem be written using "old oatmeal," "gore," and "possibility." It's from almost three years ago, and so was written during the early days of my MA studies in Victoria, BC.

I hadn't been writing much poetry while I was in South Korea, so things were a bit rusty, but an MA writing group helped me to re-invigorate my poetry writing.

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Alchemical Links

Old oatmeal on the edge of a spoon
has seen things change from soft to hard to soft again.
Thinking, thoughts like oats and water
Mixed and heated until inseparable
In combinations only possible with that water
and those oats, plus unremembered heat degrees.

Something plentiful made into
something not found in big boxes or on strips
Only in rare conflagrations of perfectly shared passions
Birthing the possibility of true outcomes.

The tender green and virulent potential
of not green is staggering;

The world is no longer separated,
Joined only by a great chain, holding
Down the sequence.

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Check back here on Wednesday for a new editorial, on Thursday for the next blog update entry, and on Friday for some sleuthing for the saving grace of Your Highness.

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[Moon-dæg] Digging Deep for Poetry?

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"Anyway"
Closing

{You may only know these words if you've read books as big as this one. The Image is "Manet's The Reader," and was found on the Eagle-Eyed Editor (ultimately from the Wikimedia Commons).}

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Today's piece is a poem written based on an earlier iteration of the 'obscure words' exercise mentioned in an earlier entry. It was originally written in January of 2008, when I was President of the University of Guelph's Creative Writing Society.

Now, the words themselves weren't recorded along with the poem (since I found this transcribed into a newer notebook), but here there are as close as I can figure (definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary Online):

• Nasonite: (n.) "A trigonal silicate and chloride of calcium and lead, Ca4Pb6(Si2O7)3Cl2, which forms prismatic crystals and occurs as white or grey granular masses."
• Hoodwink: (n.) A game of blind man's bluff; a blind; a person who deceives; (adj.) blindfold; (v.) to cover from sight; to blindfold mentally; to wink."
• Draggling: (v.) "To wet or befoul (a garment, etc.) by allowing it to drag through mire or wet grass, or to hang untidily in the rain; to make wet, limp, and dirty."
• Purloined: (adj.) "Pilfered, stolen"
• Newspaperish: (adj) "Somewhat characteristic of or like a newspaper; having a style associated with newspapers; journalistic."

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if those last two words were in the original list, but those are the ones that look the most obscure compared to the rest of the words in this poem.

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"Anyway"

Each and every purloined belch
Is a squeamish expulsion of Catholic conscience
Newspaperish in its regurgitation of facts
What's red and white and red and white‭
     red and white all over‎?

I cannot hoodwink those direfully‭
     skilful reporters
By trying to hide acts in‭
     nasonite mines
Collapsed now yet growing still
As their noisy pessimistic formations slowly
abate.

Yet I groan onwards under that harsh‭
     yoke
My own idea of god and right
Imposed and invulnerable
To any deterioration through draggling:
What's learned in youth is never forgotten
Even in age‭ – ‬health willing‭ – ‬that light
     never goes out.

When the candle becomes a‭
     cold wax column
The smoke it made‭ alone
     will silently mourn,
With an elegiac brief dance,
The loss of those automatic lessons.

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Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links (and don't forget about Thursday's)! Come Wednesday, a new editorial will be up, and on Friday, join me for a search for the serviceable in 1976's animal-based horror Squirm

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[Moon-dæg] A Convention, A Challenge, and A Poem

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A Ballad of Polaris
Closing

{Polaris 26's logo. Image found on the Polaris 26 website.}

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Tonight's piece is an early draft of a poem written specially for the 26th Polaris convention. It was held this past weekend (July 6-8), and I wanted to challenge myself to write something narrative about it before it faded into memory.

So I wrote a ballad about Polaris 26 tonight (taking about an hour to get it from brain, to page, to post-able form).

The ballad chronicles the trip to Polaris on Thursday and part of Friday; the convention itself on the rest of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; and the departure on Sunday. It begins with a refrain, and then a verse about Thursday and repeats that pattern for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Some poetic license is taken with form (there are some long lines, irregular rhyme) and content (for the sake of brevity and of rhyme). However, where necessary, I've added hyperlinks to clarify references.

Enjoy, and feel free to let me know how I can improve this one.

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A Ballad of Polaris

A special thing, held but once a year,
Hosted where a cultural heart is,
Full of friends and bright of cheer,
A convention called Polaris.

One leg's journey done and gone
And then a brief respite
First con fellow was well-met
While anticipation reached new heights.

A special thing, held but once a year,
Hosted where the cultural heart is,
A place where fandom runs ever clear,
A convention called Polaris.

The city heart was sought and found,
The lady love to the party was added,
With an old friend we dined, and had
Were funds that would that very night
In the Sheraton's halls resound.

A special thing, held but once a year,
Hosted where the cultural heart is,
To which many a spec fic fan does steer,
A convention called Polaris.

The con was off to a rumbling start,
Friday's karaoke gave voice to our hearts,
But Saturday was solitary,
Though distant victory did carry

Through Ms. Munteanu's editing 'shop great,
Where was found help enough to save
An old story from its sorry state.

A special thing, held but once a year,
Hosted where the cultural heart is,
Place of artists, editors, writers dear,
A convention called Polaris.

All was quiet in the final day's late morning,
The dance and six six three were sweated
Through and past. Bamb'ry on social media
Was clear, and shared how to make people online see ya;

While learning of when best
to leave readers to a guess
Was a fine thing over which to mull
As con and city both from view did fall.

A special thing, held for the year,
Now done and gone; farewell Ms. Lin,
All other guests and staff without peer,
Until, when in a year, comes Polaris 27.

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Check back here on Wednesday for an editorial on the newest news, and on Friday for part two of Nicolas Cage Month: a search for the good in Season of the Witch. And be sure to come back to the blog on Tuesday and Thursday for more annotated links.

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[Moon-dæg] A Poetic Turn for Mondays

The Change Up
Still the Same old Moon-dæg
The Poem's Intro
The General Lee Stanza Suite
Closing

{This General Lee can definitely make any and all jumps, with a little "digital" help. Image from Toy Wonders, Inc.}

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The Change Up

Because A Glass Darkly is my general blog, I’ve decided to make it a little more general.

Up until now, Monday’s and Wednesday’s entries have been more or less the same - just editorials or opinions about current news of one sort or another. Though the suite of recipes back in February was a bit different from all that (interestingly Bibimbap proved the most popular dish).

So, in an effort to make this blog a broader spectrum of writing styles and to work some non-editorial/review stuff into it, Monday’s entries will now feature what’s included under the umbrella term “Creative Writing.” Sometimes poetry will be posted here, sometimes fiction. Eventually, it may include novel excerpts, eventually.

The content of Monday's entries is also changing in the hopes that it will free up more time so that I can put that extra time towards other projects.

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Still the Same old Moon-dæg

As per how this fits in with the blog's original conceit: The moon is very closely related to many magical practices and occurrences.

Creative writing, in the way it weaves devices and plots and characters together into something that causes some sort of response, is similar to some of the moon's magical aspects (think of the full moon's effect on lycanthropes). And that's the connection.

However, there may still be series or sequences of work spread out over weeks, not just standalone pieces.

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The Poem's Intro

Now then, for the inaugural “creative writing” entry, I present a poem written at a local writing group.

This piece was written based on an exercise involving a handful of random figures that one member of a group or meeting brings in. At this particular meeting these figures included a tiny plastic Millenium Falcon, a Superman figurine, a Strawberry Shortcake figurine, a generic wooden man on a peg, a board for the peg man, a green figurine of some sort, and a tiny, metal General Lee. The idea behind the exercise is to write based on whatever comes to mind when looking at the brought items - in any configuration.

This poem involves the figurines and models, but not entirely directly. This indirect inspiration is reflected in the poem's title.

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The General Lee Stanza Suite

Part 1: Prophecies of Playtime

Too much too much
Crowded like a stable when all the inns are full
This train of random figures is simply too much
What will the man in the red cape save?
Through what will the mercernary and new hope fly?
Where will the woman in the fragrant hat plant
her virtues and straws?

A green man will the red cape save
Through gravel and brush will the two fly
And on a block of solid flat wood -
made fertile by a plethora of mite corpses will
the lady plant.

The green man - lowing like cattle
at the prospect of lowering over his arm
something sharper than a knife - will be saved
Those two will leave the gravel and brush behind
And that woman will make all square with
the round man’s help.

The cape will flash and sharpness will shatter on the ground
Those two will land with a leap and a pulse higher than a
snacking pastry chef’s - back out more gravel and brush
And that woman, the round man, will stand as if the ground had
grooves and
smile, their bright red reward to see.

Part 2: Further Impressions

A lot will be written about figures -
images cast in plastic -
laying on a flat brown table
While from some other space

Music of the island plays and
a voice both bright and bawled
will make an announcement to fill
auditoriums.
Such words as that on which
books are made.

Any connection -
only as needed -
the Doctor and the Farmer
born and raised in
the pretty how town.

If you only knew of all
the plundering done
to swim upstream and
to reach that distant shore with more

Or with enough
So that in your
Wake diamonds and gems would shudder
and shake causing the river to

Undulate in
A bed muddi-
er than your hands at such an end.
No matter it all comes off a

'gainst a leaf still
caught in its tree
Plucked down and scraped across each palm:
You’ll need clean hands for the promised feasts.

(Composed on 20 December 2011)

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Check back here Wednesday for an article on the newest news, and on Friday for the hunt for the good in The Last Airbender.

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