* Experiment #3 SIGN-UP *

[redwill]

Sorry, folks. This will have to wait for a Monday start. I'm very busy tomorrow and, unexpectedly, will be traveling most of the day Friday.

I hope your enthusiasm lasts.

Oh, and the magic poet is still available.

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

Is the magic poet Dr. Seuss?

[redwill]

It may be Dr. Seuss,
It may be Lenny Bruce,
It may be Bullwinkle the moose,
It definitely is not Juice.

[columbia]

I'm still bemused by the term language poets.

[columbia]

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55590

BTW...I'm just posting, not actually signing up.

[redwill]

I'm still bemused by the term language poets.

I'm still bemused by the term bemused.

[columbia]

Amused
Bmused
Bemused

Let's call the whole thing off.

[redwill]

Cmused

See Mused.
See Mused run.
See Mused run over Dick and Jane with a lawn mower.

[the wicked child]

You're giving npv a run for his money with those posts.

[crayz]

way too much effort required.

[ExPatriatePen]

way too much effort required.

Go back to your occupy Wall St. protest then.

[crayz]

way too much effort required.

Go back to your occupy Wall St. protest then.

i just may

[ExPatriatePen]

Now you have me looking up a bunch of poets I'd completely forgotten about

The most under-rated (in the US anyway)?

Spoiler:

Pablo Neruda.

Words.

Pablo Neruda is so good... I just had to share this...

My Dog Has Died.

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.


Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer

[redwill]

Sign-up will be open until Sunday, 7 PM Eastern.

Good to see crayz at least looking in to NHR Games. He's a good warz player who nabbed me several times, IIRC.

[shafnutz05]

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Love this

[redwill]

Sign up is now closed.

I'll work on PMs and get them out tonight. The game thread will be posted tomorrow morning.

The magic poet was

Spoiler:

mentioned and quoted, but not chosen:

Spoiler:

"Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines"


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Spoiler:

Pablo Neruda

Spoiler:

The prize would have been that whomever chose Mr. Neruda would get to choose what role he or she wanted to play.

[ExPatriatePen]

Sniff sniff sniff... I'm always "this close" in these games. LOL

[redwill]

My wife wrote her college senior thesis on Pablo Neruda. She learned Spanish for that very purpose.

She says she has forgotten all of her Spanish now, twenty years on...

But Pablo Neruda will always be around us.

[ExPatriatePen]

My wife wrote her college senior thesis on Pablo Neruda. She learned Spanish for that very purpose.

She says she has forgotten all of her Spanish now, twenty years on...

But Pablo Neruda will always be around us.

He was an amazing individual. One place I've always wanted to visit was his birthplace in Chile. Maybe someday.

Redwill, you went to college twenty years ago? Or is your wife significantly older than you?

I always figured you for late twenties.

[redwill]

I always figured you for late twenties.

So do I.

Spoiler:

I'm 42.

[redwill]

Sorry it took so long. I was reading poetry. And gutting terrorists.

PMs have been sent.

If you did not receive a PM, you are a regular villager.