still no ideas

And, while I do have some glorious flowers on my table, sadly, there’s not a pensamiento to be found among them:

notes for a love story

In recent years, I’ve tended to do most of my reading while waiting in queues or while travelling. So far, I remain unconvinced by electronic ‘reading devices’, although having the complete works of Shakespeare on my phone does provide useful ‘comfort reading’ when waiting in the bank.

When flying, though, there’s altogether too much time when electronic devices have to be switched off; after all, if I can’t read during take off and landing, how am I supposed to distract myself? So I often read second-hand paperbacks that can simply be abandoned when finished.

pause to regroup

Well I knew I wouldn’t be able to write a poem a day through April, and I didn’t promise even a daily blog post, but it was never my intention to go three weeks without writing anything.

I’ve noticed, though, that I get far more ideas for writing when I have other things I should be doing.

Recently one of the big projects I’ve been working on for the last few years came to a stop, which means that all of a sudden I am no longer obliged to sit in front of the computer for several hours every single day whether I want to or not.

Looked at positively, this should provide an opportunity to catch up with all my own writing projects, but that isn’t the way it’s turned out so far.

Khayyam, again, and disappearing words

"...under the apple bough"

Yesterday’s post reminded me of a glosa – posted below – but then led me on in leaps and bounds to thinking about vocabulary. Specifically, about the word ‘bough’: when, and how, did I learn it?

It’s not exactly the sort of word that crops up in childhood conversation, so I’m pretty sure I must have read it. Which could either have been in a story or in a poem. Or, I suppose, at Christmas, when we “deck[ed] the halls with boughs of holly”. Perhaps that’s the most likely, as would explain how I learned to pronounce it, too.

The word ‘bough’ probably crops up in plenty of older stories and poems, but how much new writing contains such words?

the root of the problem

As I mentioned in seeing for yourself, I’m dipping into the works of Saki each time I take a coffee break.

This morning I chanced on the story Reginald’s Rubaiyat, which begins:

The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in the bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, it occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand, is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score, and then I got to work on a Hymn to the New Year, which struck me as having possibilities.