Kip Manley's Blog, page 29
March 12, 2021
Enneoddity
Here we are: the next chapbook is about to hit the shelves, just about two months since the last one was published. It would appear that such a schedule as exists is finally being kept! For now.
If you were to accept, for a moment, for the sake of play, the discredited notion that the reason why there I decided upon 22 chapbooks per season (11, per volume) is because there are 22 cards in the Major Arcana of most tarot decks (and not, as is well known, because there used to be 22 episodes, on average, in the seasons of old-skool Yankee television shows), well. If you then were to set the chapbooks of this season (Spring; Summer) next to the cards of the Major Arcana, as if the one somehow had something to do with the other, well: this next chapter, no. 36, “ – so powerfully strong – ”, would be right there next to Death. —Make of that what you might.
The first draft came in at 17,044 words; the (nearly) final cut’s a trim 15,250, though just last night I cut five words, and significantly altered the trajectory and velocity of a major character’s path through what’s to come. We’ll see what else might happen before it’s published.
Patreons have of course already seen the cover, and will shortly be getting their ebooks and ’zines; everyone else will get a chance to see the cover when it’s posted for sale, but: if you follow the Pixelfed, you might’ve seen the underlying image. —I was walking home after one of Tonkon Torp’s annual parties—the one, in fact, where I’d spontaneously shot the cover of Good Queen Dick from a corner of their lobby—and as I made my way on foot down a freshly washed Hawthorne, I happened to see where the rain that had occasioned that bow still beaded the tables that had been set on a sidewalk outside a club, and so. —An image of a another world.
No. 36. Three chapters in, just over a quarter of the way through this volume. The free installments will appear on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, beginning April 12th; in the meanwhile, there’s no. 37 to begin, and finish. That one would be laid against Temperance; perhaps it’s best we keep our enthusiasm in check. After all: if we can’t be mirrors—or is it rabbits?—we’ll be friends.
March 9, 2021
Things to keep in mind (The secret of puns)
It is partly this tact which makes Marvell’s puns charming and not detached from his poetry; partly something more impalpable, that he manages to feel Elizabethan about them, to imply that it was quite easy to produce puns and one need not worry about one’s dignity in the matter. It became harder as the language was tidied up, and one’s dignity was more seriously engaged. For the Elizabethans were quite prepared, for instance, to make a pun by a mispronunciation, would treat puns as mere casual bricks, requiring no great refinement, of which any number could easily be collected for a flirtation or indignant harangue. By the time English had become anxious to be “correct” the great thing about a pun was that it was not a Bad Pun, that it satisfied the Unities and what-not; it could stand alone and would expect admiration, and was a much more elegant affair.
March 1, 2021
Things to keep in mind (The secret of Shakespeare)
A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.
February 19, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Closing)
the Lights are Out, the Curtains Drawn
February 17, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Act IV)
the Last of the International Harvesters – “Sorry about the burrito” – the VERN – east of Everything
February 15, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Act III)
East Multnomah Soil & Water – duty – Ward, or Sigil? – Select Passenger – Beautiful Mountain
February 12, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Act II)
“Welcome back” – Jack’s dog – the Fly, the Fly – Less than a two-Point-five
February 10, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Act I)
those Scrawny arms – the Semblance of a Hound – Up under; high Beneath – 157,185 SF – a Delicate clink
February 8, 2021
No. 35: many Christian eyes (Opening)
the Lights are Out; the Curtains drawn – Order 722 – what Becker hasn’t done
February 5, 2021
Things to keep in mind (The secret of Spenser)
It would be interesting to take one of the vast famous passages of the work and show how these devices are fitted together into larger units of rhythm, but having said that every use of the stanza includes all these uses in the reader’s apprehension of it I may have said enough to show the sort of methods Spenser had under his control; why it was not necessary for him to concentrate on the lightning flashes of ambiguity.
The size, the possible variety, and the fixity of this unit give something of the blankness that comes from fixing your eyes on a bright spot; you have to yield yourself to it very completely to take in the variety of its movement, and, at the same time, there is no need to concentrate the elements of the situation into a judgment as if for action. As a result of this, when there are ambiguities of idea, it is whole civilisations rather than details of the moment which are their elements; he can pour into the even dreamwork of his f--ryland Christian, classical, and chivalrous materials with an air, not of ignoring their differences, but of holding all their systems of values floating as if at a distance, so as not to interfere with one another, in the prolonged and diffused energies of his mind.
