Stuff and Stuff Besides

Maybe I ought to have slacked off more during spring break. Mostly I spent the week working on a new comic which, as often seems to be the case, won't be online until June. June seems to be my comic launch month, even before I went back to school--Venia's Travels started in June.

To-day I had to rearrange all the piles of stuff in my room for the termite inspectors--turns out we're only getting a wall knocked out upstairs instead of getting the house tented, so hopefully that's one less thing to slow me down. I also spent a couple hours to-day doing long division because we're doing difference quotients in my math class. So much fun.

For my literature class, I read Robert Browning, which I genuinely enjoyed. I wasn't sure what to read--I do have photographs now of the proper table of contents from the newest edition of the Norton Anthology, thanks to another student allowing me to have a look at his copy for a few minutes, but the assigned pages for Robert Browning were 1387 - 1377 and 1418 - 1436. Assuming first of all we aren't meant to read ten pages backwards from 1387, the assigned pages are actually in the middle of the section on Matthew Arnold and in the beginning of the section on Christina Rossetti. The page numbers don't correspond with Robert Browning in the old edition, either. So I've decided just to read the whole Robert Browning section to-day, which I'm halfway through.

I was rather charmed by this recording Thomas Edison made of Browning in 1889 reciting the beginning of his "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix";

As apparently a number of people have remarked, even in his time, Browning's poetry reads almost like prose. So did his wife's, for that matter--"Aurora Leigh" is practically a novella. I love how both the Brownings make the character of the speaker so much a part of the poem, and I really love how Robert's work, like "Porphyria's Lover", are often from the vantage points of twisted or ridiculous people.

Anyway, I'd better get back to reading.

Twitter Sonnet #493

Ribbit ribaldry undulates in slick
Shining green flesh, hidden through the pond night
Slipping in place as a wet paper wick
Dripping from the new wart of frog's delight.
Ambergris soft fibre optics slowly
Push through casserole signals to old worm
Laptops, the enormous 80s paisley
Faded sunflower cloth scrap yarn rainstorm.
Recycled plastic kink nickels drizzle
Down the thigh of government postage stamp
Patchwork quilts which quietly embezzle
Henry's hollow bone salsa wheelchair ramp.
Cement brain crash claims tick corkscrew sawdust;
Beige dry rain cries on powersaw-red rust.