f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

 

 

The rest of the f/k/a gang has abandoned haikuEsq today; Prof. Yabut

wanted a mental health day; the Clientes took some family leave to work

at a shelter for Katrina victims; and ethicalEsq refuses to write anything

(especially about potty parity) until he gets a sexual harrassment refresher

course.   Although haikuEsq has a headache, he’s worked to pull together

today’s post.   There’s a bit of melancoly, but also a double-header of

haiku, featuring Rebecca Lilly and Jim Kacian. 

 

 

 

Far off, a wedge of geese…

the flooded farm field

darkens with evening

 

 

 

“spiltwine”

 

 

 

Sunlit dust motes…

stunted corn stalks

scorched golden-brown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool breeze scented with mint —

a grasshopper poised

in the twilit stillness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My small family gone–

ants crawl on their graves

in the pale autumn sun

 

Rebecca Lilly from Shadwell Hills 

“cool breeze” – A New Resonance 2; Modern Haiku XXXI:1

 

 

 

salmonella

28 feet

of intestine

 

 

                                        without islands in the dead center loneliness

 

 

 

 

“spiltbucketG”

 

 

 

    a blue ceiling

where the roof-beams

    have collapsed

 

 

 

Jim Kacian 

“a blue ceiling” – Presents of Mind (1996)

“without islands” – Frogpond XXXVIII: 2 (2005)

“salmonella” –  Frogpond XXXVIII: 2 (2005)

 

 

 

• 
  
  
  

  from dagosan:

migraine —

blue sky

behind closed blinds

 

 

                  [Sept. 8, 2005]

 

 

  If, like myself, you’re still waiting for Evan Schaeffer and Ted Frank to

fill us in on yesterday’s AEI Vioxx Verdict panel, I suggest heading to

George Wallace’s Forest for his “Fighting Fire With Fliers, and Other

Tales of Lumbering Bureaucracy.”  Actually, visit George first.

update (11:30 PM, ESDT, Sept. 8, 2005): Still waiting for Evan’s debriefing

from the Vioxx panel at AEI.

  If you love seeing obscure words in weblog posts, try Walter Olson’s

summary of his “generally favorable review” of Sadakat Kadri’s new book

The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson in today WSJ.  I haven’t

run across the word “adoxography” (fine writing on a trivial or base subject)

in quite a while, although I have certainly seen it often in practice (along with

its far more common cousin, “dysodoxography” — writing trivially about important

subjects) here in the blogisphere .  Walter says: 

“As for glittering but empty turns of courtroom rhetoric, Johnnie

Cochran was just building on a tradition that goes back to Shakespeare’s

time. ‘Elizabethan schoolboys,’ Mr. Kadri writes, ‘were commonly taught

adoxography, the art of eruditely praising worthless things….The first English

treatise on the subject appeared in 1593 and contained essays celebrating

deformity, ugliness, poverty, blindness, drunkenness, sterility, and stupidity.

Its preface claimed that it would be particularly useful to lawyers’.”

I find it interesting that topics such as “deformity, ugliness, poverty, blindness,

drunkenness, sterility, and stupidity ” were considered to be worthless or base.

 

                                                                                                                                                               “spiltwineF”