A. E. Stallings
@aestallings.bsky.social
Dipping a toe in here... Oxford Professor of Poetry
Did I panic about an event I am doing in early September and write to the organizers in a state and only realize after I pressed "send" that it is for 2027? Yes, yes I did.
OK, today, pome tinkering, translation, admin (as ever, uggh), late swim, star gazing. Coffee!
OK, today, pome tinkering, translation, admin (as ever, uggh), late swim, star gazing. Coffee!
OK, today, translation, tinkering with poetry manuscript before it goes into copyediting, admin. Late swim. Coffee!
OK, today translation, admin, pome tinkering, swimming. As of tomorrow I have to start wrestling with some urgent proofs, but am giving myself one more proof-free day. Coffee!
Amazingly sharp stars rising in the dark over the forest of the island... the smoke must have largely blown away. At least for now.
OK, today correspondence, pome tinkering, translation, watering the garden. Coffee!
The pink and blue hour over the sea, peacocks calling to one another as they roost in the pines, cicadas winding down, first inky calligraphic swoops of little bats.
Cardinal sonnet (with thanks to The Sonneteer): substack.com/home/post/p-...
North American Cardinal, Heard in the Attica Zoo, Greece
A Poem by A.E. Stallings
substack.com
www.the-tls.com/classics/cro... My review of Emily Wilson and Henry Power in the new TLS.
Englished Homer
“It is probable”, Alexander Pope wrote in his translation of the Iliad (1715–20), “the author’s own words, at the time he used them, never meant half so
the-tls.com
A reminder that in Greek, the Trojan Horse is the Wooden Horse. And that in Greek folk song, a "wooden horse" is a coffin. Folk memory of the destructiveness in the myth? Or maybe the original wooden horse is itself a kenning? (Horse thoughts.)
Sea daffodils, my favorite Aegean flower (photo credit: John Psaropoulos). The strangely colorful sunset is a result of smoke from the fires on the mainland.
🏺 Look at the ears on this hare! From Late Period Egypt, now at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. www.mbam.qc.ca/en/works/237...
Went on a trail ride through the olive groves and terraces of the island today--lots of partridges in the fields, and the odd hare. After, asked guide the name of his horse--Odysseas, he said. (Odysseus.)
Weirdly, the Odyssey and Ceuta discourses have one degree of separation, as Ceuta features large in Ulysses's further adventures per Dante (which adventures largely inform Nolan)!
Good to see Mr and Mrs Partridge with their brood of cheepers walking up the hill!
Seas calm today, and water lovely--one of my best swims this summer (about a kilometer I think--I'm no Olympian!), but realized mid-swim that the black specks in the water were ashes/embers from the Boeotian forest...
Watching the cloud of black smoke drift over from the mainland and suffocate the stars...
A bit blustery today, but calmer on the lee side of the island. Today's swim:
Because today is Lammas, here is Robert Duncan's poem "My Mother Would Be a Falconress," which he wrote on 1 August 1964 based on a dream he had. He noted that it was Lammastide, 2am, and the poem poured forth quickly. poets.org/poem/my-moth...
