“Winter Scene”
Perched on his bough, a monster raven makes
the one strong note etched black upon the snow.
But no! a stooping stout old goody takes
her painful way, mumbling, stumbling and slow.
What a wind-reddened nose, for gracious sakes!
Her left arm in her apron — frost hurts so!–
in her right hand a garnished platter shakes,
and how that pickled herring makes a show!
The poem is by Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909) but I only have the English translation. I haven’t been able to find the German original online. This is not too surprising, for while Liliencron used to enjoy considerable success and fame and has a 14-volume “Collected Works” out there he is mostly unknown today, and not all his poems are online. I might go to the library to get the original.
Last night Mike came over and we enjoyed both the Pepperwood Gove old vine zin and the Giant 47lb Rooster (you know, one of my favorite cheap wines) while watching the second and third X-Men movies. X2 is still simply amazing — there few better marriages of music and action sequence than Nightcrawler’s assault on the President to the throbbing of the “Dies Irae” from Verdi’s requiem. It’s just one of the best opening set pieces I’ve seen in years, and it is always a joy to watch. Hell, I might have to watch it again tonight before going to bed.
I finished reading Ed Brubaker’s take on Captain America (vol. 5, 1-25); with the Cap dead I don’t know what is planned for the next few issues. Here’s the thing, though: it’s hard not to think of Vaughan’s death in Alias, season 5, and how his death was convincingly faked because he had enemies out there. Here, of course, Sharon Carter — the shooter — was brainwashed and only later realized what she had done (in wonderful parallelism, too, since the Red Skull’s daughter tells Sharon to “remember” just as Cap had said the same to Bucky / the Winter Soldier about a year earlier in publication time), so if this was “staged” it involved Nick Fury, or Iron Man, or some other source who had an idea about what Dr. Faustus, the Red Skull, and others would try.
That’s just the comic book geek in me talking.
After reading Captain America I got around to reading the new Ms. Marvel series, which is actually pretty good, though I still think the character is a shallow loser who needs to grow up and develop some integrity.
I finished Metallica and then Michael Jackson. I’m not on Midnight Oil. Now just a few links:
- Comics Should Be Good — comic book urban legends revealed! (#29, dealing with Kurt Busiek, and the rebirth of Jean Grey in the mid-80s)
- I am NOT The Beastmaster by another guy named Marc Singer. It’s worth mentioning because 1) the blog is about comics and 2) because Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men movies, is the cousin (by adoption) of Marc Singer
- Detlev von Liliencron over at Projekt Gutenberg
- Television Without Pity about the death of Starbuck on BSG
- Quicksilver, a Mac OS X app, not the Marvel character (son of Magneto)
- Neuroscience Law, a long article at the NY Times but really quite important. I’m reminded a similar topic in a paper at a conference I organized half a decade ago.
