Tangled Rope

• I've spent two hours working out some rhymes. Now hoping that I didn't waste my times. #
• Not much rhymes with "duologue", and it's still two hours before I can take a skate break. #
• Yes, ABE Books, you /can/ have $55 for 4 1st/1st copies I've had on my list for a year… #
• Early skate break to AF to learn to carve that bowl. #
• Logged another 2 hours on couplet rhymes. Rewrote half of 1st stanza. Still need half of the 3rd. Ignoring the 4th and final. #amwriting #
• I wrestle with meter and rhyme not in hopes of winning the match, but in gaining from the strengths and weaknesses of my opponents. #
• @poetrynews You misled me. in reply to poetrynews #
• Finished a short story that's turned out a bit Chandler-esque. Pure fiction that sounds dangerously like autobiography. #
• Too enamored by the act of literary creation; quite different from the practice of writing. #

I must admit I wasn’t familiar with the name and work of Sir William Topaz Mcgonagall (though I presumably read him in my occasional ego-sustaining forays into Very Bad Poetry) until I happened upon Anthony Daniel’s article, “Knight of the White Elephant”, recently published in The New Criterion.

I’ll let the article stand for itself, and simply comment that the most troublesome aspect of the story of McGonagall is not his delusions of genius, nor the cruelty of his audiences, but rather his humanity, his fallibility, his very similarity to each of us. I see my own writing in McGonagall’s poor poetry. I see my own longing for a life imbued with culture in his self-styled commitment as “Poet and Tragedian”. I see myself, I see others, too, and I try not to wince.

Perhaps most devastating in the McGonagall biography is the utter futility of his efforts despite an impossible commitment to his art. McGonagall earned neither satisfactory remuneration or praise for his work during his life, nor fame and respect for his aesthetics after his death. And yet he battled (with “psychological armor-plating”) to fulfill this dream and capitalize on what he clearly saw as a supreme talent. Daniel, comparing the memory of McGonagall to the fellow Scot and better poet Hamish Henderson, remarks that “a cruel posterity does not always distribute fame among writers according to literary merit”–suggesting that though we may remember McGonagall as “the worst poet of the English language” at least we remember him.

If I may say so without malice, to be a poet as McGonagall I’d rather be forgotten.

• “No satire, violence, hatred, drugs, or whoring— / Transgression must be decorous, and boring.” — J. Salemi, "Respectably Transgressive" #
• 8&c3 #
• The cannister can no longer withhold this black tar. #
• 8&c2 #
• Found P Slade's page on British broadsides via @bryanalexander's post on Victorian hoaxes (http://bit.ly/cWtTUo) Love this internet thing… #

• Watched French film "Tell No One" this morning. A pretty good, if generally derivative, modern thriller entry. #
• Great little description of conveniently lost revolver in Greene's "Dream of a Strange Land": "The dark object made a pocket in the snow." #
• That reading Hamlet aloud can still provoke tears is my best testimony to it's enduring power. #

• OnFiction: The Solitary Reader, by Sonia Zyngier http://bit.ly/b9MFap #

I thought it bizarre when friend Chris Lott dropped a sample of his writing into I Write Like… and was pegged as his (presumably) favorite author, David Foster Wallace. I gave it a go on my lunch break, and was surprised to see myself aligned with my favorite writer based on a short story I drafted this summer:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Re-testing of the system with other short stories confirmed the Nabokov link, and added 2x Jane Austen, 2x James Joyce, and 1x Dan Brown. I’ll just comment that, Dan Brown aside, I’ve read significant amounts of each Nabokov, Austen, and Joyce in the past 2 years that these stories were drafted.

• Family
• Friends
• Independence
• Individualism
• Self-reliance
• Beauty
• Talent
• Wisdom
• Intellect
• Generosity
• Service

• 8&c5 #
• 8&c1 #

Futility Closet posted a chess puzzle that claims, “White to mate in half a move”.

There’s an obvious mate at Qb7, but no “half” moves that I can see. When someone says half a move, I immediately think of the two-part movement of castling, but that’s not happening here.

My instinct aimed at 1. cxb6 e.p. +, but that’s no checkmate (1. … Rxb6).

I wrestled with the idea that the board displays a piece half-way through a move But white’s pawns can not proceed further, and have no where to go if you flip the board 180. Knight has no mating squares except xb5, but where would it come from? c7? That would suggest it’s already in the air.

Speaking of which, it’s one thing to lift a piece to reveal a checkmate, but it wouldn’t be fair to have an unknown piece already hanging in the air…

The last idea I have is that “half a move” refers merely to white’s “half” (or, ply) of a two-part turn, and thus my first move stands.

So what’s the answer? I hate to wait until tomorrow, but hate more not figuring this out on my own.

Update: Chris Lott saw through this almost immediately, recognizing that the white queen could be representing the default choice of a promoted pawn–just prior to choosing the knight which cinches a checkmate. Nice brain on that guy, eh?