Giddy.

Just found out that my novella "Simon's Relics" is a semi-finalist in this year's Faulkner-Wisdom awards! Huzzah! I also submitted THE MIDNIGHT SON to the novel competition this year; those names aren't posted until July, I believe.

A couple of friends have received some Very Good News Indeed on the publishing front this weekend, so all in all, excellent writing and publishing mojo going around.

From Herder: fourteen "a number significant in Christian symbolism as the double of the sacred number seven, it is also the number of goodness and mercy"

Book-A-Minute Classics

More hi-larious hi-jinks from the literate set: Book-A-Minuute Classics. LK, I think you might enjoy this summary of Don Quixote

Great Thursday morning laugh

I don' think I can even express how much I love this poem, Maurice Sagoff's 1980 take on Beowulf, first posted by my friend Ronnie this morning - but I had to share with y'all!

Sagoff was a journalist-turned-poet who wrote Shrinklits: 70 of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size, a collection that "cleverly and succinctly summarized literary classics in verse." (and I must get my hands on that!)

Puts Seamus Heaney's version to shame, donchathink?


Monster Grendel's tastes are plainish.
Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.

King of Danes is frantic, very.
Wait! Here comes the malmö ferry

Bringing Beowulf, his neighbor,
Mighty swinger with a saber!

Hrothgar's warriors hail the Swede,
Knocking back a lot of mead;

Then, when night engulfs the Hall
And the Monster makes his call,

Beowulf, with body-slam
Wrenches off his arm, Shazam!

Monster's mother finds him slain,
Grabs and eats another Dane!

Down her lair our hero jumps,
Gives old Grendel's dam her lumps.

Later on, as king of Geats
He performed prodigious feats

Till he met a foe too tough
(Non-Beodegradable stuff)

And that scaly-armored dragon
Scooped him up and fixed his wagon.

Sorrow-stricken, half the nation
Flocked to Beowulf's cremation;
Round his pyre, with drums a-muffle
Did a Nordic soft-shoe shuffle.

Apologies for the length here - I don't know if you can do cuts on Blogger like you can on LiveJournal.

word-hoard
shumpgullion "a glutton; Lancashire" (Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905)

word-hoard
peregrinate "to live in a foreign country; from Latin peregrinus, foreign, pereger, away from home; probably from per, through, and ager a field, territory" (Daniel Lyons' Dictionary of the English Language, 1897)

So where would you peregrinate? My husband and I fantasize about retiring to Burgundy.

Labyrinth
(Hall): "the maze at Knossos in which the Minotaur, the monster slain by Theseus, was confined. Its pattern varies."

(Herder): "originally it was the designation for the palace built by Daedalus on Crete for King Minos's confinement of the Minotaur. It had numerous passages and intricate mazes. Ultimately it came to refer to all mazes in architecture and art; Passage through a maze or labyrinth was sometimes a part of initiation rites,

symbolizing both the discovery of the hidden, spiritual center and the ascent from darkness to light; in many old churches, labyrinths represented on the floor symbolize human life with all its tests, difficulties, and detours; the center symbolizes the expectation of salvation in the shape of the Heavenly Jerusalem"

Links to labyrinth sites

word-hoard
slampant "to give one the slampant, to play a trick on, to circumvent or hoodwink one [1500s-1600s] (Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary 1919"; "obscurity in the air, arising from smoke, fog, or dust; South and West England [800s-1800s] (James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855)

OK, May 8, you are spring, not summer, so knock it off with the 90+ degree temperatures. Pah.

word-hoard
estival: relating to summer

Kooky week last week. Car troubles, work craziness, and taking my friend to her first chemo appointment (she did great). Ah life.

Word-hoard
glycolimia "a craving for sweets"