thaliarchus

@thaliarchus

The poet they probably shouldn’t have sent. I watch anime and am sometimes accused of reading books. I'm writing a long gay giant robot story in verse—probably this millennium's best yuri mecha epic poem, through lack of competition.

'Now praise those names on tombs of steel engraved | And toll this rotting country’s countless bells.'

log inask

posts from @thaliarchus tagged #delicious fish-cake

also:
thaliarchus
@thaliarchus
thaliarchus
@thaliarchus
thaliarchus
@thaliarchus

Every year I like to pull out this bit from Empson and look at it.

I don't always believe it, and I think some of the people who set out in Empson's footsteps wandered into unhelpful places.

But sometimes I believe it. Writing the introduction to my next book, I found the courage to remark that the modern poets who appear alongside the book's real topic, Middle English poetry, appear 'because I like them'.

I doubt that will endear me to the field, but one of the pleasures of living hand-to-mouth on fixed-term jobs is not having to care about that.

thaliarchus
@thaliarchus

Here is the other thing I know about Empson: 'Empson soup'.

Used to read this to first-year undergraduates, usually about halfway through their second term.

From John Henry Jones's 1989 reminiscences of Empson in the LRB.