Link roundup: Reenacting apocalypse, answering Neruda, and listening to tinamous

NYTimes.com: “Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami”
It’s hard to imagine a better way to convey the devastation and horror of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami than this interactive feature. With a sweep of the cursor, we can reenact apocalyse.

Wikipedia: Sendai
I was moved to learn that Sendai is nicknamed City of the Trees, and has a couple annual festivals that highlight its magnificent zelkova trees.

t r u t h o u t : “Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group”
I have a theory that the Wisconsin governor is actually a stealth socialist, doing everything he can to revive the union movement in America.

Poetry Daily: Three poems by Laura Kasischke

The day
en route to darkness. The guillotine
on the way to the neck. The train
to nudity. The bus
to being alone. The main-and-mast,
and the thousand oars, the
thousand hands.

New Internationalist: “Daring to Care: Notes on the Egyptian Revolution”
By Egyptian expat poet (and Facebook friend) Yahia Lababidi.

As they recited poetry, people were admirably organized and generally festive — singing, dancing and staging improv-theatre — showing us all that a revolution could be a work of art, and a way of life, even.

The Task at Hand: “Porch Poetry”

While The Morning Porch is Dave’s, there are plenty of porches — or at least perches — in every neighborhood. With that in mind, I’m calling my little collection A View From Another Porch. While I’ll certainly be adding new posts on other subjects throughout the season of Lent, each day an additional observation will be tucked in here. After not quite a week of looking around, I’m enjoying the discipline far more than I expected to, and I’m looking forward to continuing the heart and eye-opening exercise until Easter.

Shearsman ebooks: Talking to Neruda’s Questions by M T C Cronin [PDF]
Anyone who’s read Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions should appreciate this. Cronin attempts to answer each of Neruda’s questions in the same spirit. Delightful.

Spring Beauty and the bees: Volunteer pollinator monitoring
Awesome pun, great-sounding citizen science project.

Drawing the Motmot: “Tropical Rainforest Sounds”
Some field recordings by artist-blogger Debby Kaspari. Biological diversity translates directly to sonic diversity, I imagine. Hands down the most interesting music I’ve heard all week.

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Revamping Via Negativa’s About page this week, I came up with my best thumbnail description to date: “Via Negativa is a personal web log with delusions of grandeur.” I also included a new take on my old “Words on the Street” cartoon by Siona (the blogger, not the inchworm genus). Check it out.

Link roundup: Photosynthesizing salamanders, revolutionary women, and single-sentence animations

Nature News: “A Solar Salamander
Holy cow! New research shows that the spotted salamander, a common species here, may be partly solar-powered thanks to a mutualistic relationship with a photosynthetic alga inside its cells, something previously unknown among vertebrates.

CommonDreams.org: “‘So This is America’: Veteran Ray McGovern Bloodied and Arrested At Clinton Speech
Apparently wearing a peace t-shirt and turning your back on the Secretary of State is considered provocative behavior. Even if she happens to be talking about the rights of peaceful protesters.

Heraclitean Fire: Read the World challenge
Harry Rutherford is a blogger’s blogger — someone who seems able to say something insightful on nearly any topic, from art to birding to football, and never gets stuck in any particular groove. His Read the World challenge is an on-going series of book reviews in which he attempts to read at least one book from every country in the world.

Haiku News
This is not news about haiku, but news in haiku — and good haiku, not the folk kind. Their motto is “the personal is the political is the poetical.” I’d like to see more poetry zines responding to the news in this way. Such as…

Verse Wisconsin: Poems About WI Protests
An on-going collection (scroll up for the call for submissions) proving that the news isn’t always what it seems. For example:

The state of Wisecrack is facing an immediate deficit of $137 milquetoasts for the current fishmonger year which ends July 1. In addition, bill collectors are waiting to collect over $225 milquetoasts for a prior raid of the Patriarchy Compensation Funeral.

Al Jazeera: “Women of the Revolution
Three Egyptian woman talk about their experiences during the revolt.

Moving Poems forum: “Electric Literature’s single-sentence animations: videopoems for fiction
Electric Literature magazine’s video series proves that, at least where film adaptations are concerned, sufficiently artful prose is indistinguishable from poetry.

The Observer: “What does the Arab world do when its water runs out?
Conserve?

Part 2Part 3

If you care about freedom, in Egypt or anywhere else, or use social networks, watch this. (FOSDEM=Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting.) Eben Moglen is head of the Software Freedom Law Center. In this address (part 3), he announces the formation of a new foundation to create a truly decentralized, tyranny-proof internet. Awesome.

Phoenicia Publishing’s February sale on qarrtsiluni print editions
Now through the end of the month, receive $2.00 off on our four print anthologies, including the new “Words of Power.” Details on website.

Link roundup: Tenrecs, monostiches, kale and other wonders

The New York Times:When Democracy Weakens
Bob Herbert wishes Americans would take a cue from the Egyptians.

NPR: “An Immigrant’s Quest For Identity In The ‘Open City’
I have been reading the glowing reviews for Teju Cole’s new novel with great pleasure, but it was especially fun to hear this interview come on the radio while I was kneading bread this morning. I was all like, “Hey, I know that guy! I’ve published his stuff at Via Negativa and qarrtsiluni!” So good to see a member of the old blog neighborhood make it big.

Grant Hackett: Monostich Poet blog
I don’t link Grant’s poems in the Smorgasblog because they’re too short to excerpt — a monostich is a one-line poem and he excels at them. I don’t know anyone who packs more mystery and suggestiveness into such a small space. He used to blog at Falling Off the Mountain, but took that site offline late last year. On the new site, he seems to post at the rate of about one or two poems a day.

Moving Poems forum: “What comes first, the video or the poem?
Check out the variety of responses to my question from videopoets at all skill levels. I am going to have to remember to throw out questions to the community like this more often.

Voice Alpha:To read or to recite? Dramatic versus Epic
Dick Jones — poet, musician and retired drama teacher — wades into the debate about how best to present one’s poems to a crowd. Surprisingly, perhaps, given his background, he comes down rather decisively on the side of reading.

Call for Submissions: Festival of the Trees 57 with Rebecca in the Woods
Rebecca is one of the best young naturalist-bloggers out there, so we are very lucky to have her as host of the next Festival of the Trees.

Linebreak: “To Failure:” by Christopher Ankney
My first reading for Linebreak, a magazine I admire. Don’t know the poet from Adam, but I know the subject all too well! It was fun to learn the poem this way, over a series of half a dozen takes, even if I was a bit too tired to give it as good a reading as it deserves.

BBC Earth News: “Madagascar’s elusive shell-squatting spider filmed
Speaking of failure, check out the first spider in this clip from the redoubtable David Attenborough & co. (a win for photography and evolution). Then there’s…
Bizarre mammals filmed calling using their quills
Tenrecs! Stridulating!


(Watch on YouTube)
In a rare trip off the mountain, a chance remark at the coffee shop led me to discover that I was surrounded by fellow kale afficionados, and one of them later sent me the link to this video. What used to be an obscure vegetable back when we started growing it in the garden in the early 70s has now apparently achieved cult status. Who’d have thunk it?