Comments on: In a nutshell

By: Via Negativa » Blog Archive » Another shell

Via Negativa » Blog Archive » Another shell — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 02:49:27 +0000

[…] This is a test of the Audio Player plugin for WordPress. (Feed and email subscribers will need to click through to the site to see the player, I think.) I’m reading a simple little poem I wrote last April, In a Nutshell. […]

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:26:44 +0000

Me either. Not that you need any more motivation to mitigate climate change, but Ticks a pretty good one in my book.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:46:37 +0000

Pica – O.K., so you know exactly what I’m talking about, then (I know you share my love for wrens). Black walnut shells are so much more charismatic than English walnuts, aren’t they?

Bill – Yikes. I never knew there were so many tick-borne ailments!

Nope, no chiggers – not here, anyway. But state-wide, we are thoroughly infested with Lyme disease due to our super-abundant deer and white-footed mice (the alternate host).

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:56:15 +0000

Not Lyme, probably not Rocky Mountain. More likely Erlicheosis or Babesis (sic). For the whole tick disease list: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/list_tickborne.htm

You treat first, ask later with a titer (whatever that is) if you are curious. In times past it may likely have brought the curtain down on what had been a vigorous life, either ending or morbidly curtailling it. I just pop some pills and look for more fun/trouble. What’s up with that? I am getting curious though about the titer. Don’t tell me you don’t have chiggers either!

Thanks for pointing out the terminal “h”. Hadn’t noticed. And I don’t know how you have a porch and a veranda unless the porch is above?
Anyway tasty poem, thanks and I sure I needn’t have tick fever to enjoy it.

By: Pica

Pica — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:43:40 +0000

I’ve had a black walnut-half on my desk for the past three months. I threw it out on Thursday in a fit of tidying (rare for me) and now I wish I hadn’t…

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 13:03:47 +0000

Bill – Thanks for this deep and detailed reading! I’m flattered. As you know, i tend to shy away from criticism, but I do very much enjoy hearing how others hear my poems.

Yes, my parents’ house does have a veranda. The previous owners, back in the 50s, had delusions of Southern grandeur and augmented what had been a smallish, clapboard farmhouse with a ridiculous, wooden-columned front porch and veranda. I shouldn’t complain, thoush, because between the two of them we are able to eat most of our meals outside in the wwarmer months. Anyway, I wasn’t necessarily thinking of *our* veranda when I wrote this, but really something a bit more grand (hence that terminal “h,” you see).

Sorry to hear you have tick fever – you mean Lyme disease, or is this something different? We’re just starting to get ticks here on the mountain, thanks to global warming.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:46:26 +0000

PS I really like saying “empty half-walnut shell” for the way it hangs, at least for me at, the hyphen (nicely breaking “half-walnut” in half) and then tumbles on.
I also modulate pitch as I read it, jumping up a fifth at “half” and dropping an octave to “walnut shell. I’ve read it different ways now, the tumbled out “walnut-shell” always the finishing dominant. I think also I said “empty” as the third, “half” as the fourth; 3,4,1.
Did I mention I have tick fever?

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 01:46:37 +0000

I love the wren “hopping all around it/in his big clown feet… leaving nothing to chance. Then, “It was time for tea” and things are really getting domestic and comfortable, not that they weren’t already. “Ballast” hurts like a rock thrown at me from nowhere. I think of drowning. Third read I’m O.K. with it. Still smarts, though. Fourth read better yet, the veranda is melting to become sea.
Hey, I didn’t know Pennsylvanians had verandas. I would first have guessed porch, then stoop. You just liked veranda better, it worked better and it had some Catalonian blood in it.