some knit their brows of pearl in vain

[freckles_and_doubt]

Gawsh. I sent the edit commentary back to my Nice Proof-reader on Thursday, and am consequently drifting around at a bit of a loss. You mean there's no actual desperately important project which should be requiring all my attention right now this instant? Radical!

One of the upshots of this has been to make me recollect the existence of Purl-Handled Revolver, the blog wherein I indulge my bizarre knitting outbreaks in decent privacy. Fellow knitters may want to wander over there, I have a whole series of posts planned. She says seductively, and not at all in a self-pimping manner, oh no!

An upshot of rediscovering the knitblog has been the realisation that I never followed Robynn's link to the Mervyn Peake nonsense poetry, lo these many geological ages ago when I last actually posted. Why have I hitherto been blissfully oblivious to the existence of Mervyn Peake nonsense poetry? It seems a tragic oversight. Fortunately, Amazon UK has a plethora of 1p copies and librsa trundles back here in the next week or so, and he's traditionally something of a Peake-courier. *plot, scheme*

In other news: this bloody MSNBC.com "breaking news" phishing scam is setting the prevailing spam level ridiculously high. I must be killing fifty a day, which is a huge jump from the usual five. Let's hope to FSM somebody zorches it soon, bored now.

Comments

technically...

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

wouldn't it be brows of purl

*innocent look*

Re: technically...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I very much fear you are right...

Re: technically...

[(Anonymous)]

No no, it's alabaster brow, brow of pearl. Not purl. That would just mean ridgy brow. Much less poetickal. I think Peake meant it exactly as he wrote it.

scroob

Re: technically...

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry -- it was a pun. I see it was a bad pun. :)

knitted...purl...

..nevermind :)

Re: technically...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I think Peake meant the pun, which was why I was fearful at agreeing with vesta_aurelia. Because puns always cause pain.

Besides, purl causes me to knit my brow like billy-oh.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

There's another MSN scam going about, which tries to send you to a picture link and take your password.

Annoying dat.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

The mention of Mervyn Peake's nonsense poetry rang a faint bell, so I pottered over to my small collection of books, and Lo! I do have it. Thanks for the reminder.

I had not, however, forgotten that I have a copy of Peake's Selected Poems (a slender and slightly battered 1972 paperback edition), which I picked up in a 2nd hand bookshop on Lower Main Road shortly before I left for the UK in 2001. If you don't have it already, you'll have found out about it via Scroob's link. Allow me to recommend.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

While you are waiting for plots with librsa to come to fruition, let me supply you with a little something from the nonsense poetry volume - one which was not on the Peake page you linked to:

Crown Me With Hairpins

Crown me with hairpins intertwined
Into a wreath each hairpin lined
With plush that only spinsters find
At night beneath huge sofas where
The feathers, wool and straw and hair
Bulge through a lining old as time
And secret as a beldam's lair
Of ghostly grime.

Tired aunts who live on sphagnum moss
Are quite the best to ask, because
They are less likely to get cross
Than those less ancient ones who still
Peer coyly from the window-sill,
Until their seventieth year.
Go find an old and tired one,
Secure the hairpin, then have done
With your relations, dear.

It's a delight, and the final lines can also be taken as a slight nod in the direction of wolverine_nun's recent family stresses - nonsense of an altogether different sort.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, my word. I think I may have to adopt "Tired aunts who live on sphagnum moss" as my new motto. Just because.

"Delight" doesn't begin to cover it.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

A fine motto. Btw, tired old aunts who live on sphagnum moss should all be called Pete.

Space, the final frontier

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

I hope they're thin books, I seem to have acquired some yarn :P. Baby alpaca and cotton/bamboo sock yarn, sigh. It's like crack.

Re: Space, the final frontier

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

At last count, 4 DVDs and a paperback kids' book. Possibly also a paperback Mervyn Peake, if it arrives in time. You're not allowed to laugh at Wing Commander, it's a joke gift for my Evil Landlord.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't believe you were heretofore oblivious of the Peake nonsense oeuvre. It is quite magnificently magnificent. The best nonsense there is (and you know how seriously I take these things). Gosh. Well, good thing you're catching up at last. (Stern glances.) And today's subject line did thoroughly delight me.

Also, two weeks to knitting party! If we're still on? I has passport and everything.

scroob

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I did, in fact, note your passport triumph and vaguely think "Oh, good, she can do the knit-fest, then." We shall have to track down non-alcoholic champagne so as not to pickle your proto-knitter.

[(Anonymous)]

Balls to that. I'll have a small splash of bubbly and a large splash of orange juice, and I'll enjoy it, dammit.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Madam, I do like your style ;>. Bubbly and orange juice it is.

Peake's poems

[(Anonymous)]

And have you seen that there's a Collected Poems by Peake just out from Carcanet? Reviewed here:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/08/collected_poems.shtml
Love your blog -- when's "da book" due out?
Peter

Re: Peake's poems

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a lovely, and highly intelligent, review. Now I need to read Adam Roberts as well as digging out the Peake collection. I don't read enough poetry.

Da Book is trundling through the production process as we speak - I suspect it should be done round the end of the year. Early 2009 publication? Who knows? The mills of academic publication grind exceedingly leisurely, apparently.