George Lang
@xerxesxerxes.bsky.social
Ancien doyen des arts #uOttawa | Erstwhile wine merchant | Known to versify
Swift on Struldbruggs:
When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldb...
When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldb...
November 14, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Swift on Struldbruggs:
When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldb...
When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldb...
Turn not your eyes, leaves though they be,
to dazzle or blaze. Live off not light but light
transformed, simple, eccentric, stoic in the sun.
to dazzle or blaze. Live off not light but light
transformed, simple, eccentric, stoic in the sun.
October 19, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Turn not your eyes, leaves though they be,
to dazzle or blaze. Live off not light but light
transformed, simple, eccentric, stoic in the sun.
to dazzle or blaze. Live off not light but light
transformed, simple, eccentric, stoic in the sun.
This is what I wanted to show:
October 13, 2025 at 4:30 AM
This is what I wanted to show:
Had a surprise lunch with Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah today. He is a scholar, a poet, and an academic administrator par excellence. Wiki him to see.
So many memories from Edmonton, the African Literature Association, and our shared networks of friends and colleagues. We’ll be meeting again, Inshallah!
So many memories from Edmonton, the African Literature Association, and our shared networks of friends and colleagues. We’ll be meeting again, Inshallah!
October 7, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Had a surprise lunch with Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah today. He is a scholar, a poet, and an academic administrator par excellence. Wiki him to see.
So many memories from Edmonton, the African Literature Association, and our shared networks of friends and colleagues. We’ll be meeting again, Inshallah!
So many memories from Edmonton, the African Literature Association, and our shared networks of friends and colleagues. We’ll be meeting again, Inshallah!
Sit still during earthquakes,
better to see what breaks.
This shudder of Gaia
comes like an idea….
October 3, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Sit still during earthquakes,
better to see what breaks.
This shudder of Gaia
comes like an idea….
I’m grateful to have two haiku in the inaugural number of the Berlin-based e-journal Big Fat Toad. The list price is $4.95. It’ll get delivered via email
October 1, 2025 at 9:09 PM
I’m grateful to have two haiku in the inaugural number of the Berlin-based e-journal Big Fat Toad. The list price is $4.95. It’ll get delivered via email
Seems like a good moment to evoke again Mandelstam’s “Stalin Epigram”. The poem hit home, enough to have cost him, not a job rather a three year exile, which was followed by his death in the Gulag.
At least Stalin had fat wormy fingers, not little penile ones ;-)
At least Stalin had fat wormy fingers, not little penile ones ;-)
September 19, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Seems like a good moment to evoke again Mandelstam’s “Stalin Epigram”. The poem hit home, enough to have cost him, not a job rather a three year exile, which was followed by his death in the Gulag.
At least Stalin had fat wormy fingers, not little penile ones ;-)
At least Stalin had fat wormy fingers, not little penile ones ;-)
A song of lost love.
September 17, 2025 at 3:49 PM
A song of lost love.
For some late Sunday fun here are some atrocities from Richard Wilbur’s little chapbook of the same name.
September 15, 2025 at 5:23 AM
For some late Sunday fun here are some atrocities from Richard Wilbur’s little chapbook of the same name.
Nowadays none of us is much
for rites, pagan or not. We make lists,
get by on pills and illicit days off….
I have dated the title because the event itself is over a half-century old.
From another country. Related to #talkingpolitics.
#poetrycommunity #AChristening
for rites, pagan or not. We make lists,
get by on pills and illicit days off….
I have dated the title because the event itself is over a half-century old.
From another country. Related to #talkingpolitics.
#poetrycommunity #AChristening
September 10, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Nowadays none of us is much
for rites, pagan or not. We make lists,
get by on pills and illicit days off….
I have dated the title because the event itself is over a half-century old.
From another country. Related to #talkingpolitics.
#poetrycommunity #AChristening
for rites, pagan or not. We make lists,
get by on pills and illicit days off….
I have dated the title because the event itself is over a half-century old.
From another country. Related to #talkingpolitics.
#poetrycommunity #AChristening
A ditty I wrote for Paul Wilson after a fantastic week in Prague in 1976.
September 3, 2025 at 10:57 PM
A ditty I wrote for Paul Wilson after a fantastic week in Prague in 1976.
An old poem I recently rediscovered. Based on a real event.
September 1, 2025 at 6:08 PM
An old poem I recently rediscovered. Based on a real event.
My love for you is an elephant
calved in Paris or Berlin
who stamps on padded soles
into his keeper’s room.
Ii had no idea that Nicolai Gumilev could be so charming until -- well, you can read it for yourselves.
calved in Paris or Berlin
who stamps on padded soles
into his keeper’s room.
Ii had no idea that Nicolai Gumilev could be so charming until -- well, you can read it for yourselves.
August 26, 2025 at 12:11 AM
My love for you is an elephant
calved in Paris or Berlin
who stamps on padded soles
into his keeper’s room.
Ii had no idea that Nicolai Gumilev could be so charming until -- well, you can read it for yourselves.
calved in Paris or Berlin
who stamps on padded soles
into his keeper’s room.
Ii had no idea that Nicolai Gumilev could be so charming until -- well, you can read it for yourselves.
This felino-centric poem, for #InternationalCatDay, depends on a certain knowledge of things boreal, that is Canadian.
August 8, 2025 at 11:10 PM
This felino-centric poem, for #InternationalCatDay, depends on a certain knowledge of things boreal, that is Canadian.
August 7, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Dreams, they say,
repeat till understood.
What is it about you
I haven't understood?
repeat till understood.
What is it about you
I haven't understood?
August 6, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Dreams, they say,
repeat till understood.
What is it about you
I haven't understood?
repeat till understood.
What is it about you
I haven't understood?
And bareness is all we need, the scarce coin
of our rich empty inner kingdom...
An academic poem in several senses of the word, this one comes with footnotes, an acceptable poetic procedure since at least The Wasteland (Toutes proportions gardées!):
alteritas.net/pastis/makin...
of our rich empty inner kingdom...
An academic poem in several senses of the word, this one comes with footnotes, an acceptable poetic procedure since at least The Wasteland (Toutes proportions gardées!):
alteritas.net/pastis/makin...
August 3, 2025 at 5:29 PM
And bareness is all we need, the scarce coin
of our rich empty inner kingdom...
An academic poem in several senses of the word, this one comes with footnotes, an acceptable poetic procedure since at least The Wasteland (Toutes proportions gardées!):
alteritas.net/pastis/makin...
of our rich empty inner kingdom...
An academic poem in several senses of the word, this one comes with footnotes, an acceptable poetic procedure since at least The Wasteland (Toutes proportions gardées!):
alteritas.net/pastis/makin...
The Weltstadt in question was Montreal. Don, a bookseller and collectionneur, had been displaced there by the postwar sexual puritanism of the Dutch. We had met in 1972 on the M.S. Alexander Pushkin, a Soviet liner which plied the North Atlantic....
Read on: www.instagram.com/p/DMOjZ5jyad...
Read on: www.instagram.com/p/DMOjZ5jyad...
July 17, 2025 at 11:45 PM
The Weltstadt in question was Montreal. Don, a bookseller and collectionneur, had been displaced there by the postwar sexual puritanism of the Dutch. We had met in 1972 on the M.S. Alexander Pushkin, a Soviet liner which plied the North Atlantic....
Read on: www.instagram.com/p/DMOjZ5jyad...
Read on: www.instagram.com/p/DMOjZ5jyad...
I have tried to echo the deliberate flatness in this poem by one of Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, whose works are "marked by rationality and objectivity".
Do not be deceived by its ostensible simplicity, which can, in Portuguese, rely on the subjunctive in its last two lines.
Do not be deceived by its ostensible simplicity, which can, in Portuguese, rely on the subjunctive in its last two lines.
July 7, 2025 at 11:54 PM
I have tried to echo the deliberate flatness in this poem by one of Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, whose works are "marked by rationality and objectivity".
Do not be deceived by its ostensible simplicity, which can, in Portuguese, rely on the subjunctive in its last two lines.
Do not be deceived by its ostensible simplicity, which can, in Portuguese, rely on the subjunctive in its last two lines.
At a conference in Budapest in 1976, I fell in with some young Slovak scholars, tentatively, I imagined, in love with one of them. I wrote this poem recapitulating their description of their lives, trapped in Iron Curtain domesticity....
Read on : alteritas.net/pastis/plain...
Read on : alteritas.net/pastis/plain...
July 3, 2025 at 8:44 PM
At a conference in Budapest in 1976, I fell in with some young Slovak scholars, tentatively, I imagined, in love with one of them. I wrote this poem recapitulating their description of their lives, trapped in Iron Curtain domesticity....
Read on : alteritas.net/pastis/plain...
Read on : alteritas.net/pastis/plain...
Nasrin's gotten lots of flowers lately, which brought to mind this poem of mine.
July 2, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Nasrin's gotten lots of flowers lately, which brought to mind this poem of mine.
Thanks to Guillaume Apollinaire for the title to this little ditty, one of the rare short poems I've written in French.
June 30, 2025 at 11:42 PM
Thanks to Guillaume Apollinaire for the title to this little ditty, one of the rare short poems I've written in French.
A fourteener I wrote a while back.
June 28, 2025 at 7:13 PM
A fourteener I wrote a while back.
Mother would gave turned 101 today
June 23, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Mother would gave turned 101 today
First stanza of Gabriele D'Annuzio's Rain on Pines.
For the complete poem go to alteritas.net/pastis/trans...
For the complete poem go to alteritas.net/pastis/trans...
June 19, 2025 at 11:38 PM
First stanza of Gabriele D'Annuzio's Rain on Pines.
For the complete poem go to alteritas.net/pastis/trans...
For the complete poem go to alteritas.net/pastis/trans...