Hellooo! I have been rather busy last week, with exams (my old time favourites) and other stuff.
But with this week’s holiday, I can entertain you lot—I do entertain you, right?
First up, some obscure words. Yes, I have fallen way behind on that, so it had to be a plural.
(‘Yay! Two obscure and incomprehensible words to read. What fun!’ you say.)
But, anyway. I digress.
Acquiesce
Pronunciation: /ækwɪɛs/
Etymology: From LATIN ‘acquiescere’ meaning ‘to rest at’: combination of ‘ad’ (at, to) and ‘quiescere’; to rest. Weird, huh?
Definition: (The above will seem even weirder now:) To express agreement; to concur and be willing.
Examples:
‘It is the ineluctable nature of persuasive people; they shall always get what they want, even if they don’t really want it. Others always acquiesce.’
‘To acquiesce; or to deny your friend in favour of empiricism?’
‘Acquiesce with the dictator’s demands. Or else.’
(I’m a little morbid, aren’t I?)
Now, on to the next word: exigency. This is an odd one. It has two possible meanings! And yes—they’re both very different. English...
Exigency
Pronunciation: /ɛksɪdʒənsi/
Etymology: From LATIN ‘exigentia’; in turn derived from ‘exigere’ meaning ‘enforce’.
Definition: Now here they are—number one is ‘a sudden and pressing demand; a crisis’; number two is ‘excessive and/or difficult requirements’. Since my name is Stargazer, I shall try and come up with something creative for both meanings. Maybe I’ll even write something ambiguous. Now that would be really clever...
‘The exigencies of bad times often come in the way they do: unexpectedly, frighteningly, and devastatingly. Woe befalls all who are subject to them; the vicissitudes of the incompetent leaders that lead us.’
‘He was exigent, annoying, and frequently wrong; but there was a kindness to him, also, that was hard to resist.’
‘Exigent fool prone to random fits of rage and exigency.’
Beat that!
On to Poems, Bunnies, and Musings
First off: the bunnies.
Well, one bunny, I should say more correctly. (‘What’s he going on about?’ you say; well, please bear with.)
Today, on the Sun’s Day, I—or rather my dad—found a bunny. In the middle of the road. Blind. And young. Well, you can probably guess from there on; but you’d be guessing wrong. I didn’t take her in with us—and no, I didn’t abandon her either. Eek!
No, we gave her to the owner of the nearby pub. She was really quite happy, I must say. Mummy even looked kinda jealous. Hehe.
Moving on from bunnies, I have written five poems, submitted them to an uppity-tightety—my bad, literary—magazine, and yes, it was predictable from all that: I got rejected. Too bad. There are other ways for a poet to express themselves; and as you can guess, one of those is through this blog.
I shall, however, not give you all of them. I’m keeping the big guns for something special...
The Maiden and the Lake
Download and View on Google Drive
I am going to write a short essay on this. If you don’t like essays, don’t read it. Although, I suspect anyone crazy enough to follow my blog would probably be fairly comfortable with essays already...
Essay
The poem is about following your dreams.
If you were still trying to deduce that, I’m sorry. In any case: a poem’s message should not be didactic—for such a thing cannot be considered a work of art; rather an essay like this one—and neither should a poem’s message require wrestling from its cold, dead words. (Haha.)
A poem’s message should be pretty clear. If it isn’t, I’m not doing a very good job; please tell me!
In any case, the poem is partially metaphorical—the Little Ones in particular, represent the man’s inner demons—but also a straight up narrative: the scenario depicted should resonate of a wish come true.
The narrator is unnamed. This is not random: the narrator is the archetypal wishful lover; the one constrained by unyielding biology.
And of course, what tale can speak more of wishes? Love, and unsurmountable barriers, is my answer.
Imagery is also quite an important aspect of the poem. Here’s a badly kept secret: poems aren’t novels. You cannot build empathy, and love, and a desire for sucess, in the reader’s mind with quite so few words; you must instead appeal to our visual sense—our fastest sense. (Or ‘bandwidth capable input device’ if you want to go into tech-speak.)
The poem also takes in irony certain aspects of superstition. Take, for example: ‘On the seventh day, / Of the sixth month (of the sixth year)[.]’ Seven, now, there’s a number: a prime number; Seven Deadly Sins; seven days; seven, seven, seven.
As for six? Well, ‘six six six’ and Old Nick’s here.
The irony, of course, is in the fact that the man does not drown, and neither is he abandoned; the man gets what he wants. If you are so inclined, you will also notice that deceiving foreshadow is used in other ways as well—the ‘omen of joy’ and ‘the moon is but a memory’ and so on and so forth.
Indeed, the latter quote presents an irony in and of itself. The moon—as the mythology scholars among you may be aware—is often presented as the symbol of femininity. And yet, the man himself is rather un-masculine. It is also rather fitting, since the Maiden—a.k.a the moon—decides to keep him waiting.
And thus concludes the essay. It wasn’t terribly long (I don’t think). Besides, this isn’t my best poem; those are reserved for the Secret Project.
Thank you for reading. You can leave a comment, if you like. This isn’t meant to be monologue, y’a know?
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