Never make a phone cry.
Can they love?
Avoid mobile groans
Sponge yourself down after sinning
Always use a pen  when you scream
Have you got Munch’s screen?
The word nice is overused.Be sparing.Be nasty.Be  yourself
The rod broke the fish’s heart
Being eccentric is now a psychiatric disorder.Ring 999 and ask for Dave.
The nuns used  our rulers to hit our hands when we forgot how to do compound interest
My husband’s eyesight is nothing to write home about.So he doesn’t. I ll kill him
Always eat something green at  dinner.If all else fails, is there a pelargonium in the room? In the window box.
Why not grow your own cress from  seed [ buy it]
Why not turn  into a pillar of salt?
Why not rewrite the Bible in Esperanto? Why?

Mike Flemming copyrigh

https://poets.org/text/sonnet-poetic-form

Extract:

Sonnet Variations

Though Shakespeare’s sonnets were perhaps the finest examples of the English sonnet, John Milton’s Italian-patterned sonnets (later known as “Miltonic” sonnets) added several important refinements to the form. Milton freed the sonnet from its typical incarnation in a sequence of sonnets, writing the occasional sonnet that often expressed interior, self-directed concerns. He also took liberties with the turn, allowing the octave to run into the sestet as needed. Both of these qualities can be seen in “When I Consider How My Light is Spent.”

The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth century English poet Edmund Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of “couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. The Spenserian sonnet, through the interweaving of the quatrains, implicitly reorganized the Shakespearean sonnet into couplets, reminiscent of the Petrarchan. One reason was to reduce the often excessive final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet, putting less pressure on it to resolve the foregoing argument, observation, or question.

Photo by Maria Jose Bueso on Pexels.com

Never finish a sentence without  ending it all
Never write too clearly; post structuralism gapes.
Never begin a sentence without a word
Never end  one with but.
Never free associate in writing  nor in speech
Never take  a horse to  bed.
Never mention Adam Phillips unless in  the LRB
Never be  over-cautious.
Never end a word with a letter.
Never give your name to the papers
Never menstruate during working hours
Never fall in love with a duck.
Never pass water.Have a drink.
Take a random sample of  your dreams to  the OUP
Never cut your own hair while typing
Never believe anything you read.

ne

“Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.”

Czech proverb

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/13/iris-murdoch-100-books-full-passion-disaster

Short extract:

A crucial idea in Murdoch’s fiction is the reality of others, a material fact that we are confronted with daily but, in our innermost selves, seem hardly able to grasp. We glimpse them in continually evolving contexts inflected with our own agendas, which may also remain mysterious to us. That situation, often manifesting itself in the form of a dilemma, struck her as the novel’s primary concern. An essay she wrote in 1959 argues: “Prose literature can reveal an aspect of the world which no other art can reveal … and in the case of the novel, the most important thing to be thus revealed, not necessarily the only thing, but incomparably the most important thing, is that other people exist.”

To write a novel, Murdoch continues, is to quickly discover that “however much one is in the ordinary sense ‘interested in other people’, this interest has left one far short of possessing the knowledge required to create a real character who is not oneself. It is impossible, it seems to me, not to see one’s failure here as a sort of spiritual failure.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/leo-abse-and-his-brother-dannie-l8kb0k5nn8b

Extract

Dannie had a different relationship with his wife. They worked together, they wrote books together, he never went anywhere without her. They were completely and utterly bound together. He was driving the car when she was killed, and although the accident wasn’t his fault, he has to deal not just with loss but with survivor guilt. It was difficult, God knows, for me to cope with my loss, but for him it is too much to bear.

The important thing is that he keeps writing. I’m terribly worried he’s given up, and that really is fatal. With courage, pain can be transmuted into something positive. It’s hard, but then just to live requires courage, particularly when you’re in your eighties. You are kept alive by work and love, and there are years of work left. Dannie can overcome this. He must transmute his grief, his pain, his tragedy into poetry and it may make him an even better poet. As it is, I suffer with him because my feelings for Dannie will always be paternalistic. To me, he’s still the kid brother.

Ancient nests of starlings  still remain
How  beautiful the instinct and the form
Although the birds will never come again

In Somerset they glide  above low lanes
Circling  like one being, god alone.
Ancient nests of starlings   here remain

Eternal life  is by the group attained
When one dies another one is born
Although the starlings won’t  come here again

The dead birds have no funeral  nor blame
The living birds will procreate  in time
Ancient nests of starlings   here remain

Their migration  is no children’s game
The  style and beauty of their flight ‘s  sublime
I’m sad those starlings won’t  come here again

And  so it is with  our possessions fine
They’ll be  discarded  when we cross the line
Ancient nests of starlings  still remain
And I shall never see those birds  again

My own photo.Copyright

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190301-how-to-stop-digital-gangsters-stealing-your-time

Extract:

He says you can get back your time and concentration with a certain amount of personal effort. And he says it’s up to individuals, because “our government is not going to save us, and neither are the tech companies”.

He has a four-step plan to stop getting distracted by technology.

Step 1 – Manage your internal triggers: When we’re distracted, we’re normally looking to escape from something uncomfortable. Try to work out what it is and manage it.

Step 2 – Make time for distraction: Set aside time in your day to be distracted – that way it won’t feel like your time is being invaded. Give yourself a set hour that’s ‘social media time’.

Step 3 – Remove the external triggers: Turn off your notifications and the rings, pings and dings that tell you what to do.

Step 4 – Make pacts to prevent distraction: Get a technology app that tries to limit the amount of time you spend on your phone. The key factor is self-awareness: once you realise you’re being distracted by your phone or tablet, you start putting it down.

I have got PTSD.My husband hit me on the head with a wok
At least he didn’t cut it off!
So sympathetic
Tell me more
It’s getting complex
Like numbers?
How are numbers complex?|
When they are half imaginary
In a sense they are 100 per cent imaginary
But some are  more imaginary than others
Such as?
The square root of minus 1
Yet mathematicians are mainly atheists while believing  more numbers are irrational than not
Yet we are taught to value rationality
Value  lies in meaning.
Or is meaning gives us value?
Will you leave your husband?
Where?
Behind
Where am I going?
Ask God
How?
That’s what we all say
Does it get us anywhere?
How?
Was  that how or houch?
I am confused.
I blame numbers myself
Numbers of men?
No just numbers
They have no minds!
Just like the British people.
I prefer numbers especially aleph one
What does it denote?
The infinity of all real numbers
But we just agreed they are not real
What is “real” ?