Phyllis’s comment about collecting Tam Lin stories is interesting. When I was performing a song of the legend, I remember feeling an obsessive urge to do the same, and I’ve seen it in the few others of my acquaintance who spent time with some version of it. It’s as though the rhetoric of Beowulf were masked for May Day with the Song of Taliesin. What is the abyss in it, I wonder?

http://badreviewsofgoodbooks.blogspot.com/

But if reading six of these is cheering, reading six dozen may well be depressing with the way it highlights the worst tendencies of today’s students.

Meanwhile, an exquisite-poet, friend printed this over at her blog the other day, and I think it useful for you to print out and tack up somewhere:
1791, Rabbie Burns responds to one of his critics:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

— Schiller

I’ve been working lately w someone at my firm who rips my writing to shreds. My first reaction is, always, to want to hurt him. But, you know, no one else makes me grow, stretches me, the way that he does. I’m not saying it isn’t painful. Just saying that I’ve learned (the hard way) to appreciate it.

I think you’re doing great. You’ve shown us over the past year or so via this blog that you are a persistent go-getter despite your fatigue, so it’s only a matter of time that writing WILL be all you’re doing.

(Maybe I’m wrong about you wanting to be able to do nothing but write? I apologize, if so, but I’m pretty sure you’ve indicated that here a few times.)

(on that note, have you read Susan Cain’s recent book, QUIET? It’s about the power of introverts – fascinating!)

See you Thursday.
Dawn @ Concord Bookshop
blogging/tweeting personally as @TooFondOfBooks

Good luck with everything!

In any case, thank you for writing it and sharing it.

And in truth, Ms. Goss has little besides time to envy in other writers. Talent and a unique imagination certainly aren’t at issue.

What will envy get you? Usually nothing (or perhaps a blog post). But I’ve also found that envy lights a fire, sometimes. Catalyzes a change. Forces me to step back and re-prioritize, or look at something from a different angle.

On a separate note, I am REALLY looking forward to The Brides of Rollrock Island (or Sea Hearts). I adore Ms. Lanagan’s books. So much so that I spent some time pondering whether or not to pony up for international shipping so I don’t have to wait until the US version comes out later this year. As much as it pains me, I think it will have to be done.