#aaron poochigian

[aaronpoochigian]

From Sea to Shining Sea

I lift the sash and lean into the night.

A waxing crescent moon just past the eaves

is varnishing wrought iron and Ginkgo leaves,

plate glass and brass, with visionary light.

 Just think of it, uniting (here quite late,

there story-time) the Lower Forty-eight.

The girl I scared away, the guru’s wife,

is probably in a hot tub, wine in hand.

A breeze that spans the Rockies and heartland

says Eucalyptus.

                           I’ve fucked up my life.

#aaron poochigian #love poem #poets on tumblr

[tragicmasquerade]

Correspondences, Charles Baudelaire (trans. by Aaron Poochigian)

#Poetry #charles baudelaire #aaron poochigian

[poem-today]

A poem by Aaron Poochigian

American Divine

There is a heightened way of being here in Union Square: as ice descends half-thawed past whirling numbers on a glass façade, so many coats attached to totes, briefcases, blueprint tubes and roller bags are reaching a stairwell to the subway. They don’t fear the local Moses, Mort, who flails and paces back and forth before the top step, preaching to infidels about a Weather God: “Azuzu whispers, and the world goes round!” Amused teenagers hoot and mock-applaud. The trains keep making thunder underground.

You there, behind your breath, a rhythmic wraith of breath, are voyeuristic in the slush, absorbing everything — the twilight rush and blur of digits, a Sephora sign, those antics laughing at a madman’s faith — till vertigo crescendoes in a sense of outside-in and inside-out, intense clashes of light and shadow, warmth like wine, and an ungovernable urge to dub the grove holy, the old bandshell a shrine, the whole plaza a civic sanctuary where the ineffable has residence. This is the numinous, this is the hub from which the stacked, starless, and luminary city spokes—the streets, the trains, the towers.

It starts this evening, in the winter flaw — seeking new prophets, modern sites to cherish, finding divinities in earthly powers. You are a church of one, a private parish; be passionate in the pursuit of awe.

Aaron Poochigian

An audio-visual version of the poem on YouTube

#aaron poochigian #american poetry #american divine

[thepooch]

The Chump

Now that the sun is under Jersey City,

the long light on the streets has petered out

and pavement that by day was merely gritty

has turned a maze for play or maze of doubt.

The subway squeals beneath a rusted grating;

the nine-to-fivers are at Happy Hours;

and still because you promised I am waiting,

a forty-nine-year-old whom Dread devours.

#aaron poochigian #poets on tumblr

[andrumedus]

Let us love sweetly. [...]

Charles Baudelaire, tr. Aaron Poochigian, The Flowers of Evil, from “Spleen and the Ideal”; “Autumn Sonnet”

#literature #poetry #charles baudelaire #the flowers of evil #lovers at the edge of eros #french lit #m #x

[derangedrhythms]

What was my mad heart dreaming of? 

Sappho, from ‘Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments’, tr. Aaron Poochigian

#sappho #stung with love #poetry #excerpts #heart

[marcusagrippa]

some ghosts i've been thinking about lately

sappho, 'stung with love' , trans. aaron poochigian // lucan, pharsalia 9.983-987, trans. jane wilson joyce // horace, odes 3.30, trans. terry walsh // ovid, amores 1.15, trans. a. s. klein // john donne, the relic // catullus 1, trans. a. s. klein // shakespeare, sonnet 55 // robert harris, dictator // virgil, eclogues 10, trans. a. s. klein // ovid, metamorphoses 15.877-879, trans. a. s. klein // phillip larkin, an arundel tomb

#ghosts #i read out the metamorphoses epilogue to my friend today and wouldnt you know it ovid was right

[yuri-is-online]

You Simple Vile Monstrosity: Rook and the Flowers of Evil

My other two dumb history posts have at least a semblance of fun fact to them, but this is mostly going to be literary analysis and some theory. There's some interesting stuff here sure, but I don't really think it adds much to the overall landscape of twst theories. But it does make Rook make more sense to me so I am making this post anyway.

So without further ado, if you are like me and enjoy reading twst theories, you might know that the beginning lines of Twisted Wonderland are something we have been debating the meaning of since the game came out really. While I think we have been closing in on their true meaning as Chapter 7 progresses along, the phrase "Flowers of Evil" can actually refer to something specific: a french poetry collection of the same name (Les Fleurs du mal in french) by a poet name Charles Baudelaire originally published in 1857. The collection was extremely controversial, but today it is highly lauded and has inspired several other literary works, including a manga series by Shūzō Oshimi of the same name. I found out about the poetry collection while working on this request and finally finished reading it... and another essay by Baudelaire for reasons we can talk about later on in the post. For now let's talk poetry.

Beauté! 100 Points!

I don't speak french, so I read an English translation done by Aaron Poochigian that does contain the original french text in the back half of the book. The Flowers of Evil is split into seven-ish parts: The Flowers of Evil (just containing "To the Reader"), Spleen and the Ideal, Parisian Scenes, Wine, Flowers of Evil (again but with 12 poems this time), Revolt, and then Death. The sections are more or less organized by the subject of the poems, Spleen and the Ideal is the largest with Baudelaire musing over what the ideal concept of beauty is while Wine deals with getting drunk (on wine mostly if you can believe it.) One of the things that jumps out very quickly about Baudelaire's work is that his concept of beauty is almost synonymous with his concept of evil. He writes a lot about maggots eating corpses, about decay, he has a few poems that talk about vampires appearing to be the highest form of beauty but really being husks of rotted flesh; it's all very much about this acceptance that evil is a part of life and human nature, so therefore there must be beauty in it. The concept of "ideal beauty" must by it's nature be divorced from the concept of "morality." When Rook talks about the potential for Leona or Malleus to kill him and how beautiful that would be, I think he means the act of destruction itself would be beautiful. The circumstances surrounding it and the consequences of it are irrelevant to the concept; this is also why while he initially says he cannot find the crimson lotuses in GloMas beautiful Deuce accuses him of doing just that after everything is said and done. He cannot find beauty in Rollo's actions, but the visual and the fight are beautiful because of the effort he and the other students put in to stop them. And perhaps most importantly, it's why he is willing to drink Vil's poison and look upon what is supposedly ultimate ugliness and say "In this moment you are the fairest of them all." Because how could an act born out of such raw and genuine emotion be anything but?

Le Chasseur D'Armour, The Hunter of Love

Baudelaire wasn't just a poet, he fancied himself a critic and wrote multiple essays, the one I read for this post is The Painter of Modern Life. Which is actually a collection of several but they are all related, and I was directed to them by this wordpress post. In it, Baudelaire muses over how things can be both beautiful and ugly, and why:

"Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element... which severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its morals, its emotions."

He was talking about fashion plates that depicted outdated costumes, but his point was more or less that if you strictly look at the design of the costume they look ridiculous: ugly. But when you take into account their historical value (these particular plates were all from the around the time of the French revolution) they become exceedingly important: beautiful. He also mentions in this same essay the importance of not just taking into account the opinions of so called "masters" and sneers at people who think they understand what is beautiful just because they have seen a painting done by a professional:

"... to declare that Raphael, or Racine, does not contain the whole secret, and that minor poets too have something good, solid and delightful to offer... that we might love general beauty, as it is expressed by classical poets and artists, we are no less wrong to neglect particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the sketch of manners."

In chapter 5, while helping Vil judge the auditions for VDC, Rook gives every audition 100 points because, well, in his mind they are all an example of perfect beauty specifically because they are the work of amateurs, and that is no less valuable to him or less worthy of praise that the work of the master. Now granted he clearly does value professional quality (he did have reasons for voting for Neige other than being a massive simp. Valid ones even if loosing does sting) but that's only in the context of strict rules and guidelines. When Rook is asked for his opinion, while he certainly does believe there is an absolute, academic definition beauty, he doesn't place any value on where that beauty comes from. Baudelaire muses over how human life "accidentally" puts mysterious beauty into the world, and the true appreciator of beauty must make himself not strictly a poet but:

"...an observer of life, and only later set himself the task of acquiring the means of expressing it... For most of us... the fantastic reality of life has become singularly diluted. [But he] never ceases to drink it in; his eyes and memories are full of it."

I strongly dislike suggesting in these posts that xyz is "the definitive reason" for why a character acts the way that he does, but I do think it is very interesting how well this describes Rook's ethos. He thinks of himself as a hunter, but in order to do that he needs to observe. Sure he takes it to exceptionally extreme lengths, but it makes him one of the most lively members of the NRC cast. Baudelaire is right, there are a million things about life we miss on a day to day basis wherein true beauty lies, but Rook sees all of it. His eyes, memories, camera, and secret photo albums are fit to burst with it.

My Noble and Beautiful Flower of Evil

I mentioned the opening text at the beginning of this post, and I stand by my interpretation that the phrase "flower of evil" it uses likely is not a specific reference to any of the poems themselves... beyond the obvious note that it is a collection of poems about finding beauty in, well, evil and most of the characters are based off of villains.

But there was something that started gnawing at me when I read the introduction to my translation, which was written by a poet named Dana Gioia. It was a very well written summary of Baudelaire's life and the significance of his work, but it mentioned a connection that I have seen brought up in twst theorizing before: Edgar Allen Poe.

You see, Baudelaire was obsessed with Poe. To the point that (according to the introduction) "He considered Poe a sacred martyr for art and referred to him as 'Saint Edgar.' In his morning devotions, Baudelaire prayed first to God and then to Poe."

I have nothing to say on that (because really what could you) but the point that Gioia wanted to make in that introduction was that Poe had a massive influence on Baudelaire's writing style. He wrote multiple essays on his work and translated them into French because he felt like Poe deserved the recognition, so while Gioia used this to argue that Poe's influence on Baudelaire shouldn't be underestimated...

I can't find the post, but someone was talking about how Malleus's mother's name Meleanor is very similar to "Lenore" and I recall people sort of brushing that connection off. I don't that name is a coincidence. I think the poem "Lenore" might very well have been something thought about when constructing her character, and that the themes in Poe's work might be very relevant to the overall story of Twisted Wonderland.

Something about ravens and telltale hearts just feels like they fit; maybe we have got it all wrong and Yuu's visions aren't coming from the mirror in Ramshackle, but the floorboards.

Semi- Unrelated Fun Facts:

If you read the name Baudelaire and thought to yourself it sounded familiar, you might have be thinking of the Baudelaire children from A Series of Unfortunate Events. This isn't exactly a coincidence as the author of the series admits to his writing being heavily influenced by Charles Baudelaire to the point he actually wrote the afterword to the translation I own.

Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of the state of California, something that deeply confused me. Apparently the Governor of California appoints someone to a 2 year term and they travel around the state to promote poetry and literacy which is apparently something that 46/50 U.S. states and D.C. does to????

My glorious motherland of Pennsylvania is not one of these states, apparently we only ever appointed one, then eliminated the position entirely after he retired, and then started just. Handing out ones to people in individual cities and counties. Which is so par for the course here I don't know why I am surprised.

One of the first things any college level literature course will try to drill into you is that you don't examine the life of an author when examining their work. It might sound silly, but I think Baudelaire is a great example of why that's important. The man was addicted to drugs and sex, refused to get a "real job", lived off his inheritance from his wealthy father and eventually whatever money he could convince his mother to send him his entire adult life, and had her use her political connections to bail him out of legal trouble multiple times.

If I thought too hard about that it would make his lines in "Skeleton Laborers" (Nothingness is treacherous.//Even Death is a deceiver.//Alas, forever and ever,//work may be awaiting us) fall terribly flat, which I think does them a disservice. The man was very talented and I am glad he wrote them because I felt very seen when I read them.

Baudelaire opened his publication with a note to the reader, but he made it a full poem entitled "To the Reader." I liked the ending stanza so much I used a version of it to title my blog, and eventually my current masterlist: (Boredom! Moist-eyed, he dreams, while pulling on//a hookah pipe, of guillotine-cleft necks.//You, reader, know this tender freak of freaks-//hypocrite reader-mirror-man-mytwin!)

Likewise the title of this post is also taken from part of a poem, "Hymn to Beauty" (Beauty, you simple, vile monstrosity,//I cannot care about your origin,//provided that your gaze, smile, feet show me//a sweet infinity I have never known.) I think that fits Rook's ideals rather well, don't you?

#twisted wonderland #twst rook #rook hunt #character analysis #twst theories

[jeanmoreaux]

*✧ — november & december 2023 wrap up

hi hi. here are the things i read in november and december. i'll post my favourites of the year later, but as a teaser i can already tell you that the favourite off of this list will be on it!! given that i was very much in the trenches with my thesis and my finals i still managed to get a good amount of reading in—to be fair though half of this list is stuff i read in the last two weeks of december so. you know. also, as you might have realised, lots of rereading going on. for my mental health. it was A Time. grateful it's over. on to bigger and brighter things <3

2023 goal: 201/100 books

as alway, feel free to drop book recs, questions, or opinions in my inbox; i am always happy to talk to you about books!

* –> newly added to my favorites shelf

follow my goodreads | follow my storygraph | previous wrap ups

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger | 5★ | review

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh | 5★

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon | dnf'd at 55% | 1★ | review

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor | 3.5★

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare | 3.5★ | review

Rouge by Mona Awad | 3.75★

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata | 3★

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton | 3.5★

* A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza | 5★ | review

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll | 3.75★

Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho by Sappho (transl. Aaron Poochigian) | 4★

Heartstopper: Volume Five by Alice Oseman | 4.5★

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov | no rating

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

rereads

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

The Raven King by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

The King’s Men by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins | 5★ | review

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins | 5★ | review

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins | 5★ | review

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater | 5★

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller | 5★

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins | 5★ | review

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater | 5★

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater | 5★

#book recs #mish reads #wrap up #goodreads #the storygraph

[aaronpoochigian]

#charles baudelaire #aaron poochigian #poems on tumblr

[lulavvpoetry]

“…because the people I most strive to please do me the worst injuries."

-Sappho, Come Close (tr. Aaron Poochigian)

[verdantlyviolet]

Hi! I was interested in reading some of Sappho’s works and was wondering if you had any recommendations of books to start with?

Many thanks! 💕

The first translation I started with was Come Close by Aaron Poochigian, and since it’s part of Penguins Little Black Classics series it’s usually fairly cheap and easy to find. Otherwise, I do love If Not, Winter by Anne Carson.

Someone else recently asked for my favourite translations here.

#Asks #Sappho

[caffeinatedmonologue]

text: Sappho [tr. Aaron Poochigian].

upper right: earrings, lower left: eye glasses; both featured in the “Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli” exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris [photos mine]

#elsa schiaparelli #sappho #poetry

[andrumedus]

I am the dagger and the scar. I am the slap, I am the cheek, I am the limbs, I am the rack, the convict, the executioner. I am the vampire of my own soul

Charles Baudelaire, tr. Aaron Poochigian, The Flowers of Evil, from “Spleen and the Ideal”; “Heautontimoroumenos”

#literature #poetry #charles baudelaire #the flowers of evil #divine‚ glorious selfhood #to so delicately undo #french lit #m #x

[loveswitchery]

What was my mad heart dreaming of?

Sappho, tr. Aaron Poochigian

#quote #sappho #poetry #lit #literature

[ninetyninewords]

let me descend into your dreamlike eyes and drowse a long time in your lashes' shade.

Charles Baudelaire, tr. Aaron Poochigian, The Flowers of Evil, from "Spleen and the Ideal"; "Semper eadem"