Vivamus atque amemus

As Catullus says, "Let us Live and Love".

Happy Valentine's Day all!. I don't really celebrate the holiday the way Hallmark wants me to but I do like a bit of love in my February. I think the world always needs a bit more love. So tonight I'll read Neil Gaiman's twisted Harlequin Valentine short story and I'll break out a bit of poetry. A friend of mine got me started with the great Roman love poems. Here is the famous (perhaps infamous) love poet Catullus with Poem 5.

Let us live my Lesbia and love
and value at one penny
all the talk of stern old men
Suns can set and rise again
we, when once our brief light has set
must sleep one never ending night

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred 
then a second thousand, then a second hundred
then yet another thousand then a hundred
Then when we have made up many thousands
we will wreck the count
least we know it or
any devil have power to cast an evil eye upon us
when he knows the total of our kisses.

Original Latin:
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Poetry Friday

It's been a long time since I posted a poem to the blog. I've been missing Poetry Fridays. And since my last post was so rambling and incoherent, I figured I would share a very beautiful and sparse little poem that touches me every time I read it. I read poetry and books and discover the secret on a regular basis. But I always forget.

The Secret
by Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes
for that
most of all.

Adam Rex and Halloween

The leaves are falling fast now and the nights are getting pretty cold. I have pulled out my wool socks. All of this means that it's fall. And with fall comes Halloween. I'm actually in the mood for the season this year. Normally I dread fall because of what follows it. This year I'm really excited for the cool temperatures and the beautiful fall colors. And to celebrate the upcoming holiday I have purchased Adam Rex's books on monsters.

I make it no secret that I absolutely adore Adam Rex's work. I started by reading The True Meaning of Smekday and went out to buy everything he's illustrated or written. The next one that ended up in my home was Pssst, a cute little story about a little girl who's trip to the zoo turns into a shopping trip with an unusual ending. Rex tells the story through words and pictures but it is his fantastic illustration that keep you coming back for more. Everywhere you look on the page is a fun little detail. The humor is sometimes silly, sometimes dry but always fun.

Adam Rex has two books about Frankenstein filled with hilarious poems. In his first book in the series, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, he gives us poems about how the Phantom of the Opera can't get familiar tunes out of his head. Poems about the invisible man getting a haircut, the creature from the black lagoon who goes swimming too early after eating. My favorite is a wonderful poem about how Dracula has spinach in he teeth and no one knows how to tell him. All the poems are different but all of them are hilarious.

The new book is Frankenstein Takes the Cake. This is possibly even better than the first. In this one we follow Frankenstein as he gets married to his bride. My favorite pages have the Headless Horseman as he writes a blog about people wanting to eat his head, and why he wants people to stop copying his look. Please take note that those are not illustrations but pictures. Adam made the head and photographed it. Adam writes a wonderful little poem about Medusa and her problems in school. Even the dust jacket and the inside pages have jokes. They are everywhere. The thing about Adam is you have to read everything: signs, copyright information....

So here are two books that are perfect for the upcoming holiday. I recommend them to both kids and adults. Kids will love the humorous rhymes, and adults will love all the cute references and inside jokes in the pictures. I don't often tell people that you have to buy books, but you really do need to buy these. If you do pick up his books and enjoy them, also check out Adam Rex's blog at http://adamrex.blogspot.com.

P.S. The actual titles of the books are

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Other Stories You're Sure to Like Because They're All About Monsters and Some of Them Are Also About Food. You Like Food, Don't You? Well Alright Then.

and

Frankenstein Takes the Cake Which is Full of Funny Stuff Like Rotting Heads and Giant Gorillas and Zombies Dressed Like Little Girls and Edgar Allen Poe. The Book, We Mean--Not the Cake.

Yeah even those are hilarious. I love this man's work.

To see how he made the Headless Horseman's head, check out this amazing blog entry on the always wonderful 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=1398