Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'poetry'

The Accidental Poetry of Horse Names

October 26th, 2022 · Comments Off on The Accidental Poetry of Horse Names

I’ve been trying really hard to fall back in love with the English language, and this gargantuan compendium of racehorse lineages is really helping. There’s such a pleasing alchemy to the way the names evolve over the different generations, and then often end up with a thoroughbred whose moniker can be interpreted as having multiple […]

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Wading Back In

June 14th, 2012 · 2 Comments

Taking a full day to get cracking on the book’s second draft. I can only hope the end product is as lyrical as the Eritrean revolutionary poetry above.

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Poetry Lives!

May 29th, 2012 · Comments Off on Poetry Lives!

I spent part of the long holiday weekend catching up with Evan Osnos’s account of Macau’s casino scene, a story gorgeously stuffed with details of nouveau riche excess. The mind reels at the thought that Macau’s high rollers require stools upon which to place their handbags, or that they rock $12,000 mobile phones. But the […]

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Avoiding the Dreaded Shoelace Belt

February 14th, 2011 · Comments Off on Avoiding the Dreaded Shoelace Belt

This is gonna be a rough week, as we’re solely in charge of Microkhan Jr. while the Grand Empress is off doing her thing in Vega$. The good news is that, with the aid of several Yuenglings last night, I believe that I’ve been able to reset my internal clock to deal with the situation […]

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Carry Your Cup in Your Hand

October 29th, 2010 · 2 Comments

It felt weird leaving an abysmal Sidney Sheldon mini-series atop the blog for the weekend, so let me instead outro with a brief poem from the latest issue of Granta—one of the publication’s best in recent memory. It is by the Peshawar-based writer Hasina Gul, and translated from Pashto: We grow up but do not […]

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A Sonnet for Haiti

January 13th, 2010 · Comments Off on A Sonnet for Haiti

William Wordworth’s “To Toussaint L’ouverture” works beautifully today as a meditation on loss and rebirth: TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy of men! Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den; – O miserable Chieftain! where and when Wilt thou find patience? Yet […]

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Bulletproof: The Boxers

November 24th, 2009 · 8 Comments

It is to the turn-of-the-century media’s great discredit that they referred to China’s quasi-Luddite rebels as “Boxers.” Had the minions of William Randolph Hearts been more adept at understanding Chinese, they would have realized that the rebels’ secret society translated more literally as “Fists of Righteous Harmony,” a far more poetic moniker for an organization […]

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“My War-Weary Willie…”

May 19th, 2009 · Comments Off on “My War-Weary Willie…”

Since the missus is gone and we’re dealing with Microkhan Jr. all by our lonesome, we’re gonna post today’s NtHWS Extras installment a bit earlier than usual. Don’t worry, there are non-book goodies to follow today—but those are more easily written when the kid is napping. Today’s focus is the poet laureate of the Ledo […]

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