Gay Rebel Scum

Nothing in the Zinnia theme quite spoke to me, but I think just about everyone on the planet has some sort of relationship with red roses. Personally, I associate them with A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns, and it got me thinking about my relationship with poetry in general.

I first learned about this poem in A Child's Introduction to Poetry by Michael Driscoll (which is apparently absent from archive.org's collection! I will need to rectify this.) I had the 2003 edition linked here, but Black Dog & Leventhall  released a revised version in 2020. If it's even half as good as the version I grew up with, I think it would make a great gift for any literarily-inclined children in your life.

I was a bit of an odd duck as a child. But I was quickly labelled as "smart" because I was a voracious reader, even from a young age. I remember when I was in first grade (7 years old for those of you outside the US), my first grade teacher didn't actually have any books in her classroom that it took me longer than 20 minutes to read. At the time, first graders were limited to only reading picture books, levelled readers, and really simple chapter books (think Magic Treehouse and A to Z Mysteries) in the school library, and it annoys me to this day that they didn't encourage kids to challenge themselves. If a kid picks up Harry Potter and struggles with it, shouldn't we be encouraging them to ask an adult for help?

Anyway. I don't actually remember when I received this book. I do remember that it was a gift from my Bubbe and included a CD that I would sometimes listen to. It was formative enough that the illustrations in the book and the voices of the narrators are permanently burned into my mind. Side note: They anglicised poor Mr Burns's poem and had what's clearly and American actress read it. Which is... definitely a choice.

Regardless of when I got it, the collection ignited this life-long love of poetry. I remember, when we had to do poetry recitations in third grade (age 10), everyone else chose from the Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky books (no shade to either of them, for the record. Their poems are delightful) while I preformed The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. I wasn't trying to show off or anything, I just genuinely liked the poem. I didn't fully grok what was going on in it, but I knew that the narrator was sad about his dead girlfriend and the raven is taunting him and that was enough.

I was an English major in college, and I'm theoretically still pursuing that degree. (I had to drop out during the pandemic and things have been complicated since working full time). It's been very fun to kind of play I Spy with the authors I first learned about in that book. I still instinctively think of Keats as "the guy who wrote that really long vase poem" to this day.

I do still love poetry, but most of the stuff I'm reading lately are translations of older work (namely Lombardo's translation of The Metamorphoses and Anne Carson's translations of Sappho's Fragments). There are really only a few living poets who I can name off the top of my head (tumblr's darlings: Carson and Richard Siken). I also got to meet Marie Howe, who is the kindest woman I've ever met, though I don't own any of her books.

I extend the question to you. Do you like poetry? Who do you like to read? Is there anyone out there doing it like my favourite Dead White Boys?

When I saw that one of the prompts was "goldenrod," I knew that I'd end up recommending one of my favourite essays from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer!

I could have sworn that I saw it published on its own somewhere online, but I'm afraid it looks like you will have to acquire the book to read it. If it's not at your library (I highly recommend the audiobook, which is read by Kimmerer herself), archive.org does have a scan! It starts on page 39.

Dr Kimmerer is a Powatomi botanist and poet, and her book blends modern science, knowledge passed down via her indigenous heritage, and stories from her remarkably interesting life. Everyone I have recommended this book to has come out of it with a different take away. If you've read it, I'd love to hear you thoughts as well!

"Asters and Goldenrod" is an essay about racism in "Western" science, but not in the way that we usually think of "scientific racism." When Kimmerer first begins her botany programme, she tells her professor that she wants to learn why asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together. Her professors laugh this off as the frivolous interests of a silly young girl, and I think it highlights a fundamental issue with mainstream science. Kimmerer's question isn't just about her two favourite flowers, she wants to understand their relationship to each other and to herself. While science has gotten better about understanding ecology in the last few hundred years, I think we as "Westerners" (to the extent that the term means anything) tend to forget that we're also part of the ecosystem. We need these different perspectives in order to better understand our world, and I found it extremely upsetting that Kimmerer's professors didn't foster that curiosity.

Kimmerer then goes on to answer her question, and the answer takes her across multiple disciplines, all woven together in her stunning prose. This book will make you feel things about plants that you did not know were possible to feel about plants.

Goldenrod season is soon upon us in my little corner of the world, and every time I see them in bloom, I try to keep an eye out for their little purple companions. I think Kimmerer has really helped open my eyes to the beauty of the natural world around me. I hope her work will spark a similar love for you as well.

Another ficlet! I don’t know why the prompt made me think of Dean Winchester, but it did put me on a Supernatural kick for a few days lol.


Title: Bluebell
Fandom: Supernatural
Ship: N/A
Rating: Teen & Up
Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Canon Character Death
Other Tags: Post-Season 4 Episode 1
Length: 320 words
Summary: Dean Winchester, on whether or not he deserved to be saved.

( Fic Under the Cut )

This week's prompt for Sunshine Challenge is Iris, which can represent wisdom and hope, among other things.

In this vein, I've migrated some of my fics from 2012 onto AO3. They are for a fandom that I haven't thought about in years and is very heavily associated with that era of the Internet. I won't be linking them here because I've anonymised them (they are VERY embarrassing nowadays), but it did get me reflecting a bit on where my fandom journey started and where I've ended up.

I was recently reading a fic published to FFn (which I have since archived due to how difficult it is to access these days), and I have no idea how anyone took it seriously as a fan fic site. Not only did it not trust you to use your own HTML, it erased any words that had special characters in them, and you couldn't even tag pairings until, like, 2015! And if something inspired you or you wanted to link off-site to fan art, you had to space out the url so the almighty FFn filter didn't delete them. All this to prevent spam links from being posted.

There's also the fact that you can't copy/paste from the site, which must have made reviewing a nightmare. Luckily, you actually can copy/paste if you use the mobile site, which is what I did to archive my old fics.

Anywho, it's stuff like AO3 and the OTW that gives me hope for the future of fandom. It's a space that we made for ourselves. We own the servers, and no one can tell us what we can and can't do on them (aside from, like... the law). We fund it ourselves, and we keep it afloat with our donations. I can't begin to tell you how much I love it. And yes, I know the OTW has been in hot water lately for being slow to react to concerns of its users of colour (and hopefully that can be sorted out quickly and efficiently), but considering where we started? It's such a gift. I appreciate it so much.

This time has also given me the opportunity to reflect on how I've grown as an author. These fics are... really bad. Baby Sunset couldn't keep track of a plotline to save his life! But they're also just really special. I used to just be able to sit around and frantically type out a fic on my iPod Touch and post it once I got home from school. (Side note: I actually used to email the entire fic to myself in order to post it on my family computer, since I didn't have my own laptop until I was in high school. I'd use FFn's shitty built-in rich text editor to make it work. It's honestly amazing anything I wrote made it to that site.)

I recently opened up to a good friend about how I was feeling a lot of shame around my fics. My 25th birthday is looming over the horizon, and I always thought that I'd have written something Big and Important by then. But the opposite of shame is pride. I am proud of how far I've gotten since 2012. I'm proud that I've continued doing something that I love. I'm proud that I've managed to make some really good friends from my time in fandom! And that pride is what's going to keep me going. You haven't seen the last of me!