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  #11  
Unread 04-06-2022, 09:38 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Then I guess this is the John Isbell with a son named Claiborne.

http://at.yorku.ca/t/o/p/c/06.htm
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  #12  
Unread 04-06-2022, 10:02 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Yup, that's my dad, John Rolfe Isbell. Interesting reading that interview, I've not seen it in a long time. Lots of old names and faces.

Cheers,
John
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  #13  
Unread 04-07-2022, 10:51 AM
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Back on the main road, Valerius Catullus 13!

Hey, that’s a great observation about the volta at “sed”. Truly good. ~ 50 BC, give or take. The basic mental structure is very similar to that of a sonnet. Great observation indeed. My bold lady Latin teacher gave us this to translate, and I’ve loved it ever since, and toyed with doing a version. Now maybe I will. I always thought it was about Roman hashish, as with certain poems by Horace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_13

Thanks for spotting this! Maybe the “unguent” helped Catullus be as nutty as he was. Don’t overdo the hash, Valerius

[perhaps your Erdős number is 13]
.
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  #14  
Unread 04-07-2022, 12:21 PM
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Duncan Gillies MacLaurin Duncan Gillies MacLaurin is offline
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Cheers, Allen!

I hadn't previously thought of/heard of the idea that hashish is the perfume in question. But it certainly makes a good deal of sense.

Nor had I been aware that Horace possibly had references to hashish. I'd certainly be interested to learn where in his poems he might have done so. Almost thirty years ago I was fascinated by a book about Horace and Surrealism (that I haven't been able to trace since), especially with regard to Cerberus' triple tongue in Odes II, 19. (It was the poem I had to analyze in my final oral exam for my Latin degree here in Denmark.) Perhaps this was one of his hashish-inspired speculations.

Duncan
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  #15  
Unread 04-07-2022, 03:17 PM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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A poem of mine that riffed on that one was included in an early issue of Rory Waterman's New Walk. I must confess I had a different perfume in mind.
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  #16  
Unread 04-07-2022, 03:43 PM
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Well, the impossible to translate probable pun: Cenabis - kannabis (from Greek), coupled with other things that include Catullus’ cry of faux poverty, makes the possibility of a gift of very expensive imported hashish from Lesbia seem possible at least. There’s even the lurid thought of gross erectile function in an imaginable Freudian transfer to nasal entirety. Horace mentions the drug sellers in Rome in an early hilarious polysyllabic zinger. One of Horace’s curiosities is the ode where he promises not to reveal the secrets of Mercury’s leaves. I wonder if Horace had a hookah.
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  #17  
Unread 04-08-2022, 02:03 PM
Tim McGrath Tim McGrath is offline
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Hey John--

I too have a Wyatt poem, rendered in rhyme royal no less. I used to think it was pretty good, but then I learned that many here are as fluent in Elizabethan as they are in Latin.

I love reading the biographies of mathematicians, your father's, Clay, being no exception. It also explains your interest in Apollinaire’s alexandrines.

Last edited by Tim McGrath; 04-08-2022 at 02:46 PM.
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  #18  
Unread 04-08-2022, 04:39 PM
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At the risk of stomping on a passel of toes, I’ve observed a high tide of displays on recent Eratosphere threads, all exactly true in every point, on various people’s ancestry. I claim an amoeba. And there I shall stop, but in 1695 my…. Anyway, nobody, exactly nobody, can help who their forebears were, none of us, dammit, so let’s just turn that page. (The past is another country: they usually do things differently there.) Still, this ancestry wave has inspired me to post the following link to a recent radio demolition derby compression of an opera where a family tree gets gnarly. Like it or not, this is a site for the kind of wallpaper music I listen to. No one has to like it, especially Grand Ole Opry fans.

https://www.wqxr.org/story/3-minute-...rdi-don-carlos
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  #19  
Unread 04-08-2022, 05:59 PM
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Isn’t it generally known that the Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini invented the sonnet form in the 13th century? (I might be related to him, my father from Agrigento.)
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Ralph
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  #20  
Unread 04-08-2022, 06:36 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Ralph, that's the name I've heard. Sicily has its place in history.
Tim, glad you enjoyed the bio. My Wyatt poem is four lines long, though it does rhyme, FWIW. It's about Whoso list to hunt, the 'Anne Boleyn' poem.
Allen, you and Michael asked me, so I told you. I believe in answering questions asked.

Cheers,
John
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