Betsy at “It’s All Connected” shared this sonnet with me in a comment on the Keats podcast below. The poem spoke to me, and I wanted to try to read it aloud. I’d like to hear Betsy do it, and I’d like to hear my beloved English professor Elizabeth Phillips read it too (she very much enjoys Millay), but in the meantime here’s my attempt.

English geek mode on: I found it hard to catch the tone, which is somewhere between ecstasy, hunger, and agony. The emotion is very intense and it’s difficult to avoid melodrama in the reading. Millay herself saves the poem from melodrama in that breathtaking final couplet, where the four monosyllables sound like flat resignation mingled with anger and sorrow.

It’s a terrific poem and one of the few sonnets I know with two stanzas of seven lines each. The break usually comes at line nine (8-6) or twelve (4-4-4-2). The unusual break makes the poem all the more poignant.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (798.3KB)

Computerworld story here. Andy blogs about RC2 here.

I’ve been a satisfied Firefox user since Andy delivered his impressive oration two years ago on “10 Reasons to Use Firefox.” Thunderbird is my email client of choice for my home ISP email account. It’s interesting and satisfying to see how Mozilla has kept on plugging away, patiently leading us into this open-source, collaborative world. The Mozilla wiki gives us all, even non-coders like me, a chance to give back. I’m grateful.

For the past few days I’ve spied Jack Frost on the grass around my house. The tang of fall is in the air, and in honor of the season, I read “To Autumn,” by John Keats.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)

To quote Pete Townshend, “can’t pretend that growing older never hurts.” But hey, he made it to his 60’s and he’s still rocking, “My Generation” notwithstanding. 🙂

From xkcd, a site I picked up from Robin Sloan at Snarkmarket.