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Eight Facts About Hermagoras

I asked for a tag, and I got it. Thanks Kristine!

We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
  • Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  • People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
  • At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  • Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.
Okay, here goes:
  1. I'm an identical twin. Until college separated us, nobody could tell us apart. Now it's easy: I'm the heavy-set English professor, he's the fit rich scientist guy. We lived in different states for twenty-plus years. In 2004 I moved within three miles of him, and within half a year he moved to the other side of the world (Singapore).
  2. For about a month in college I was in a Dead Kennedys cover band called "Sirhan Sirhan and the Lee Harvey Oswald Choir." We also played song by the Vandals, Black Flag, Minor Threat, and the Meatmen. Mainly we just goofed off, but we did play one short show in a women's dormitory at my university.
  3. I wanted to be a fundamentalist theologian before I discovered poetry. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself."
  4. Back when I was a teenager I was the instrument for converting one of my best friends to Christianity. He was Jewish. I've had a hard time forgiving myself for that, especially as he's still (to the best of my knowledge) a fundie.
  5. Before the recent ugliness, I had never been kicked off a blog. As a kid, however, I was kicked out of the White Flint Mall in Rockville, Maryland for repeatedly going up the down escalator.
  6. I take Imitrex for migraines: the injection form, as the pill never worked for me. I had to take one on an Amtrak last year. Let me tell you, there's no feeling quite so wonderful and debased as shooting up a prescription medicine in the bathroom of a moving train.
  7. I love long poems: the early ones (Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, De Rerum Natura), medieval (Divine Commedy, Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Creseyde), Paradise Lost, Dryden, -- not so much Pope -- Samuel Johnson, Keat's Hyperion and Dream of Hyperion, Shelley's Triumph of Life and Adonais, Browning's The Ring and the Book -- oh, yeah. And love the modernist and postmodernist long ones too: Pound's Cantos, Zukofsky's "A," Olson's Maximus Poems, Bunting's Briggflatts, Stein's Tender Buttons and Stanzas in Meditation, Duncan's "Passages," Hejinian's My Life. I even like The Changing Light at Sandover. One summer I read nothing but long poems.
  8. I remain firmly convinced that Thomas Kinsella is the most underrated poet alive.
Okey, who should I tag:

Duae Quartunciae,
John,
Zachriel,
The Editors,
Adrian (just searching around for someone random to tag and I came across this. Pretty cool young blogger. Give him some love).
Jessica Smith,
Jaki Shelton Green,
Mike Edwards.

Some of these are far up the food chain and may not get a response. I mean come on -- the Editors? And I would have tagged Ron Silliman, but tagging him would be useless--he's already told us everything there is to know.

Comments

Zachriel said…
Hi Hermagoras,

Eight things about Zachriel:

1. Angel who rules over memory, presides over the planet Jupiter;
2.Member AMF, Angelic Motive Force: Pushing planets on celestial spheres — one epoch at a time;
3. Celestial spheres really are made of crystal;
4. Yes, we do sing Hallelujahs along to the music of the spheres;
5. Busy times are during Jovian conjunctions;
6. Blog posting limited to certain planetary configurations;
7. Thrice banned (by Uncommon Descent);
8. Always Jovial.
Bob O'Hara said…
If you like long poems, have you read Kalevala? It's the Finnish epic, and there's a good translation by
Keith Bosley
. It must be good: he even sneaks in a Rocky Horror reference.

Bob
Hermagoras said…
The Kalevala is one long poem I haven't read. I should, though; I hear it's quite a trip -- also, it's the longest of the long poems. I'll check out Bosley's translation.

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