I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...
a line from my sestina poem Subien...
"Swimming in the surf was the guide, Khidir,
Working to shore in his form as Dolphin."
I didn't know much about Khidir when I wrote that poem back then...I gathered his name from Idris Shah's books about Sufis...and since, I've found some neat things about Khidir...one is that he is depicted in storybook illustrations, those miniatures from Mogul India, as riding on a fish....just why I don't know, but my poem line could have been something like
"riding to shore on a fish"...that's just a kind of curio...and for the curious, I recommend a web search of Khidir...he is often depicted as being green, and finds correspondence with the Green Man, the Green Knight, and such in Western lore...in Eastern lore, the green often seen in Arab nation's flags is a correspondence to Khidir...the ancient Egyptian god Osiris was depicted as Green too...oh.a late update....and there's a little shrine, looks like a cupola, to Khidir on the Temple Mount...
Temple Mount shrine Khidir
Dome of Al-Khidr, Temple Mount, Old City of Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khidr
the name Subien in the Sestina I went on about in a previous blog post...I changed Suibne, which I had wanted to use for the poem, to Subien, so it would rhyme in the poem...all the end line words rhyme, though so softly it's hardly noticed...Khidir the one that doesn't rhyme...the story of Suibne is on the web too...I came across it in Graves' The White Goddess...but it is a well known tale in Celtic lore...one can't help but identify with Suibne in that old tale...many have, and me too!...fancifully, at times, the persona writing the blog is Suibne/Subien...which can lead to confusion, as one might think everything written here is from a real me, and not the speaking of some ancient character from legends...sometimes, sometimes my keyboard is writing words out for a character from ancient legends!...kind of like when I play my toon, Subien, in world of warcraft... I'm in character like an actor...ah, it's all a masquerade after all...gotta go check something...brb...there are now ten Suibne character toons in World of Warcraft....one, my warrior, my first toon...my Suibne has a distinction I'm very proud of...at level 90 Suibne achieved Ironman in Warsong Gulch in random battle ground mode...Subien is my mage, and my main for a long while...I've left Subien, and Suibne at level 90...I like the Mists of Panderia expansion...and rather than level them up to Draenor, left them there...
I have this own little interior private kind of Lord of the Rings realm in my imagination...oh, in fact, I wish I could relate where I first read Lord of the Rings, but some things are just way too interior!
Anyway, the third name I used, Cerridwen, is even more interior, to me, though on the web, there's lots and lots...lol...when I looked up the White Goddess on the web, the book I mean, by Robert Graves, I got to reading the reviews on amazon, where I ordered my new copy...they are really neat to read...book reviews on amazon are nice, as you get to relate to others who read the books you read...something I lost when college classes were over...anyway, I thought to poke fun at the reviewers...and relate what the book had meant to me...lemmesseee if I can find that...brb...
Robert Graves White Goddess Amazon
on October 31, 2015
Reviews here remind me of camera lens reviews!
quote
The White Goddess and The Nazarene Gospel Restored are curious: I wrote the first to define the non-Jewish element in Christianity, especially the Celtic. And I wrote the second, with the help of the late Joshua Podro, to drive the Greek and Roman element out of what was a purely Jewish event. The curious result was that a special Early Christian Society got founded at Cambridge, based on the Nazarene Gospel, and various White Goddess religions started in New York State and California. I'm today's hero of the love-and-flowers cult out in the Screwy State, so they tell me: where hippies stop policemen in the street and say, “I adore you, officer.” Also I get a number of letters from witches' covens, requesting flying ointment, magical recipes, and esoteric information.
Robert Graves, The Art of Poetry No. 11
Interviewed by Peter Buckman and William Fifield
Paris Review
Summer 1969 Number 47
I imagine Graves wrote the White Goddess to a young poet friend, and between them, as between lovers, every word had a heightened meaning.
Starting out as a poet? Find it, keep it close by...
To Her, To You
In the cities' world
I had no one to pray to,
No one to wish to,
For good luck and your answer yes
When I called on the telephone asking you to be with me awhile.
So, I found my own goddess of love,
Of the sun and the moon and the earth, everything,
And prayed to her, to you,
My eyes lowreerd
Offering the gift I had to give,
To her, to you.
DavidDavid
(I'm from California, and was there in '69)
Oh, the little guy on the book's cover inspired that poem..:)
quote
The White Goddess and The Nazarene Gospel Restored are curious: I wrote the first to define the non-Jewish element in Christianity, especially the Celtic. And I wrote the second, with the help of the late Joshua Podro, to drive the Greek and Roman element out of what was a purely Jewish event. The curious result was that a special Early Christian Society got founded at Cambridge, based on the Nazarene Gospel, and various White Goddess religions started in New York State and California. I'm today's hero of the love-and-flowers cult out in the Screwy State, so they tell me: where hippies stop policemen in the street and say, “I adore you, officer.” Also I get a number of letters from witches' covens, requesting flying ointment, magical recipes, and esoteric information.
Robert Graves, The Art of Poetry No. 11
Interviewed by Peter Buckman and William Fifield
Paris Review
Summer 1969 Number 47
I imagine Graves wrote the White Goddess to a young poet friend, and between them, as between lovers, every word had a heightened meaning.
Starting out as a poet? Find it, keep it close by...
To Her, To You
In the cities' world
I had no one to pray to,
No one to wish to,
For good luck and your answer yes
When I called on the telephone asking you to be with me awhile.
So, I found my own goddess of love,
Of the sun and the moon and the earth, everything,
And prayed to her, to you,
My eyes lowreerd
Offering the gift I had to give,
To her, to you.
DavidDavid
(I'm from California, and was there in '69)
Oh, the little guy on the book's cover inspired that poem..:)
http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Goddess-Historical-Classics/product-reviews/0374289336/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
Oh, and I misspelled 'lowered'...the entry text box for reviews is tiny...poem was from '66 , put to pen on paper in seventies sometime...some poems are like that...they are just there, whether you, or some ones, write them out or not!
Maya's napping on the porch...
DavidDavid
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