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George Lang

@xerxesxerxes.bsky.social
140 followers 49 following 212 posts

Still kicking || Known to versify || Also on IG, X/Twit & Tumblr || Photo by A. Brault. alteritas.net

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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Proud to announce that Ezra / ezratranslation.com has accepted Rain on Pines / Gabriel’s D’Annunzio’s La pioggia nel pineto. Forthcoming in Spring 2027. alteritas.net/ #translation #poetrycommunity #d’annunzio
ezratranslation.com
Ezra | An Online Journal of Translation — since 2007
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
"That very afternoon I returned the violin to my mother’s safekeeping. It remained for years in the back of the hall closet. It was one of the first times in my life when I felt truly clean..." < Mickey Mouse Music. alteritas.net/GXL/?page_id...
alteritas.net
Mickey Mouse Music. My Violin.
The first instrument I played was violin, which I took up in the fourth grade at Park Place Elementary School in the industrial East End of Houston. It is hard to believe now, but our working class…
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
First in my series Played by Others. Like other musicians, even a dabbler like myself, I have a special loving relationship with pieces’ve played. < alteritas.net/GXL/?p=5681 Here is the Mertz Tarantella played by Haruka Lee: youtu.be/1A5mWs_319k?...
alteritas.net
Played by Others
Like all musicians, even a dabbler like myself, I have a special, loving relationship with the pieces I’ve played.  Just a few years before Covid I stopped practicing classical guitar. For ov…
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
To read a poem in translation is to pledge troth to a ghost, a wispy, intangible presence residing in another world you can never touch without crossing over to it. For St Jerome’s Feast Day 2026, I’m releasing Troths to Ghosts, a motley selection of translated poems. Links at alteritas.net.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Here's an interesting exercise for anyone with free time, and curiosity about AI and climate change. Put this question into various different AI bots, DeepSeek, Duck AI, even the notorious Grok: What do oceanographers think will happen to the Gulf Stream when the Arctic ice mass melts?
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The go-to blog for info on Wawa, aka Chinook Jargon. chinookjargon.com/2026/07/19/k...
chinookjargon.com
“Klahowya” from Cultus Bay
Today I’m on Whidbey Island, WA, on a research & writing trip.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Time again to tout Helene Garrett's translation of the Curaçoan poet Elis Juliana's Haiku in Papiamenu. i had nothing to so with it apart from having supervised the thesis it was part of.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Thanking the good folks at Blooomin' Onion for nominating "Shinny" for Best of the Net 2026: www.thebloominonion.com/distinguishe... Shinny is the concluding poem in a sequence of seven I've dedicated to the late Houston born, bred & based poet Michael Berryhill. alteritas.net/pastis/honey...
thebloominonion.com
Distinguished Work — The Bloomin' Onion
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Once I noticed it I can't unthink it. The predictive spelling function on my iPhone is a (very primitive) version of the LLM bots like Claude, Chat GPT and DeepSeek. Watch it and you'll see how it knows what you're going to say.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
They may well own the algorithm, but they do not control it. The algorithm controls them. #alogorithm #Algo
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
What better way to fete May Day than Pasolini's sublime elegy "Gramsci's Ashes"? alteritas.net/pastis/trans...
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
This is an excellent example of somatic poetry. It translates bodily experience directly into formal structure. It doesn't just describe freezing; simulates the necrological loop. The poem cannot escape Line 1, just as the PwP cannot escape the freeze. - DeepSeek
alteritas.net
DeepSeek on Freezing: Triolet for a PwP – Stories on Myself
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The best thing about dying slowly, which I consider myself so far lucky enough to be able to do, is that the flash of poignant moments from your past life you allegedly see when you die is spread out over a longer while. How long remains unknown to most of us. alteritas.net/alteritas/20...
alteritas.net
Memoria vitae bene actae iucundissima est – Stories on Myself
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Learned Profs of Lit, Beware! You too will be replaced. As stimulus I fed my poem "Calculating Machine: A Villanelle" into DeepSeek,the Chinese LLM bot. Within nanoseconds it spat out the # following stellar 9.5/10 response, alteritas.net/alteritas/20...
alteritas.net
Learned Profs of Lit Beware ! – Stories on Myself
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I fell into a paroxysm of words but managed to avoid the rhyme with 💩
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Although staunchly secular, as I explained in "Pascal's Conditional, Subjective Wager" I do try to engage with theological concepts: alteritas.net/GXL/?p=3799 Happy Easter, Palm Sunday for the Orthodox.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Would anyone believe I watched the coronation of Elizabeth live? We’d just gotten our first TV.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
My own Wawa is piddling but I admire this example of the revival of literature in Chinook Jargon, of which I wrote in Making Wawa (UBC Press, 2009). Putting Carney's speech into this historic vehicle of cultural reconciliation is a literary act par excellence. kaltashwawa.ca/2026/01/22/k...
kaltashwawa.ca
Kaltash Wawa Sp. Ed. – Davos
A translation of part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech into Chinook
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
The caption of this marvelous palindrome approximately reads : “If I can’t have the whole moon, then cancel the Artemis mission”. Use your own engine. I started with DeepL then gussied it up.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
A slight revision of my Topical Poem of last week. CALCULATING MACHINE, the new title, makes it at least in part about itself. * Isn’t war itself war crime? Do ends ever justify the means? … alteritas.net/pastis/calcu...
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I got lucky in the mom I got.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
My thanks to the editor, JP Relph, a specialist on post-apocalyptic worlds, for stepping in to read in my stead. Greetings as well to fellow members of the Trash Family: trashcatlit.com/trash-family...
trashcatlit.com
Trash Family Portrait Gallery
Our gallery of bin rogues – we asked them which animal (trash or otherwise) they most identify with and snook a look at their thrifting/collecting habits. Here’s what came up. JP Relph …
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
My thanks to the editor, JP Relph, a specialist on post-apocalyptic worlds, or stepping in to read. Greetings as well to fellow members of the Trash Family: trashcatlit.com/trash-family...
trashcatlit.com
Trash Family Portrait Gallery
Our gallery of bin rogues – we asked them which animal (trash or otherwise) they most identify with and snook a look at their thrifting/collecting habits. Here’s what came up. JP Relph …
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
trashcatlit.com/eggs/ I was lucky in the mother I got. So I am happy that my eulogy (“good words”) about her have been published as part of the Trash Cat Lit March Mini Bin of short fiction. My thanks to the editor, JP Relph, who also stepped in to read in my stead.
trashcatlit.com
Eggs
George Lang Listen to George’s story – read by JP Relph Mother taught me to fry an egg when I was fifteen. She was a terrible cook. She considered all forms of housework domestic burden…
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Characteristically, Michael Berryhill depicts Lee and Red Berryhill almost lovingly, melancholic while sharp-eyed. I have memories of his house, shared knowledge of what contemporary idiom would call his family trauma. From Everything Changes (2010), a collection of Fourteeners.
From Everything Changes by Michael Berryhill (2010). A collection of Fourteeners.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Michael Berryhill, a Houston born and based poet, passed recently in hospice. Here is Honeysuckle Taint, the initial poem from Backyard Suite, my memorial to the Edenic source of our shared vocation. * Big trees grew smaller, small ones big. I could reach … alteritas.net/pastis/honey...
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
No comment necessary. bsky.app/profile/edwa....
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Reposted by George Lang
Paul Deane @rhunedhel.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
If you want a feel for how a poem full of kennings works, this poem is a pretty good example (explanations included!) alliteration.net/poetry/lament-for-vinlands-sailor/
alliteration.net
Lament for Vinland's Sailor, a poem in alliterative verse by Marcus Lindenburg
Kiss me now, kill me later; / I left you on that dead dock. / With my heart heavy then, / And you in wicked wind ...
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
"i saw the monkey fooling around in the anomalous ogival network."
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
As I age I find myself inclined to conservative positions, though not at all attracted to the GOP, and repelled by MAGA. All the more reason to follow www.dropsitenews.com. One thing I know I don’t want to conserve is willful ignorance of uncomfortable, unpleasant, awful, even horrific fact.
dropsitenews.com
Drop Site News | Substack
Independent news on politics and war. Click to read Drop Site News, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
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Reposted by George Lang
News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Rubio: “Let me tell you, Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics.”
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
“On this planet, the fog of war starts in Trump’s mind.”
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
With Richard Haly and Doña Lupe, his informant on curandera invocations. First stop on our trip to Oaxaca. Ash Wedneday, 1984. * It took a friend, a poet, to invent this motley trek, two gringos and a Nahua setting out the first of Lent. [from Isla Mujeres, a poem in progress]
Photo of two gringos with a Nahua informant, Doña Lupe.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Happy to report that I just had two poems published in Bloomin’ Onion, a journal of many layers. www.thebloominonion.com/featured-poe...
thebloominonion.com
Featured Poem #1 — The Bloomin' Onion
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
“Brigid, Brigid!” What we are supposed to exclaim if we spot a flower on #StBrigidsDay (one day before Groundhog Day)
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
A reasonably objective piece on Kermit Lynch. Full disclosure: I worked for Kermit 1980-1985. www.themanual.com/food-and-dri...
themanual.com
From Jura to Sardinia: What Kermit Lynch taught us about wine
Kermit Lynch reshaped the U.S. wine scene by introducing overlooked regions, low-intervention wines, and new wine styles. Here's how his work expanded our palates — and still does.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
We can’t imagine heat when cold nor feel the anxiety of youth when old. #aphorism #juvenoia (cf wiki)
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
How do poems get us, like this one did me, to the point I put it over into English? Here it was the lines translated as: … the overgrown / ditches where boys fish stray eels / ….. They recalled a poem of my own from my bayou-centric boyhood in Houston. Read on: alteritas.net/pastis/monta...
alteritas.net
Montale’s Lemon Trees – Pastis @ Bandol
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Not surprising but nonetheless revealing results. www.lingoblog.dk/en/linguisti...
lingoblog.dk
Linguistic identity in times of crisis: The roles of the Ukrainian and Russian languages in the lives of Ukrainian war refugees | Lingoblog
In Ukraine, being a bilingual who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian is such a ‘normal’ thing that many people hesitate to even call themselves bilinguals. As
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
www.standwithminnesota.com
standwithminnesota.com
Stand With Minnesota
A directory of places to give to as Minnesota defends itself from ICE occupation
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Machado gives her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump. Lameculos ¿acaso luce mal? = “Kiss-ass, does it look bad?” #Palindrome
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Reposted by George Lang
The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 10/01/2026
Alberta organizes banned book buyback to keep streets safe
thebeaverton.com
Alberta organizes banned book buyback to keep streets safe
Critics have argued that, while the buyback may get some books off the streets, serious readers could simply swap covers, file off ISBN numbers, or even 2D print books at home.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
substack.com/@hannahlevy/...
substack.com
Hannah Levy (@hannahlevy)
in honor of Renee Nicole Good, a poet and a mother 🤍
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
I won’t gush on about how satisfying I find palindromes to be…. bsky.app/profile/anth...
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Reposted by George Lang
Boris Dralyuk @bdralyuk.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
“1939 is gone— and good riddance… Moving on… Oh, it left a bitter sting. What will 1940 bring? War, a raging hurricane… The whole world has gone insane…” In an era much like ours, Alexander Voloshin remembers a happier New Year’s Eve: bdralyuk.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/b...
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
www.thebeaverton.com/2025/12/cana...
thebeaverton.com
Canadian economy rallies as #1 export now Heated Rivalry
OTTAWA - Canada's economy, which has spent the year reeling due to American tariffs, is finishing the year strong thanks to the country's new chief export, the gay hockey-romance drama Heated Rivalry.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
F among the Consonants To the pewter tines of you as cap I prefer your curves in small case longhand, gathered and cinched at the crux of your lap then unknotted at your command. *** Another in my series #MerciRimbaud pour ces quelques consonnes.
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George Lang @xerxesxerxes.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Para alguém como eu, que é apenas ligeiramente disléxico, isto é um verdadeiro desafio. Parabéns ! 🙏🏼
media.tenor.com
a group of people in tuxedos are clapping their hands .
ALT: a group of people in tuxedos are clapping their hands .
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