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Welcome
Welcome to Scrappapertiger, the online repository of writings by Sonya Hallett.
From here, you can either scroll down to read my latest entries or choose one of the following:
- Travelogues
- Essays
- Poetry
- Reviews & commentaries
- Other thoughts...
- Index of categories
To find my online artwork, please go to my deviantArt account at bonzaialsatian. ( Read more... ) -
Poetic influences
Poetry that creates a very specific sense of place through the all senses has always attracted me, especially if the poems also have a strong rhythmical and musical quality. Two poems that are particularly evocative in this respect are Dylan Thomas’ prologue to Under Milk Wood and Inversnaid by Gerard Manly Hopkins.
Under Milk Wood opens in a ( Read more... ) -
Sex, drugs and medieval rock'n'roll
[‘The Canterbury Tales consistently present natural energies escaping socially-constructed order.’ Substantiate, modify or refute this view.]
The common themes of love, lust, sex and jealousy in The Canterbury Tales certainly suggest a trend towards natural anarchy over social order, yet the idea of there being any true consistency within the tales ( Read more... ) -
Weekday
I was so deep in sleep
I barely remembered you leaving,
felt your heavy coat brushpast
my fingertips,
the soft creases of your hand,
something whispered
and the touch of your lips.
Then
waking,
I breathed in the silence
of an absent breath
as stillwarm I sink back
into pale light
and swirling lint. -
October
Cold-start morning in yellowleaf drowned
cycle through puddles crunched yellow and brown
ice-paled greengrass
sky breathing clouds
on hardblack road the wheels turn round
red-sprawled warning for ivyclimed walls
path-tree colonnades, waiting tall,
leaf broken sunlight
strikeout bark
stealaway sleeptight and dozebutton calls
handlebar fingers their feeling ( Read more... ) -
EST
Does the Distance draw us closer?
Now I watch your thoughts
flick light across the screen and
stretch my sleep
where once you lay beside me
for three hot nights.
Then summer and your flight
leaving; bareblank Departures
and I lost you in the crowd.
You were so Real
walking the Great Wall
all lean chest and private eyes.
Beihai Park and stone steps,
Stone ( Read more... ) -
August
heatdrunk cicadas and thunder
we left the damp window wide to
suck sleep and mosquitoes into the night
and blow in storm soaked air
You are barely awake
Warm breath through eyelashtips and morning bristle
Forgotten sheets at our feet
Sonya Hallett
September 2007
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From Satire to Sugary Romance - the building of A Room with a View
The most striking thing about A Room with a View is the way in which the novel shifts so dramatically in tone between Italy and England, to the extent that the beginning and end feel like two separate novels. Forster’s treatment of his characters shifts from bitter satire, to forgiveness and sympathy, to glowing romance. Whether we see this as ( Read more... ) -
Don't read philosophy on an empty stomach
[What lessons should we learn from what Parfit calls the non-reversibility objection?]
The non-reversibility objection draws attention to the limitations of Kant’s (first) formulation of the Categorical Imperative. Though seemingly unlimited in the way in which it is universally binding, ruling out maxims that cannot be universally accepted rather ( Read more... )
