The Wordsmith's Forge

The following poems from the May 5, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl are currently available. Poems may be sponsored via PayPal -- there's a permanent donation button on my Dreamwidth profile page -- or you can write to me and discuss other methods. There are still verses left in the linkback poems "A Sense of Weather Changes," "The Loving Embrace of Night," "Generations of Cooks Past," "Homefree and Clear, " "One Bite at a Time," "Mishpocha," "Changing Your Nature," and "Besa."


"The Hardest Thing in the World"
Story Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Summary: Tarnish goes to the Riverton Sobering Center rather than to a bar, but this time Roy is not there and Tarnish has to pick someone else to talk with.
395 lines, Buy It Now = $198

Tarnish trudged through the snow
toward the Riverton Sobering Center.

Today had gone to hell, again,
because that's how it went for him.


"Save All the Pieces"
Story Date: November 17, 2016
Summary: Stylet runs into a snag with his giant ground sloth project.
296 lines, Buy It Now = $148

Stylet had been getting
great results from his work
recreating giant ground sloths.


"To Love without Condition"
Story Date: Saturday, August 15, 2015
Summary: Jarom Brahmaputra meets a girl and reconsiders his soulmark.
106 lines, Buy It Now = $53

Peace House was hosting a fundraiser
for Raleigh Carpenter, whose stepfather
had quit paying for her college tuition.

Today is partly cloudy, humid, and hot.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/29/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 5/29/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 5/29/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

 

The Monty Hall Problem: Why Switching Doors Wins 2/3 of the Time

The host does not open a door uniformly at random. The host opens a door that he knows hides a goat, and he never opens the door you initially selected. These constraints are not incidental — they are the entire source of information in the problem. The host's action is not a random event that preserves symmetry between the remaining doors. It is a deliberate, knowledge-guided action that breaks that symmetry in a precise and quantifiable way.


I've heard the claim before, but this explanation of how it works is the best I've seen.

Today is partly sunny, humid, and hot.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/28/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

EDIT 5/28/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

Xenofiction tells a story from the perspective of a nonhuman character.  Some have humans only in the background; others have none at all.  Alien-only science fiction is a small branch of that genre, but animal fiction is a very large branch of children's and young adult literature.

Today we went up to Danville.

( Read more... )

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, June 2, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Fun with Language." I'll be soliciting ideas for linguists, translators, interpreters, historians, diplomats, refugees, explorers, partners, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who get into interesting linguistic situations, translating, interpreting, reading, researching, revising theories, conversing, traveling, inventing languages, parenting, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, asking for help and getting it, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, libraries, laboratories, meeting rooms, ruins, liminal zones, trading posts, port cities, schools, churches, supervillain lairs, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where languages mix, alphabets, pictograms and other symbols, lost languages, ancient tomes, mysterious texts, misnomers and mistranslations, recordings, the record that breaks the record player, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Bear Tunnels features numerous tribal languages.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy with occasional bits of Hebrew or Yiddish.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse spans a variety of languages, including a split before Before and After English.

Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, but they don't always appear in the same language.

Fiorenza the Wisewoman is Italian fantasy with bits of Italian.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, with languages including Dacian, English, French, Hungarian, Romanian, and Latin.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters, set in Sweden with occasional tidbits from other languages.

Not Quite Kansas includes demonic and angelic writing.

Peculiar Obligations features a mix of Quakers, pirates, and other people speaking diverse languages.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.  It spans a wide range of languages including Arabic, Dhivehi, English, Esperanto, French, and several tribal ones.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Prince William is Selling 20% of His Duchy Landholdings to Build Affordable Housing and Restore Nature

The Times reported that the offloading seems to be currently planned for Duchy property in Bath, Cornwall, Dartmoor, the Isles of Scilly, and Kennington in south London. Early estimates are that it could lead to 12,000 housing units by 2040, about one-third of which are expected to be affordable for the lowest income brackets.

Much of the estate’s lands are in rural areas, so money and attention will be devoted to reviving rural economies and communities, as well as developing environmental value in the form of carbon storage potential in peat bogs, woodland, and wetlands.


Daaaamn. I am impressed. Rich, powerful people rarely think about the poor let alone about displaced wildlife.

( Read more... )