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Thai poetry

Thai literature consists out of two categories; poetry and essay. There are several different types of Thai poetry such as Raay, Khloong, Chan, Kaap and Klon. Each poetry type has its own style of distinctive rhythm.

Raay: Raay usually consists of five-syllable group of sentence, linked together by rhyme between the last syllable of a sentence and one of the first three in the next. A series of any number of sentence completes a single stanza. One of the oldest Thai verse forms, raay is often used for laws and chronicles. When raay alternates with khloong the form is known as lilit. In lilit compositions, the raay passages frequently describe action while the khloong passages consist of dialogues or provide commentary. Judging from the similarities in syllable number and tone placement in raay and khloong, it appears that raay may have been the forerunner of the khloong verse forms.

Kloon: Kloon was claimed by many scholars that it is a true Thai form but it has a certain similarities to Chinese verse. Kloon usually has four to eight syllables per line. Kloon form consists of a series of three phrases of two or three syllables each. These phrases can be phonological or syntactic.

Kaap: It is a set of poetry which contains fixed number of syllables (depends on forms of kaap) and rhythm. Its way to create rhythm is similar to Chaan but does not consist of light and heavy syllables to make tone like Chaan. The most common types of Kaap are; yaanii with eleven syllables per line, cha-bang with sixteen syllables, and suraangkhanaang with twenty-eight syllables.

Chan: The chan is a form of poetry which distinctively consists of syllables defined as light (lahu) and heavy (kharu) and arranged in invariable number and sequences.

The classic Thai dancer often appears in Thai poems.

Khloong: The khloong is the oldest form of poetry and a highly intellectual form poetry used only by the sophisticated and educated classes because of its elaborate tonal and rhyming constrains. It has been developed from the nature of the Thai language which contains various intonation. In the early day, Thai had only 3 contrasting tones appeared on syllables ending in a vowel, a semivowel, and a nasal. Nowadays, it splits into 5 tones. Kloong consists of 3 tones which were designated by many western scholars as A, B, and C. Tone A is neutral tone, while tone B and C are low and high tone. The 3 tones of syllables must be placed to create a special rhythm which is the uniqueness of this form of poetry.

Thai poetry

In Andernach, Germany in the year 1920, on the 16th of August Charles Bukowski was born. He was the only kid of a US soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he moved with his family to the USA and grew up in the city of Los Angeles. From 1939 to 1941 Charles attended the Los Angeles City College, then he decided to finish school and went to New York City try to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.

Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His writing often featured a depraved metropolitan environment, downtrodden members of American society, direct language, violence, and sexual imagery, and many of his works center around a roughly autobiographical figure named Henry Chinaski. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including Pulp (Black Sparrow, 1994), Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992). He died of leukemia in San Pedro on March 9, 1994.

The movie Barfly, which was directed by Barbet Schroeder was largely based on certain parts of Bukowski’s life. Mickey Rourke plays the role of Henry Chinaski and Charles was often at the set to give Rourke advice about how he should act. Faye Dunaway plays Chinaski’s alcoholic girlfriend. Both actors performed very well and this movie deserved much more attention than it did get at the time it was released.

Rourke as Henry Chinaski in Barfly

This website provides much more information about the controversial writer, Charles Bukowski. 

It has been labeled as mind altering, and even been the blame of murder back in 1905. It’s a strong liquor and some even label it as a dangerous drug. It’s called Absinthe, the Green Fairy.

Absinthe started out as a medicinal tonic invented by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire to administer to his patients. The concoction was made by distilling alcohol similar to moonshine in a plethora of herbs. Some of the herbs commonly used were anise, fennel, Angelica, Hyssop, Licorice, and peppermint, but the most notorious of them all was the grand wormwood. Wormwood was the herb that caused Absinthe it’s biggest controversy due to the thujone content. Thujone is a terpene found in wormwood and is blamed for absinthe’s secondary effects, which were hallucinations, convulsions and madness. All unfounded might I add.

Absinthe has a very sordid history due to the prohibitionists of France during the 1800’s. It also has a huge presence in art over the years. Many of the artists, poets and writers living or visiting Paris and living in London in the late 1800’s were absinthe drinkers. With a over 21,000,000 liters annual consumption, absinthe was a very popular drink among the aristocrats down to the poorest working man.

Absinthe was the subject of many art works by very famous artists over the years, but not always correlating to their personal consumption. Jean Francois Rafaelli was a heavy drinker of absinthe, and was used as a theme in many of his paintings. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was also a heavy drinker of absinthe but devoted very few of his works to the Green Goddess.

Some people claimed that Absinthe Liquor was an aphrodisiac, Ernest Christopher Dowson claimed in his writings that “Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder”. To some artists of the period, hallucinations caused by the Green Fairy claimed to be mind stimulating and essential to produce the works of art they created.

Two of the most famous paintings with Absinthe Alcohol being the subject matter is “At the cafe by Paul Gauguin and “The Absinthe Drinker” by Pablo Picasso. Both of the paintings were similar and featured a blue seltzer water siphon near glasses of absinthe.

Other notable artists associated with Absinthe liquor: Ernest Hemingway was probably one of the most recent artists who partook of Absinthe Green Fairy. Hemingway drank absinthe way after it was banned in most parts of the world. Some works he did that mentioned of Absinthe was Death In The Afternoon and For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Arthur Rimbaud was a poet arriving in Paris at the young age of sixteen, he fell in love with Paul Verlaine and the two would drink absinthe together and play cruel games with each other. After a falling out with Verlaine he joined the Dutch army and became a gun runner. Although he gave up poetry early he still became known as one of France’s greatest poets.

Alfred Jarry was famous for his scandalous play Ubu Roi. He was known to drink absinthe straight and was very eccentric. He is most famous for creating the monstrous character Pere Ubu, a grotesquerie who drove audiences to anger. Jarry admitted using absinthe to fuse together the story.

Not all Victorian artists were fans of absinthe. Novelist Marie Corelli was so concerned about the growing number of absinthe drinkers in England and Europe that she wrote a novel on the subject entitled Wormwood, published in 1890. The main character, Gaston Beauvois, is addicted to absinthe, and frequently refers to the drink as the “fairy with the green eyes.” He states, “Let me be mad . . . mad with the madness of absinthe, the wildest most luxurious madness in the world.”

Banned at the beginning of the 20th century in the West, absinthe is once again available in many European countries as well as Great Britain, Canada and even Israel. Some are attracted to it by its threat of danger but more seem to find it appealing because of its association with the bohemians of the early to mid 20th century, and still others find romance in it because Manet, Degas, Picasso all painted pictures of people sipping it. Celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Eminem and Marilyn Manson praise it and only further the interest in the Absinthe drink.

Giles Turnbull, a freelance writer’s website.

Thousands of bloggers coming from 45 countries, all join a cyber protest against the cruel Burmese junta by placing a

 ’Free Burma’ banner on their blogs.  

Various sources reported that at least 200 citizens and monks were killed and thousands of people have been arrested.

The country’s fascist rulers already have cut off the internet as they do not want the world to know what’s really going on in Burma.

The internet protest was a German idea and by now has spread out to countries such as the US, Brazil, Russia, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Indonesia and China. The text of the anti-junta cyber protest appeared already in eight languages on the net. You also can join and place the banner below on your blog. Visit the Free Burma website for more info.