aaron boothby
LightNews LightNews
banner
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
aaron boothby
@ellipticalnight.bsky.social
2K followers 670 following 12K posts
mostly poet, preferably tree or rock

https://linktr.ee/aaronboothby
Posts Replies Media Videos
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
it's pretty tonight though, and quiet out
snow covering streets and cars at a residential intersection facing a small park. bare tree branches are coated in snow under street lights at night. yellow leaves and dark branches of a tree framed by limbs coated in heavy snow at night next to an apartment building
November 11, 2025 at 3:34 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
"The more I think about it, the more it amazes me how little the people involved in this economy knew about the regions from where their goods came. Even as coral was traded over great distances, no one person along its route would have been able to trace its complete trajectory on a map."
ideology that turned these human beings into property. Looking at these materials, the coral and the bronze, prompts me to see the history from a different perspective. I have long been fascinated with how the objects in the Romantic archive have travelled through time, from the Romantics to me. When I take up Shelley's baby rattle, I imagine the poet as a chubby baby chewing on its red coral handle. It is a physical connection across time. The same holds true of the commodities that were exchanged for humans. They are physical links between people who had almost no knowledge of one another: the Southern European coral fisher in his corallina; the English slave merchant who arranged for the coral to be shipped to Africa; his African counterpart who bought the coral and resold it to a local jeweller, who may have crafted it into a necklace that might have been purchased as tribute to their ruler. The coral passed through all their hands, but they would have known next to nothing of each other: not where they lived, the languages they spoke, the gods they believed in nor the foods that they ate. The more I think about it, the more it amazes me how little the people involved in this economy knew about the regions from where their goods came. Even as coral was traded over great distances, no one person along its route would have been able to trace its complete trajectory on a map.
October 30, 2025 at 5:58 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
here is a snoozing sweetie for you
a mostly white toasted marshmallow calico cat with her sweet paw in front of her little nose on a salmon pink cushion in a sun spot
October 27, 2025 at 5:15 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
the one maple is next door and the elm out front changed at the same time so on occasion today the apartment filled with glowing light
a maple tree with leaves fully changed to yellows and golds in late afternoon sun a maple tree with leaves fully changed to yellow and gold in late afternoon sun against blue sky
October 24, 2025 at 9:21 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
maybe risking a little more light, yeah
mostly maple trees in midst of colour change with some leaves still green with others yellow and red on a residential street lined with brick houses mostly maple trees in midst of colour change with some leaves still green with others yellow and red on a residential street lined with brick houses large silver maple trees in a park from across a street glowing yellow against partially cloudy afternoon sky a maple tree turned completely yellow glowing radiantly in late afternoon sun
October 24, 2025 at 9:17 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
literature is art, books are objects for sweetie sits
a sweetie face mostly white calico cat in a perfect perch on a stack of books on a small table with a blue cloth. behind her is a red bookshelf with many books.
October 16, 2025 at 3:54 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
"They spread the notion that these frequent insurrections, far from testifying to the unbearable cruelty of slavery, pointed to the innate violence of Black people, a violence that demanded constant vigilance to be kept in check."

Mathelinda Nabugodi, The Trembling Hand
historian Douglas Hamilton notes, in virtually every major rising across the anglophone Caribbean in the so-called Age of Abolition, the Royal Navy was instrumental in protecting and maintaining the colonial elite. Parliamentarians without West India connections grew increasingly resentful of the resources needed to protect the planters from Black insurgency. In response, the pro-slavery lobby ramped up their rhetoric. They spread the notion that these frequent insurrections, far from testifying to the unbearable cruelty of slavery, pointed to the innate violence of Black people, a violence that demanded constant vigilance to be kept in check. Furthermore, they accused abolitionists of inciting such violence with their demands for emancipation. As if it would be a handful of white saviour petitions and pamphlets, and not the gruesome conditions on plantations, that incited rebellion! When Wordsworth cautioned Clarkson that his petitions would excite disturbance among the enslaved, he was directly repeating the pro-slavery arguments of the time. This was a position he would hold on to for the rest of his life.
October 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
"I have no desire to immerse myself in these dehumanizing logics. And why should I? Most Romanticists, even those who have published entire books on Coleridge, have quietly turned away from his racist little pyramid."

Mathelinda Nabugodi, The Trembling Hand
This is what I do not want to talk about. Talking about it means that I first need to understand it, and that involves a deep dive into areas of scientific inquiry known as comparative anatomy and comparative physiology. In the Romantic period, these disciplines were dominated by various attempts to construe taxonomies of racial difference. Their proponents presented competing theories about the number of human races, whether they were separate species or varieties of one species, how the differences between races had arisen, what their defining characteristics were, and what their future development might be. All the finer details were up for discussion, yet all agreed that the world's races formed a hierarchy in which white Europeans came out on top and Black Africans at the bottom. I have no desire to immerse myself in these dehumanizing logics. And why should I? Most Romanticists, even those who have published entire books on Coleridge, have quietly turned away from his racist little pyramid. Clearly, they have had little interest in exploring how one of the greatest poets in the English language, whose poetry is full of nuance and psychological depth, came to believe this bullshit, so why do I have to? Nina Simone sucks her teeth. That's not good enough. I wriggle under her disapproval; there is no escaping the knowledge I do not want to know. She shakes her head. I take a deep breath. I am dreading what lies ahead. Nina Simone touches my forehead. An assurance that we will make it through.
October 6, 2025 at 12:49 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
une placette
wood benches and tables in a cute little patio structure with built-in planters filled with leafy and flowering planta in a public park
October 3, 2025 at 10:42 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
on the drying grass in the park under falling leaves with Pattern-book by @eireannmor.bsky.social
SONNET FOR THE SECOND- LANGUAGE SPEAKER What is a word? — Depends on who you ask. For instance, in the rigid Flemish taal, so many things that feel like words don't pass, and my sprung language doesn't work at all. My sentences are yet another place where stringent rule-embracers don't agree: to me, an error shows the second face of grammar. The mistakes are what I mean. The thing I value most in any line— drawn, made, wrote, thought, in fantasy or fact— is flexibility: that, like a spine, the art supports the mind by which it's maked. What use is language flattened, dried in books? Our language lives most when it is mistook.
October 3, 2025 at 7:30 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
I picked up Babel for fun to see what the kids were on about and the whole thing has been like oh, oh it's that kind of good, okay
Robin couldn't see Letty's face in the darkness, but he could hear her breathing growing shallower. He wondered if she was about to cry again. 'There are no kind masters, Letty,' Anthony continued. It doesn't matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.' 'But you don't really believe that about Babel, Letty whispered. Do you? It's just not the same - they weren't enslaving you - I mean, Christ, you had a fellowship— 'Do you know what Equiano's master told him when he was manu-mitted?' Anthony asked mildly. 'He told him that in a short time, hed have slaves of his own.'
September 25, 2025 at 10:44 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
"I persisted with the dead racists in an attempt to gather traces of Black people, real and imagined...I set out to retrieve their stories as an act of historical recovery, though more often than not they have become the guardian spirits who rescue me."

Mathelinda Nabugodi, The Trembling Hand
Sankofa is a Twi word that can be translated as 'go back and get it' an invitation to return for that which has been forgotten, an acknowl edgement that we need to learn from the past as we go forward into the future. The concept of Sankofa has travelled with the diaspora, and is sometimes evoked by the descendants of people displaced by the transatlantic trade in enslaved persons when they wish to recall their origins. It also helps me make sense of my work in the archive. Looking at records of chattel slavery and related racist vitriol is over-whelming; a day at the library can leave me in despair, wondering why I choose to do this to myself. I could study anything - images of ponds in Wordsworth's late poetry, Shelley's vegetable diet, Keats's hot flushes, or I could leave Romanticism altogether and become a scholar of Black feminist speculative fiction that imagines a liberated future - but instead I am reading some long-dead racist's theories about African women having sex with baboons. Then I think of Sankofa. There is something I need to go back and get out of this archive - or rather, someone. I persisted with the dead racists in an attempt to gather the traces of Black people, real and imagined, who inadvertently survive in their writings. I set out to retrieve their stories as an act of historical recovery, though more often than not they have become the guardian spirits who rescue me.
September 22, 2025 at 12:19 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
"The rainy / night, like Debussy." is a perfect break in a perfect line, to me

Éireann Lorsung, from Pattern-book
SIMILE How does a simile work? -Place something next to something and say, here. (The here is where the somethings touch.) The rainy night, like Debussy. There on the shelf, a piece of grapevine in a blue vase. The world is so much like itself it can be hard to see. Tomorrow I will try again to understand: what is a simile? All night, all day: the rain comes in vertical lines, then horizontal lines, like a drawing made on the world I can perceive. How does the simile do whatever it is it does to us? The world is touching the world itself and touching me. My hand, this pencil making all these marks. A drawing of the world that is the world, that I can make. That's making me.
September 21, 2025 at 9:24 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
favourite neighbourhood smoke tree in late summer afternoon light
a smoke tree in late summer lit by afternoon sun glowing resplendently between green leaves a smoke tree in late summer lit by afternoon sun glowing resplendently between green leaves
September 19, 2025 at 1:17 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
I arranged the squashes for investigation and this is where she put herself
a yellow and green stripetti squash a dark green acorn squash and a dark green buttercup squash on a pale wood polished floor surrounding a medium mostly white calico toasted marshmallow sweetie cat looking up
September 18, 2025 at 10:02 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
things that impress me include storing millions of years of adaptation and knowledge for how to survive drought, fire, climate changes, storms, insects and whatever else in tiny seeds capable of growing into trees that live thousands of years
fluffy deep green small giant sequoia trees in a sea of lighter green ferns beneath towering mature giant sequoias with red bark and dark green foliage
September 12, 2025 at 1:25 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
looking down the marble fork of the kaweah river
bare tree branches and evergreen bushes framing mountains with a deep canyon and many sequential ridges extending into the distance as the sun sets behind low clouds
September 11, 2025 at 5:22 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
friend
a really big giant sequoia tree in a forest of other giant trees with some small trees in front
September 11, 2025 at 3:34 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
the stars
streaks and swirls of deep pink and orange clouds lit by first light against still dark sky appearing almost celestial while still being of this earth
September 10, 2025 at 3:48 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
this also somehow happened
sillhoutted mountain peaks before dawn again swirls of clouds turning pink in first light
September 10, 2025 at 3:45 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
communing again
broken blocks of granite roughly the size of office buildings in a small valley of smaller broken rocks with sparse pine trees above a small pine tree growing out of a crack in a huge granite slab, improbably but persistently
September 10, 2025 at 3:32 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
mornin'
jumbled rounded rocks in shadow then granite hills then sharp white granite peaks of mountains in bands of morning light and shadow under a blue sky and moon jumbled rocks in shadow leading to tall sharp mountain peaks just turning pink in morning light under a moon
September 9, 2025 at 2:20 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
I'm enjoying Babel anyway but the way Kuang succinctly drops facts into the notes is fun, imagining all the young Austen fans arriving here and getting a little reality check
He enjoyed novels more than anything else. Dickens's serials were well and fun, but what a pleasure it was to hold the weight of an entire, finished story in his hands. He read any genre he could get his hands on. He enjoyed all of Jane Austen's oeuvre, though it took much consulting with Mrs Piper to understand the social conventions Austen described. (Where was Antigua? And why was Sir Thomas Bertram always going there?*) He devoured the travel literature of Thomas Hope and James Morier, through whom he met the Greeks and the Persians, * Because he owned slaves.
September 5, 2025 at 12:31 AM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
southwest desert monsoon season from somewhere over western arizona
white clouds in many forms over the desert seen from above. one distinct thunderstorm cell rises to the level of the shot, flattened out at the top
September 4, 2025 at 4:09 PM
ellipticalnight.bsky.social
maybe some plumeria for your morning
white and pink plumeria flowers with their long green leaves that smell delicately perfect in the warm morning air
September 4, 2025 at 4:05 PM