tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28839798411111736102024-03-14T11:02:25.563-04:00Banjo52Conversation. Especially literature and language, education, football and baseball, movies, history, then and now, birds, two-lane roads.
"Banjo" is a fun word, and the instrument can make fine music. But this isn't really a blog about banjos, except in the metaphorical sense of interesting sounds riding across a valley from one porch to another. Click on any photo to enlarge. Students, remember to footnote. All text and photos:
© 2009-2014 Banjo52Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.comBlogger535125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-49135871321537785662014-08-18T16:12:00.001-04:002014-08-23T13:08:38.743-04:00Predatory Thanatosis and Shakespeare's Falstaff<style>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBwqOg53w36KGXbJbp_gbpOqvt3DHc4msIzv3bNGXhMzdDwoVY4L3bmWQ-x1ztsfgX_d0xBtcJqzuPZro6smDIuBQ8Yj8VaEr2vPyos6g3VBFcecD3vshRyk_aPsQUTyrqS1qT31wcmsUA/s1600/IMG_6824.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBwqOg53w36KGXbJbp_gbpOqvt3DHc4msIzv3bNGXhMzdDwoVY4L3bmWQ-x1ztsfgX_d0xBtcJqzuPZro6smDIuBQ8Yj8VaEr2vPyos6g3VBFcecD3vshRyk_aPsQUTyrqS1qT31wcmsUA/s1600/IMG_6824.JPG" height="400" width="305" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Camouflage: Yellow Warbler</td></tr>
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At Butlers Birds on 8/14/14 [<a href="http://butlersbirdsandthings.blogspot.com/">http://butlersbirdsandthings.blogspot.com</a>], the blogger mentions
the Eastern Pee Wee and the House Finch in connection with “predatory
thanatosis,” a wonderful academic phrase that means mimicking death--yes, playing
possum, or playing dead like Falstaff--Shakespeare's comic, pragmatic, lovable, execrable, drunken, cowardly, obese knight, Sir John Falstaff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> (see below).</span></div>
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I wondered about a bird's reasons for pretending death. It's usually for safety--creating lack of interest from a predator. But some think it's possible that a bird might be trying to trick a predator or a prey into coming close enough for a surprise counterattack by the supposedly injured or dead "possum bird."And if birds don't do it, other animals do. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PYfsoAkvOs2MAu17RZVzkge36y6a3qKv9MOfydaKGvHX0bks5ebz5sTVsN91zuMArU2DiKSAicPZZUY4ViCTDyhRn_O8viF9-5omCBP5iSTXroA3impKSsH9zp7PEzwfmcFfIgesGnTP/s1600/IMG_2026.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PYfsoAkvOs2MAu17RZVzkge36y6a3qKv9MOfydaKGvHX0bks5ebz5sTVsN91zuMArU2DiKSAicPZZUY4ViCTDyhRn_O8viF9-5omCBP5iSTXroA3impKSsH9zp7PEzwfmcFfIgesGnTP/s1600/IMG_2026.jpg" height="274" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eastern Wood-Peewee or Eastern Phoebe ??</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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I looked at a couple of additional sources on Wikipedia and
found that some male spiders fake death in order to improve their chances for
survival after mating with a female.The males usually die after mating, and sometimes the female eats her suitor. </div>
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So how could I fail to think of poor old Edward Lee and
Sadie Bell in my last post (8/13/14). Here it is again, with the news above
from the animal kingdom added for a bit of context. You’ll be forgiven if you find
yourself humming “Frankie and Johnny” as you read—“Rat a tat tat, three times
she shot, right through that hardwood door. He was her man, but he was doin’
her wrong.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicnQOX6cj7OK3_f6b7q5RAA5_J9x0vF6zBKchBQv025sPcvBjUqt4w8fhEod3kNeAU4bKCefbiVAfmc9RldgXFid9CvGP4WeaTHq13mF5nnZyRjdAV213OhwPdb_dcI0124LTIJTCJBLm/s1600/IMG_6834.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicnQOX6cj7OK3_f6b7q5RAA5_J9x0vF6zBKchBQv025sPcvBjUqt4w8fhEod3kNeAU4bKCefbiVAfmc9RldgXFid9CvGP4WeaTHq13mF5nnZyRjdAV213OhwPdb_dcI0124LTIJTCJBLm/s1600/IMG_6834.JPG" height="320" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Female Baltimore Oriole? Trying to be Subtle?</td></tr>
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I hope you'll look at Wikipedia's fascinating info on predatory thanatosis, even at the risk of finding your imaginative self picturing these
bird, snake, fish, spider, and human maneuvers in 3D Technicolor. </div>
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Once again from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Oakland Press, </i>Pontiac, Michigan, July 26, 2014: </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bond revoked for
Southfield woman convicted of shooting boyfriend over sexual performance.</b> </div>
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Sadie Bell, 58 . . . shot her longtime lover, Edward Lee, after he
produced what she believed to be an inadequate amount of ejaculate during a
sexual encounter. </div>
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She accused Lee of cheating on her. </div>
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Bell and Lee had been having an affair for 15 years . . . .</div>
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I don't know if Falstaff can be appreciated<br />
outside the plays themselves (both parts of <i>Henry IV, </i>plus<br />
<i>Henry V), </i>but his self-serving<i>, </i>devious<br />
humor can be seen here, as can the high stakes underlying the banter between him and Prince Hal, who has become King Henry V:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li class="playtext"><b><a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=henry5&WorkID=henry4p1">Henry V</a>. </b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1445"></a>That villanous abominable misleader of youth,
<span class="playlinenum">1445</span><br />Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li class="playtext"><b><a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=falstaff&WorkID=henry4p1">Falstaff</a>. </b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1447"></a>My lord, the man I know.
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li class="playtext"><b><a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=henry5&WorkID=henry4p1">Henry V</a>. </b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1448"></a>I know thou dost.
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li class="playtext"><b><span style="background-color: #eeaaaa; border: thin solid #000000;"><a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=falstaff&WorkID=henry4p1">Falstaff</a></span>. </b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1449"></a>But to say I know more harm in him than in myself,
<br />were to say more than I know. That he is old, the
<span class="playlinenum">1450</span><br />more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but
<br />that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster,
<br />that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
<br />God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
<br />sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
<span class="playlinenum">1455</span><br />to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine
<br />are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,
<br />banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
<br />Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
<br />valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,
<span class="playlinenum">1460</span><br />being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
<br />thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's
<br />company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li class="playtext"><b><a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=henry5&WorkID=henry4p1">Henry V</a>. </b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1464"></a>I do, I will. </li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEEvFsTpaOilydrVibGg1c2dlPM7JNOdFtDBh1APAYNeAmV7OyFyeMBY1pwoJQRU0xx71T11Ls-RhjgHUvQmbkZBlPXaXqZTyVgGYt3ukxdKWPtGMmjG_cnbl9gK-Zp7tEPDW8DrLkuWG/s1600/IMG_0325.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEEvFsTpaOilydrVibGg1c2dlPM7JNOdFtDBh1APAYNeAmV7OyFyeMBY1pwoJQRU0xx71T11Ls-RhjgHUvQmbkZBlPXaXqZTyVgGYt3ukxdKWPtGMmjG_cnbl9gK-Zp7tEPDW8DrLkuWG/s1600/IMG_0325.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See the gator snout just above the lily pads? Good time for the immature ibis to play dead</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-83107390030397299902014-08-13T23:13:00.001-04:002014-08-16T17:11:01.921-04:00Kay Ryan's "Surfaces" and Crime in Southeast Michigan<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CRcxjg7-6Os6zbXtsSOuBwLaDqIj60vuafiI1miFgxWA5n-udTf1-lG5wdizn-L2qwKSzfHrZlbFyrzcETB55d3XLLc3cB89V33TDewfj3FGRSBaj0KAUKow8Pkt2CfxSc9XXYSEVMtj/s1600/IMG_2714.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CRcxjg7-6Os6zbXtsSOuBwLaDqIj60vuafiI1miFgxWA5n-udTf1-lG5wdizn-L2qwKSzfHrZlbFyrzcETB55d3XLLc3cB89V33TDewfj3FGRSBaj0KAUKow8Pkt2CfxSc9XXYSEVMtj/s1600/IMG_2714.JPG" height="155" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Key West, Florida</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsi0GLspNfTi7I8SFZOHg7mz4lV5nhPW_3o91F92q4L27LuOMVFFwfUzAQdX7w5eqONMg6xkqSVTeV2nH2BbY4y6kxL4yjfS4_FCcDXu32vb7U1ceVAl-DVVCF3McQ-akwdpsrQ8ZbtZEa/s1600/IMG_1749.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsi0GLspNfTi7I8SFZOHg7mz4lV5nhPW_3o91F92q4L27LuOMVFFwfUzAQdX7w5eqONMg6xkqSVTeV2nH2BbY4y6kxL4yjfS4_FCcDXu32vb7U1ceVAl-DVVCF3McQ-akwdpsrQ8ZbtZEa/s1600/IMG_1749.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wooster, Ohio</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177126#.U-vDO1Rseho.blogger">Surfaces by Kay Ryan : The Poetry Foundation</a><br />
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Once again I like a Kay Ryan poem, “Surfaces.” The succinctness,
subtlety of imagery, and the surprising yet reasonable associations of
thought and sound are vintage Kay Ryan, a recent U.S. poet laureate.<br />
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Can you offer, from your own experience
or meditation, an example of a discrepancy, or merely an intriguing relationship, between a surface and what’s within or
beneath it?<br />
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I think Kay Ryan's “Surfaces” has something to do with the headlines
and notes below, which come from a single issue (July 26, 2014) of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Oakland Press</i> of Pontiac, Michigan.
But maybe I’m forcing the comparison. If so, will you tell me? </div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Metamora Township:
Dogs that killed man [jogging] involved in past attack, says Oxford woman.</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>In
May 2012, there was a report of a dog bite where the animal returned to the
same property . . . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in
November 2013, a man was taken to a hospital after being bitten by a dog that
returned to the address.
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Murdered Armada teen
identified: Police seek clues to death of April Milsap,<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>14, who was walking her dog on a recreational trail near Armada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sheriff: Man stabbed
in back by girlfriend [33-year-old Pontiac woman], causing a collapsed lung.</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriRprLoQNSvYLOyMa2uWafRDhY0jG0hQKLufvNXpDW-PyCmJl_oVCRluwV_G3NsGcKmXPpqEhBHhOr2pC8Ok1eaiyFvLEISN7HmsO5B_-Fs-1NKST2_mErgeXyPUg6vcbSUjfnr3w79DN/s1600/IMG_1788.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriRprLoQNSvYLOyMa2uWafRDhY0jG0hQKLufvNXpDW-PyCmJl_oVCRluwV_G3NsGcKmXPpqEhBHhOr2pC8Ok1eaiyFvLEISN7HmsO5B_-Fs-1NKST2_mErgeXyPUg6vcbSUjfnr3w79DN/s1600/IMG_1788.jpg" height="320" width="265" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">[Pontiac] Man stable
after being shot three times. </b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">No injuries reported
in [Pontiac] apartment shooting.</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bond revoked for
Southfield woman convicted of shooting boyfriend over <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>sexual
performance.</b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sadie
Bell, 58 . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shot her longtime
lover, Edward Lee, after he produced what she believed to be an inadequate
amount of ejaculate during a sexual encounter. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
accused Lee of cheating on her. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bell
and Lee had been having an affair for 15 years . . . .<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5xPt9qaDOerVuXGcm3jK7sgXouVE40AlQW-eZRKIgD12zWLWhCuWhOJ81UwmVvdLPyCe8Vp6tR1C193VKQiOSScCWLegFCiXBO8x-q9vZ9I8iYE_OaAopTIs7TLBnnvG0IY3xNXvohnE9/s1600/IMG_1714.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5xPt9qaDOerVuXGcm3jK7sgXouVE40AlQW-eZRKIgD12zWLWhCuWhOJ81UwmVvdLPyCe8Vp6tR1C193VKQiOSScCWLegFCiXBO8x-q9vZ9I8iYE_OaAopTIs7TLBnnvG0IY3xNXvohnE9/s1600/IMG_1714.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bison skull, $200, Berkeley Springs, WV</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGr667_x_7dzqjBLflQlfwizI3cIYjRGTm7glJsYNEmvX9WBD0ri84aFSYVP48XZWfQo69IYhflXiiF5qVSAxgSX5asXb8DHFo4FNNiOIhT4rHLAF1-sRIsis0KZgs1pCb-P1WUjON1rln/s1600/IMG_1722.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGr667_x_7dzqjBLflQlfwizI3cIYjRGTm7glJsYNEmvX9WBD0ri84aFSYVP48XZWfQo69IYhflXiiF5qVSAxgSX5asXb8DHFo4FNNiOIhT4rHLAF1-sRIsis0KZgs1pCb-P1WUjON1rln/s1600/IMG_1722.JPG" height="234" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anonymous Surfaces</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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Here’s an ounce of context for those news items (sources: <a href="http://www.city-data.com/">http://www.city-data.com/</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Wikipedia). </div>
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<br /></div>
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Pontiac is a blue-collar city of 60,000 (down from 85,000 in
1970). The estimated median household income of $27,818, down from $31,000 in
2000. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Armada is a village of about 1,700 (up 10% since 2000) at
the southern end of Michigan’s agricultural “thumb” area. Its median household
income is about $64,120. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Southfield is a suburb on Detroit’s northwest boundary.
Population 72,000 in 2012, down 7.4% since 2000. Estimated median household
income:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$45,494, down from $51,802
in 2000.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqy86On8brTcnubZC_plOgOUo3-pd_O4AvS4TCXvIc_j11-mGto2Pg5BSgWg2Qrwa4wdXyfvD5ixX5ovZoxCjb1yPctoyMhyB9OaUij8o_0SFnVJdfifYN3qzX7z71nmp_LYR-kjsEDJo/s1600/IMG_2004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsqy86On8brTcnubZC_plOgOUo3-pd_O4AvS4TCXvIc_j11-mGto2Pg5BSgWg2Qrwa4wdXyfvD5ixX5ovZoxCjb1yPctoyMhyB9OaUij8o_0SFnVJdfifYN3qzX7z71nmp_LYR-kjsEDJo/s1600/IMG_2004.JPG" height="202" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lakeville, Michigan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177126#.U-vDO1Rseho.blogger">Surfaces by Kay Ryan : The Poetry Foundation</a> Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-82589908929730367082014-07-25T21:53:00.000-04:002014-07-27T09:52:22.217-04:00The Chipping Sparrow and Richard Wilbur's "Still, Citizen Sparrow" Again<br />
<br />
On my walk today, I saw a new bird. He's not rare, but he was my first Chipping Sparrow. (Someone please correct me it that's incorrect). I didn't get a good look at him in real life, but I took a few shots anyway. When I got home and tinkered with the photos (cropping and sharpening), I was glad to find him fairly quickly at the fantastic Cornell Lab of Ornithology. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHFIJiE7NCkhlLlSTYnfc1g4DqSaDwJgnXn15KDVw9FdVISLGkbCWdKZjVLsp9JbegelZ5Fi1fDQ6xkB8sW_BRpa52LmrGzXG-Osd6v1PRNXySmpDOCoK8ogsPyLavtcXVonYLiIb9x7C_/s1600/IMG_2006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHFIJiE7NCkhlLlSTYnfc1g4DqSaDwJgnXn15KDVw9FdVISLGkbCWdKZjVLsp9JbegelZ5Fi1fDQ6xkB8sW_BRpa52LmrGzXG-Osd6v1PRNXySmpDOCoK8ogsPyLavtcXVonYLiIb9x7C_/s1600/IMG_2006.JPG" height="198" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chipping Sparrow</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It's only a small exaggeration to say I cannot compare little birds to big birds without remembering Richard Wilbur's magnificent poem, "Still, Citizen Sparrow." Today I've tweaked my comments from February of 2010. They're still long and imperfect, so read only as much as you want. But I hope you'll read or re-read the poem. Otherwise, you'll miss your chance to be one of Noah's sons, dutiful, noble and glorious, a survivor on Mt. Ararat.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/%7Eafilreis/88v/wilbur-sparrow.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/wilbur-sparrow.html</a><br />
<br />
Although
I predict that several of Richard Wilbur's poems are canon-fodder (that
is, immortal--I couldn't resist playing with Falstaff's words), I
especially admire "Still, Citizen Sparrow," which offers the scavenging
vulture as a hero in whose shadow mere sparrows are told to be still.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLarxeWtqaQZSIY4ogMt0i3t20JmpV-LMsysSwGDDCoAgaxzuWD9gtVZS-DpcAA4If3lEN0hXS9qOny4P6JwyJYX8Csk07duf-VTlEBubcdwjjJiyoSoQVQzFt_XuLGfcSqoHvjZcL_Wgm/s1600/IMG_7420.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLarxeWtqaQZSIY4ogMt0i3t20JmpV-LMsysSwGDDCoAgaxzuWD9gtVZS-DpcAA4If3lEN0hXS9qOny4P6JwyJYX8Csk07duf-VTlEBubcdwjjJiyoSoQVQzFt_XuLGfcSqoHvjZcL_Wgm/s1600/IMG_7420.JPG" height="222" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
In
"Still" as the opening word, there is more muscularity of language,
more purposeful ambiguity and layered meaning, than I find in many
entire poems. First
and foremost, I hear "Still" as "Be still," an instruction to the
chattering sparrows, who are that most mediocre of things, "citizens."
Shut up and behold the hovering vulture as he lords (Lords?) it over
trivial you with his necessary, purgative work.<br />
<br />
However,
that meaning of "Still" doesn't hold up grammatically; we'd need a
semicolon or period after the command for "citizen sparrow" to be still. So the
literal and grammatically sensible meaning is probably, "Even so,
citizen sparrow . . . ." It's an introduction to the more elaborate
argument that follows. It's as if the sparrows, just before the poem
begins, have proposed their own cuteness along with the vulture's
grotesqueness, whereupon Wilbur's speaker is offering a
counter-argument. "Oh yeah? Well, consider this about Mr. Vulture, whom
you call ugly . . . ."<br />
<br />
I won't continue with this kind
of attention to detail or I'll never finish. But do, please, take time
to admire the parts you consider to be gems. I'll be surprised if you don't find some. For example: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfGQRrXNWGh6It3lNBROLIJIqopok5AGG0ltt3Kxhv9YkBanOIz4cAX7dfw9C_qqFdVxpHyPP6cMhrcTWn7xvVhIHZ8b1DXviV7YTaBFdRsF-WYILoWKLblZrL3nN44K5RU4Iqu3j2SgSU/s1600/IMG_4283_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfGQRrXNWGh6It3lNBROLIJIqopok5AGG0ltt3Kxhv9YkBanOIz4cAX7dfw9C_qqFdVxpHyPP6cMhrcTWn7xvVhIHZ8b1DXviV7YTaBFdRsF-WYILoWKLblZrL3nN44K5RU4Iqu3j2SgSU/s1600/IMG_4283_2.JPG" height="320" width="264" /></a></div>
<br />
". . . lumber again to air /
Over the rotten office . . . ." What could better capture the rhythm
of the buzzard's flight than "lumber" or the brutal accuracy of its
mission than "rotten office"? Remove the carcass in order to eat it:
". . . bear / The carrion ballast up . . . ." And because the
vulture's the hero who does the dirty work, he is able to "lie cruising"
at the "Tip of the sky."<br />
<br />
". . . the frightfully free
// The naked-headed one . . . ." Maybe he's "frightfully" free
because what he does seems, or is, "unnatural." It's not just garbage
collection; it's also something like cannibalism, yet by virtue of this
shredding and munching, the hero "mocks mutability." Death? He laughs
at it. He casually eats Death and cruises on.<br />
<br />
". . . childheart . . . bedlam hours . . . slam of his hammer . . . " All of those <i>am</i>
sounds are verbal sledge hammers against the chirpy multitudes of
sparrows, who, in their small lives, might protest, "Oh, Buzzard, stop
preparing for heroism--we sparrows can't sleep (or chatter) with the
slam of your hammer going on and on and on."<br />
<br />
And these bits of elegance speak for themselves, I think:<br />
<br />
<i>How high and weary it was . . .</i><br />
<br />
<i>He rocked his only world, and everyone's.</i><br />
<i>Forgive the hero, you who would have died</i><br />
<i>Gladly with all you knew . . .</i><br />
<br />
Wilbur
proclaims that sparrows don't know much. They haven't "rocked"
anything; they know nothing of "high and weary" labor that purifies and saves--or the soaring
that goes with the work. Trash collectors and undertakers probably know a lot
more than most of us. Odd as it may seem, the poem is an apotheosis of
those who tidy up after messes, including corpses. And there we find
the vulture glorified as the lofty, silent one, the solitary Noah among
us nattering nabobs of sparrow-hood..<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR6_hrTJU4aOpJTsfc1cuaoI3_2t0PFH7Rz8FEFJeqqj-AX058vKnP1XIA6bi4bnYizW2J8MTcNMLsePaZleV4bAWlx0VZq6_Ej-iSLi9d3bXERrP0HfuyzO1iTJ3yCTUBzEMu-LMaREZt/s1600/IMG_1744.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR6_hrTJU4aOpJTsfc1cuaoI3_2t0PFH7Rz8FEFJeqqj-AX058vKnP1XIA6bi4bnYizW2J8MTcNMLsePaZleV4bAWlx0VZq6_Ej-iSLi9d3bXERrP0HfuyzO1iTJ3yCTUBzEMu-LMaREZt/s1600/IMG_1744.JPG" height="189" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Turkey Vulture</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As something of a
skeptic about heroes, I don't know how much I agree with Wilbur's
argument, but I admire its creative logic and presentation, the power of
its imperatives ("Do this; do that"), the poem's passion bucking
against the constraints of its rhymed and metered formality, just as its argument
bucks against the expectations of most of us, who might like a sparrow
in the back yard rather than a buzzard, never mind that the sparrow makes
messes while the buzzard cleans them up, flies away and soars again, looking for more. He's big and other, not at all a citizen like us.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/%7Eafilreis/88v/wilbur-sparrow.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/wilbur-sparrow.html</a><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyZB-SxY3w7QWVkEjat0Iknpm1nldpMOBUZ4yigkDyDHA9J6lHc7iIlxycGWQxmopS48VCM_tYbi6N48clzD7EeUtT5xZcmaze55DETzJxRzcY50ihXb-a-_iNXsruzxUAJxyG8s9RT7-P/s1600/IMG_1726.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyZB-SxY3w7QWVkEjat0Iknpm1nldpMOBUZ4yigkDyDHA9J6lHc7iIlxycGWQxmopS48VCM_tYbi6N48clzD7EeUtT5xZcmaze55DETzJxRzcY50ihXb-a-_iNXsruzxUAJxyG8s9RT7-P/s1600/IMG_1726.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Black Vulture</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-56193797311427437872014-07-12T16:27:00.001-04:002014-07-14T07:20:34.347-04:00Guns and Morons, plus Chase Twichell's "Stripped Car"<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOnB9jdcrVpsZaHne4b4xXtZebRrnGdM3IRu94dyvKIn5PhjOWRJCWNL5KvOS7u9L30U4p0LvH0UzLo5zOd3Y5U_1hKM85NEvuJ_To4WrOQv461zV7o75S3ZFsQeR0-fuRXO7POMmD8Mc1/s1600/IMG_1038.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOnB9jdcrVpsZaHne4b4xXtZebRrnGdM3IRu94dyvKIn5PhjOWRJCWNL5KvOS7u9L30U4p0LvH0UzLo5zOd3Y5U_1hKM85NEvuJ_To4WrOQv461zV7o75S3ZFsQeR0-fuRXO7POMmD8Mc1/s1600/IMG_1038.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">aka Peace and Wisdom Party</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thirty seconds of this video conveys plenty, but I’m a masochist
and watched all four minutes. The film wants to be funny, and sometimes it may be,
but I find it a troubling sequence too. When I caught myself smiling a few times,
I didn’t like myself. So I wrote the snarky treatise below.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/">http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/</a><br />
<br />
What’s the moral of the story in the video, which is passed off as humor? <br />
<br />
1. Guns don’t shoot themselves. Unequivocally true.<br />
<br />
2. In spite of some delusions, people can’t fire bullets from their fingers or genitalia. Unequivocally true. <br />
<br />
Solutions: <br />
<br />
1. Eliminate gun control for people who have never made a mistake of any kind. <br />
<br />
2. Hate <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZ4wUbTAWk_HaqRW7tbHXhpdbJXgUuXQljyqi-4Tnt9SlidhNGY1U6jv1sMX1LYSTi5rf0wNODQZ9HqdLn0vOpXtG9DSHq7Zlq1upQLfTpRE7bAxF-1VJTv1u_oEQGojnUDWF3ZrbnwDb/s1600/IMG_1917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZ4wUbTAWk_HaqRW7tbHXhpdbJXgUuXQljyqi-4Tnt9SlidhNGY1U6jv1sMX1LYSTi5rf0wNODQZ9HqdLn0vOpXtG9DSHq7Zlq1upQLfTpRE7bAxF-1VJTv1u_oEQGojnUDWF3ZrbnwDb/s1600/IMG_1917.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
each other over the two unequivocal truths above. <br />
<br />
3. I'm pretty sure there are 8 billion mountain tops on Planet Earth. Give each human a mountain top and all the firearms he can carry, which will lead to all the ammo-orgasms he has time for. Or energy. And alone on a mountain top, that’s a lot of time. Food? With all that weaponry, if they can’t find enough to kill, fuck ‘em. Shelter? Ammo-orgasms will keep ‘em warm. <br />
<br />
4. Uh-oh. My research team isn't sure there are 8 billion mountain tops. <br />
<br />
5. Someone also asked about propagation of the species? Uh-oh. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/">http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/</a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I went to Poetry Foundation,
typed “guns” in the search box, and was offered “Stripped Car” by Chase
Twichell. I’ve liked her work before, so I read it, though it's a
little longer than what I usually post here: </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522</a> </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs5EY6IHVy7LxOpPcOe9LIAFOmVcd-FRbUZez0xoomX7jxPrsGDOEBb1WV8MZctHvR-83b6laofxNQVjS5lNZlqVO6EWaP0da6cYIi3AD3AOcF-8NyXTzuoJqEfuTUBWI8Cj4pJ1eljKdd/s1600/IMG_1884.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs5EY6IHVy7LxOpPcOe9LIAFOmVcd-FRbUZez0xoomX7jxPrsGDOEBb1WV8MZctHvR-83b6laofxNQVjS5lNZlqVO6EWaP0da6cYIi3AD3AOcF-8NyXTzuoJqEfuTUBWI8Cj4pJ1eljKdd/s1600/IMG_1884.JPG" height="271" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Notice white fuzz ball in nest</td></tr>
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I’m not sure every line needs to
be there, but the style is breezy, and some of the images were poignant, <br />
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so I stuck with it. Do you like the poem? Respect it?
Do you have some favorite lines, images or ideas? How about a “sulking adolescent” . . . “with a
silky little shadow-moustache/and a gun”? Or the play of fruit and gardens
against the images of metal and violence? </div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522</a><br />
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-59315959775377877182014-06-28T09:44:00.001-04:002014-06-28T12:54:20.766-04:00Phillip Levine, "Coming Close": Labor and Place<style>
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Here is former Poet Laureate, and native Detroiter, Phillip
Levine with a portrait of women who labor. Really labor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would you agree that he does not
sentimentalize her or the work?<br />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319</a></div>
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Am I the only one who thinks of a slight connection to Van Gogh’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Potato Eaters, </i>although they strike
me as agrarian while Levine’s woman is part of the American industrial scene?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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In “You must feed her, as they say in the language of the
place,” the “her” is the machinery. (Right?). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Levine characterizes industrial machinery as female, then
goes on to say, “Make no mistake, the place has a language.” In this place the
machinery is female, perhaps a demanding maternal figure who must be fed.<br />
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I think Levine's treatment of place and language might be the most
interesting idea in the poem. Does
a place have its own language?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does
our language change according to place and situation? If so, is that about the
power of place to shape human language, which amounts to human thought,
emotion, and personality?<br />
<br />
If our language changes as we move from place to
place, are we being dishonest? No? Simply pragmatic? Is pragmatism inherently
dishonest? And then of course, the old adolescent question, how much honesty
can any of us handle? “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember the Jackster delivering that
one? </div>
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Does the laborer’s laughter at the end amount to meanness,
or is it an effort at jolly, rough fellowship? </div>
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Is the speaker’s feeling “marked” a bad thing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What does “for your own” mean? I really
don’t know why that’s there.<br />
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<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319</a><br />
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-72078486292289486002014-06-16T15:06:00.002-04:002014-06-16T15:17:22.898-04:00Hannah Gamble's "Growing a Bear": Entertainment and Art<style>
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First a note on the photos:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which of these women might be the poem's speaker? Now,
on to the work itself.</div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246502">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246502</a></span></div>
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In poetry, humor is such a tricky thing, a tightrope—veer
left and you fall into superficiality or mean sarcasm or commercial slickness and pandering;
veer right and you reveal an underbelly too dark for genuine levity--no belly laughs, no
breeziness at cocktail parties, no appreciation of the absurdity of it all. It's all too grave for that, as Dostoevsky knew. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSGuc86rxrDOaXsVxXpQ6NXammTDViVqZ9oyeyJnAk7IXk0mGCWx_4KhdzrkUzH0T82N1fKMkWzAQ38pBXK75EiNTxKkqX5VE2jlQV6CiLBN7Zzgb3dRHe9OMq0kg5wFKN9lzII9tK5hC/s1600/IMG_0449.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSGuc86rxrDOaXsVxXpQ6NXammTDViVqZ9oyeyJnAk7IXk0mGCWx_4KhdzrkUzH0T82N1fKMkWzAQ38pBXK75EiNTxKkqX5VE2jlQV6CiLBN7Zzgb3dRHe9OMq0kg5wFKN9lzII9tK5hC/s1600/IMG_0449.JPG" height="320" width="282" /></a><br />
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In my college years and into my twenties, I heard more than
once that America’s only contributions to world literature were the short story
as a genre and American humor. We were supposed to feel bad about that—inferior,
provincial lightweights. Well, if those are our only contributions—and how can one
make such a claim in the first place?—I say we’ve done pretty well, as I whisk dreary dust off
my shirt and visor from long, long, dark, dark European tomes. Especially on the continent, none of the languages have a word for "concise."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFy_dc3QDIWFMnYOXFndXQOKHbkVDYojX9z3QW1McPXv8-3ps6FiK71-Kpu5wVj7UkGhKaK7lAsXV41aKxXoHsAB7t6JKhHGtzd4iHWuHmaSRwOItJhffn1CxP7tOOWwOiYXl-uXya0Iz/s1600/IMG_0149.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFy_dc3QDIWFMnYOXFndXQOKHbkVDYojX9z3QW1McPXv8-3ps6FiK71-Kpu5wVj7UkGhKaK7lAsXV41aKxXoHsAB7t6JKhHGtzd4iHWuHmaSRwOItJhffn1CxP7tOOWwOiYXl-uXya0Iz/s1600/IMG_0149.JPG" height="320" width="254" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheSGuc86rxrDOaXsVxXpQ6NXammTDViVqZ9oyeyJnAk7IXk0mGCWx_4KhdzrkUzH0T82N1fKMkWzAQ38pBXK75EiNTxKkqX5VE2jlQV6CiLBN7Zzgb3dRHe9OMq0kg5wFKN9lzII9tK5hC/s1600/IMG_0449.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>So Hannah Gamble’s “Growing a Bear” interests me quite
a bit. I hope no one disputes that it’s funny. But is it fluff? We’re back to
The School of Accessibility and the constant question it presents: is the work
mere entertainment or does it have enough heft to be labeled significant
literature—enough insight into and commentary on big issues like the
environment or social justice or simply being a lone human with human
complexity? And is the work’s expression artful enough to make us take the
piece seriously? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF-GWzMfV2GOed2VgPnuNwGnz_dIeDtwMopsqDFwQnpbdHwucvU8x63Oq4DHkdIMAJXIBn-w2qyYq2MTUtBtmbMzQyROitMq6lvuz3QKBI5-NGw9LZPsZVQAaDd5LwLhztNayBrlNEZjp/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiF-GWzMfV2GOed2VgPnuNwGnz_dIeDtwMopsqDFwQnpbdHwucvU8x63Oq4DHkdIMAJXIBn-w2qyYq2MTUtBtmbMzQyROitMq6lvuz3QKBI5-NGw9LZPsZVQAaDd5LwLhztNayBrlNEZjp/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG" height="320" width="210" /></a></div>
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After reading “Growing a Bear” a few times,
I’m not at all sure what the Bear is, but I think it's vaguely naughty and funny and grave. How would you pin it down? Or would
you decline the invitation to pin it down?</div>
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And did you enjoy the poem? </div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246502">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246502</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhVhPxp7oVPwdBmioPwgX-qTGO_YJwTQ6IvLbrHoaYHjIf8ubV_PvLJw7ggVGQ0O_I8RI0TyG7uTr3-Lp79N5fESgy6LvKIFjRxgZN4PJFqiRXfez_LySjKa5Y50-dsEVRQj-7lxv4FVMZ/s1600/IMG_1065.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhVhPxp7oVPwdBmioPwgX-qTGO_YJwTQ6IvLbrHoaYHjIf8ubV_PvLJw7ggVGQ0O_I8RI0TyG7uTr3-Lp79N5fESgy6LvKIFjRxgZN4PJFqiRXfez_LySjKa5Y50-dsEVRQj-7lxv4FVMZ/s1600/IMG_1065.JPG" height="245" width="400" /></a><br />
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-47760983124964281472014-06-06T17:39:00.000-04:002014-06-06T17:39:52.733-04:00D.H. Lawrence's "Bavarian Gentians" and Dylan Thomas, Follow-up<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-eP3PEZwr2skyOeYWOKqhRGHTpcB8i-ITjobdODB6u3Uh9HkvM_LP9Pr9r9RW3B9WXJJ7ShDaFr6N4ZIpv9XMdTLSrNJCwcGSI5pHp1EC102miCnsd5wsQ00o1cUJaXhbdFwD7tQ4aWsM/s1600/IMG_1729_2_2.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-eP3PEZwr2skyOeYWOKqhRGHTpcB8i-ITjobdODB6u3Uh9HkvM_LP9Pr9r9RW3B9WXJJ7ShDaFr6N4ZIpv9XMdTLSrNJCwcGSI5pHp1EC102miCnsd5wsQ00o1cUJaXhbdFwD7tQ4aWsM/s1600/IMG_1729_2_2.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a>Here is D.H. Lawrence’s poem, “Bavarian Gentians.” I think I know why it came to mind as I talked last time about Dylan Thomas and “The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," but I'm not sure. Ideas? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which of the two poems do you prefer, and
of course, why? </div>
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<a href="http://allpoetry.com/poem/8510509-Bavarian-Gentians-by-D-H-Lawrence">http://allpoetry.com/poem/8510509-Bavarian-Gentians-by-D-H-Lawrence</a><br />
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I don't have a photo of a Bavarian Gentian, but I'm including some with important blues or purples and darkening and excess. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid2N39qTej6m6SryiKOfHS4kW-N6UlKMEZ7ME9vSOZqElwnbWoTDRHZ5MLqFEMgzL-VXoYtUkiIP0vZ6NsSOug69NyFp7YeKLiCPybJZIGt1GjGcJgBNzD6oEHUvR5_IFb7-Ya7raEju-F/s1600/IMG_1761.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid2N39qTej6m6SryiKOfHS4kW-N6UlKMEZ7ME9vSOZqElwnbWoTDRHZ5MLqFEMgzL-VXoYtUkiIP0vZ6NsSOug69NyFp7YeKLiCPybJZIGt1GjGcJgBNzD6oEHUvR5_IFb7-Ya7raEju-F/s1600/IMG_1761.JPG" height="228" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gnowtzn6jFlAqwsOoHIArLxUlfsuU3Ux7ZXfcD24is7MmOqC7QkwQCm0dDngLjOljiBOPXY5NvASUeHPwj1GGklqvwq7LCGlVzX3xTcUuduJhsd23z65KDOhX3nUQtu5GLG2OfYcdEMa/s1600/IMG_6729.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>My posting twice about the same poem has never elicited much
visitor interest, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. Here are some further
questions and thoughts about Dylan Thomas’ “The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.”
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<a href="http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower">http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower</a></div>
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One word that might confuse or alienate readers is “the
green fuse,” which I take to mean the flower’s stem. Does Thomas get enough
bang for his buck with “fuse” as a metaphor? In exchange for potential
confusion in some readers, what, if anything, does he gain by using “fuse”?</div>
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Same question for “dumb”?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzd_Mj4phvKZGgWnOerl4OCvrmZgJbcksIVFETWMwRdaaKp1qAuVuwquE6Wg6paXzTmwsuVzkbF1VbjiaMeJkn5a5PNxaMX7WNaxLg-Y40BF24B_zLoIpsZv-9iBw0DwgQ-c5FFoGRHxL/s1600/IMG_1373+-+Version+2.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzd_Mj4phvKZGgWnOerl4OCvrmZgJbcksIVFETWMwRdaaKp1qAuVuwquE6Wg6paXzTmwsuVzkbF1VbjiaMeJkn5a5PNxaMX7WNaxLg-Y40BF24B_zLoIpsZv-9iBw0DwgQ-c5FFoGRHxL/s1600/IMG_1373+-+Version+2.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a>Why is the poem so full of violence? About a hundred and
fifty years before Dylan Thomas came along in Wales, the English Romantics,
especially Wordsworth, had conceived of a dynamism in Nature—its potential for
destructive activity along with its beauty and spirituality. But isn’t Thomas going further than
the Romantics in seeing and insisting upon Nature’s fearsome extremes and thus complicating
its beauty with its violence? Thomas’ Nature wreaks such havoc that he cannot
express its extremes; he can only give examples and
ask us to perceive natural presences as he does. </div>
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Do you think a single force governs the life and death of
humans, plants, and animals? Are we that much a part of nature?<br />
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Where in the
human being would you locate that force? The heart? The brain? The mouth? The
hand? The genitals? Or the mind or soul or spirit?—none of which can be located
on an anatomical chart. </div>
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English teachers are sex-crazed nerds; that’s old news. Therefore,
I ask if the poem has anything to do with sex—potency and lack of it, or Freud’s
“libido” versus “thanatos.” I’m pretty sure I recall accurately that Freud
expanded his concept of the libido from a specifically erotic drive to a
broader meaning of life force, a quest for survival, which of course was in continuous
conflict with “thanatos,” or death drive. </div>
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Thus, Freud, like the Romantics, saw the essential condition
of humans as one of tumult, inner turmoil, conflict, unlike Buddhism’s sense of a calm inner place,
nirvana, which we should try to reach. Do you favor one of these views of human nature over the other? If the human is an onion and you keep
peeling off layers, what’s at the center—a roiling ocean or a still pond? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gnowtzn6jFlAqwsOoHIArLxUlfsuU3Ux7ZXfcD24is7MmOqC7QkwQCm0dDngLjOljiBOPXY5NvASUeHPwj1GGklqvwq7LCGlVzX3xTcUuduJhsd23z65KDOhX3nUQtu5GLG2OfYcdEMa/s1600/IMG_6729.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gnowtzn6jFlAqwsOoHIArLxUlfsuU3Ux7ZXfcD24is7MmOqC7QkwQCm0dDngLjOljiBOPXY5NvASUeHPwj1GGklqvwq7LCGlVzX3xTcUuduJhsd23z65KDOhX3nUQtu5GLG2OfYcdEMa/s1600/IMG_6729.JPG" height="211" width="320" /></a></div>
Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-42096028735962280872014-05-28T21:05:00.000-04:002014-05-30T20:19:31.871-04:00Spring and Dylan Thomas' "The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit4be5gYyHdOTZpsrr1V1BQCwbqEwJUm_TDRlf5hfUAAfXBUqIzJRNWW3GZLRfwdAzomgByxDJqcku_hdsuFRzuJIZtQm7d966nbbuQZxIC9bGDYgWPlahmZhyrhoPfu5ONcJldVjWXcnk/s1600/IMG_1608+-+Version+3.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit4be5gYyHdOTZpsrr1V1BQCwbqEwJUm_TDRlf5hfUAAfXBUqIzJRNWW3GZLRfwdAzomgByxDJqcku_hdsuFRzuJIZtQm7d966nbbuQZxIC9bGDYgWPlahmZhyrhoPfu5ONcJldVjWXcnk/s1600/IMG_1608+-+Version+3.JPG" height="288" width="400" /></a><br />
I'm pretty sure I was a college freshman when I first encountered Dylan Thomas' "The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," and I'm pretty sure I had no clue what it meant or why anyone would write such a thing or why I was in college or where Wales was or why anybody lived there instead of Ohio.<br />
<br />
Well, here is the poem again. I think it's one of the great works about the mysteries and rhythms of all kinds of life. And death. Yin and Yang, I suppose. Libido, broadly defined, and Thanatos? <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower" target="_blank">http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6qt1DraS1N1AMfi8njQ4iqqP1gnJ9PPxUHgQguOfui3j6u5FOYg9qWyZlTvCfNtCg6tMgXnQbswY3QtCGMp-vJN47hET8WWZXeFoYJ3WHfkiaz_s-xAdgvq5CmnehdJF3PfhmyPzdxjA/s1600/IMG_1616+-+Version+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6qt1DraS1N1AMfi8njQ4iqqP1gnJ9PPxUHgQguOfui3j6u5FOYg9qWyZlTvCfNtCg6tMgXnQbswY3QtCGMp-vJN47hET8WWZXeFoYJ3WHfkiaz_s-xAdgvq5CmnehdJF3PfhmyPzdxjA/s1600/IMG_1616+-+Version+2.jpg" height="400" width="277" /></a>In the photos from early May, a Great Egret kept retrieving sticks for his nest. (For obvious reasons, I'm making him a hard-working male). I don't know how it could have been clearer that a natural force was driving him to go fetch and to come back, again and again. And maybe that force is larger and more complex than anyone can explain. Hence, the repetition of "I am dumb." <br />
<br />
Dylan Thomas claims it's that same force that drives a flower through its stem (its "fuse") and propels a human through his green age, even though it's also the force that brings death to lovers and to us all. The poem is an interesting combination of elegant, romantic, musical language and thought with a realistic insistence that what lives also dies.<br />
<br />
I especially love these lines:<br />
<br />
<pre>And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
</pre>
<br />
Dylan Thomas may be as romantic and effusive as e.e. cummings about nature, but maybe Thomas is more realistic and complex. Opinions?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower" target="_blank">http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower</a><br />
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*Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-46780991913295948212014-05-26T12:05:00.002-04:002014-05-26T12:12:15.045-04:00The Great Speckled Bird . . . Is a Robin? I'd like to think this is the bird in the gospel song:<br />
<br />
<i>What a beautiful thought I am thinking</i><br />
<i>Concerning a great speckled bird.</i><br />
<i>It cometh descending from heaven</i><br />
<i>On the pages of God's holy word. </i><br />
<br />
However, having seen a nightmare version of a blue jay child in its early <i> </i><br />
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adolescence, my guess is that the splotchity bird in the pic is a juvenile robin growing into her or his plumage. Birders, yea or nay? I hope this guy only needs some Clearisil rather than major surgery or a feather transplant. Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-56214368266075078792014-05-08T12:18:00.001-04:002014-05-08T20:43:20.096-04:00Poking and Prodding: e.e. cummings’ “O sweet spontaneous” and the Nature of Nature (and; un-Schooling<style>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
Kensington Metropark the other day, I discovered an island hubbub, a rookery
full of Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Cormorants. Below them Canada
Geese </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDZm5GE6O2n-7MgFfw-y8l0ppmW6sFJ0J27oesipCnZfWqCgA5yG7w52AV_z5lyGDnk7geY4tRPW3HpQxVXyUtPoRGt8PfJJHLOBvqzx6KVQOJsrLjwNyr24uapAzQtggpAA6hS3UHWxA/s1600/IMG_1636.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDZm5GE6O2n-7MgFfw-y8l0ppmW6sFJ0J27oesipCnZfWqCgA5yG7w52AV_z5lyGDnk7geY4tRPW3HpQxVXyUtPoRGt8PfJJHLOBvqzx6KVQOJsrLjwNyr24uapAzQtggpAA6hS3UHWxA/s1600/IMG_1636.jpg" height="400" width="277" /></a>squawked. Closer to shore, red winged blackbirds clung to reeds and half-seriously
threatened me, I assume because of nearby nests. Two male geese squared off as if to
fight—much hissing and honking in goose profanity, I'm sure. Later, two male redwings got into the longest physical
squabble (maybe ten seconds) I’ve ever seen between two birds. At home, the
wiser gold finches, doves, cardinals, and sparrows make only symbolic gestures
of combat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju3SBCVP09IYAuJNhLivgFan2uKbgMdui4-_kgTorhWJ6RWWNMfWSqNLB739yLtmd-jiVP80yJTji-OjO4-2bszwT5HR-SMXy38qjwUP3BRL_mAEeq-HWiMbVbzvAPkD7CDKPJ6Js5Wc5H/s1600/IMG_1591.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju3SBCVP09IYAuJNhLivgFan2uKbgMdui4-_kgTorhWJ6RWWNMfWSqNLB739yLtmd-jiVP80yJTji-OjO4-2bszwT5HR-SMXy38qjwUP3BRL_mAEeq-HWiMbVbzvAPkD7CDKPJ6Js5Wc5H/s1600/IMG_1591.jpg" height="320" width="259" /></a> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
big birding day at Kensington got me thinking even more about spring and nature,
and that reminded me of e.e. cummings’ poem, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“O sweet spontaneous,” in which he offers mockery and
contempt for philosophy, science, and religion. Whatever those three endeavors
might be, what they are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>—and never
will be—is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spontaneous</i>. They are
considered, rehearsed, systematic invasions and perversions of nature, which is
so magical and supra-rational that spring, season of rebirth and renewal, is the
“rhythmic/lover” of death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Nature
is spontaneous in the sense that it simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is;
</i>it cannot be understood empirically. Philosophers and
scientists are “prurient” and “naughty” voyeurs, while religionists try to
knock nature around, “buffeting” it as they attempt to pull gods from its womb.
Is that not a rather violent image of birthing, perhaps suggestive of abortion?
</span>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaSoJt6pObJCTZNeM1x0Zg2fdSbUl8r31n1cp62YS4mOZDcu5u1uw-m9A8feIbcpIIni2Q71nOgKdUWhnK2a8FGR66BFcwvlUuZxd3Q4vD96Zb-ehA8xWtEi9rkMhap4JT7IxE6ywMad50/s1600/IMG_1650.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaSoJt6pObJCTZNeM1x0Zg2fdSbUl8r31n1cp62YS4mOZDcu5u1uw-m9A8feIbcpIIni2Q71nOgKdUWhnK2a8FGR66BFcwvlUuZxd3Q4vD96Zb-ehA8xWtEi9rkMhap4JT7IxE6ywMad50/s1600/IMG_1650.jpg" height="320" width="235" /></a></span>In the ongoing American hostility and debate about evolutionism vs. creationism, what might
e.e. cummings say? And what might he say about religion in the schools? Would
he tell us to avoid teaching philosophy, science and religion altogether? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
a poem, “O sweet spontaneous” is surely vulnerable to charges of
oversimplification and sentimentality (that is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">excessive</i> or unearned emotional content).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does it cross that line into touchy-feely, art-fart mush? Or
does it try to demonstrate through simplicity its own argument that nature and
the cosmos cannot be known in Academy-sanctioned curricula?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Does
the poem ask us to plop the kid in a field to witness the elk and experience
snakebite? Shall we cancel science classes nationwide? What would a school run
by cummings look like? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What
would cummings do about climate change? Or cancer? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Would
he argue that pantheism, animism, atheism and their ilk are also “prurient,”
“naughty,” and “squeezing” and “buffeting”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do they too have “scraggy knees”? Or is it only mainstream schools
of thought that are villains and morons? Kill the Presbyterian, let the hippie roam. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPKaAW6AJao1kXJXgotxt_-F7yoTCuglNB6PRVxCDLaGq6sM4epL2tow4FD7YNsqvBgTCgtfsDrmykwBYdQ0BIHnm5eQkQdMInU5k9iFAI3OcBPn5A1MYsV0fijDhjciRN7bdnndRmnXx/s1600/IMG_1665.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">See
how easy it is to take cummings to task? And aren’t his anti-traditional
punctuation, capitalization, and diction rather juvenile, facile, disingenuous
rebellions? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Or
are they the most honest, urgent, cogent way to challenge authority? Maybe they
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demand</i> that we experience the world
as cummings does, unfettered by semicolons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Whatever
the case, when I’m having a good experience in nature, what I’m feeling feels
unknowable—fwom de pwitty wittle finchee (change now to a baritone voice) to
the big mean hawk that eats him (“the incomparable/couch of death”?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I’m experiencing might be such a
vigorous firing of neurons, or such a jiggling of stardust as it wiggles with what I
am, that no mere empirical <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Discipline</i> can
touch it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Surely the solution is to invite politicians to write up an exam that tests a student’s
life-essential knowledge at age 15. For if politicians don’t know what must be
learned, who does? </span></div>
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-21165493619535667312014-04-25T18:05:00.002-04:002014-06-27T22:09:04.337-04:00FROST'S DIMINISHED OVENBIRD: THE SMALL AND BROWN, THE FALLING<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsJIVCcJiQyyt1rAPG_XUQsXZOmTMaLpwitVir1Jm6YMt56AIIG7bwtx-MfA-troD1NcxUrQRlEhHQvoilruw67O_VDTd6uiib8OUpBfE8MaDELW_PKM0Rhn10Zd7ZCh2QAhUE4ic9nHk/s1600/IMG_1480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsJIVCcJiQyyt1rAPG_XUQsXZOmTMaLpwitVir1Jm6YMt56AIIG7bwtx-MfA-troD1NcxUrQRlEhHQvoilruw67O_VDTd6uiib8OUpBfE8MaDELW_PKM0Rhn10Zd7ZCh2QAhUE4ic9nHk/s1600/IMG_1480.jpg" height="291" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Golden-Crowned Kinglet, I think</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ovenbird/id">http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ovenbird/id</a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Early in my walk two weeks ago,
before I came upon the garter snake, a sparrow-sized bird fluttered from a
branch down to the brown leaves from the last few autumns. A second or two
later, my brain registered that I'd seen some yellow on him. “Probably
just another gold finch,” I thought, as I kicked myself for being jaded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I paused long enough for him to
reappear, and indeed there was some yellow in his crown, yet he looked nothing
like a gold finch. I'm pretty sure it was the golden crowned kinglet, a somewhat rare gift I
came upon, near the same place about a year ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">He flew off, and I
figured the episode and my curiosity were finished. I came across the snake,
got some pictures of him, plus a pair of blue jays, and had a pleasant walk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNESDaTPg4jG49FZVR7PLiBb5-bmMcKlANCxK5R50VYBIBkBo6ySN2q8U9gEdAwqdVLhIOOc1kkYztRDTIpq0kQhuQUkzHNrcdk97EOa6cOK8F0LrW1MHxdFeK4xMOtBv3zJIYP1iW-1C/s1600/IMG_1554.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNESDaTPg4jG49FZVR7PLiBb5-bmMcKlANCxK5R50VYBIBkBo6ySN2q8U9gEdAwqdVLhIOOc1kkYztRDTIpq0kQhuQUkzHNrcdk97EOa6cOK8F0LrW1MHxdFeK4xMOtBv3zJIYP1iW-1C/s1600/IMG_1554.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Robin (American Thrush)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But when I got home, the bird with
a yellow crown reappeared in my mind, and I got a little obsessive. I’ve had
occasional luck with googling from faraway clues, so on a lark (terrible pun
intended) I typed “golden-crowned sparrow,” and there he was—at the Cornell Lab
of Ornithology, of course. Unfortunately, he lives only on the west coast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">That could have been the end of the
adventure, but the “Similar Species” included not only my guy, but also one of the warblers, called the ovenbird, which
is the title critter of a Robert Frost poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I figured I might as well reread
Frost’s sonnet—it had been a long time, and some credible people have
loved the poem. I liked it all right, especially the final
line, which gives us calmly wonderful, troubling words and a big question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what shall we “make of a diminished
thing”?--such as a small, brown and mortal bird in a big forest where everything falls
down sooner or later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I love underdogs and other
“diminished things.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I probably think
it’s immoral not to. Nobody needs more New York Yankees except for having a common enemy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">However, I also googled the big
song of the little brown ovenbird; it’s anything but diminished. And he does have
the minor glory of some yellow on his crown, which is more than most sparrows
and wrens can say. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqJVcG9E_gNHBZxcDztEdxTx9R_ugErmaoIeDvPw8ONOC5rZvBBC_PmtrTnKkCZJJcWJOu4ezQ3yaV0KicORMli4SBAvp9CPlB-nGm28Gqcb0ExA8qdDcml01XXPcnOn4dwem9me5myZi/s1600/IMG_1472.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqJVcG9E_gNHBZxcDztEdxTx9R_ugErmaoIeDvPw8ONOC5rZvBBC_PmtrTnKkCZJJcWJOu4ezQ3yaV0KicORMli4SBAvp9CPlB-nGm28Gqcb0ExA8qdDcml01XXPcnOn4dwem9me5myZi/s1600/IMG_1472.jpg" height="320" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Song Sparrow (I think)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Then I struggled with some of
Frost’s phrasing. His ovenbird says, “</span><span style="background: white; color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten,” which strikes me as a
convoluted way to convey that spring has ten times more flowers than summer
does. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">And what about this?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"> <i> </i><i>.
. . the early petal fall is past<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><i><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
pear and cherry bloom went down in showers<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><i><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On
sunny days a moment overcast;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><i><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
comes that other fall we name the fall.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
can figure this out, but how important is it for the ovenbird to observe that
rain brings down blossoms? Or the fact that birds and humans can deem rain odd
if it happens on days that are mostly sunny, but yield to a “moment” of
overcast skies and rain. True, that kind of rain is a bit rare, perhaps even
sudden, unfair or precipitous, and Frost wants us to hear that the bird
perceives this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Frost’s
oven bird also understands that there are two or three falls: the petals fluttering to
the ground and “that other fall we name the fall.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll take Frost at his word that our less formal expression
for autumn, “the fall,” comes from humans as we watch leaves fall—and perhaps life falling into winter death. But he might be making a rather big deal of this fairly old notion. Also, of course there's there's that third Fall, the one in Eden. How can I not hear the poem hinting at that? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKnWfV2MHLARNFCbAa53oR6jt2FFFY37kt3qjYWTl6tVdeoi35OGStMUQZKFpWq6rdsDaHkNXRMhxzNWEDPCagmazIiLXUMjwFA7efxkqJpjp6qtPa2nZyiAdOF9K7TqqWc2ebnQcTolv/s1600/IMG_1465.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: transparent; clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKnWfV2MHLARNFCbAa53oR6jt2FFFY37kt3qjYWTl6tVdeoi35OGStMUQZKFpWq6rdsDaHkNXRMhxzNWEDPCagmazIiLXUMjwFA7efxkqJpjp6qtPa2nZyiAdOF9K7TqqWc2ebnQcTolv/s1600/IMG_1465.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
these concepts go at least as far back as Shakespeare, so I’m puzzled that Frost struggles
to repeat them in a syntax I find somewhat labored. I wonder if he's sacrificed some clarity
and perspective to the demands of the sonnet form (also, this is an unusual
rhyme scheme for a Petrarchan sonnet—is that another result of a forced
effort?).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet,
in spite of all my reservations, Frost saves the poem for me in two places. First, his
oven bird notices “the highway dust is over all.” It's a small thing, but it adds to the poem's modernity, and it's slightly more
original and less grand that the symbolic “fall” and falling business. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"> But the crowning blow, the
home run, is Frost’s final line. Even if I wonder about its accuracy when
applied to the ovenbird, I cannot fail to love the little bird’s phrasing in his question about
himself and all of us, as he asks “what to make of a diminished thing.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"> We all
have been or will be diminished by nature’s seasons as well as the seasons in
our individual lives, and I’ll bet every one of us has wondered, more than we
admit, what to make of all that falling—spring petals, autumn leaves, little brown
birds, ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173533</a></div>
<div>
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*</div>
Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-22439980066025344602014-04-10T09:49:00.000-04:002014-04-10T12:20:47.683-04:00Snakes, Stealth, Beauty: Emily Dickinson, D.H. Lawrence, A.E. Stallings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In my April 5, 2014 post about Jamaal May's "Hum for the Bolt," we were feeling lightning’s sneaky
approach, its skill at getting near us before we realize it, then flashing a bolt of awareness and probably fright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Speaking
of sneaky things that can be scary, yesterday I got my first photos of a snake,
an Eastern Garter Snake, so I’m offering these three poems about snakes. I’ve posted
links to them before, but not recently, and each fine poem is worth revisiting: <span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">Emily Dickinson’s “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” D. H.
Lawrence’s “Snake,” and A.E. Stallings’ “Momentary.”</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834">http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344</a></span><!--EndFragment-->
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One oddity I’ve noticed about poets is their interest in and
fondness for snakes and crows, two creatures most people fail to love. I wonder
if poets and artists have a penchant for loving what the mainstream eschews or
even despises and demonizes. Why might that be?</div>
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I’m having a lot more luck with liking crows than snakes,
but the fellow I met yesterday demonstrated serpentine beauty more than any of
the (very few) snakes I’ve seen before. His colors, his lines, his absolute silence
and silky smoothness in movement were stunning. I was having a big moment, but
he was perfectly casual. Maybe I bored him.</div>
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We looked at each other for several seconds. I had room to
pass him on the left, but I figured he could whip around on me if he felt like
it, and I didn’t know what kind of snake he was, had no idea about his the
potential for venom—or simple pain. No one else was around.<br />
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Attractive, slender and modest, maybe three feet in length,
he looked as un-menacing as a snake can, which to me is till pretty menacing. I
know the experts say they’re more afraid of us, blah blah. Experts screw up all
the time. Just ask GM, Wall Street, and M.D.s who can’t decide about Vitamin E or
eggs.<br />
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Ever the comedian, I hissed at the garter snake to shoo him
away from my path. He gave me a look. In Snake, I’m pretty sure he said, “Are
you shitting me?”</div>
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So I was about to take my chances with stepping left, far
left, when he slid away like poured oil.</div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">Back at home, I went of course to Wikipedia, and found
information about garter snakes that was absolutely fascinating. Rather than
going on and on (who, me?), I encourage all to check it out. The infinite
variety on this single planet is stunning—an old idea, but one that gets refreshed over and over if we shut up and look. And get lucky.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180204</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834">http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence/834</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344</a></span><!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-50847415929819946342014-04-05T09:46:00.004-04:002014-04-10T12:51:12.665-04:00Jamaal May, "Hum for the Bolt": Lightning Reconsidered<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/245630#.U0ABbTvyW8E.blogger">Hum for the Bolt by Jamaal May : Poetry Magazine</a><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuHhbWCRbor7GX6MIt10MUieqyLxwNF06TvHmD0TBjx4MZzHLsaG3VxzmGIKj_X357Mp-DuXLV7pOQtohfYFavVTDVAZ72g5uIHLGO1jZTM3bmPg_21UeQ1085U8tGthKhuh6n5phG9bE7/s1600/IMG_1140.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuHhbWCRbor7GX6MIt10MUieqyLxwNF06TvHmD0TBjx4MZzHLsaG3VxzmGIKj_X357Mp-DuXLV7pOQtohfYFavVTDVAZ72g5uIHLGO1jZTM3bmPg_21UeQ1085U8tGthKhuh6n5phG9bE7/s1600/IMG_1140.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blurred Edges</td></tr>
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“Hum for the Bolt” is the title poem of a first book by the<br />
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up and coming Detroit poet, Jamaal May. We can see “Hum for the Bolt” as a spring poem, but more importantly, it’s simply an excellent work that presents the speaker’s wish to be lightning, “the Bolt.” (It reminds me of Emily<br />
Dickinson’s concept of the poem as a force that blows the top of her head off. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also hear Coleridge concluding his portrait of the mysterious poet as prophet or deity in “Kubla Khan”:<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His flashing eyes, his floating hair!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Weave a circle round him thrice,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And close your eyes with holy dread<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For he on honey dew hath fed,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And drunk the milk of Paradise.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UfWATYYRDzxmwOztBL84OwHtEMaW6lBgHJBZCUrjxD0w-1_OgOF3V_0X-WO5YQHr5VZAp0oSW65LMivujT4_uW2TTWTFQJI-tCYcIfejZ5sMTqLoLQ-efGVN7GLmr1QOBbRjiAf__2Bw/s1600/IMG_1306.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UfWATYYRDzxmwOztBL84OwHtEMaW6lBgHJBZCUrjxD0w-1_OgOF3V_0X-WO5YQHr5VZAp0oSW65LMivujT4_uW2TTWTFQJI-tCYcIfejZ5sMTqLoLQ-efGVN7GLmr1QOBbRjiAf__2Bw/s1600/IMG_1306.JPG" height="249" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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Coleridge’s poet is at least a shaman and perhaps a deity, yet Jamaal May’s image of the poet strikes me as new and credible, powerful and scary yet appealing.</div>
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I suppose the speaker could be just some guy, maybe a lover who wants to be flashy, like lightning, in order to be noticed; or he could be a stalker trying to be sneaky and unnoticed except for that instant of victory flash.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Ghost Plane, Avatar</td></tr>
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But how many men want to be lightning? How many would choose lightning over silk that lies romantically against an arm or an arrow that whistles<br />
on its way to the kill? He might</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. love to be<br />
the silk-shimmer<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>against<br />
the curve of anyone’s arm,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>as<br />
brutal and impeccable as it’d be to soar<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>from<br />
a crossbow with a whistle and have a man<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>switch<br />
off upon my arrival, it is nothing<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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But instead of lover or warrior, the speaker wants to be<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>an illumination, scary and near. He<br />
doesn’t just bring the light; he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>the light “in this moment, in this doorway.” The immediacy, the <i>Now </i>is important. The poem messes with time and space: the flash is simultaneously “this far. . . . this close.”</div>
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Lover or stalker—what an excellent way to picture a poem, which was the communication, the light, we welcomed into living rooms and bedrooms before television came along. Maybe it is still the presence, power and magic that “eat the dark.”<br />
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Although the images of medieval warfare (“spaulder and<br />
helm,” and maybe “have a man//switch off”) strike me as forced, I can live with them in exchange for the poem’s wonderful yet unexpected comparison of silk and water, or the rain that makes “a noisy erasure/of this town.” What does rain do if not <i>erase</i> towns—the edges and outlines of buildings and people. Yet I never<br />
consciously thought of rainy cityscapes in that way. Again, the lightning replaces time and space with magic: “the flash that arrives//and leaves at nearly the same moment.”</div>
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May’s choice of “spaulder and helm” makes me realize once again that we don’t have to praise every inch of a poem or a person or the person’s oeuvre or a symphony or a country to say we like it. The more reasonable point is that we like plenty of what’s there. Maybe that’s what we should hope we can say about this day or this life. The bad or merely bland, boring moments might outweigh the good in simple-minded numbers, but there’s some good that keeps sneaking in for whose who can receive it, and some of it flashes like lightning, the fierce beauty and power of which cannot be measured or understood.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Boundaries</td></tr>
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-45073642048043324922014-03-24T18:22:00.001-04:002014-03-25T11:56:48.508-04:00More Motel Charm, plus Mary Szybist's "Night Shifts at the Group Home" <div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdc-PU-RgManUByx8oJm6tq3sneLMXyA3wCDvu1rs5jD0cmSh4LumJ5Jcw8i17cqYkF-Kygv5EfZuE7_Zypql6hneNvOY-PqH0MLc4wcaVU1WSpgMvPQ1M0IpDxeVrL2twkWszWSA34Ma/s1600/IMG_1007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdc-PU-RgManUByx8oJm6tq3sneLMXyA3wCDvu1rs5jD0cmSh4LumJ5Jcw8i17cqYkF-Kygv5EfZuE7_Zypql6hneNvOY-PqH0MLc4wcaVU1WSpgMvPQ1M0IpDxeVrL2twkWszWSA34Ma/s1600/IMG_1007.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blue Traveler</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In case you came for a poem, a discussion of Mary Szybist’s “Night
Shifts in the Group Home” follows two brief travel notes from strange bedfellows on the internet. But play before work. For . . . charm? . . . the first note probably depends entirely upon high quality Kleenex. The second
speaks for itself.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">1</span><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->They were evaluating different TV providers so
we had almost no channels all week. They paid for any guest to go see a movie
in town as compensation . . . . If they get new mattresses, flat screen TVs and
softer Kleenex the hotel will be up to the chain’s standards.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjolLDGwHkGGFoR0OJXXIcz-e5Vzgt8JZeuynqQH-2dKwJ5ficxHva9jY2RNtstjlg3JFqodRD1Swp25XG_2J6i1HbnA6XNgLL9FHdLU3rPxDBbETm2vO3m6mwGmke7ovgXNwG6Mk0fbMkA/s1600/IMG_1348.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjolLDGwHkGGFoR0OJXXIcz-e5Vzgt8JZeuynqQH-2dKwJ5ficxHva9jY2RNtstjlg3JFqodRD1Swp25XG_2J6i1HbnA6XNgLL9FHdLU3rPxDBbETm2vO3m6mwGmke7ovgXNwG6Mk0fbMkA/s1600/IMG_1348.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Road</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> 2. I</span> stayed in [that motel] for 3 days and i got bit up by bed bugs. i came back after
christmas to his other motel and told him he called me a liar and didnt believe
me. he said he just had it gone through and sprayed they didnt find any bed
bugs. a few night later he comes to my room and chews me out telling the guys i
work with about it. he said they came in with me my bag or clothes that it
could have been a spider or somthing. i know that is not that case that it was
his motel that i got bit up at and nothing came from my house or bags and i
know it wasnt a spider. I dont appricate being called a lair or cussed out.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh7-qBTGoYkaY32qOXukksJZXX1UV2-I2Yy3MKzn5wP1IAFvIVtSTs4tkeVLGVAiBqTJI95uigfh68yeNKLnxE8Y-C-Xb-UqjaoXB_JuH2mAQIjdT63QXuxYSBlQzO12Mk9IZmX2f99U-h/s1600/IMG_0982.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh7-qBTGoYkaY32qOXukksJZXX1UV2-I2Yy3MKzn5wP1IAFvIVtSTs4tkeVLGVAiBqTJI95uigfh68yeNKLnxE8Y-C-Xb-UqjaoXB_JuH2mAQIjdT63QXuxYSBlQzO12Mk9IZmX2f99U-h/s1600/IMG_0982.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Convent or Group Home?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246922#.UzBUTNPaNbo.blogger">Night Shifts at the Group Home by Mary Szybist : The Poetry Foundation</a><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i><br />
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<br /></div>
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The connection between motel visitors and group homes may seem thin and far-fetched, but think about it. In travel, our actual, current neighbors and our imagined past fellow travelers are arbitrarily appointed to<br />
us, a little like the members of a group home—or boarding school, or college, or apartment building.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the relationship between the speaker and the resident<br />
in Mary Szybist’s “Night Shifts at the Group Home” is more universal than it might seem. The resident, apparently named Lily Mae, is some kind of patient, “older than my mother: manic, caught / up in gibberish,” while the speaker, a supervisor of some sort, a protector and keeper of order, says, “I needed relief // from myself” and “I just didn’t love / my loneliness.”<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUoPe3xaBvYjDg9RN24vgejKnKid4rG9buYyGPEJsBvufQo1JEjZvwadtp_h3ou9aaM8Cu-ULujApKHPCLWG9P30mKcb3ErNerkzl2mJBb0XSm4NodSu9bW9JQ_qVEbZfYwBa_15pNSjU/s1600/IMG_0717.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: -24px;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMUoPe3xaBvYjDg9RN24vgejKnKid4rG9buYyGPEJsBvufQo1JEjZvwadtp_h3ou9aaM8Cu-ULujApKHPCLWG9P30mKcb3ErNerkzl2mJBb0XSm4NodSu9bW9JQ_qVEbZfYwBa_15pNSjU/s1600/IMG_0717.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Atlantic on Rocks, Manic, Caught Up in Gibberish</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So the two end up in a somewhat forced intimacy in a single cot--the speaker’s. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NO_7nv8LGOQs-CYc-IKI67QMs4gQK9dL4ILHvdGxurZZH5gBXaJ30nl0IbW7M427vRcXJ7Em9Kr3mwr_KO29dZkT96GFL5mGs4mBUtj3ZAeqy1j2RQrYDBIsfDUWD764BdeGN5cBG3Ga/s1600/IMG_0708.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NO_7nv8LGOQs-CYc-IKI67QMs4gQK9dL4ILHvdGxurZZH5gBXaJ30nl0IbW7M427vRcXJ7Em9Kr3mwr_KO29dZkT96GFL5mGs4mBUtj3ZAeqy1j2RQrYDBIsfDUWD764BdeGN5cBG3Ga/s1600/IMG_0708.JPG" height="271" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Girls, Those Same Rocks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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That’s a strange situation, but isn’t it just an extreme example of humans being thrown together in one or another kind of communal living? The lines and the idea I like best in this strange portrait are:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"> I imagine I</span> </i><br />
<br />
<i> <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Times; font-size: small;"> was someone she won</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Times; font-size: small;"> at a fair as the wheel spun</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -12pt;">
<i><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Times; font-size: small;"> under the floating, unfaltering sun</span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 158.05pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 158.05pt;">
Feeling destiny cast her about like that, plus seeing herself as a doll-object in someone else’s view, plus being pulled from her lofty intellectualization into an awareness of separate selves as inarticulate bodies—all that adds up to a supra-rational liberation for the speaker. So yes, she ends up “undone,” but “happily” so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 158.05pt;">
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246922#.UzBUTNPaNbo.blogger">Night Shifts at the Group Home by Mary Szybist : The Poetry Foundation</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .5in 158.05pt;">
<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8svmRbl38vohC5vj7bECuq9LSsgQmGvJnKKeFYUuIPBr5teIXJxN7FpaGirMYq2HtDf6MLA_vys14necKShXGYlC13cv999bEUe8T5ptIEkoR2ou_MwgsBNXjhtpfhfiuPBmLvRcv0yI/s1600/IMG_1309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8svmRbl38vohC5vj7bECuq9LSsgQmGvJnKKeFYUuIPBr5teIXJxN7FpaGirMYq2HtDf6MLA_vys14necKShXGYlC13cv999bEUe8T5ptIEkoR2ou_MwgsBNXjhtpfhfiuPBmLvRcv0yI/s1600/IMG_1309.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Grackle on Ice</td></tr>
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-26407871100073782362014-03-16T16:59:00.001-04:002014-03-18T19:51:48.848-04:00MOTELS, BUGS, SLICES OF LIFE AND PIZZA, WORK<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXfKuw1hW2u4hmD2iM1gFMUqRNnUDLeUPavrYDWjqnHpjrF4yV_QAEtUArU_MTcK0P8q36tPdEe_HjCuTqzWCI2Be9HwN7jxepFEQ3P-p_wrwqC-vhxQAEJukrLq71AvLFchp8zP5ZCjK/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXfKuw1hW2u4hmD2iM1gFMUqRNnUDLeUPavrYDWjqnHpjrF4yV_QAEtUArU_MTcK0P8q36tPdEe_HjCuTqzWCI2Be9HwN7jxepFEQ3P-p_wrwqC-vhxQAEJukrLq71AvLFchp8zP5ZCjK/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG" height="320" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Server</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In case you've come for a poem, here’s Detroit’s own
Philip Levine on the subject of work, which seems relevant to motel dirt, as guest or as worker:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15319 </a><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglf4JPX1GeLDpT3J3Msuabs3E1Kw02TGorVjOpMfZJvtPsIHlngTpi4IsJ8Umkv-goDF-l1X35esQDpBYJEyB-CDMM1VeZDr16H7aueIlqMr7J9ZSJX8MAkkkLzM_DM4cOvk-ifQN2Lhdf/s1600/IMG_1036.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglf4JPX1GeLDpT3J3Msuabs3E1Kw02TGorVjOpMfZJvtPsIHlngTpi4IsJ8Umkv-goDF-l1X35esQDpBYJEyB-CDMM1VeZDr16H7aueIlqMr7J9ZSJX8MAkkkLzM_DM4cOvk-ifQN2Lhdf/s1600/IMG_1036.JPG" height="237" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">UFO Inspector</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXfKuw1hW2u4hmD2iM1gFMUqRNnUDLeUPavrYDWjqnHpjrF4yV_QAEtUArU_MTcK0P8q36tPdEe_HjCuTqzWCI2Be9HwN7jxepFEQ3P-p_wrwqC-vhxQAEJukrLq71AvLFchp8zP5ZCjK/s1600/IMG_0510.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjuwu5GLtWX_dWrydWT_6NwIMrouh9g9ldlKUJ0J3VdgSVbsx0KAN43sCGtEay5i-4IEqinYYGo5v4Uv541TGrn9SGv0XdeWXTjuGUVBxYp91lBDRQN-jYVyzGK6oIp6CwlhtSpMUwzWYb/s1600/IMG_0432.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjuwu5GLtWX_dWrydWT_6NwIMrouh9g9ldlKUJ0J3VdgSVbsx0KAN43sCGtEay5i-4IEqinYYGo5v4Uv541TGrn9SGv0XdeWXTjuGUVBxYp91lBDRQN-jYVyzGK6oIp6CwlhtSpMUwzWYb/s1600/IMG_0432.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kite Catcher</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVNY37AGYPFcnZnAIMPzWFuQCd9l5memyTGvcwJzDoamt0p6hhdK3z9pMAY6iYIwVy9teXH7KC5J1jXEMzk6qPjO1olLnVqMlOCfU8x0_mI9pHr-M_jS4j2MiOfMgEd3hM5XXXpNkwEQ7p/s1600/IMG_0434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVNY37AGYPFcnZnAIMPzWFuQCd9l5memyTGvcwJzDoamt0p6hhdK3z9pMAY6iYIwVy9teXH7KC5J1jXEMzk6qPjO1olLnVqMlOCfU8x0_mI9pHr-M_jS4j2MiOfMgEd3hM5XXXpNkwEQ7p/s1600/IMG_0434.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And Wind Catcher</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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But moving on to new topics . . .<br />
<br />
In roaming on some internet travel sites, I’ve found a few entertaining
details about motels in the nation’s major chains. Maybe I’ll just stay home,
like the guy I know who carries sterilizing spray cans with him on the rare
occasions when he travels and submits to the dangers of public lodging. He
wipes the rooms clean, the way a cop show's CSI might. </div>
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I shouldn’t say aloud that I’ve never had experiences like
his or those below. Then again, I wasn’t looking for germs. I wonder if that’s
the secret: be willfully blind; bugs and human debris will always be with ye,
but ye can choose whether and whither thy vision goest thither. If thine eye
offend thee, pluck it out. Etc.</div>
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By the way, I’m more interested in the reviewers than the
motels, so I’ve kept the original authors’ words, spelling and punctuation for
authenticity, and I have not disclosed the identity of individual motels or
chains—it would be unfair (and libelous?) to cast a shadow on a business
because of a single review. Besides, it’s been over a year since I started this
project, so I no longer recall names or places; I have plausible deniability,
which I’ve always wanted more than love or money or a good crop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I'm limiting myself to two of these per post: </span><br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Breakfast was bad and found a very old
slice of pepperoni stuck on curtain in
room<br />
and food crumbs under furniture and beds.<br />
<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I use to be an housekeeper and
maintnance person at this [motel]. People <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>complaining
about overbooks its not this hotels fault. It is corporates fault. The
manager, Harry, hes not the nicest guy in the world, but at times he can be
very helpful. It's not the
biggest pool ever and cleaning isnt always done the
fastest but what do you expect from a small town like this?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0CoyDzQQWtoNM_c0jadjKwEBssfsRK_o-outyxORBtKqcO0KPsXeS9EgNaEXujdc8gaZ_O3UHwOV25EI_olQENKACtXVjb1hPGjtUtoOGFAF2SQ7H6_VE6HxKTBIUZZjJHN7Nm44lugc/s1600/IMG_0090.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx0CoyDzQQWtoNM_c0jadjKwEBssfsRK_o-outyxORBtKqcO0KPsXeS9EgNaEXujdc8gaZ_O3UHwOV25EI_olQENKACtXVjb1hPGjtUtoOGFAF2SQ7H6_VE6HxKTBIUZZjJHN7Nm44lugc/s1600/IMG_0090.JPG" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">River Guardian</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifPE7BRvrv9LWIBcGQS84iYUKl_xYEVVw40LTloRlY1tu1oZX-1T4iu58xBC4e0ghsOxXR7zYZwGyN46ogzES2fMIbcQ_opyAWH-pbJbR768PTfVtrxtE3WsHtd7ZCWphk5kT3d7k4bT62/s1600/IMG_1037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifPE7BRvrv9LWIBcGQS84iYUKl_xYEVVw40LTloRlY1tu1oZX-1T4iu58xBC4e0ghsOxXR7zYZwGyN46ogzES2fMIbcQ_opyAWH-pbJbR768PTfVtrxtE3WsHtd7ZCWphk5kT3d7k4bT62/s1600/IMG_1037.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Protectors of All?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-63299284480740898542014-02-17T11:06:00.003-05:002014-02-24T08:19:30.120-05:00James Wright: Dog, Horse, Gopher, Blessing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitxtBmaFROrdvS3NkPctFoYwCIZnxOpujF8hLUXSDX3VT2aMMVXKPXb91ZJB8oUMDgQcLTx8uZkCFl0rKaMH-EQNzj8Ys-HeaPkJUwRoRb_02fpf3Ck2q2mqOZmNaaUaiIQb5tjVjBjGl6/s1600/IMG_0799.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitxtBmaFROrdvS3NkPctFoYwCIZnxOpujF8hLUXSDX3VT2aMMVXKPXb91ZJB8oUMDgQcLTx8uZkCFl0rKaMH-EQNzj8Ys-HeaPkJUwRoRb_02fpf3Ck2q2mqOZmNaaUaiIQb5tjVjBjGl6/s1600/IMG_0799.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQePpp2ztDcT2chWWPXk7rHVZvmXclsLcz3Kbuegu4YPqCG_szswGNkcvO6p9EQGeooiuXbaxMvuntgYU9Z_xnJar6XAUN57CbtFcf9dmXePy_sza8LkXDNjUnihFcY7qP-OzW7KNNfoAM/s1600/IMG_0321.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQePpp2ztDcT2chWWPXk7rHVZvmXclsLcz3Kbuegu4YPqCG_szswGNkcvO6p9EQGeooiuXbaxMvuntgYU9Z_xnJar6XAUN57CbtFcf9dmXePy_sza8LkXDNjUnihFcY7qP-OzW7KNNfoAM/s1600/IMG_0321.JPG" height="320" width="234" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Here is an excerpt
from Peter Stitt's 1972 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paris Review</i> interview with
esteemed poet James Wright (1927-1980), whose eloquence here makes clear why his finished poems are so widely admired. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8uVibxpv8xLXYfzX9uCN6IQfWC-vZkByQq-rzNr5yOpZxfxxt8KEX_1YethRCcSoFjBTbvL5yiKaVkVJi6oyNbYNN2FOspXBdozCAP5tUaa05kb-Yd_DEIpmjfx19_hDSmlGsS7InVfBx/s1600/IMG_0524.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8uVibxpv8xLXYfzX9uCN6IQfWC-vZkByQq-rzNr5yOpZxfxxt8KEX_1YethRCcSoFjBTbvL5yiKaVkVJi6oyNbYNN2FOspXBdozCAP5tUaa05kb-Yd_DEIpmjfx19_hDSmlGsS7InVfBx/s1600/IMG_0524.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Snowy Egret</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 22pt;">(The Bly to whom
Wright refers is poet Robert Bly, who had—still has?—a farm in Minnesota, which
Wright sometimes visited).</span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 14.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 22.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span> THE PARIS
REVIEW<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 14.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 22.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The book that
followed, of course, is <i>The Branch Will Not Break</i>. How do these things
show up there?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 14.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 22.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>JAMES WRIGHT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At the center of that
book is my rediscovery of the abounding delight of the body that I had
forgotten about. Every Friday afternoon I used to go out to Bly’s farm, and
there were so many animals out there. There was Simon, who was an Airedale, but
about the size of a Great Dane. There was David, the horse, my beautiful,
beloved David, the swaybacked palomino. Simon and David used to go out by Bly’s
barn. David would stand there looking out over the corn fields that lead onto
the prairies of South Dakota, and Simon would sit down beside him, and they
would stay there for hours. And sometimes, after I sat on the front porch and
watched them, sometimes I went and sat down beside Simon. Neither Simon nor
David looked at me, and I felt blessed. They allowed me to join them. They
liked me. I can’t get over it—they liked me. Simon didn’t bite me, David didn’t
kick me; they just stayed there as they were. And I sat down on my fat ass and
looked over the corn fields and the prairie with them. And there we were. One
afternoon, a gopher came up out of a hole and looked at us. Simon didn’t leap
for him, David didn’t kick him, and I didn’t shoot him. There we were, all four
of us together. All I was thinking was, I can be happy sometimes. And I’d
forgotten that. And with those animals I remembered then. And that is what that
book is <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2883979841111173610" name="_GoBack"></a>about, the rediscovery. I didn’t hate my body at
all. I liked myself very much. Simon is lost. David, with what Robert called
his beautiful and sensitive face, has gone to the knacker’s. I wish I knew how to
tell you. My son Marsh, the musician, is in love with animals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDTO0FCrc6xKZwOxrD_7iirMQYV3UIiobvUNszbRLN_Wo8nrr8eX4ihWnNoI80LCTjAc23LWvAyikat2Qz1ZeWPGKViM0uHF1eD1245Kf_Ty9aVhhFYKkTJrcIMfYhhSdtl2YeLDJiLPyC/s1600/IMG_0105.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDTO0FCrc6xKZwOxrD_7iirMQYV3UIiobvUNszbRLN_Wo8nrr8eX4ihWnNoI80LCTjAc23LWvAyikat2Qz1ZeWPGKViM0uHF1eD1245Kf_Ty9aVhhFYKkTJrcIMfYhhSdtl2YeLDJiLPyC/s1600/IMG_0105.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhylrbBxsNzdSJpDk-GXt_cHJS2O_X739sQYSfXMbfAofqpE2O5-YIni75auQMDWvI8IupsuFpY2FbfaVxbz2RhpdBjBiA0F9HVW6m-dPT5JWS7wueX0XsB3M-S5TqI2npFh-NSIa_pxzpc/s1600/IMG_0666.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhylrbBxsNzdSJpDk-GXt_cHJS2O_X739sQYSfXMbfAofqpE2O5-YIni75auQMDWvI8IupsuFpY2FbfaVxbz2RhpdBjBiA0F9HVW6m-dPT5JWS7wueX0XsB3M-S5TqI2npFh-NSIa_pxzpc/s1600/IMG_0666.JPG" height="264" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m posting Wright's passage today simply because I find it stunning, but also because some regulars here
are animal lovers, as am I. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can’t imagine a piece of writing that better captures what I find beautiful
and comforting about the furry and the feathered (and lizards and bugs, though less
so). </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIo9oaLyHpT9XARdWwmRSwy3MZCRDJPOBqJzkBFOEfzWS-S1wnckHPpqd67FuAnxY21JOlkNJeLjl1K0OalXGEV0ccRFxWKY2ncElaUWoFalZhsrK88b4XVub9L10BKjXcRJC3b2xaDvc0/s1600/IMG_0565.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIo9oaLyHpT9XARdWwmRSwy3MZCRDJPOBqJzkBFOEfzWS-S1wnckHPpqd67FuAnxY21JOlkNJeLjl1K0OalXGEV0ccRFxWKY2ncElaUWoFalZhsrK88b4XVub9L10BKjXcRJC3b2xaDvc0/s1600/IMG_0565.JPG" height="320" width="106" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">True, animals can be crazy and mean (with or without pollution by humans), and I
question the popular, romantic notion that animals kill <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> to feed themselves. A few months ago, a television piece showed an adult female lion (or was it a tiger?) who ate so much of her prey that her stomach
exploded and killed her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 14.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 22.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m wary of sweeping
generalizations, even when they seem to come from reliable sources and
tell me what I think I want to hear about nobility in nature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 14.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 22.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">However, what James
Wright says here captures animals at their best, which is what they are most of
the time—plus the benefit of a human with convincing humility and
admiration. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 22pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: 19.09090805053711px;">For those who are interested, here is the entire interview, about various aspects of writing poetry, not just animals:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: 19.09090805053711px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 19.09090805053711px; text-indent: 22pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3839/the-art-of-poetry-no-19-james-wright" target="_blank">http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3839/the-art-of-poetry-no-19-james-wright</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 22pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 22pt;">If you have the time,
see also James Wright’s poems, “A Blessing” and “Lying in a Hammock,” which are rather directly related to the passage above.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-indent: 29.333332061767578px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo5pqvsjU3l7jtYaX5w2fqLMXpO3mJ6tnv_jLxpZYHjSoNWioEXBfB9_DdLl1gmJpy_8CVqDIFo9zw6ysUqm4TZoIdHgOumUygBnirYJGF9Kp2KPpBm0Tj2LFsZwKse92hD1ceMJX9mR4c/s1600/IMG_0926.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo5pqvsjU3l7jtYaX5w2fqLMXpO3mJ6tnv_jLxpZYHjSoNWioEXBfB9_DdLl1gmJpy_8CVqDIFo9zw6ysUqm4TZoIdHgOumUygBnirYJGF9Kp2KPpBm0Tj2LFsZwKse92hD1ceMJX9mR4c/s1600/IMG_0926.JPG" height="270" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Yellow-Rumped Warbler, Female</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175780#.UwIaPqlI2Zg.blogger">A Blessing by James Wright : The Poetry Foundation</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177229#.UwIaoCO4Cq4.blogger">Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy&rsquo;s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright : The Poetry Foundation</a><br />
<br />
See and hear Wright reading the poem here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpQU79sda3Q" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19.09090805053711px; text-indent: 29.333332061767578px;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpQU79sda3Q</a><br />
<br />
Visitors and I discussed these poems here a few years ago:<br />
<br />
"Lying in a Hammock":<br />
<a href="http://banjo52.blogspot.com/search?q=lying+in+a+hammock">http://banjo52.blogspot.com/search?q=lying+in+a+hammock</a><br />
<br />
"A Blessing":<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2883979841111173610#editor/target=post;postID=5566567101729438795">https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2883979841111173610#editor/target=post;postID=5566567101729438795</a><br />
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-64654889548273933162014-02-05T18:17:00.001-05:002014-02-05T18:17:24.781-05:00Jane Kenyon's "Happiness"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcGiQxRqJAjbdPsVCcqV3Ef-ju0vhoF0jZ6ISmUn4VQ2_GvKX_ot6UgULLENr3ePPm45uloJRllDPV5WorQArXF8_9BJO31Nhsy4l0su7adGTnDI8yShbVpQiqUYqKm-ySZJz19JcYXbm/s1600/IMG_0604.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcGiQxRqJAjbdPsVCcqV3Ef-ju0vhoF0jZ6ISmUn4VQ2_GvKX_ot6UgULLENr3ePPm45uloJRllDPV5WorQArXF8_9BJO31Nhsy4l0su7adGTnDI8yShbVpQiqUYqKm-ySZJz19JcYXbm/s1600/IMG_0604.JPG" height="275" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Prodigal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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There is much to love about Jane Kenyon’s poem, “Happiness,”<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/28400">Happiness by Jane Kenyon : Poetry Magazine</a><br />
<br />
especially if we violate the New Criticism and read her life into her lines—her
death from cancer at age 47 and, according to Poetry Foundation, “the
depression that lasted throughout much of her adult life.” We might expect such
a person and such a poet to challenge the whole notion of Happiness. </div>
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<br /></div>
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However, if we look only at the poem itself, as it centers
on one of life’s trickiest, most amorphous subjects, happiness, there’s not a single false note,
and there are brilliant gifts along the way.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first two stanzas are dangerously general and
discursive; they resemble an essay’s thesis or topic sentences. But
the calmly bold opening line is much more profound and perceptive than we might
have thought. How often have occasions that were supposed to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happy </i>turned out otherwise? </div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPnAjWkZFl4grwNXtMBIpGT7Sd7kwEyXEAwPKqdcAogUDa40cx47-HP2r8u6xsvgSzJcH2O5QGzKtR9CljKNMeqgieunfWpuOdwi4UV8YkUj0VoPBkyP2-IHs0-ff1hGhaRDsujb8J6EJu/s1600/IMG_2129_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prodigal?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The reverse is even more important. As serious readers of
poetry, we might be inclined toward a gloomy worldview, which is easy to
support with examples of death and destruction. But Kenyon is not the easy
thinker that we are. She argues that happiness shows up just where and when
we’d least expect it—or deserve it, perhaps. The comparison of happiness, a
condition, to the Bible’s prodigal son, a human, is so unlikely I think it
deserves the label of <i>conceit (</i>an extremely far-fetched metaphor or simile).</div>
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<br /></div>
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Like other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">good</i>
conceits, Kenyon’s argument holds. The prodigal son does not deserve
forgiveness, and it seems we should not be happy to have him back. After all,
he’s wasted everything we gave him. However, if for no other reason than an
abatement of our loneliness in his absence, we are happy he’s returned. Our
love for him outweighs, or simply negates, any anger we feel. </div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a peculiar logic that I, for one, had never thought of,
but in the end, it makes sense. It’s also brutally honest: we don’t necessarily
forgive because we’re generous, or good, or selfless, but because we were
bereft without the offending person in our lives. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQIrSoh9J2NGq9rswv2Tmey0hxBVmGtaz_Bwa9CK5oky3-NoraeZPCVCRAoAL3kgWoCZQzoKYXY2_778magTSgLj18yGcmsSM5tmKDSusZatHebV7ujyD85ZF-juEQGZCsy_7DWLul4u2z/s1600/Image+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQIrSoh9J2NGq9rswv2Tmey0hxBVmGtaz_Bwa9CK5oky3-NoraeZPCVCRAoAL3kgWoCZQzoKYXY2_778magTSgLj18yGcmsSM5tmKDSusZatHebV7ujyD85ZF-juEQGZCsy_7DWLul4u2z/s1600/Image+6.jpg" height="248" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin: 0px;">
Prodigal? </div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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If Jane
Kenyon were in a workshop these days, I bet someone would have suggested that her
poem really begins—and really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">takes off—</i>with
the third stanza and she should delete the first two. In many cases I might be
that critic because most abstractions don’t have Kenyon’s power of surprise, freshness and important insight into human nature. </div>
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Still, once she begins the specific details, she maintains
her perceptiveness and originality. Who else would have thought to introduce an
unknown uncle? Who else would have placed him </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYw_Sjy12LFwZxnGfhF_qmo5Pd8PnjdE1xvAiXaGTl2TPd1jGbMJEbb198Uikk-VKcvuI6U0PeCa6Fr2QpIpJa3KQpm2JAOao60MSJAUUb20rDy6J47UyovNUTmu7T73GPwcOTEdhFU0A/s1600/IMG_2267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYw_Sjy12LFwZxnGfhF_qmo5Pd8PnjdE1xvAiXaGTl2TPd1jGbMJEbb198Uikk-VKcvuI6U0PeCa6Fr2QpIpJa3KQpm2JAOao60MSJAUUb20rDy6J47UyovNUTmu7T73GPwcOTEdhFU0A/s1600/IMG_2267.JPG" height="232" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">An Unknown Uncle Flies into Town</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in a single-engine plane on a grassy
air strip, would have him hitchhiking into town and knocking on doors?<br />
<br />
This guy
is a bit of an avatar, out of the blue, yet I believe in him completely. If
he’s fictional, I don’t care—then it would be the world’s fault for not containing
such an airstrip and such a hitch hiking uncle, who loves an unseen niece that much,
that daringly. In fact, does he sound just a little like Jesus? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__R19FeC2B5C5pY3PExCSF1N674UYF1t-Fdslqb6WNYBqF-Cl_tJmDuftrYHFrR93E4rsVJ0t5dq-9d2YBQ_LidZQHtvSMqqJso8hhHaLWfN3iYlkhW7aPH14VRWcfPLYEccxOISoIHu1/s1600/IMG_2728.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__R19FeC2B5C5pY3PExCSF1N674UYF1t-Fdslqb6WNYBqF-Cl_tJmDuftrYHFrR93E4rsVJ0t5dq-9d2YBQ_LidZQHtvSMqqJso8hhHaLWfN3iYlkhW7aPH14VRWcfPLYEccxOISoIHu1/s1600/IMG_2728.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a>I also believe in Kenyon’s monk, her sweeping woman, the
child of the drunk mother—and my favorite single image, for this human might
most resemble us all: “the clerk
stacking cans of carrots / in the night.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From there Kenyon makes another daring move—she personifies
inanimate objects and acts out John Ruskin’s famous concept of the Pathetic Fallacy<i>,</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>or<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>the attribution of human qualities to
nature.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the same time—near the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">end</i> of the poem!—she develops the <i>new</i> theme of labor,
first with her catalogue of humans, and concluding with inanimate subjects. Beginning
with the monk, everyone <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">works, </i>has a
function. In the final four lines, that labor, that fact of being, expands to
the boulder, the rain, and the wineglass. They all <i>do their jobs</i>, and maybe they all become weary. At least the wineglass does,
explicitly, holding up wine—or is that blood, in the biblical sense of blood? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it’s also true that all the characters and objects
receive happiness. Happiness <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ministers</i>
to them, perhaps <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because</i> they labor
and have functions. Maybe we are left with the implication that the destiny of
the prodigal son’s family is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">labor</i>
of receiving him back into their arms and hearts, </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjciD6lnGjrIQl_5MFPmEShUdJfDyaZCU7_qObcQGy4k09jyjz1gIxJM9EAUTykVzsw3QmB8yWD6R87oMSX6EB8085RROtYsin9OORww2FULsz558-yWNvgmEIAxObkSOlOyevZv9j_l-mT/s1600/IMG_0589.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjciD6lnGjrIQl_5MFPmEShUdJfDyaZCU7_qObcQGy4k09jyjz1gIxJM9EAUTykVzsw3QmB8yWD6R87oMSX6EB8085RROtYsin9OORww2FULsz558-yWNvgmEIAxObkSOlOyevZv9j_l-mT/s1600/IMG_0589.JPG" height="258" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; text-align: center;">Grace?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and that labor <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> their happiness, or at least happiness
is the reward for their labor. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
With the ordinary word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happiness,</i>
maybe Kenyon is talking about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grace—</i>grace
made evident for those not inclined to believe it. I’d like to think so. </div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/28400">Happiness by Jane Kenyon : Poetry Magazine</a><br />
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-80185141131526739752014-01-28T16:35:00.000-05:002014-02-08T09:03:41.805-05:00Mary Ruefle, "Why I Am Not a Good Kisser," a Comedy-Gravity Meatball<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4u8IrnHD4DYTJOHVwrL3DTR7mrFewVRP8IVQquADf97968zEs2ZgjOm1eoiyyhykqxom3xL7GTQeLX5HUwwWYxZhzA7sp7GFYhP6yBFCM19uawSh0-rxgHYZx4SBDjlKni_oZmah1u1z/s1600/IMG_9043_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4u8IrnHD4DYTJOHVwrL3DTR7mrFewVRP8IVQquADf97968zEs2ZgjOm1eoiyyhykqxom3xL7GTQeLX5HUwwWYxZhzA7sp7GFYhP6yBFCM19uawSh0-rxgHYZx4SBDjlKni_oZmah1u1z/s1600/IMG_9043_2.JPG" height="400" width="378" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.versedaily.org/2011/goodkisser.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.versedaily.org/2011/goodkisser.shtml</a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Why
I Am Not a Good Kisser” <o:p></o:p><br />
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is a Mary Ruefle romp in which we see her ample, quirky,
speedy cerebellum and its thick book of information leavened by humor. Or is it
two pages of humor—about our famous A.D.D., perhaps—deepened by scholarly
details? In any case, it’s a pretty enjoyable example of trying not to take too
seriously a really, really serious self. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If
I started in on my favorite parts, gifts along the way, I might never stop.
With a gun to my head, I’d probably opt for the little black dog and the rooster
details. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgXq4vIL2pOPV-slMYkPuRLXyjCU9260WZ26Z0T5MJE1rBZGDKfdLZcakKwn9rfxWvFw7u_uc7Dp_QSZqJYXHx5i-pwU-sWWnYc-QbnsxTyulrOca7_jJ9TSWnHkTOCyRTiJa1CjY_g1N/s1600/IMG_0391.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgXq4vIL2pOPV-slMYkPuRLXyjCU9260WZ26Z0T5MJE1rBZGDKfdLZcakKwn9rfxWvFw7u_uc7Dp_QSZqJYXHx5i-pwU-sWWnYc-QbnsxTyulrOca7_jJ9TSWnHkTOCyRTiJa1CjY_g1N/s1600/IMG_0391.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boat-Tailed Grackles</td></tr>
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</div>
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I do
have two questions or reservations about the writing. Wouldn’t shorter lines
increase the sense of romp and comedy? These often long lines, with no stanza
breaks, create a sense of labor that might weigh down the frolicking, just a
bit.<br />
<br /></div>
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Secondly,
we are taught—or we once were—that every word in a poem <i>must</i> be there, must be
necessary and right, even if ambiguous. There’s no fat on poetry’s meat—or, once upon a time there wasn’t. With some of Ruefle’s details, I wonder how much they’d be missed
if omitted (keep the rooster!). But there’s a mystery of rhythm and timing
in poetry (and all writing) that might say success is success, don’t mess with
it. And I’ll argue that “Why I Am Not a Good Kisser” is a successful feat
indeed, less frivolous than most humor and less ponderous than most serious writing. <span style="text-align: center;"> </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjZutACW4QprV34FnzVei-FjFWub5hSl5CuE7gbwQr2QwlHdhVVJemcUg8ZysxFSgOnKwJgHJP709tmCT87nKqfvZSvIKQGtbkmiqjtlSyrggffu4GgWBxRVt6RVaiDhPtkiN8HCbb7uvB/s1600/IMG_0339.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjZutACW4QprV34FnzVei-FjFWub5hSl5CuE7gbwQr2QwlHdhVVJemcUg8ZysxFSgOnKwJgHJP709tmCT87nKqfvZSvIKQGtbkmiqjtlSyrggffu4GgWBxRVt6RVaiDhPtkiN8HCbb7uvB/s1600/IMG_0339.JPG" height="312" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Anhinga Dries His Wings (and thinks deep thoughts)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HiWQmKUDTdbqEIbpYUd3rse4FRrFONkAVVuV5hyphenhyphenspPcln-3q4ZqI8mXQy_1M4jt6i2i5-vDdQ9mg5pXvhth1RZWckSU1pabozKpaOpBbqZry_49ltpYJZk62ePq9NKhZVw2zQW-GIIUn/s1600/IMG_6085.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HiWQmKUDTdbqEIbpYUd3rse4FRrFONkAVVuV5hyphenhyphenspPcln-3q4ZqI8mXQy_1M4jt6i2i5-vDdQ9mg5pXvhth1RZWckSU1pabozKpaOpBbqZry_49ltpYJZk62ePq9NKhZVw2zQW-GIIUn/s1600/IMG_6085.JPG" height="320" width="230" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.versedaily.org/2011/goodkisser.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.versedaily.org/2011/goodkisser.shtml</a></div>
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By the way, I've now heard the poet introduced as Mary ROOF-ul, and like the ROOF-lee I offered last time, the introducer was well-qualified. What's in a name, anyway? Hey, somebody should write about that. </div>
Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-48603637875511739032014-01-22T11:23:00.000-05:002014-01-22T12:02:53.312-05:00Mary Ruefle, Kurt Vonnegut and the Problem of Anti-War Literature<style>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_ZDgubhxUj5ocEfYeqfXdRYkOQi1BBfTNSWU9TeR2Dcwf0waDxDCFYKS01_dvdFyGhndDCc3K0aCxMdm1gppZUuzHCUQxqRm8AQm4wHWj2uLY2GC0tVqgKiQOowYO2kl7_OsidHFWWXc/s1600/IMG_0232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_ZDgubhxUj5ocEfYeqfXdRYkOQi1BBfTNSWU9TeR2Dcwf0waDxDCFYKS01_dvdFyGhndDCc3K0aCxMdm1gppZUuzHCUQxqRm8AQm4wHWj2uLY2GC0tVqgKiQOowYO2kl7_OsidHFWWXc/s1600/IMG_0232.JPG" height="241" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cat with No Tail</td></tr>
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It’s supremely difficult to raise an anti-war poem above the
level of shouted, trite protest. Vonnegut succeeded in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slaughterhouse-Five, </i>largely because he was aware that “writing an
anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book.” He sees from the get-go that
he must do something new, and he does. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPTo6NqQM9PT-1fRPb3fHGe-JeekqbdTdjSzM5BlcHH-WKLcKNMGvWzbLWkihMxBUy3Jkd-Yv5qpjHQ4kl0f7ces8QSUJIGlRmlSK1e8H_CAoeKq69ogZn0___J4JnNxs5DAWPlkDSd0r/s1600/IMG_0190.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPTo6NqQM9PT-1fRPb3fHGe-JeekqbdTdjSzM5BlcHH-WKLcKNMGvWzbLWkihMxBUy3Jkd-Yv5qpjHQ4kl0f7ces8QSUJIGlRmlSK1e8H_CAoeKq69ogZn0___J4JnNxs5DAWPlkDSd0r/s1600/IMG_0190.JPG" height="200" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paper Mill</td></tr>
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I’ve started exploring the poetry of Mary Ruefle (ROOF-lee),
and the half-dozen or so poems I've read are brainy, but also emotional and
witty. Her turns are often abrupt or extreme, but they're earned, legitimate, and purposeful, I
think. I'll have to reread to feel more confident about that, but I’m
optimistic. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTLoC85rGGblkaiRJ1iV1xA8GS2oumyi4QJJCqzxcauiqtJJteMLtHu7Oros43pc4XcniOXCBXn2QLvN5kGeiafmZGfGROCUbVP5B0XnbQbhNJHD3RtpG-mwgCxchgRoHckRqv9AUlYKH/s1600/IMG_1178.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTLoC85rGGblkaiRJ1iV1xA8GS2oumyi4QJJCqzxcauiqtJJteMLtHu7Oros43pc4XcniOXCBXn2QLvN5kGeiafmZGfGROCUbVP5B0XnbQbhNJHD3RtpG-mwgCxchgRoHckRqv9AUlYKH/s1600/IMG_1178.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lovers, Thinkers</td></tr>
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Here’s Mary Ruefle’s poem, “The Letter,” which I
particularly like. It’s a poem about the history of love, tragedy, and human
transience as well as war, and that multidimensional feature is much of what I admire: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15908">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15908</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPu7tsCn8MwrM3NfGXZ-_43_fUSAyfIu8XO4i7QLrbADuGj05pEiEfEIhO4ifb1wOli7HmfTnN8uNFP2XYT_GK5RagAvoWSfjQqRaGDFSs1zSYirsiCLsXofWYxWNNwfldxVEMK3M8EP-1/s1600/IMG_0222.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPu7tsCn8MwrM3NfGXZ-_43_fUSAyfIu8XO4i7QLrbADuGj05pEiEfEIhO4ifb1wOli7HmfTnN8uNFP2XYT_GK5RagAvoWSfjQqRaGDFSs1zSYirsiCLsXofWYxWNNwfldxVEMK3M8EP-1/s1600/IMG_0222.JPG" height="400" width="276" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grackles, Florida</td></tr>
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The generically evil, invading army in the first five lines felt a bit different, somehow more creative than most writing about evil,
invading armies, but I wasn’t sure Ruefle would bring it off. Then Jocko’s
frozen tear made me pretty sure the poem had me in its grip and would keep me
there—once more, the power of a single detail.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thinkers, Lovers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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By the way, here’s a site that has many videos of poets
reading, including Reufle. It’s a good place for an initial impression of any one of many poets.</div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8GA8ttQfsc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8GA8ttQfsc</a></div>
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-54835634327964341842014-01-12T18:02:00.001-05:002014-01-12T20:30:11.383-05:00Two Snow Scenes: Maureen Seaton and Naomi Shihab Nye<style>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKTYDivErmfUSjlm56c0aH0ZRtQ80J_6P3TDIZra21Q2L38z97Won0BdzPg4I6KGvG0EuJQH4AsnJ3mhqS-8FK-bC8wRQWMLb7R1wm7eTcRDNzL706n16H7Yl6jwVA3gwRgnjtdQtX_aPY/s1600/IMG_0173.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKTYDivErmfUSjlm56c0aH0ZRtQ80J_6P3TDIZra21Q2L38z97Won0BdzPg4I6KGvG0EuJQH4AsnJ3mhqS-8FK-bC8wRQWMLb7R1wm7eTcRDNzL706n16H7Yl6jwVA3gwRgnjtdQtX_aPY/s1600/IMG_0173.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Here are
two poems sharing the title “Snow,” the first by Maureen Seaton (1991) </span><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241458#.UtGpnLObzGE.blogger">Snow by
Maureen Seaton : The Poetry Foundation</a> <span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the second by Naomi Shihab Nye (1998). <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970</a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">They are
an invitation for us to think about this season and all seasons (add in Wallace
Stevens” “The Snow Man” last time).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> Do you
have a preference? </span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">What would
you write about snow? What do you remember <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because
of </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>snow? Is it simple or
complex and nuanced? What are some of the specific details? </span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Because
Seaton’s poem is overtly political and Shihab Nye’s is domestic and personal, I
might be asking for a comparison of fire hydrants and cauliflower. So let me
say up front that what interests me is that Seaton’s gritty New York portrait of
biracial lesbian lovers, from different socioeconomic strata, seems no more
interesting or “deeper” than Shihab Nye’s recollection of a girl pulling her younger
brother up a snowy hill on his sled.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pXKmMUY4gSLE0B3JkkyD4ALRw6p8KL9olkKRva6pBKVEam1fQiSmGCOiV8dkXqXpfLAqr3tuYuJA-vspcVdPjCgWARog_0Y1wqgSJViOeA2sB1YHlELo9o7-5X1lr_a3ubG_-hdT91jp/s1600/IMG_5629.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pXKmMUY4gSLE0B3JkkyD4ALRw6p8KL9olkKRva6pBKVEam1fQiSmGCOiV8dkXqXpfLAqr3tuYuJA-vspcVdPjCgWARog_0Y1wqgSJViOeA2sB1YHlELo9o7-5X1lr_a3ubG_-hdT91jp/s1600/IMG_5629.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not a Winter Hill, Not a Sled</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">This pair
of poems illustrates, for the ten-thousandth time, that the devil really is in
the details. I learn more from and about Shihab Nye’s children than I do from
Seaton’s adult characters, though I’d have thought them more significant, richer material, caught as
they are in the midst of just about every major prejudice. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Here are
three gems from Shihab Nye that might compel our deeper wondering about sister,
brother, and family, both then and now: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my brother whom I called by
our secret name//</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as if we could be other people under the skin. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People would dig their cars
out like potatoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How are you doing back there?</i> I shouted, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and he said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fine, I’m doing fine,</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the sunniest voice he
could muster<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and I think I should love
him more today </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for having used it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">She <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should </i>love him more? What is the gap
that remains between them as adults? In the childhood home, there was an unexplained “raging
blizzard of sobs,” and now we might wonder about secret names, or being “other
people under the skin.” Shihab Nye might be teasing us with incomplete
information, but at least she is imbuing her characters with ample human
complexity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970</a></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDFmkZmrm-_uEAtNaVYxrbYUiX-13fLZlPlHan3pQOWltzfl66nKX-TBei_DDTfk2hurHWff13E-7zsEFzIIYs5w809ZaR1IjaroFr19KweK7qZe3DoO0owH858-Pj10dPOcGCyjDOlZZ/s1600/IMG_0167.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDFmkZmrm-_uEAtNaVYxrbYUiX-13fLZlPlHan3pQOWltzfl66nKX-TBei_DDTfk2hurHWff13E-7zsEFzIIYs5w809ZaR1IjaroFr19KweK7qZe3DoO0owH858-Pj10dPOcGCyjDOlZZ/s1600/IMG_0167.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">In
Seaton’s “Snow,” the information is also incomplete, but that’s less about
mystery and complexity than turning humans into political types. I don’t know
enough about the lovers to determine whether I want still more info. Are they
statistics in a sociological pamphlet, or are they intriguing, multidimensional
humans? Both? They are not individualized enough for me to feel I know them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHexTrQAUjNs9I0OA1f9r_vkJjNCTJdV3i8zbsNTsmpS9qdNQBBJs12U0GNDllbRAnUSzErEAcAugZsiTZjYXbH1i1Fl1C4KKRsXwQl9FxRN09M-NgB74pSXXEvo96EXpQJlui6jJz73v/s1600/IMG_0168.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHexTrQAUjNs9I0OA1f9r_vkJjNCTJdV3i8zbsNTsmpS9qdNQBBJs12U0GNDllbRAnUSzErEAcAugZsiTZjYXbH1i1Fl1C4KKRsXwQl9FxRN09M-NgB74pSXXEvo96EXpQJlui6jJz73v/s1600/IMG_0168.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dove and Dark-Eyed Junco</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">I’m
inclined to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">like</i> the two, but
consider the second stanza where the speaker confesses her white guilt:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[I]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>strolled along the river, believing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
belonged there, that my people</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>inherited
this wonderland</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>unequivocally,
as if they deserved it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">There’s a
social consciousness there, and I’m glad the speaker sees her unfair advantages
in finding fine housing. But if we’re the kind of people who read serious
poetry, aren’t we just as likely to say, “What took you so long to notice and
care about these inequalities?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">I’d be
more moved by the situation if there were more thorough characterization, with
or without a sociopolitical context, such as these interesting lines about the
lover: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My lover buys twinkies from the Arabs,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>bootleg
tapes on ‘25<sup>th</sup>,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>and
carries a blade in her back</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>pocket
although her hands</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>are
the gentlest I’ve known.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.75pt; text-indent: -12.0pt;">
<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
ignores the piss smells</span></div>
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<span style="color: #505050; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>on
the corner . . . <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">In that
brief passage, she comes alive, </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygyJLkbsfxKfEAURyPLfcRG9rY_al4cajxoxZ7C6J0njgDEWvLs9e0GGmrZUNcS9qZVtTfpWOv-FlCqizRGK3yPdiYG-xOM5wwaxYCfqGg_n9wajsIpOA1WGOL7LkRRAXlu8RjoVjnX3n/s1600/IMG_2943.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygyJLkbsfxKfEAURyPLfcRG9rY_al4cajxoxZ7C6J0njgDEWvLs9e0GGmrZUNcS9qZVtTfpWOv-FlCqizRGK3yPdiYG-xOM5wwaxYCfqGg_n9wajsIpOA1WGOL7LkRRAXlu8RjoVjnX3n/s1600/IMG_2943.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">so I’d like to know her and the speaker in more
contexts like this. I wonder if the poem’s situation lends itself better to
fiction or essay than poetry. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">I’m not
satisfied with either poem’s conclusion, and in both works, I want more
information. But at least both poems interest me enough to wish for a more
complete understanding of their characters. </span></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241458#.UtGpnLObzGE.blogger">Snow by Maureen Seaton : The Poetry Foundation</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19970</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> </span> Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-90893572757559806802014-01-06T18:36:00.003-05:002014-01-07T15:08:58.516-05:00Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" Again<br />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15745">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15745</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFW0iEExVj4UnEFy6UGlnQznscQ6K4tf9R44Gcn9I_xYVNmP5rML2MsWvxPbPiC4HgZWnxrUl_P477wNeRUXnTSzZhMoO8CopNKb9yo8Yeql7GuYQMG3k_iVfRRHYPFyFR4u3lMH4YyHne/s1600/IMG_0143.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFW0iEExVj4UnEFy6UGlnQznscQ6K4tf9R44Gcn9I_xYVNmP5rML2MsWvxPbPiC4HgZWnxrUl_P477wNeRUXnTSzZhMoO8CopNKb9yo8Yeql7GuYQMG3k_iVfRRHYPFyFR4u3lMH4YyHne/s1600/IMG_0143.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a><br />
<br />
It's hard not to talk about snow in our foot of the stuff and our single-digit temps. So, while I consider other poems on the subject, let's return to Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man," which is surely humanity's best poem on snow and one of our best poems, period. As I've said before here, the key to the poem is coming to terms with Stevens' "one must have a mind of winter." Is a mind of winter a good thing--for Stevens? For you?<br />
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<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15745">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15745</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilR6dk18NwpJd-bDgNEubu9K7FXTy_gK7C710ayAv1vaQ2CYOlQ67r8KIN1vg4Gtm9fJ1EGdXb-0gqj8fnTJFQ0uV7SbBiNtYdv2APRVc4OKmvZcVcblzXsHIiNjsPZMX-_tW3I-9YikYt/s1600/IMG_0177.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilR6dk18NwpJd-bDgNEubu9K7FXTy_gK7C710ayAv1vaQ2CYOlQ67r8KIN1vg4Gtm9fJ1EGdXb-0gqj8fnTJFQ0uV7SbBiNtYdv2APRVc4OKmvZcVcblzXsHIiNjsPZMX-_tW3I-9YikYt/s1600/IMG_0177.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-40289957438167824162014-01-04T13:19:00.000-05:002014-01-05T08:36:35.592-05:00An African Greeting and A Small Emily Dickinson Gem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuyhVv1uFr2PpZS-oN7fQtNrSh9NcsUvg7wjLr3xXR4eqTK9tEM6QVzEBUtkPh5kTqD0VFIwmE94EMIN3fOpzVocuXYVccjqNaQ8MvZDjM-JoKL_sYH7aSDjnAxUNea-W-zAY7SDwSr5s/s1600/IMG_2358.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuyhVv1uFr2PpZS-oN7fQtNrSh9NcsUvg7wjLr3xXR4eqTK9tEM6QVzEBUtkPh5kTqD0VFIwmE94EMIN3fOpzVocuXYVccjqNaQ8MvZDjM-JoKL_sYH7aSDjnAxUNea-W-zAY7SDwSr5s/s320/IMG_2358.JPG" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wood Storks, Northern Florida</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Somewhere, years ago, I heard of a greeting that was common somewhere in Africa. Instead of settling for "Hello," the first human says, "I see you." And the other replies, "I am here."<br />
<br />
"I see you."<br />
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"I am here."<br />
<br />
I find something wonderful about that--what it says might be everything. But the exchange also calmly recognizes all that cannot be expressed.<br />
<br />
Can anyone give me more information? Is it in fact an African greeting? Where in Africa? (I think I heard it was South African). Has there been a lot of commentary about it? It seems to me there might be, yet I haven't heard the words in more than a decade.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0qzdr-n60uhTH5eqaPPyD0aQYah7TaZjuisBU6zHEyafbgVSTIGjhHCz2ga5Sq02s7jG4VSpejgvG4SLzyVGOjfzIYj2hSdHEENb7waQCFf3_Q6B0iJySTxcoytSAY2VOAgcIFfrqPh8X/s1600/IMG_4040_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0qzdr-n60uhTH5eqaPPyD0aQYah7TaZjuisBU6zHEyafbgVSTIGjhHCz2ga5Sq02s7jG4VSpejgvG4SLzyVGOjfzIYj2hSdHEENb7waQCFf3_Q6B0iJySTxcoytSAY2VOAgcIFfrqPh8X/s1600/IMG_4040_2.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Southern Ontario</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPYgyhGiC6AT-GyOsAyF95SLyMrPeuPE7mXavvupXVU-yjPTJyC5oqfSKARaBRKJqcfhxf2t7GTdxPpeB6cpAan6YThWDrhFj7TO_KunHq_bEbouplzP3vwXs3RFJ302o7YsOCF4XBVkZj/s1600/IMG_1842_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg31yKb3ZCTtaErx1UtgA_x6jDKCWz-1OKmbrRYx3sHwuP4cPxl7I8rD0aC_tBvNp-FOEPMPA7gFxzL7sQeewaSXh8Be8p79jfpUGIKm7c91tjhdt6aSnyR_g86eqvRXeRH-wZh1CYcTGXG/s1600/IMG_2468.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg31yKb3ZCTtaErx1UtgA_x6jDKCWz-1OKmbrRYx3sHwuP4cPxl7I8rD0aC_tBvNp-FOEPMPA7gFxzL7sQeewaSXh8Be8p79jfpUGIKm7c91tjhdt6aSnyR_g86eqvRXeRH-wZh1CYcTGXG/s320/IMG_2468.JPG" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Loxahatchee NWR, Florida</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Th0LuORLTgOA71Ii80ctYIPqULvOC8YvmX4HP7T72oENvRm6FMH2ZwMxWd1NFhOBXIhVLYknBRkoGnIVifP7NQLvBbCZQ1XGnCXr7z_mBZO1OklGTBOLByN59MyoavmdKbz2BAVmKYY9/s1600/IMG_2692.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Th0LuORLTgOA71Ii80ctYIPqULvOC8YvmX4HP7T72oENvRm6FMH2ZwMxWd1NFhOBXIhVLYknBRkoGnIVifP7NQLvBbCZQ1XGnCXr7z_mBZO1OklGTBOLByN59MyoavmdKbz2BAVmKYY9/s320/IMG_2692.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suburban Detroit park</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPYgyhGiC6AT-GyOsAyF95SLyMrPeuPE7mXavvupXVU-yjPTJyC5oqfSKARaBRKJqcfhxf2t7GTdxPpeB6cpAan6YThWDrhFj7TO_KunHq_bEbouplzP3vwXs3RFJ302o7YsOCF4XBVkZj/s1600/IMG_1842_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPYgyhGiC6AT-GyOsAyF95SLyMrPeuPE7mXavvupXVU-yjPTJyC5oqfSKARaBRKJqcfhxf2t7GTdxPpeB6cpAan6YThWDrhFj7TO_KunHq_bEbouplzP3vwXs3RFJ302o7YsOCF4XBVkZj/s320/IMG_1842_2.JPG" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suburban Detroit park</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br />
And thanks once more to the Poetry Foundation, this time for its Dec. 31, 2013 daily poem, a brief Emily Dickinson gem. It's new to me and feels a bit like the tone and feeling in the African greeting. Doesn't it? How would you explain the similarity? Or do you not agree there is one?<br />
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<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
It's all I have to bring today-- </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
This, and my heart beside-- </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
This, and my heart, and all the fields-- </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
And all the meadows wide-- </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
Be sure you count--should I forget </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
Some one the sum could tell-- </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
This, and my heart, and all the Bees </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
Which in the Clover dwell.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: start;">
<br /></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtohqPPPBPnuQL_sTJmp3ZXLCO-NrE_nBu06Bcblqt3TdjctSyHJfeev_VfmwACfL5_bH6w-J7lrdHhzPNByEdLbQxlviTLYw6Ikqkrxxe9DsmYxx067phhO9YfAYUaxd1lTiVyRHma7W/s1600/IMG_2108.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtohqPPPBPnuQL_sTJmp3ZXLCO-NrE_nBu06Bcblqt3TdjctSyHJfeev_VfmwACfL5_bH6w-J7lrdHhzPNByEdLbQxlviTLYw6Ikqkrxxe9DsmYxx067phhO9YfAYUaxd1lTiVyRHma7W/s320/IMG_2108.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Augustine Beach, Florida<br />
<br />
<br />
Happy New Year.<br />
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<br />
<br />Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-53417975425285050622013-12-24T16:35:00.001-05:002014-01-05T08:34:34.484-05:00Billy Collins' "Snow Day" and the Gift of Gab<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6EYhHdrv93u4ZK8Hco55q6A5Qoeea4xCqaY-x_L27Yp1tWjvtf04XzFS2kcKCJZxiHRp38mvFBS-4cLWT8XIiEXhGXxdnKgx9lkSsql-DVj_LGjmnoadyfXCLCg8LcnV7DxY68KHLklh/s1600/IMG_9522.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6EYhHdrv93u4ZK8Hco55q6A5Qoeea4xCqaY-x_L27Yp1tWjvtf04XzFS2kcKCJZxiHRp38mvFBS-4cLWT8XIiEXhGXxdnKgx9lkSsql-DVj_LGjmnoadyfXCLCg8LcnV7DxY68KHLklh/s400/IMG_9522.JPG" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sandhill Cranes</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">It
seems everyone wants me to like Billy Collins’ poetry, and for the most part, I
do. I especially like what he and the other makers of “the poetry of
accessibility” have done for the popularity of poetry. They’ve created a
likable product; they’ve even made it sell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">However,
when I’m asked if I like Collins, Sharon Olds, Tony Hoagland, and others, I
find myself feeling guarded. I think that has much to do with long-ish narratives and the
premium they place on humor and charm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Many “accessible” poems take a long time to deliver their punch, if there’s any sock-'em at all to go with the charm. I’m likely to find more reward, more left hook, more
dirt and scabs and tobacco-spit, in addition to more lily-like beauty, in a single line of
Hopkins, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Bishop, and others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Why
should I not ask poets to try for that power-per-line or at least power-per-stanza? I
suppose one answer is that charming, winking, “accessible,” inoffensive poems
sell better. So poems are Barbie Dolls? Buicks? Surely that’s a poisonous argument to anyone who cares about the <i>art</i> of poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Here’s
a season-appropriate Billy Collins poem that I don’t dislike—mostly because of the originality and keen perception of the
dog that will “porpoise through the drifts.” Also the radio’s being specifically
“plastic” somehow plants me nicely in the poem’s suburban world, although farms and cities probably have plastic radios too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176051#.UrmtW90Ef38.blogger">Snow Day by Billy Collins : The Poetry Foundation</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTMJwircDivYfQiZ_G3m6AY4XZ9ge0Y4oIAo1K4WKvr8HTq0fM40B4AJxeufLljwP4WRt2xXteyXNFjqQdJcQBtM4Zh0IK5Y4diFbRh9dzG9iQtcTKmKnie8w9064Y_XuhwZo9EPtgvYxB/s1600/IMG_3071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTMJwircDivYfQiZ_G3m6AY4XZ9ge0Y4oIAo1K4WKvr8HTq0fM40B4AJxeufLljwP4WRt2xXteyXNFjqQdJcQBtM4Zh0IK5Y4diFbRh9dzG9iQtcTKmKnie8w9064Y_XuhwZo9EPtgvYxB/s320/IMG_3071.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">But I’d drop the first two stanzas entirely, along with some of the ten cute names
for elementary schools. If ten is an OK number, why not
seventeen? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">I’d
rather hear more about the meanness of the girls. Should it prepare me for
grown women? Should it worry me, especially when evolutionists say the female
does the selecting of a mate? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">And
by the way, if all the schools are closed, which three girls are plotting? And where?
Where is the speaker now, that he might move close enough to hear their words?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">And how much does any of that have to do with a snow day?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Many
of Billy Collins’ poems are richer, more urgent than “Snow Day.” If you wish, consider his poem "Silence": </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/39">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/39</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I’ve picked "Snow Day" instead because it might illustrate why some poetry hardliners and old-timers are leery
of populist poetry and the apparent argument that poetry might amount to little more than the gift of gab. I hope
we all want poetry to sell and poets to prosper, but I also hope we prefer gems to synthetics, poems to fortune cookies. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 19.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!</span></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176051#.UrmtW90Ef38.blogger">Snow Day by Billy Collins : The Poetry Foundation</a>Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-50415239622171091322013-12-16T11:39:00.002-05:002013-12-20T10:23:01.187-05:00On Second Thought, the Silence of Snow<br />
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Banjo52http://www.blogger.com/profile/04342397136888422440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2883979841111173610.post-53349407661663344592013-11-27T11:58:00.004-05:002013-11-28T12:37:15.039-05:00An e.e. cummings Thanksgiving for Pantheists, Pagans, Generic Mystics, Animists, Deists, Theists, Agnostics, Atheists, and Doubting Methodists<br />
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A friend's request to see my photos of the new-to-me golden-crowned kinglet made me think of e.e. cummings’ Poem 53 and hear it as a thanks-giving as well as
its more obvious prayer of beseeching and urging oneself. The world is rich and not entirely logical; let me perceive and love it for those reasons, contradictory as they may seem. Poem 53 might be too sentimental for some, but how does one dispute its argument? </div>
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(In my cummings book, Line 7 begins “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> even,” not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“for</i> even”—I
suspect Garrison Keillor’s secretary was typing on Sunday):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<a href="http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/12/31">http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/12/31</a></div>
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Also consider Poem 53 as a reply to Janet Loxley Lewis’
“Austerity” in my last post. Would she and e.e. cummings have hated each other?
Are they actually disagreeing in these two poems? How bitterly? Which side of the argument are you partial to—cummings’
“little birds” or Loxley Lewis’ “monotony” of stars?</div>
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And now that I've caused myself to think in pairs, then, how can I re-post the golden-crowned kinglet without his cousin (I assume), the ruby-crowned kinglet? Do you have a favorite? Do you love one child more than the other? </div>
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You see, this is how football begins: you feel a kinship with a team's location or uniform and soon enough you're a tribalist, betting on Roman gladiators who rumble in the dirt, making themselves metaphors for war. And yet, I'm a fan, sort of. </div>
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It must be Sunday: I'm not making sense; surely I'm wrong. And therefore blessed.</div>
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Happy eating-drinking-observing-thinking! </div>
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<a href="http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/12/31">http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/12/31</a></div>
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There wasn’t a lot of commentary when I posted Poem 53 in
May of 2010. Maybe it will be different this time.<br />
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