When I was a newly married teaching assistant long ago at Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State University), one of my fellow TA's, a good friend of my husband's, hung over and desperate to procure a copy of Walden from which to make illicit copies for his freshman composition class which was to begin in fifteen minutes, borrowed my well-thumbed little paperback edition and promptly lost it, although not before having successfully used it to prep materials for his class. I regretted its loss, although not so much, perhaps, as Mark regretted the borrowing of it in the long run, for his students gave him a very hard time about the effusive marginalia which which I'd worshipfully inscribed its pages. I badgered him so mercilessly about the book's return and was so heartbroken at his confession of its loss, that a year later he presented me with a hardback edition in a Victorian replica binding. On the title page, he'd written, "Walden deserves your love almost as much as a certain lanky redhead does--and like Scott, Walden is not something so much...to live with as to live for. & now you've an edition that will age no quicker than you will...Forgiven?"
Mark may have been a too often high, irresponsible if well-meaning sot who taught his lesson on Thoreau in a lime green jester suit he'd passed out in the night before, but here's the thing about Mark: he was brilliant, utterly and undeniably brilliant. And he was right. Scott, that lanky redhead whom I've now been living with and for during the last twenty-four years? He has some things in common with Thoreau, including something I've not often heard brought up in relation to dear old Henry David--the propensity to employ a fine, often irreverent bit of humor when making an earnest point.
One way Thoreau shows off his clever self is through word play. Writing about a piece of land, he says, "I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last" (1998). The word play in this sentence hinges on the word buried, which can mean placed in a grave or to be immersed in some activity. I can't help but believe that Thoreau here means instead of buying the property, he intends to simply spend a great deal of time there, walking around it and enjoying it--burying himself in it, so to speak. Using the word immediately after the phrase "as long as I live," however, causes the reader to associate it with the end of life and the burial that occurs as a result.
Another humor tactic Thoreau uses is through juxtaposition of subject matter that is heady with that which is very down-to-earth, often introducing the latter unexpectedly: "One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool" (1999). The reader has to grin at herself by the end of that sentence, when she finds herself surprised to be staring not into the secrets of the earth, but at a tub of butter. Thoreau sets her up via her own expectations of some deep intellectual insight, and then delivers butter instead. To be sure, the insight is there, but so is the giggle at the end of it, instead of an opportunity to rub one's forehead, nod sagely and look knowing.
Thoreau isn't above using a bit of snark, either, sassy bits of commentary with a bit of an edge to them. Of Britain he writes, "The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine" (2033). Dinner parties also seem to draw his ire, for after reporting that his neighbors enjoy meeting famous people at such gatherings, he says, "The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose, still, dress it as you will." (2031). Ouch.
Let's not forget exaggeration, either. One of my favorite lines is (again!) in reference to dinner time, when evidently one was expected to dine in company. Thoreau's advice for surviving its horrors is nothing short of comic genius: "Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner... Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill" (2005). (I need to remember that in order to survive the next multi-generational family holiday get-together at which my presence is required.) Thoreau was not above using absurdity (exaggeration's close cousin), either. A passage that made me laugh aloud was one addressing the need to strive to fulfill one's potential, regardless of whatever limit that potential might have. "Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies," asks Thoreau, "and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?" (2029). Today, I'm sure this qualifies as politically incorrect. Nevertheless, it is funny simply for the extreme absurdity of the image. Here we are, tootling along in conversation with one of America's best respected Transcendentalist writers, and he throws pygmies (not a common nineteenth century American subject of conversation for most of his readers, I would assume) into the mix.
He uses humor for a purpose, of course, does Thoreau. He knows that most people can only sustain serious mind-bending thought for so long, that we need concrete images to connect to abstract thought in order to process them and remember them best. And of course, his own Transcendental belief in the need to put foundations beneath our castles in the clouds, to ground our philosophies in earthy reality, taught him to do just that in his writing as well. The result is that he is not only a more enjoyable read than Emerson, but a more easily understood (and appreciated) writer, as well...at least in my book.
As for that lanky red-head, he's still making me laugh, too, and he does it with all Thoreau's techniques, from the absurdity of pouring salt on my arm during a romantic dinner date ("Well, at least now we know you're not a slug.") to puns and definite snark, he keeps life interesting and lightens the load that responsibility and deep thought too often press upon us. I'm keeping them both--Great Scott and Thoreau; they give me hope.
Note: I love Thoreau. I really do. That fact does not mean, however, that he is above having a bit of fun poked in his general direction.
Thoreau, Henry David.
"Walden". The
Heath Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Vol. B. Boston: Wadsworth,
2014. 1996-2034. Print.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Taking Another Look at Emerson
I've been rereading Ralph Waldo Emerson this week for a literature class, visiting him again after a twenty-five-year hiatus, and the result is not what I'd expected. Twenty-five years ago in an American lit survey class I was startled to read a man from the 1800's putting my own thoughts and beliefs (many of which I'd never shared with anyone else) into words. I fell. I fell hard. I knew why Louisa May Alcott left wildflowers on his doorstep. When I discovered at the beginning of this summer that I would be reading Emerson, I determined to save him for the end of the term, to savor him again and in hopes of finding inspiration with which to return to my classroom in August. Instead, I found myself having to get out of the chair where I sat and pace around the room in frustration, and procrastinating writing this blog entry.
Emerson, of course, hasn't changed in the past twenty-five years; I have. While he still speaks to me deeply, while I still love his fierce insistence on the necessity of discovering one's own truths and then standing in them unshaken by institutions or individuals in one's surrounding society, I find that I cannot agree with him wholeheartedly any longer. I have seen too much. I know too much.
It was this passage which broke my heart:
Maybe Emerson would say that actions like these are born of not listening to our true natures, actions caused by either the stress that builds in us from denying the truths we recognize deep in our hearts but are afraid to grasp tightly enough to stand up against the pressures of a world that wishes us to conform, or caused by our utterly believing some untruth we've been fed all our lives, by not searching and finding those truths that are naturally and individually ours. I believe that many such actions are exactly that. But surely ending a life over a few acres that one can only possess for a limited time is wrong, even if the person wielding the weapon believed completely that it was the right thing to do.
My disagreeing with Emerson on the question of right and wrong has clouded that original starry-eyed love I felt for him when I was twenty, but in a way, it also gives me reason to love him more, to love him for his idealism, his ability to believe that people were so truly good that if they would only listen to their natural selves, they would never do great wrongs in the world. The second love feels more authentic anyway, based as it is on what he was, on his being faithful and thorough in pursuing and sharing his own deeply held beliefs--such as believing that the nature of man was good--rather than the viability of his beliefs in the real world. Surely Emerson would approve.
Note: For "something entirely different, pop over to Alon for a blog entry on what happens when I get wound up about Emerson and start talking with The Younger Daughter. She's quirky, and she has some insight.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance". The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Vol. B. Boston: Wadsworth, 2014. 1871. Print.
Emerson, of course, hasn't changed in the past twenty-five years; I have. While he still speaks to me deeply, while I still love his fierce insistence on the necessity of discovering one's own truths and then standing in them unshaken by institutions or individuals in one's surrounding society, I find that I cannot agree with him wholeheartedly any longer. I have seen too much. I know too much.
It was this passage which broke my heart:
"I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.' No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it."The last sentence sent chills down my arms when I read it. I have no issue whatsoever with the potential fallibility of the church and its interpretations of the scriptures upon which it claims to base its doctrines. Nor do I think that living from within is wrong--to the contrary, we must live from within, or we can hardly be said to be living. No. What I cannot believe in the least is that good and bad are defined only by what lies within our own natures. In the six years that I've been teaching high school, I've seen one student threaten--loudly and violently--to kill another based on his sexual orientation. Two students lost their grandfather to a neighbor who decided to kill him and hide his body in a shallow grave in the woods...over a property line dispute. Several students have been hospitalized for self-harm or suicide attempts and been mocked or harassed for it. I could go on.
Maybe Emerson would say that actions like these are born of not listening to our true natures, actions caused by either the stress that builds in us from denying the truths we recognize deep in our hearts but are afraid to grasp tightly enough to stand up against the pressures of a world that wishes us to conform, or caused by our utterly believing some untruth we've been fed all our lives, by not searching and finding those truths that are naturally and individually ours. I believe that many such actions are exactly that. But surely ending a life over a few acres that one can only possess for a limited time is wrong, even if the person wielding the weapon believed completely that it was the right thing to do.
My disagreeing with Emerson on the question of right and wrong has clouded that original starry-eyed love I felt for him when I was twenty, but in a way, it also gives me reason to love him more, to love him for his idealism, his ability to believe that people were so truly good that if they would only listen to their natural selves, they would never do great wrongs in the world. The second love feels more authentic anyway, based as it is on what he was, on his being faithful and thorough in pursuing and sharing his own deeply held beliefs--such as believing that the nature of man was good--rather than the viability of his beliefs in the real world. Surely Emerson would approve.
Note: For "something entirely different, pop over to Alon for a blog entry on what happens when I get wound up about Emerson and start talking with The Younger Daughter. She's quirky, and she has some insight.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance". The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Vol. B. Boston: Wadsworth, 2014. 1871. Print.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Language and Listening
For my birthday this year, Great Scott gave me The Best American Essays 2009, which was edited by Mary Oliver. The language in the chosen essays of this volume seems to me richer than that of most contemporary essays. Many of Oliver's choices echo the style of some of her own favorite writers, Victorians such as Emerson and Whitman, whose writing require readers to slow down and immerse themselves deeply in the flow of words rather than skimming merrily over the top of them. The Younger Daughter and I have been reading George MacDonald's Phantastes on weekend mornings and snow days, and here, too, I've been struck by the richness of the words and wording of the Victorians. My students--most of them--would never be able to follow sentences like these, sentences which wind and curl like vines up pillars or large-trunked trees, sprouting side branches and arabesque tendrils before finally growing into comprehensive maturity and blooming gloriously into full, many-petaled meaning.
As I was reading to The Younger Daughter earlier this week, I began wondering if she might be better prepared to read and comprehend such sentences on her own for having heard them read aloud by someone else. The human mind is a great recognizer of patterns. If, when it begins a complex task, it has some basic patterns in place, basic patterns that will aid in the comprehension and execution of the complex task at hand, that task will be accomplished much more easily and with better results. My students have all acquired the skill, the pattern knowledge, of word-calling; however many to most of the students in my classes have not developed an ear for written language. They don't hear the words in their heads as they read. The rhythms and melodies of the written word blow past them like so many dry, leaves; inflection and the subtle meaning it carries is lost. I wish all children were read to aloud. Written words are symbols for our quickened breath passing between tongue and tooth, for living human spirit shaped into transmissible entities leaving our lips. Expecting a child to read well without her having experienced the breath of life blown across the pages of books and into her waiting ear is like handing her a bird from the taxidermist and requiring her to comprehend and demonstrate flight.
As I was reading to The Younger Daughter earlier this week, I began wondering if she might be better prepared to read and comprehend such sentences on her own for having heard them read aloud by someone else. The human mind is a great recognizer of patterns. If, when it begins a complex task, it has some basic patterns in place, basic patterns that will aid in the comprehension and execution of the complex task at hand, that task will be accomplished much more easily and with better results. My students have all acquired the skill, the pattern knowledge, of word-calling; however many to most of the students in my classes have not developed an ear for written language. They don't hear the words in their heads as they read. The rhythms and melodies of the written word blow past them like so many dry, leaves; inflection and the subtle meaning it carries is lost. I wish all children were read to aloud. Written words are symbols for our quickened breath passing between tongue and tooth, for living human spirit shaped into transmissible entities leaving our lips. Expecting a child to read well without her having experienced the breath of life blown across the pages of books and into her waiting ear is like handing her a bird from the taxidermist and requiring her to comprehend and demonstrate flight.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Thirteen Marriage Tips for Bibliophiles
1. Budget for books the way you do for food and electricity...or you won't have food and electricity.
2. Read each other's books.
3. Keep separate accounts at the used bookstore.
4. Books are paper. Paper is good insulation. Line the walls of your house with bookcases. Fill them. It's the environmentally responsible thing to do.
5. Read aloud to each other.
6. Keep stray dishes, flowerpots, etc... handy to throw during arguments, lest you be tempted to throw books.
7. Respect each other's differing literary tastes.
8. To communicate with a spouse who is reading a book, replace his or her bookmark with a note.
9. James Fenimore Cooper is your friend.
10. Work out a shelving system together to ensure both of you can find the books you need when you need them.
11. For the sake of your financial stability, do not often shop for books together.
12. A bookless parlor is a howling wilderness.
13. Buy only one copy of books you both love. The thought of having to buy replacement copies is an excellent divorce deterrent.
2. Read each other's books.
3. Keep separate accounts at the used bookstore.
4. Books are paper. Paper is good insulation. Line the walls of your house with bookcases. Fill them. It's the environmentally responsible thing to do.
5. Read aloud to each other.
6. Keep stray dishes, flowerpots, etc... handy to throw during arguments, lest you be tempted to throw books.
7. Respect each other's differing literary tastes.
8. To communicate with a spouse who is reading a book, replace his or her bookmark with a note.
9. James Fenimore Cooper is your friend.
10. Work out a shelving system together to ensure both of you can find the books you need when you need them.
11. For the sake of your financial stability, do not often shop for books together.
12. A bookless parlor is a howling wilderness.
13. Buy only one copy of books you both love. The thought of having to buy replacement copies is an excellent divorce deterrent.
Monday, January 14, 2008
A Review: Goblin Fruit Winter 08
So many of the poems in this issue were excellent in either storytelling or wordplay, and so many excelled in both, that I hardly know where to begin in letting you know what I like. Where to start?
JoSelle Vanderhooft's two pieces were, as hers always seem to be, strong. I very much liked "The Explorer's Daughter," but it was "Death Enters a Mother's Service" that had me crouched in front of the monitor scrolling up and down and up again to read and reread. Elements there of Walter de la Mare and Rosetti, strong images and rhythms, heartbreak and beauty. Lovely work.
Robert Borski's "The Bashful Young Swain at the Ogre's Cotillion" made me raise my eyebrows and laugh aloud with pleasure.
Sophanny Marin's "The Choke-Damp"...ah, what a poem. This is definitely one of my favorites, and I need to find a way to let her know. I think that by which I am most struck in this poem is her adeptness in bringing the world of faerie and the modern world into such graceful, frightening and heartbreaking juxtaposition. Well done.
Maureen McQuerry's "Selkie" is a study in wonderful line breaks (always tricky and potentially awkward!) and language that sings in both sound and sense. McQuerry is someone whose work I will be watching in the future. If all her poems are as well crafted as "Selkie" and "Chesire" (another poem I loved in this issue), I can't wait to read her books.
Jennifer Crow's "Twelve Swans" also was exquisite and exceptionally wonderful technically as well as lyrically and narratively. She has a skill in poetic construction that shines as she spins the familiar tale of the twelve swan brothers into a new poetic form with each section. Brava!
And finally, I couldn't comment on Goblin Fruit's Winter 08 issue without mentioning "Revisiting the Maiden's Tower" by Stacy Cowley, a piece that gave--and continues to give--me chills, with its images both beautiful and horrific.
These were probably my favorite pieces, but the other poems were wonderful as well and deserve a read, especially by anyone with an appreciation for mythopoetic literature. Old fairy tales spun in new directions, silk kimonos, ravens, seals, cherries and snow and a saint... It is easy to become lost here. Tie a string to your wrist as you enter, to be sure of finding your way back out.
JoSelle Vanderhooft's two pieces were, as hers always seem to be, strong. I very much liked "The Explorer's Daughter," but it was "Death Enters a Mother's Service" that had me crouched in front of the monitor scrolling up and down and up again to read and reread. Elements there of Walter de la Mare and Rosetti, strong images and rhythms, heartbreak and beauty. Lovely work.
Robert Borski's "The Bashful Young Swain at the Ogre's Cotillion" made me raise my eyebrows and laugh aloud with pleasure.
Sophanny Marin's "The Choke-Damp"...ah, what a poem. This is definitely one of my favorites, and I need to find a way to let her know. I think that by which I am most struck in this poem is her adeptness in bringing the world of faerie and the modern world into such graceful, frightening and heartbreaking juxtaposition. Well done.
Maureen McQuerry's "Selkie" is a study in wonderful line breaks (always tricky and potentially awkward!) and language that sings in both sound and sense. McQuerry is someone whose work I will be watching in the future. If all her poems are as well crafted as "Selkie" and "Chesire" (another poem I loved in this issue), I can't wait to read her books.
Jennifer Crow's "Twelve Swans" also was exquisite and exceptionally wonderful technically as well as lyrically and narratively. She has a skill in poetic construction that shines as she spins the familiar tale of the twelve swan brothers into a new poetic form with each section. Brava!
And finally, I couldn't comment on Goblin Fruit's Winter 08 issue without mentioning "Revisiting the Maiden's Tower" by Stacy Cowley, a piece that gave--and continues to give--me chills, with its images both beautiful and horrific.
These were probably my favorite pieces, but the other poems were wonderful as well and deserve a read, especially by anyone with an appreciation for mythopoetic literature. Old fairy tales spun in new directions, silk kimonos, ravens, seals, cherries and snow and a saint... It is easy to become lost here. Tie a string to your wrist as you enter, to be sure of finding your way back out.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Friday Quote: On Bibliophilia
"She is too fond of books, and it has addled her brain."
--Louisa May Alcott
--Louisa May Alcott
Monday, October 29, 2007
Call for Submissions: Guerrilla Ink Press
Guerrilla Ink Press is currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction manuscripts, as well as photography and digital artwork for a new literary, arts, entertainment, news publication, GiP. This magazine allows Guerrilla Ink Press to continue providing dynamic publishing opportunities for new, emerging, and established writers in both electronic and print formats. Deadline is December 10, 2007.
Send Submissions to:
Attn: GiP Magazine
Guerrilla Ink Press, LLC
1956 E. Chestnut Exp.
Springfield, MO 65802-2235
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact GIP@guerrillainkpress.com with the subject ‘Attn. GiP Magazine.’ We look forward to hearing from you soon.
I've known Will LaPage, the founder and executive editor for GiP, for a good many years and can say without reserve that he is one of the most dedicated people I have ever met in terms of commitment to the literary world. He himself has a definite gift for writing, and reading his pieces in workshop has always been an act of appreciation as well as critical review on my part. His input on my own work has been more than notably helpful (those of you who enjoyed "Mania" have him, in part, to thank). What's more, GiP is offering book deals to each of of the contributors to its first issue. You can read more here.
Please pass this information on to other writers who may be interested. I'd love to see GiP flooded with quality work, and I know many of my readers and their acquaintances can make it happen.
Send Submissions to:
Attn: GiP Magazine
Guerrilla Ink Press, LLC
1956 E. Chestnut Exp.
Springfield, MO 65802-2235
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact GIP@guerrillainkpress.com with the subject ‘Attn. GiP Magazine.’ We look forward to hearing from you soon.
I've known Will LaPage, the founder and executive editor for GiP, for a good many years and can say without reserve that he is one of the most dedicated people I have ever met in terms of commitment to the literary world. He himself has a definite gift for writing, and reading his pieces in workshop has always been an act of appreciation as well as critical review on my part. His input on my own work has been more than notably helpful (those of you who enjoyed "Mania" have him, in part, to thank). What's more, GiP is offering book deals to each of of the contributors to its first issue. You can read more here.
Please pass this information on to other writers who may be interested. I'd love to see GiP flooded with quality work, and I know many of my readers and their acquaintances can make it happen.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Sunday Situation
We've recently begun going to a new church, which is helping--a bit--with some of the tensions and ambivalence I've had toward church for a long time. Still, there are Sundays when what I really need is space, when the thought of stepping into a church building and facing church people is more than I can bring myself to tackle.
A couple of Sundays ago was like that, and Scott graciously took the girls himself. He came back chuckling, saying that when the pastor asked about my whereabouts, he (Scott) had told him I was staying home, that I was Emily Dickinson. "Oh, we all have days like that," the pastor replied.
"I didn't even try to explain," said my husband. "What could I have said? 'No, you don't understand; her nickname among her college professors was Emily Plath. She really is Emily Dickinson...on a good day.'"
Great Scott also tells me that the pastor was making noises about coming out to visit. Maybe I can stay upstairs and send down little scrappets of cryptic poetry until he leaves.
A couple of Sundays ago was like that, and Scott graciously took the girls himself. He came back chuckling, saying that when the pastor asked about my whereabouts, he (Scott) had told him I was staying home, that I was Emily Dickinson. "Oh, we all have days like that," the pastor replied.
"I didn't even try to explain," said my husband. "What could I have said? 'No, you don't understand; her nickname among her college professors was Emily Plath. She really is Emily Dickinson...on a good day.'"
Great Scott also tells me that the pastor was making noises about coming out to visit. Maybe I can stay upstairs and send down little scrappets of cryptic poetry until he leaves.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Goblin Fruit
An online poetry webzine, Goblin Fruit specializes in poetry '"of the fantastical", poetry that treats mythic, surreal, fantasy and folkloric themes, or approaches other themes in a fantastical way.' Working from three different continents, editors Amal El-Mohtar, Jessica P. Wick and Oliver Hunter (who is also responsible for Goblin Fruit's wonderful artwork) have put together a quarterly web publication that made me cry and laugh at once in a surprised sort of painful joy when I stumbled across it.
"Find your own images," a much loved mentor told me once, "and write them." My public personal images have been rural and home based--trees, field grasses, birds, garden flowers, cups, my daughters' hair--and these I've woven into poem and essay as I was taught, finding meaning in the ordinary, making the commonplace new. What I have been careful to keep out of any writing I intended for publication, though, is the mystical, the fantastic, hints of deeper and often darker things that even as a child I knew lay beneath the ordinary. This summer I began giving myself reading permission to return to my first literary love: speculative fiction. By July I was searching for mythopoetic markets, which is when I found Goblin Fruit through a link at Endicott Redux. I've found several other markets that I like, but none quite so well as Goblin Fruit. If you've got a few moments, an interest in poetry and a secret fairy tale fascination, go check it out. I do not think you will be disappointed.
"Find your own images," a much loved mentor told me once, "and write them." My public personal images have been rural and home based--trees, field grasses, birds, garden flowers, cups, my daughters' hair--and these I've woven into poem and essay as I was taught, finding meaning in the ordinary, making the commonplace new. What I have been careful to keep out of any writing I intended for publication, though, is the mystical, the fantastic, hints of deeper and often darker things that even as a child I knew lay beneath the ordinary. This summer I began giving myself reading permission to return to my first literary love: speculative fiction. By July I was searching for mythopoetic markets, which is when I found Goblin Fruit through a link at Endicott Redux. I've found several other markets that I like, but none quite so well as Goblin Fruit. If you've got a few moments, an interest in poetry and a secret fairy tale fascination, go check it out. I do not think you will be disappointed.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Friday Quote: Personal Ads
"They call me naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46)."
"My only academic achievement was contaminating the water supply in class 2C by sneezing over the beaker tray. It caused the biggest outbreak of conjunctivitis ever known at Sutton Primary. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now. Bitter PR exec. (F, 34) WLTM man to 40 who enjoys living on the edge (of Putney). Box no. 8370."
"Don't send me any poems. Woman, 34. Fed up of getting poems. Box no. 4253."
"You are going to be alone this Christmas. That's because nobody likes you. I, however, will provide you with a basic meal and some pleasant company on the understanding that you do not criticise my collection of antique medical implements. Tidy man, 51. Size 9 slipper. Box no. 7314."
"Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth. Box no. 7652."
--from They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from The London Review of Books
"My only academic achievement was contaminating the water supply in class 2C by sneezing over the beaker tray. It caused the biggest outbreak of conjunctivitis ever known at Sutton Primary. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now. Bitter PR exec. (F, 34) WLTM man to 40 who enjoys living on the edge (of Putney). Box no. 8370."
"Don't send me any poems. Woman, 34. Fed up of getting poems. Box no. 4253."
"You are going to be alone this Christmas. That's because nobody likes you. I, however, will provide you with a basic meal and some pleasant company on the understanding that you do not criticise my collection of antique medical implements. Tidy man, 51. Size 9 slipper. Box no. 7314."
"Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth. Box no. 7652."
--from They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from The London Review of Books
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Journal Excerpt: May 1, 2007: On Choices and Ambivalence
11:57 p.m.
All day I have been forgetting that this is the first of May. All day time has meant nothing to me save that it touches upon the necessity of picking up the girls after school and eventually feeding them.
I have been playing with fountain pens and inks tonight, foolish ink-stained wretch that I have become. I form letters, loops and backloops, humps and dots and swirls, as if they matter, as if they have meaning there upon the page. "Noodler's Burgundy," I write, and, "Diamine Royal Blue," "Private Reserve Purple Haze" and "Unknown Black." I write them over and over, some with fine nibs, some with medium. Some I write with flex nibs, adding unnecessary flourishes and scrolls until, impatient, I begin to write too quickly, and the flowing lines turn into scrawls and worse-than-scrawls. Afterward there are pages and pages that mean nothing, that say nothing save that I was restless. Nowhere on the pages do the words "conflicted" or "dissatisfied" appear. "Unhappy" is not among the eloquence of looping lines, nor "discouraged" nor "slipping," "dark," "falter" or "lost." Only the objective and the cheerful names of inks: "Apache Sunset," "Purple Martin," "Sapphire Blue,""Claret."
A power line was down across the road in town this morning. I had to back up and turn into a parking lot, then turn around, go back the way I'd come and try a different route to my destination. What if the destination is unknown? What if one finds oneself in a parking lot three times a day? Four? Five? Six? Turning and heading back up the path already traveled? Without direction, without a goal, one loses the way. There is no coming or going save only to keep moving, long for rest as one may well do.
The rain is falling outside, pattering on the walk. It, at least, knows its own direction, single-minded, enviable phenomenon of nature.
"...when we choose
the way by which our only life
is lived, we choose and do not know
what we have chosen, for this
is the heart's choice, not the mind's;
to be true to the heart's one choice
is the long labor of the mind.
He chose, imperfectly, as we must,
the rule of love, and learned
through years of light what darkly
he had chosen: his life, his place,
our place, our lives..."
(For whole poem, click quote and scroll down to Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004.)
Wendell Berry's words strike home both as a sharp blade and as a life preserver that having been thrown, hits the person in need of it and gets his attention. I think of choices I have made, choices I repeat weekly, sometimes daily. I think of how, unknowing, I first chose, how knowingly I continue choosing, a life in which I am so restless, how still that life is full of love and how choosing against it would betray myself far more deeply than I have yet to do, even traitor that I am. "We live the given life and not the planned," writes Berry in another poem, and I believe these words, too, believe that they are not in opposition to the others, believe our hearts in making their own choices, result in given lives, lives far different than anything our minds would have ever planned.
Perhaps it is an exercise in humility and discipline at last, to subjugate the lofty mind to the inexplicable and single-eyed determination of the simple heart. At least there is in it for me this consolation of choice: "...his life, his place,/our place, our lives." It lightens the weight of doubt to consider that my own choice of the rule of love is a choice that has resulted and continues to result in the places and lives of our two daughters and perhaps to some lesser degree, Great Scott's, too. I do not choose perfectly, but I choose. I choose.
All day I have been forgetting that this is the first of May. All day time has meant nothing to me save that it touches upon the necessity of picking up the girls after school and eventually feeding them.
I have been playing with fountain pens and inks tonight, foolish ink-stained wretch that I have become. I form letters, loops and backloops, humps and dots and swirls, as if they matter, as if they have meaning there upon the page. "Noodler's Burgundy," I write, and, "Diamine Royal Blue," "Private Reserve Purple Haze" and "Unknown Black." I write them over and over, some with fine nibs, some with medium. Some I write with flex nibs, adding unnecessary flourishes and scrolls until, impatient, I begin to write too quickly, and the flowing lines turn into scrawls and worse-than-scrawls. Afterward there are pages and pages that mean nothing, that say nothing save that I was restless. Nowhere on the pages do the words "conflicted" or "dissatisfied" appear. "Unhappy" is not among the eloquence of looping lines, nor "discouraged" nor "slipping," "dark," "falter" or "lost." Only the objective and the cheerful names of inks: "Apache Sunset," "Purple Martin," "Sapphire Blue,""Claret."
A power line was down across the road in town this morning. I had to back up and turn into a parking lot, then turn around, go back the way I'd come and try a different route to my destination. What if the destination is unknown? What if one finds oneself in a parking lot three times a day? Four? Five? Six? Turning and heading back up the path already traveled? Without direction, without a goal, one loses the way. There is no coming or going save only to keep moving, long for rest as one may well do.
The rain is falling outside, pattering on the walk. It, at least, knows its own direction, single-minded, enviable phenomenon of nature.
"...when we choose
the way by which our only life
is lived, we choose and do not know
what we have chosen, for this
is the heart's choice, not the mind's;
to be true to the heart's one choice
is the long labor of the mind.
He chose, imperfectly, as we must,
the rule of love, and learned
through years of light what darkly
he had chosen: his life, his place,
our place, our lives..."
(For whole poem, click quote and scroll down to Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004.)
Wendell Berry's words strike home both as a sharp blade and as a life preserver that having been thrown, hits the person in need of it and gets his attention. I think of choices I have made, choices I repeat weekly, sometimes daily. I think of how, unknowing, I first chose, how knowingly I continue choosing, a life in which I am so restless, how still that life is full of love and how choosing against it would betray myself far more deeply than I have yet to do, even traitor that I am. "We live the given life and not the planned," writes Berry in another poem, and I believe these words, too, believe that they are not in opposition to the others, believe our hearts in making their own choices, result in given lives, lives far different than anything our minds would have ever planned.
Perhaps it is an exercise in humility and discipline at last, to subjugate the lofty mind to the inexplicable and single-eyed determination of the simple heart. At least there is in it for me this consolation of choice: "...his life, his place,/our place, our lives." It lightens the weight of doubt to consider that my own choice of the rule of love is a choice that has resulted and continues to result in the places and lives of our two daughters and perhaps to some lesser degree, Great Scott's, too. I do not choose perfectly, but I choose. I choose.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Top Ten Literary Crushes
I stumbled across this post over at Chelsea's blog and knew at once I would have to pilfer the idea. Below you will find, in no particular order, ten of my worst literary crushes.
1. Legolas from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Long before Orlando Bloom ever stepped into leggings or glued on his rubber elf-ears, I was smitten. Badly.
2. Thomas the Disciple from the New Testament. He who by pragmatism guarded his heart as best he could against a hope so great it would crush him were it to prove hopeless, after all.
3. Fritti Tailchaser from Tailchaser's Song. For bravery and humility, Fritti has most of his human hero-counterparts beaten by a far shot. The best cat in literature, save, perhaps for Christopher Smart's Geoffery.
4. Coren from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Persistent in love and loving, even in the face of his own confusion. Kind, even in anger.
5. Morgan of Hed from The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy. A man who knows the worth of riddles, of myths and legends and how they surface unexpectedly in the lives of even the most unsuspecting people. A man who pushes hard after understanding and full knowledge of deep things.
6. Pwyll Twiceborn from The Fionavar Tapesty books. Self-sacrificing (literally), gentle, wise, solid.
7. Winnie-the-Pooh. C'mon. Who hasn't been in love with Pooh since you were old enough to say his name?
8. Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter books. My guilty secret. (Oh, alright! I admit Neville Longbottom is right up there, too.)
9. Mr. Knightly from Emma. The perfect big-brother, close friend turned true love and husband. I swoon. Of course, Jane Austin is excellent at penning perfect men, those creatures of excellence with perhaps just one flaw tiny enough to render them not only human, but more perfect than they'd be if they were...well...perfect. Mr. Darcy, for example.
10. Professor Bhaer from Little Women. Yes, I was unhappy when Jo turned Laurie down, but when Professor Bhaer rescued Jo in the rain, I knew he was a man of quality.
Bonus: Young Matt from The Shepherd of the Hills. Who wouldn't be at least a little twitterpated at a guy who would take on a mountain lion bare-handed and risk his life to save his city-boy rival who is there to whisk away his true love?
[Note: Below you will find other Top Ten Literary Crush confessions.]
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Logophiliac Fix--Wall Words
I do not often post links to retail sites. In fact, I think only Despair, Inc has rated a QL link thus far. Today that changes. Go take a look at Wall Words.
(Disclaimer: The author of Quotidian Light shall not be responsible for any bodily injury resulting from fellow logophiliacs hyperventilating and falling from their desk chairs.)
(Disclaimer: The author of Quotidian Light shall not be responsible for any bodily injury resulting from fellow logophiliacs hyperventilating and falling from their desk chairs.)
Friday, September 09, 2005
Friday Quote: On Literature
"Literature involves more than literature, or we would not be grateful for it."
--Wendell Berry
from his essay, "Sweetness Preserved"
--Wendell Berry
from his essay, "Sweetness Preserved"
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Poetic Influence
Michael Wells, over at Stick Poet Super Hero, posed a good question to his readers: What poet/poetry book has meant the most to you this year? Michael’s choice was Robert Bly’s Morning Poems; he gives his reasons here.
I can’t choose a single book of poetry, but without a doubt, Donald Hall has been the poet whose words have made the biggest impact on my writing and thinking as well as on my everyday life in the past year.
Reading Hall’s Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected was like taking a huge gulp of air after holding my breath for years. I loved (and still do) Hall’s insistence that too many poets publish or attempt to publish their work too soon, his stance that anything worth doing is worth doing not just well, but exceptionally well. “I see no reason to spend your life writing poems,” says Hall, “unless your goal is to write great poems.” The book is a collection of mostly previously published essays, but the content holds consistent over the years through which it was originally published, and is consistently confirming.
In March, overwhelmed with the melancholy restlessness into which spring often spins me, I wrote Hall and asked, “How does one go about having a life?” He’d been kind enough to reply to a few sporadic letters over the course of a year or two previously, a correspondence originating from my gratefulness to him for his book Life Work and out of admiration for Jane Kenyon’s poetry-- poetry I strongly felt was possible because of the life they made for themselves together on Hall’s ancestral farm in New Hampshire. His reply to my impulsive question has given me much to think on this year, along with Breakfast Served: “. . . to have a task, an ultimate and life-long and consuming task.” It was advice, he wrote, that sculptor Henry Moore gave him when he asked the same question of Moore some years ago. (Hall writes about Moore’s advice and their relationship in Life Work.)
I’ve pondered over Hall’s letter and Breakfast Served the remainder of the year, and while I’m not ready to write about those ponderings yet, I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity to tie my brain in knots. I connect with Donald Hall’s writing, with his sharp wit and plainspoken approach to crafting poetry. He’s got my vote for 2004, hands down, Michael.
I can’t choose a single book of poetry, but without a doubt, Donald Hall has been the poet whose words have made the biggest impact on my writing and thinking as well as on my everyday life in the past year.
Reading Hall’s Breakfast Served Any Time All Day: Essays on Poetry New and Selected was like taking a huge gulp of air after holding my breath for years. I loved (and still do) Hall’s insistence that too many poets publish or attempt to publish their work too soon, his stance that anything worth doing is worth doing not just well, but exceptionally well. “I see no reason to spend your life writing poems,” says Hall, “unless your goal is to write great poems.” The book is a collection of mostly previously published essays, but the content holds consistent over the years through which it was originally published, and is consistently confirming.
In March, overwhelmed with the melancholy restlessness into which spring often spins me, I wrote Hall and asked, “How does one go about having a life?” He’d been kind enough to reply to a few sporadic letters over the course of a year or two previously, a correspondence originating from my gratefulness to him for his book Life Work and out of admiration for Jane Kenyon’s poetry-- poetry I strongly felt was possible because of the life they made for themselves together on Hall’s ancestral farm in New Hampshire. His reply to my impulsive question has given me much to think on this year, along with Breakfast Served: “. . . to have a task, an ultimate and life-long and consuming task.” It was advice, he wrote, that sculptor Henry Moore gave him when he asked the same question of Moore some years ago. (Hall writes about Moore’s advice and their relationship in Life Work.)
I’ve pondered over Hall’s letter and Breakfast Served the remainder of the year, and while I’m not ready to write about those ponderings yet, I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity to tie my brain in knots. I connect with Donald Hall’s writing, with his sharp wit and plainspoken approach to crafting poetry. He’s got my vote for 2004, hands down, Michael.
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