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Thomas Hardy: Lines

This past weekend I picked up my The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy. I won’t pretend to have read all of its 918 poems yet, though I will eventually. Hardy is a remarkable poet; one of the best English poets certainly. I wanted to quote a few lines of his that I enjoyed immensely. I am going to leave out the last phrase, a typical Hardy melancholic view of the world, not because I disagree with it or anything, but because I was so moved by the the rest. (Again, apologies for the lack of line indentation…I will figure it out eventually.)

So, to the one long-sweepng symphony
From times remote
Till now, of human tenderness, shall we
Supply one note,
Small and untraced, yet that will ever be
Somewhere afloat
Amid the spheres…

Philip Larkin: Excerpts from Further Requirements

While I have been reading Andrew Motion’s Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, I also began Philip Larkin’s Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements, and Book Reviews, 1952-85. Below are a few excerpts from the small bit I have read which struck me in some fashion:

One of the pleasures of writing actual poems is the final and honourable release it bestows from worrying about poetry in the abstract. In an age that sees poetry as syllabus rather than menu this is luxury of the thickest pile.

I suppose most writers would say that their purpose in writing was to preserve the truth about things as they see it. Unfortunately, to write well entails enjoying what you are writing, and there is not much pleasure to be got from the truth about things as anyone sees it. What one does enjoy writing – what the imagination is only too ready to help with – is, in some form or other, compensation, demonstration (by writing about it) that one is in command of a situation, and so on.

The worst thing about a poetic influence that is alien to you is not so much that it dominates the words you pick, it dominates your view of what you can write about.

To me, now as at any time, poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of the transference.

A T-Shirt and Nikos Kazantzakis

Every time I wear this t-shirt in public, I receive multiple comments about it. The writing is Greek and is from the epitaph on Nikos Kazantzakis tomb in Heraklion, Crete. Translated it says this:

I hope for nothing;
I fear nothing;
I am free.

Kazantzakis is, perhaps, best known to Americans as the author of The Last Temptation of Christ, but he also wrote Zorba, the Greek and The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. While The Last Temptation is notorious in the US (and was in Greece as well), Kazantzakis considered The Odyssey his masterpiece. I have read some of this work (it is one of my goals to read it in its entirety this year) and it is well worth checking out.

Arthur C. Clarke: Rendezvous with Reading

The famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died. I hesitated to use the adjectival “science fiction” before writer, given that many think of science fiction as less of an art than so-called literary fiction, but as in all writing, you have levels of craft and art – one’s chosen genre should not pigeonhole a writer (though it should be noted that the Library of America has printed Philip K. Dick’s novels, which may demonstrate that some boundaries are falling away). Clarke is in a class of writer that deserves more recognition than from the science fiction crowd. Most are familiar (albeit through Stanley Kubrick’s lens) with his 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, I remember best Clarke’s novel Rendezvous with Rama. I remember it best because this is the first science fiction novel I can remember reading. I am pretty sure I read something else first, but this one sticks. And frankly I still remember the novel, if not its specifics.

Rendezvous with Rama is, in essence, the story of man’s unimportance in the universe, though the novel addresses it much less bluntly. An alien spacecraft takes a tour through the solar system and departs. Some human explorers visit the ship and are left with more questions than answers. Why is this ship here? What is its purpose? Where is its destination? The ship and its creators are unconcerned about the third planet from the average star. Unlike UFO lore where aliens are visiting us because there seems to be no reason not to, Rendezvous with Rama suggests there is no reason to visit. That this encounter is chance, and its mysteries will remain mysteries.

Clarke also wrote many short stories, two of which I recall with pleasure: “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Star.” Clarke was a writer of great craft and human concern. His legacy will only be treasured as time passes.

Birthdays

First, it is my birthday. Second, my very, very good friend Doug Bowers, it is his birthday too. Happy Birthday friend!

Third, the great poet Wilfred Owen was born on March 18, 1893. Other poets with this birthday: Manuel de Faria e Sousa, William Cosmo Monkhouse, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Srečko Kosovel.

Finally, while not born on March 18th, Thomas Adès, was born March 1, 1971. This wonderful composer has already made a substantial mark on the musical world with Aysla, The Tempest, and America: A Prophecy. His just released Violin Concerto is wonderful (and had I heard it before I posted my list from early March about modern classical works one should listen to, it would have replaced America: A Prophecy). From Amazon.com as an MP3 download, it is selling for $3.92. A steal.

Sedoka

I recently read and enjoyed Robert Lee Brewer’s posts about haiku and tanka. Reading this reminded me of another Japanese form, the sedoka. I will quote from Lewis Turco’s The New Book of Forms:

Parts of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” … look very much like … Japanese forms, including the sedoka. The sedoka is a poem, not necessarily of the question-answer mondo pattern that is made up of two katautas (5-7-7, 5-7-7 syllable count). A turn (as in the Italian sonnet and the tanka) takes place between the two triplet stanzas. It can be a dialogue, but the poem is written by a single author.

Some time ago, I tried my hand a sedoka poem, albeit not a very satisfactory one in the end:

The Suburban Buddha Fishes

A rain-crusted bench
Down by the retention pond,
Covered with spongy algae.

His reddening arm
Dangles by his side. Across
His legs a fishing pole rests.

His fingers graze white
Clover consuming his yard
Of crab grass and spiny weeds.

The orange-top bobber
Listless in green, still water.
Minnows dart as in a trap.

Does he feel the dip
Of the wind or the tangent
Of weeds brushing his ankles?

Lemonade sitting
So long lemon and water
Divorce in cloudy layers.

His neighbors hearing
His snores wonder why his lawn
Over grows, fence unpainted.

Does he feel shadows
Cross his body, feel the weight
Of shadow, quanta of light?

Neighbors fertilize,
Mow, tan, and wonder. Wonder
Why he naps? How he has time?

The bobber sinks twice.
He sleeps and snores, and the grass,
Weed, and dandelions grow.

Mark Twain Versus James Fenimore Cooper

Mark Twain wrote one of the funniest literary essays I have ever read. He skewers James Fenimore Cooper. Check it out.

Blogging: Kirsch and Others

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog from Reginald Shepherd’s blog, where he pointed to Adam Kirsch’s article in The New York Sun, titled “The Scorn of the Literary Blog.” How interesting that I should post a blog regarding book reviews. For much of Kirsch’s article, he does not discuss blogs but, rather, discusses the decline of journalistic book reviewing. A long quote from his article:

For along with the fall of the print review, we are also seeing the rise of the Internet review — or, rather, of a new form of discourse about books, which is not quite the same thing as reviewing. People who write about books on the Internet, and they are surprisingly numerous, do not call themselves reviewers, but bloggers. And the subtext of the NBCC’s ethics survey and panel was really about the standards, professional and ethical, that bloggers are bringing to the profession.

In one sense, the democratization of discourse about books is a good thing, and should lead to a widening of our intellectual horizons. The more people there are out there reading, making discoveries, and advocating for their favorite books, the better. But book bloggers have also brought another, less salutary influence to bear on literary culture: a powerful resentment. Often isolated and inexperienced, usually longing to break into print themselves, bloggers — even the influential bloggers who are courted by publishers — tend to consider themselves disenfranchised. As a result, they are naturally ready to see ethical violations and conspiracies everywhere in the literary world. As anyone who reads literary blogs can attest, hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. And the scorn is reciprocated: Professional writers usually assume that those who can, do, while those who can’t, blog.

And another:

The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers. For one thing, literature is not news the way politics is news — it doesn’t offer multiple events every day for the blogger to comment on. For another, bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve. The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals

A few of Kirsch’s comment’s disturbed me. First, his wholesale clumping together of bloggers. Second, his clear disdain for bloggers. Third, his withholding of “professional” or even worthy book reviewing to an embattled coterie of journalists.

I have zero pretensions about being a book reviewer, nor do I intend my blog to be. I do, however, find it offensive that because I put up a few quickly typed words on my blog I am clumped together as a conspiracy nut, resentful, and unable to write. Exactly how is one a “professional” book reviewer versus the amateur. From Kirsch’s perspective, it seems that the requirement is your book review be published in a select group of magazines or newspapers.

Now, I don’t believe Kirsch intended to classify hordes of bloggers in these categories, but his writing certainly does not make that clear. I write “book reviews” on my blog for books that I enjoy and for books or poems that have triggered some desire to write about them for good or ill. The resentment I occasionally feel is when I receive yet another rejection from yet another poetry journal that seems to want carbon copy poets. But I quickly shake that off and realize either the poem was not good enough, my journal selection was poor, a bunch of other better poems were received, or the reader was having a bad day. The difference is that I recognize the issue myself. I don’t need some gentleman from The New York Sun labeling me by tossing my blog in a category he seems to dislike.

William Bolcom: Fascination with Blake

Check out this New York Times review of William Bolcom’s Symphony No. 8. I have enjoyed Bolcom’s setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience in the past. Bolcom applies a varied and wonderful set of sounds to these master poems. Some of the music is folksy, even country. Rock rhythms rise up every now and again as well. At other points, the music is beautifully lyrical. I find the setting for “London” ravishing in its aggressive push. “The Little Black Boy’s” harmonica, bluesy funk, and punchy singing are equally as enthralling. Classics Today.com has a positive review of the Naxos release.

I hope that Bolcom’s Symphony No. 8 finds its way to disc soon, for I am anxious to hear it.

Lowell and Gygax

Check out Edward Byrne’s blog post about Robert Lowell.

***

Gary Gygax has passed. That name may not mean much to many people, but to role-players around the world, Gygax is, well, huge. Gygax developed and created Dungeons and Dragons. While I was not a D&D player, the success of D&D created a giant industry, and one of my favorite RPGs was Traveller. There were others I played, but what I remember most about them were the times I had with my friends or my brother when we charted a world of our own and pretended to be impossible people in impossible worlds. The true magic of RPGs is that the imagination is king. Yes, there are rules, but even the most free-spirited imaginative play of children are set to rules. Rules provide the framework, the operating mechanics of a universe; how we chose to fill them were entirely our own. RIP Gygax. RIP.