A Work in Progress

A Poem for a Wednesday: Dover Beach

I can see where reading a poem or two can be a happy, calming experience and one where on a busy, hectic day makes a person feel like she has had a nice literary/bookish moment in amongst all the crazy tasks that otherwise need to be completed.  Yes, it is one of those weeks where I wish I had time to just lounge and read and sit in a sunny corner and escape into a story, but there is too much other stuff going on.  I know I am not the only one having that sort of a week.  This is what happens as the semester at a university nears its end (and where the library approaches it's fiscal year end). 

Do you know what really made me choose The 100 Best Poems of All Time, edited by Leslie Pockell?  Aside from the fact it looked so very 'dippable', when I flipped through looking to see whether I recognized any of the poems, or if they appealed to me . . . my eye was caught by Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.  And in particular the first line: "The sea is calm tonight."  If you happen to stop by here frequently and over a longer period of time, you might know how much I love the idea of the seaside (living right in the middle of the US I am about as far away from the sea as a person can get, but I have visited a number of coastlines and love the sound of waves hitting a beach--happy sigh sort of memories and experiences). 

I don't know anything about Matthew Arnold, other than he was a Victorian poet, but I will certainly read up on him now.  I have read the poem a few times and may well read it a few more time today as I love the eloquence of it, the sound it makes in my mind (have not yet been able to read aloud as I wasn't alone when I read the poem).  It has a lovely sadness to it, as weird as that sounds.  But I like it.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

 

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

 

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

 

Isn't that lovely?  I can picture it in my mind, I can feel the spray and smell that sweet night air.  Oh and those pebbles, can't you just imagine them being pushed and pulled by the waves?  A mini escapism, is this poem!  Not only is the book dippable but it is tuckable, too, as in, I can tuck it into my bookbag and take it with me.  I think I need to do this more often!

A Few Bookstore Finds

I've had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket for a couple of months now and decided it was time to have a little bookstore splurge.  I found a number of wonderful treats, an unexpected surprise or two and a couple of downright bargains.  What more can a person ask for on a Friday afternoon since I even took a few hours off work in order to book shop. 

For once I actually came with a list (only found one book) and a couple of coupons (both of which I was able to use, one being a free coffee in B&N's café).  I made some very thoughtful selections, put a few books back added one or two when I thought I was done, and in the end am quite pleased with my finds.  From top to bottom:

A Raisin in the Sun by Loraine Hansberry -- I have long wanted to read this and I want to read a few plays in general this year (and hopefully can find a filmed stage production to watch after reading).  This was "a radically new representation of black life, resolutely authentic, fiercely unsentimental, and unflinching in its vision of what happens to people whose dreams are constantly deferred."

The 100 Best Poems of All Time edited by Leslie Pockell -- Now this is one of the surprises.  When do I ever buy poetry?!  Since it is National Poetry Month right now (and I think I need to do this on April 27, too!) I thought I should celebrate in some way.  Faced with shelves and shelves of poetry collections and not knowing where to start (I was reaching for Robert Frost but as I already have a collection of his work on my shelves I thought it better to try and expand my horizons a little), I opted for an anthology.  Of course now that I think about it--classic poetry . . .  I wonder if I should have chosen a contemporary anthology.  You know how it goes--classic can mean Classic and also mean challenging and I don't want to be put off by my first foray into poetry.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World edited by Maria Tatar -- This is my other surprise.  Right next to poetry is the section with mythology and fairy tales.  My eye was caught by this title.  It's essentially a collection of fairy tales from around the world--mostly short tales/short stories.  Different cultural riffs on the same theme.  I'm quite thrilled with this find.

The Supreme Macaroni Company by Adriana Trigiani -- This is one of my bargain books--they have a great selection of remaindered books.  How can you pass up a novel that is a third the price and in pristine condition?  I have read a couple of her novels and enjoyed them and I love Italian-American (or just Italian!) sagas.  This story moves from the "cobblestone streets of Greenwich Village to lush New Orleans to Italy and back again."

Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh -- My other bargain book.  To be honest I am pretty sure I read this one, but it would have been a library book and I would like to revisit the story.  It's the setting that draws me in--1940s . . . "Bakerton is a community of company houses and fireman's parades.  Its neighborhoods include Little Italy, Swede-town, and Polish Hill."  The story follows the Novak family.  Haigh wrote a collection of short stories about Bakerton, and I believe I saw remaindered copies of it as well and now wish I would have bought that, too.  (A reason to go back, I guess).

Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown -- I remember looking at this when it first came out in hardcover (yay, for once I waited to buy it since it now in paperback, and I bet I would not have read it yet had I bought it then).  Ah, another novel with a Paris setting, so this might get a big bump and I might read it this month, too.  This is a novel with two storylines--one contemporary and the other a diary about one woman's experiences in Jazz Age Paris. 

The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya -- The lone book from my list that I found on their shelves.  It is a coming of age memoir about the author's girlhood in Stalinist Russia.  She had a very bohemian upbringing and I am curiously fascinated by life behind in the Iron Curtain in general.

Loads of goodies.  I want to read them all rightnowofcourse.  But I will try and resist.  Well, the poetry will absolutely be slipped into my reading pile.  And who knows what else I will be inspired to start reading.  Now I need an afternoon (or three) off in order to just read! 

Did you have a bookish weekend, too?

Spring Sampler's Red Wheelbarrow

First a little reminder of last week's Prairie Schooler Spring Sampler progress.  I had stitched in the wheelbarrow only to realize that I used the wrong color and so picked it out.  And then Stefanie mentioned William Carlos Williams and gave the little teaser . . . "so  much depends upon a red wheelbarrow".

(Not a whole lot of progress really, but each stitch adds up.)

Indeed it does.  Let me quote the whole poem by William Carlos Williams and then you'll understand why I had to change the color from the called for green to a nice muted red!

The Red Wheelbarrow (1962)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

It's always fun when books/stories overlap and cross paths.  But it's even cooler when I can incorporate poetry with needlework!  I think that red wheel barrow is going to really catch the eye when I finish as the rest of the sampler doesn't call for that color again.  I am working on the tree next to the house and one of the garden patches that will eventually have plants growing.

Moving right along now.  And summer officially begins on the 20th, right?  I hope to move now at a good clip and maybe will begin prepping my linen for the Summer Sampler to follow soon.

***

Oh, by the way, the Baileys Womens Prize winner for 2016 is shortly to be announced.  I have been following along on Twitter and have been reading what other bloggers have to say about the shortlist.  I only managed to read Anne Enright's The Green Road which I liked and admire, but I didn't love as much as I had hoped I would.  It was my introduction to her writing other than a short story or two (as yet have not gotten around to writing about the book, of course).  I think maybe my lack of enthusiasm might in part have been due to a general satiation of Irish melancholy perhaps since it was the last of a pile of Irish novels and story collections that I have read this year.  I won't be disappointed if it wins however.  I was going to say the general consensus seems to be that Cynthia Bond's Ruby will win, which curiously is the one book I was not eager to read--only due to the weightiness of subject matter.  Lots of bad things happen in this book and I tend to shy away from stories like that.  However . . . I have pulled it from the library shelves and will check it out and give it a go.  I've also heard that Lisa McInerney's Glorious Heresies is a very strong contender since it is a breath of fresh air (as is she is doing new and innovative things?) and then there is Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life is a shoe-in (and she has been up for how many other awards?).  Of course ask three different readers and you will likely get three different answers, so it is still anyone's guess!

Who shall win the coveted Baileys Award?  Hmm.

At the Source: Gillian Clarke on Poetry

One of my semi-reading-failures this year has been to read a book in monthly installments and then written about it over the course of the year.  I have come across some really fantastic books that lend themselves well to this sort of reading project.  There has been Roger Deakin and Anna Pavord.  Both books are written in perfect 'bite-size' chapters with essays and observations presented in a monthly format.  This year's book At the Source by Gillian Clarke is another perfect read for this kind of serial reading project.  It was a gift from my friend Cath with whom I have been (at least had been until I dropped the ball) reading along.  Somewhere along the line, early summer I think, I fell behind and now am just trying to finish reading the remaining chapters. It is presented in journal format by month with additional essays at the beginning of the book. 

Clarke is a Welsh poet and her writing is, unsurprisingly, very eloquent.  She is also a careful observer and reminds me of Roger Deakin at times.  To be honest I am not sure I will remember many details, little bits here and there only, but the act of reading her writing is a pleasure in itself.  I have all sorts of pencil markings so when I go back and dip into various chapters I can easily see the things that caught my eye.  There is just so much--it's such a lush sort of book, and even reading it very slowly (which her writing sort of demands) I mostly just let it all wash over me as i go.  It's like looking at paintings or sculpture in a museum--you can soak some of it in but when you leave you are mostly just left with impressions and images.   

So, at this point, I won't write about each chapter but as I was catching up on my reading I came across a section of wonderful bookishness.  I wish I could just share every bit with you here and now, but let me pick out a few especially tasty morsels.  Since she is a poet she writes a lot about her own work and that of others.  What she says is so spot on when it comes to reading in general.  And she makes me want to read and love poetry, which someday I hope to achieve (just like I have come to love short stories).  Here are a few snippets on poetry or reading or novels that I think every reader (of any type of literature) will appreciate.

"Good poetry is layered with secrets, observant, true, the best so simple it can stop your heart."

Then she goes on to name a few poets in particular--Yeats, Emily Dickinson, R.S. Thomas, Hughes and other living poets.  Must check some of these poets out--I know some of Emily's work, but in general I am woefully underread when it comes to poetry.

Do those of you who read poetry agree . . . she was at a literary conference and talking with other passionate poetry fans notes that "we rarely read a novel more than once, but the poetry-lovers all read favorite poems over and over, searching for the secret of their power, finding something new at every reading, yet never fathoming the mystery."  Even though I am not a poetry reader I can somehow see what she is saying.  The power of words to create strong images or a story maybe, and how the meaning might change depending on what the reader brings to the poems or interprets the words. 

And this is wonderful:

"Reading a novel and reading a poem are completely different ways of reading.  There is no comparison.  One drives you on, page after page.  The other stops you dead, stops your breath as if you saw the burning bush.  One is a journey, the other is a spell."

But this doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate good novels, too.  And I can easily concur with here here:

"When the novel is finished I close the book, and if it's any good it unfolds in my mind for hours, days, weeks, forever if it is a tryly great novel, by Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot."

And this actually gave me shivers--she was talking about an especially stunning poem and how she reacts to it:

"It's a spell, a magic trick, a key to your heart made by a man who doesn't even know you."

But it's so true.  A really good piece of writing is like a work of art.  It speaks to you across time and distance.  It is really quite a gift, and to think that someone somewhere had the ability to shake you up in some way, to give you a good memory, something you can take with you outside that particular moment and carry with you in your heart and mind.

This is what I love about good books (and good poems!).  It's for this moment (and they don't come as often as I would like) that I read!

The Poetry of Rutger Kopland

Once again my friend Cath has kindly written a guest post for me--a little collaboration on my Dutch reading project.  I know she is a great poetry reader, and I was hoping she might share a favorite poet here.  We've never met, only virtually, but you know how it is when you click with another reader and discover common interests that form a bond across so many miles.  I have been so fortunate to find many friends via blogging.  While we have never met, I always feel a sense of calmness and tranquility from her no matter what obstacles might pass her way.  I think poetry reading must add to that sense of peacefulness and someday I hope to find some of that same mindfulness in poetry eventually, too.  And now, I'll hand things over to Cath.

* * * * *

Poetry. One poem, two at the most, each morning after breakfast. It has become so much part of my daily rhythm that I feel unsettled without poetry every day. And when Dutch poet Rutger Kopland (1934- 2012) passed away, it made me sad. The thought that he would never write a poem again was unbearable for a moment. 

‘Do you know what touched me most when I sat here at my writing desk for the first time again?

I looked at the garden and saw it was the same as before. The garden does not need me. The trees are not there for me, they are just there. They do not love me, do not hate me either, they are.

That I find extremely moving. That loving indifference consoled me. I sat down and it was as it was before. As if nothing ever happened. It will be like that also when I am gone. That I find marvellous.’

(Rutger Kopland in an interview given after recovering from a severe car accident in 2005)

His work seems to be simple. It is accessible. The tone of voice can be hesitating, searching, aware of the limitations of language.

he must have wanted to find out how a horse
is made and have realized
it can’t be done,

how the secret of a horse grew and grew
beneath his pencil.

(from: I Cavalli di Leonardo)

Simple, yet there will come a line which will make you pause. A choice of word that will startle you.

You might feel a soft punch in your stomach, a butterfly fluttering in your chest or a sudden tear in your eye.

Our conversations slowed down
we answered our questions by looking
at the slow world around us
(from: Stroll)

Questions are important. Questions. Not answers. His questions about life and what to think of it, how to look and see. How to observe and understand. In search of essence. Melancholic sometimes. Pure.

 Give me a galloping horse, but one on

his side in the grass. Give me

a question. No answer.

(from: An Empty Place to Stay IX)

When asked in the same interview what is a beautiful poem he answered: A beautiful poem is one that after reading makes me say in admiration and with wonder: “That is how I feel”.

Because we were searching for our name.
But only the wind knows the place
that we were, where and when.

(from: Psalm)

There is no other voice like his among Dutch male poets. That’s why you might try to find Rutger Kopland‘s Memories of the Unknown.  

By CathvdL, 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, July 3, 2014

* * * * *

Many thanks to Cath for such a gorgeous post and introducing me to a new poet whose words I find beautiful.  When I first read what she wrote I went directly to my library's stacks to look for something by Rutger Kopland myself, which I might just have to share later.

The illustration was chosen by Cath for its timeless quality. 

Rock painting Lehaha ha Baroana

Ha Khotso Lesotho Africa

Billy Collins was Lost in the Stacks, and Other Library Finds

Okay, so if this isn't a sign from the book gods that I must read this book, then nothing is.

Scene one:  Last week I was looking for Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins after a friend recommended it to me.  The online catalog claimed it was available and could found at PS3553 O47478 S25 2002, so off I went to pull it.  Find the right spot, scan the shelves, peruse the row of books by Collins my library owns, but alas, no Sailing Alone.  Disappointment sets in, but someone else must be looking at it or it has simply disappeared to wherever lost library books disappear to.

Scene two:  Yesterday I was looking at the books we own by Ivan Doig after he was recommended by another friend (I really like recommendations as you can see and love browsing library shelves as you will soon attest).  Once again, scan shelves, spot Doig's books--he's at PS3554 by the way--and what spine do I see sitting there nestled amongst the other American authors, 1961-2000?  Billy Collins.  Billy Collins?  What's he doing here in the D's?  Is this a book about Billy Collins maybe?  Closer glance.  It's Sailing Alone Around the Room!

How's that for luck or serendipity or whatever you want to call it.  PS3553 and PS3554 sound like they are close together, but trust me, they are not.  Several ranges separate them as well as an aisle cutting the ranges in two.  To have found the one book I was looking for just last week, and by chance--right there, smack where I was expecting to find something else is pretty cool.  Once a book has been misshelved it can be a serious quest to find it again.  And this time, I wasn't even trying! 

So, here it is at home with me.  I am not a good poetry reader.  Actually I am not a poetry reader at all I am sorry to say, but I want to try and read at least one or two collections this year.  I have a few other poets in mind that I want to try.  First Billy Collins.  More about him soon!

I have a few other interesting library finds to share, too, since I am on a roll.  I've been checking out lots of library books lately. 

Poetry.  Highbrow.  Here's is something that looks decidedly lowbrow.  Saucy and gossipy and something I don't think I would ever have gone in search for, but as it just crossed my desk at work yesterday as well, I gave in to temptation.  I'd heard of it, but I have never looked at it.  I must be in the minority as this copy is actually a replacement for a much used and battered copy the library had to discard.  Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon.  I'm not really all that interested in Hollywood, but this is the scandalous version of early Hollywood.  It contains some shamefully lurid photos, which sets a tone needless to say.  I was thinking this might be a good gym/workout book and I am all for making my workouts go by quickly.

I mentioned the 'Best of . . ." books yesterday, and more serendipity as one showed up on the hold shelf (is it very indulgent to bring home three books from the library where I work and then go to the public library and bring home half a dozen more?  Probably, but I have so few guilty pleasures that I think I am allowed this one . . . ).  I have never tried The Best American Nonrequired Reading before.  A quick glance at the introduction--is this the last one?  Typical, I finally discover something just as it is ending.  I'm intrigued as it looks like all the essays, stories, articles, etc. were chosen by high school students, which is pretty cool. 

One more fun find.  You know Virginia Woolf, but what about Virginia Wolf?  This is a children's book written by Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault.  I couldn't resist.  " . . . a story of two sisters, one blue, the other sunny, both brimming with imagination."  This is a story about sisters, but also one of gardens and art. 

I have a stack of novels, mysteries and nonfiction titles, too, but I think I will save them for another day.  It's good to have a little something new and different now and again!

How to Read a Poem

Yesterday I received a card in the mail that had a really lovely poem on it.  I liked it so much that I carried it with me to work and then searched out a book of poetry by the writer, Donald Hall.  What I could tell you about poetry is not much at all, I'm sorry to say.  So ignorant (and I hate to admit that) am I that I hadn't even heard of Hall (or more likely heard of him but didn't quite register anything about him).  He is a former Poet Laureate and is quite a prolific writer.  He's published not only poetry collections but criticism, children's books, essays, plays, memoirs and short stories.  He was married to poet Jane Kenyon, who I have heard of. 

I've discovered that Hall is known as a rural poet and writes about nature.  The poem I was given reminded me of Robert Frost (whose work I love), and as it turns out Hall and Frost met when Hall was a young man.  Maybe it's the "plainspoken" quality of his writing that appeals to me so much.  I want to love poetry, but I know I don't give it much of a chance.  I'm just not sure how to read a poem, which I realize sounds strange.  I think I make poetry harder than it often is, or look for some hidden meaning that I feel like I can't quite grasp.  I love short stories, but poems seem even slighter.  Sometimes they tell a story, but maybe it's just an impression or a feeling they offer?  The sound of the language, of the words slipping off the tongue?  I'm not sure and I'm never quite sure how to approach a book of poetry, though I did bring home from the library, The Alligator Bride by Hall (because the title of the book is so wonderful).      

I'll leave it by my bedside and will dip into it.  Maybe I'll read all the poems or maybe just a few, and have an epiphany on how to read a poem.  I'll share one now, though I'm afraid the clever formatting will have to be left to your imagination (see the photo above).

Apples

They have gone
into the green hill, by doors without hinges,
or lifting city manhole covers to tunnels
lined with grass,
their skin soft as grapes, their faces like apples.

The peacock
feather, its round eye, sees dancers underground.
The curved spot on this
apple is a fat camel, is a
fly's shadow,
is the cry  of a marigold.  Looking hard,

I enter:
I am caught in the web of a gray apple,
I struggle inside
an Immense apple of blowing sand,
I blossom
quietly from a window box of apples.

For one man
there are seven beautiful ladies with buns
and happy faces
in yellow dresses with green sashes
to bring him
whiskey.  The rungs of a ladder tell stories

to his friend. 
Their voices like apples brighten the wind.
Now they are dancing
with fiddles and ladies and trumpets
in the round
hill of peacock, in the resounding hill. 

Do you have a favorite poet?  A favorite poem?  How do you approach reading poetry?  Do you read poetry?  So many questions.  I bet there's a book that would answer some of these, so I may have to investigate further.  Another of my unspoken 'goals' this year is to try and read a little poetry.  And so a card in the mail has inspired me.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

I'm not a poetry reader, but after reading Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist I wish I was.  And just maybe I will become one.  This is such a great book on poetry, almost a primer for poetry lovers--even those like me who know so little about poetry (maybe especially for people like me).  What's nice about this book is how excited Paul Chowder, the narrator, is about reading and writing poems.  It's hard not to get caught up in his excitement and appreciation of the form.  Now that I've read it for the story I feel like going back and reading it for all the other information he shares in a way that's not at all didactic (well, maybe it is sort of didactic, but he does it in such an entertaining way it doesn't feel like it) but totally interesting.

I finished this over a week ago, but much like Paul Chowder I've not been terribly motivated to write about it.  Don't get me wrong, as I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Nicholson Baker is someone I've long wanted to read (actually I read Vox ages ago when it caused a big stir, but that was because I was working in a bookstore and felt I needed to keep up on the books everyone was talking about--so somehow I feel like that doesn't count--besides I've more or less forgotten the story).  It was Dorothy's enthusiastic post that finally convinced me now was the prefect moment.  She wrote about it so well I feel like I just need to point you in her direction and then you'll want to read it, too.  Paul Chowder is a published poet, but he seems to be in a bit of a rut.  He's supposed to be working on an introduction to poetry--rhyming poetry by the way--but he just can't seem to get the introduction written.  Only fifteen pages, but he spends more time thinking about what he wants to tell readers that he never seems to get inspired enough to sit down and write them.  Much like me and this post.  So I guess I will share a few things with you, though mostly so I can sneak in some great quotes from the story.

"I want to tell you why poetry is worth thinking about--from time to time.  Not all the time.  Sometimes it's a much better idea to think about other things."

So Paul Chowder is writing an introduction to a rhyming poetry anthology.  He knows a lot about poetry and has a particular love and appreciation for rhyming poetry, but he reads other types of poetry, too.  He's full of little tidbits of information and trivia about poets and their lives, which he shares with the reader, and sometimes with his neighbors.  Paul was in a serious relationship with Roz, but she's left him because he's going nowhere with his work--this introduction.  So it's just him and his dog, Smacko (isn't that a great name?).  He's just an average type of guy really, and maybe it's his averageness that's so interesting and at times funny because he does and thinks the sort of quirky things we all do, but somehow on the page what he thinks is really amusing--I found myself chortling (and chortling is the perfect word really), because I could relate.  He cleans out his office, and he weeds his poetry anthologies and boxes them up, and he goes out and buys an easel, pad of paper and Sharpie markers to help him in putting together this introduction.  What's funny is all along as he's thinking, and the book is essentially made up of his thoughts, he's writing the perfect history of rhyming poetry and why it's still important--voilà, his introduction, but somehow his thoughts never translate onto the printed page. 

"Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing.  We've got to face that.  And if that's true, do we want to give drugs so that people won't weep"  No, because if we do, poetry will die.  The rhyming of rhymes is a powerful form of self-medication.  All these poets, when they begin to feel that they are descending into one of their personal canyons of despair, use rhyme to help themselves tightrope over it.  Rhyming is the avoidance of mental pain by addicting yourself to what will happen next.  It's like chain-smoking--you light one line with the growing ember of the last.  You set up a call, and you want a response.  You posit a pling,and you want a fring.  You propose a plong, and you want a frong.  You're in suspense.  You are solving a puzzle."

I don't think Nicholson Baker is a poet, but you can tell he must love poetry and knows a lot about it.  The story just flows for all its disconnectedness of different thoughts.  And he knows a lot about music, too.  The only thing that I felt was a bit over my head were the musical notes.  He sometimes would put a line or two of poetry to music, but I was pretty much lost by that as I can't read music.  Still, no worries, as there wasn't a lot of this and I didn't feel that I was especially missing out on something important.  I wonder if Nicholson Baker has a special fondness for rhyming poetry, too, or just his character Paul Chowder.  Paul doesn't limit himself to rhyming poetry, either reading or writing, but this anthology is only rhyming poetry, which was really very important historically, and still is (though those modernists came along and pulled the rug out from under it). 

"It's not a crossword puzzle--it's better than a crossword puzzle, because you're actually trying to do something beautiful.  But it's not unrelated.  The addicts of crossword puzzles are also distracting themselves.  They also don't want to face the world's grief head-on.  They want that transient pleasure, endlessly repeated, of solving the Rubik's Cube of verbal intersection.  But has anyone ever wept at the beauty of a crossword puzzle?  Maybe, maybe.  I have not."

"Rhyming is the genius's version of the crossword puzzle--when it's good.  When it's bad it's intolerable dogwaste and you wish it had never been invented.  But when it's good, it's great.  It's no coincidence that Auden was a compulsive doer of crossword puzzles and a rhymer, and a depressive, and a smoker, and a drinker, and a man who shuffled into Louise Bogan's memorial service in his bedroom slippers"

I wish, if nothing else, I would have written down the poets Paul Chowder talks about, and there were a lot of them.  He talks a lot about Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish, and about Louise Bogan and Charles Swinburne (who was the rhyming poet) and Mina Loy (who came along and helped make poetry more modern) to name a few.  Just reading about the various poets and how many of them knew each other and played off each other was fascinating.  Paul taught poetry, but he didn't last long when faced with students writing really appalling poems.  So if he could just write this introduction then life would be good and  maybe Roz would come back.  

"I think I'm going to RiverRun Books and look at the poetry shelves.  When I see new books for sale that I already own, it makes me happy.  It makes me feel that there's part of the world I really understand."

Doesn't he sound like a totally likable guy?  I can so relate to him.

April is National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month.  In honor of this I am reading a book of poetry by American poet, Galway Kinnell.  A coworker of mine, who is himself a poet, urged me to give the book a try.  What is nice about this particular volume of poetry is it comes with a CD of Kinnell reading his poems and he usually gives a brief commentary of them as well.  He has a really nice speaking voice--it's sort of nice just to sit back and listen.  Sometimes I listen to the poems being read, other times I will read along as Kinnell reads them aloud, and I will also just read them on my own.  I know there is no right or wrong way to read poetry (or is there?), so it sort of feels a little strange.  I have just been picking the book up now and then and reading a poem or two at random.  I have never been much of a poetry reader, so I am not exactly sure how to talk about what I am reading.  Maybe I should just share one of the poems?

The book's title comes from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation" ("Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,/ Strong is your hold O love.").  According to the publisher's website: "In this striking and various collection, he gives us poems of intermingling with the natural world, love poems and evocations of sexuality, poems about his father, his children, poet friends, poet heroes, and mythic figures. Included also is 'When the Towers Fell,' his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11".   I wish I could share the spoken poem with you, but aside from the fact I'm not sure how to add audio, that may be a copyright no-no.  If you would like to hear him read a poem, you can click here--he reads "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps".  And here is a poem from Strong is Your Hold:

Shelley

When I was twenty the one true 
free spirit I had heard of was Shelley,
Shelley who wrote tracts advocating
atheism, free love, the emancipation
of women, and the abolition of wealth and class,
a lively version of Plato's Symposium,
lyrics on the bliss and brevity
of romantic love, and complex
poems on love's difficulties, Shelley
who, I learned later--perhaps
almost too late--remarried Harriet,
then pregnant with their second child,
and a few months later ran off with Mary,
already pregnant with their first, bringing
along Mary's stepsister Claire,
who very likely also became his lover,

and in this malaise a trois, which Shelley
said would be a "paradise of exiles,"
they made their life, along with spectres
of Harriet, who drowned herself in the Serpentine,
and Mary's half sister Fanny, who, fixated
on Shelley, killed herself, and with the spirits
of adored but neglected children
conceived almost incidentally
in the pursuit of Eros--Harriet's
Ianthe and Charles, denied to Shelley
and sent out to foster parents, Mary's
Clara, dead at one, her Willmouse, dead at three,
Elena, the baby in Naples, almost surely
Shelley's own, whom he "adopted" but then
left behind, dead at one and a half,
and Allegra, Claire's daughter by Byron,
whom Byron packed off to the convent
at Bagnacavallo at four, dead at five--

and in those days, before I knew
any of this, I thought I followed Shelley,
who thought he was following radiant desire.

--Galway Kinnell