tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312583602024-03-05T01:29:03.439-08:00wordstrumpetscenes from a life ruined by poetry.Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-62865900124436849752010-09-17T06:11:00.000-07:002010-09-17T06:22:40.555-07:00Wednesday, October 6: New Writing Series, UC San Diego<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RqFbz_egPeiX4pAOjGnRpMqBxV-gYiZuMqvREfmYmh9hJ7LszpLAb6roZQH0dzautGgyPvmpVWC3UGkfpy4CCuThJsZJutMarZYVxQebLagsyZHNbA7-aTzD2T0ZwV7H9wffHQ/s1600/San+Diego+flyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RqFbz_egPeiX4pAOjGnRpMqBxV-gYiZuMqvREfmYmh9hJ7LszpLAb6roZQH0dzautGgyPvmpVWC3UGkfpy4CCuThJsZJutMarZYVxQebLagsyZHNbA7-aTzD2T0ZwV7H9wffHQ/s1600/San+Diego+flyer.jpg" /></a></div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-35639429781719154852010-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:002010-09-15T08:11:49.501-07:00Notes on "Causal Mythology": Berkeley Poetry Conference, July 1965A page from my notes on Charles Olson's lecture, "Causal Mythology," at the Berkeley Poetry Conference in July '65. This isn't the legendary talk later in the week (although I have notes of a sort on that as well), but an earlier, more intimate moment in a classroom. <br />
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Eight lines down, the giddy, 17 year-old exclamation “GINSBERG JUST BORROWED 2 PIECES OF PAPER FROM HERE -->," with an arrow toward the spiral binding.<br />
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Understand that Ginsberg and Olson were people I had been reading before I arrived -- so to see them walk out of those pages was eye-popping. <br />
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The indented parts were my attempt to represent what Olson was writing on a blackboard or tablet at the front of the room (can't recall which).<br />
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More to come in some form later. . . .<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZvqECgw-K-Sw5pcPgp7TP5uGlo1bEHSapUhDGlKtGJymLBc_93ALqSeIkJS4TI6Bfsu3xCMRCfdPyTbkrNDb-WVeNP7n5Bk-bhJTlETYIn9UFnL7dDriAFRhBFeWFspVMPVYFCA/s1600/Berkeley+Poetry+Conference+notes+-+one+page.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZvqECgw-K-Sw5pcPgp7TP5uGlo1bEHSapUhDGlKtGJymLBc_93ALqSeIkJS4TI6Bfsu3xCMRCfdPyTbkrNDb-WVeNP7n5Bk-bhJTlETYIn9UFnL7dDriAFRhBFeWFspVMPVYFCA/s640/Berkeley+Poetry+Conference+notes+-+one+page.jpg" width="486" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Click to enlarge image</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-62813844651245282192010-09-13T04:49:00.000-07:002010-09-13T04:49:41.170-07:00Thursday, September 30: Living Writers Reading Series, UC Santa Cruz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5fQKotPus_GJPSM9p2o7KEsWALk0kFtemrZ8GkH0D0InayoAzYN8GTong7TD9BH6VkORnN30evEZGLDhbPEKurPGNzBN-2S40FP_T4JjT2SHd58XHzwarWQwn8PGElTJyEHcAyg/s1600/UCSC+poster+sept+30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5fQKotPus_GJPSM9p2o7KEsWALk0kFtemrZ8GkH0D0InayoAzYN8GTong7TD9BH6VkORnN30evEZGLDhbPEKurPGNzBN-2S40FP_T4JjT2SHd58XHzwarWQwn8PGElTJyEHcAyg/s640/UCSC+poster+sept+30.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-19277394609324899132010-08-16T07:18:00.000-07:002010-08-18T07:11:48.636-07:00Rebecca Harding Davis: Lost and Found in Family Pictures<b> </b><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXyXIhSfjCJae96eOzEpEwBJRjNZWyjmnxyL4O7Qznuu0qW9tzd_7O3gtHyZTujmvFBPuGhniDlqqrRvnE19OO6EJ48_CyRbbgmYtfVoiWF_5avx-FnIf3nuCpUuGuQqbGqQM3nw/s1600/RHD+possible+pix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXyXIhSfjCJae96eOzEpEwBJRjNZWyjmnxyL4O7Qznuu0qW9tzd_7O3gtHyZTujmvFBPuGhniDlqqrRvnE19OO6EJ48_CyRbbgmYtfVoiWF_5avx-FnIf3nuCpUuGuQqbGqQM3nw/s400/RHD+possible+pix.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The picture on the right is Rebecca Harding Davis. Is the picture on the left the same woman?<br />
(Click to enlarge image)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Recently the pictures above came to light in the collection of an older family member (who scanned them), and we're trying to identify the woman on the left.<br />
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We know that the picture on the right is American writer Rebecca Harding Davis (my great grandmother's sister) -- or certainly identified as such, since it appears on the covers of at least two books and elsewhere.<br />
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One friend says, "I do see a resemblance, a strong one, in the curls, shape of head, and the facial configuration right below the lower lip."<br />
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That would be my impression as well. What do you think, dear reader? Is there a science to this kind of informed guessing? Are there people who specialize in it?<br />
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If scholars have seen this picture before, I would be very interested to hear.<br />
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The originals are in Connecticut and I'll be there in late October (after my reading with Jerome Sala at the Poetry Project in New York on the 27th). I will of course be eager to examine them, looking for clues of any kind. There are, apparently, others of interest, including a group photo taken (according to writing on the back, or so I'm told) by L. Clarke Davis, Rebecca's husband.<br />
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But these, and some intriguing others, are unidentified. Lesson: label your pictures immediately (she said to herself).<br />
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One thing that's beyond eerie for me is the arresting resemblance between the well-known picture and my own mother. That could be Cynthia, as easily as Rebecca, looking out at us from some strange remove. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje_WI4VXRXY7MqEc0qv2RHvnPbmI_vq6pFjVqZC3Xt9U53TBm7g1lrUXHxeImCO7c4xVNjE8onSwuHMGRa2m44eTB9sEXNfKTFkuJiySegvmHoHqN1NxhtGKpb9zN26n51TBUhqg/s1600/RHD+on+cover+of+the+Lasseter+book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje_WI4VXRXY7MqEc0qv2RHvnPbmI_vq6pFjVqZC3Xt9U53TBm7g1lrUXHxeImCO7c4xVNjE8onSwuHMGRa2m44eTB9sEXNfKTFkuJiySegvmHoHqN1NxhtGKpb9zN26n51TBUhqg/s320/RHD+on+cover+of+the+Lasseter+book.jpg" /></a></div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-15118933492969022682009-12-14T15:28:00.000-08:002009-12-14T15:48:03.877-08:00The Fudd-Lieberman Ticket: Elmer Meets Joe in a Paroxysm of Delight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi88diI9DrnhuBiiXHXHPnXy9EfAvM7NZMESGDMWodXo8gKhkX1s2EH21-8E25UMwqNhsh9TZrozJ1kGaeloKt07dlvRAZp6ddjx3sA80kBoFJ182yHs72pzde9ZwMn-F8ZSaqinQ/s1600-h/Fudd-Lieberman.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi88diI9DrnhuBiiXHXHPnXy9EfAvM7NZMESGDMWodXo8gKhkX1s2EH21-8E25UMwqNhsh9TZrozJ1kGaeloKt07dlvRAZp6ddjx3sA80kBoFJ182yHs72pzde9ZwMn-F8ZSaqinQ/s400/Fudd-Lieberman.bmp" /></a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Self-love conquers all, even that wascally congwess and that unpwesent pwesident.<br />
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</div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-42216680144283103632009-08-21T17:46:00.000-07:002009-08-21T18:35:18.167-07:00The Giant (from Kate Greenstreet)<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br />I was knocked out by this extraordinary little movie. It's a piece of one of the short films from the DVD that'll come with <a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/">Kate Greenstreet</a>'s new book, <a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/last.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Last 4 Things</span></a>, when it's published in September by Ahsahta Press. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><br /><b><br /></b></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >If there's a better poetry clip anywhere, please send me a pointer. (Seriously. I'm interested in this stuff.) </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">B</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >ut it seems to me we could all go to school on this one. </span><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Even more astonishing to the technically-challenged among us, she made it herself.<br /><br />At the moment, I can't even remember how to blog.<br /><b><br /><b><br /></b></b></span><object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4932469&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"><b><b><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4932469&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="300" width="400"></embed></b></b></object>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-13918982173087916652009-07-20T03:34:00.000-07:002009-07-20T03:48:42.691-07:00I Am Not a Crook's Head<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Courtesy of Daniel Bouchard: micro cartoon-clips of Tricky on the march!</span><br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HvYm68dOQ4k&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HvYm68dOQ4k&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-P7peu7Wy7w&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-P7peu7Wy7w&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-18103845963904555142009-06-10T01:57:00.000-07:002009-06-10T02:17:09.834-07:00The Poet, Burning His Own Work<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuULyOv56RiINgnRTeIUvM7VMK3Qvw7rX9hCZylyVM6XuVHjLhBm8Av04tUYC2IlYiEgMknNmqHl0hjb7IBDimoSgeRdeMagsQfDN1RsxcmQmiU4tEGhJBw7RuoyfPlSqEU_9Fw/s1600-h/Carl_Spitzweg_The_Poor_Poet.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuULyOv56RiINgnRTeIUvM7VMK3Qvw7rX9hCZylyVM6XuVHjLhBm8Av04tUYC2IlYiEgMknNmqHl0hjb7IBDimoSgeRdeMagsQfDN1RsxcmQmiU4tEGhJBw7RuoyfPlSqEU_9Fw/s320/Carl_Spitzweg_The_Poor_Poet.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345620734965784690" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:85%;">Carl Spitzweg, "The Poor Poet" (1839)</span><br /></div><br /><br />"The poet writes while huddling under his bedcovers and wearing a tattered coat and nightcap. The writer has been burning some of his own work - most likely volumes I and II since volumes III and IV remain in bundles on the floor. The fire in the room has obviously gone out since the poet rests his hat on the cold stovepipe and no live coals are visible in the stove. Indeed this cold stove is the darkest part of the picture and symbolizes the writer's <a href="http://arthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/_the_poor_poet_">sorry state of affairs</a>."Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-62008911343093686462008-10-08T05:49:00.000-07:002008-10-08T06:03:08.019-07:00Paavo Haavikko, "A Flower Song"<p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNW87Up-XTU-AzFg8evCgqz9RFoWoV8SHITisEmS8MpZNoqkygk20khcJzamLKwrClDe1butNN1jmq48tiD3kA-X5ZheiMVgDTvcWg9Cj0UQPWyjnnIlZ4eRG0W62l0IR59L7lA/s1600-h/haavikko.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNW87Up-XTU-AzFg8evCgqz9RFoWoV8SHITisEmS8MpZNoqkygk20khcJzamLKwrClDe1butNN1jmq48tiD3kA-X5ZheiMVgDTvcWg9Cj0UQPWyjnnIlZ4eRG0W62l0IR59L7lA/s320/haavikko.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254765855449295202" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:78%;">Paavo Haavikko, 1966 </span> <br /></div><p><br />A Flower Song<br /><br />The fir-trees at play;<br />comes raining down<br />ceaselessly;<br />O you, the wood-cutter's<br />daughter,<br />steep as the mountains,<br />as gruff and as gorgeous,<br />listen,<br />if you never loved, if I<br />never loved (your<br />bitterest words<br />when we parted), O listen —<br />the cones, raining down upon you<br />abundantly, ceaselessly,<br />without mercy.<br /><br />— tr. by Anselm Hollo</p>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-63748812537635628492008-10-07T02:49:00.000-07:002008-10-07T03:07:19.566-07:00Paavo Haavikko (1931-2008)<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOAkRIq0GkMkBYfkyN0jqSQbY0eMq4gL31LYKI8MwlRYK1Il2bZvSY4wcfGMoVs4UKvXxcb-x1IgYaaHOMZmmMKc7EDh9DuWR5_Ds2jEJqCVKch65pef957-Uj1nUsWZFRkJicQ/s1600-h/Haavikko+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOAkRIq0GkMkBYfkyN0jqSQbY0eMq4gL31LYKI8MwlRYK1Il2bZvSY4wcfGMoVs4UKvXxcb-x1IgYaaHOMZmmMKc7EDh9DuWR5_Ds2jEJqCVKch65pef957-Uj1nUsWZFRkJicQ/s320/Haavikko+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254347170213805346" border="0" /></a></p><p><br /><br />Life being short, poverty and wealth<br />     are final verdicts, in that<br />poverty and life are of equal duration<br />     and wealth and cold indifference<br />are perennial and hereditary, like diseases.<br /><br /> (from <span style="font-style: italic;">May, Eternal</span>, 1988, tr. by Anselm Hollo)<br /><br /><br />And, briefly:<br />The old part (1754-1762) is known as<br />The Winter Palace.<br />Accordingly everything,<br />Floor, ceiling, walls<br />Is covered with these exalted beings:<br />Venus, Jupiter, many ladies<br />Of a full-bodied vintage.<br />You can still see how many a man<br />Lost head and hat<br />By the Berezhina River,<br />You can see that Borodino<br />Was a victory;<br /><br /><br />Of such<br />I'm talking, here,<br />Under the roof<br />Thatched by my hair.<br /><br /> (from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Winter Palace</span>, 1959, tr. by Anselm Hollo)</p><p>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-26799780018947273542008-03-30T07:13:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:32:02.153-08:00Where Metaphor Comes From<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuw5ow-YTCeeul8KJuHPdgdhJ5_jeOzBGtm29rKPu1gDO2zFoBSBYdzYeovgEwCrZJDs-QdD7yCrBeoX5cYnhC3hX2IRG2wirY6T6Kx2atIy6Nxr_eYw6Rj0dOnErBVfRD-eS6Ug/s1600-h/all's+well.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuw5ow-YTCeeul8KJuHPdgdhJ5_jeOzBGtm29rKPu1gDO2zFoBSBYdzYeovgEwCrZJDs-QdD7yCrBeoX5cYnhC3hX2IRG2wirY6T6Kx2atIy6Nxr_eYw6Rj0dOnErBVfRD-eS6Ug/s320/all's+well.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5183531674866708018" border="0" /></a><br /><br />That place where you throw sand in the air and get to call it rain.</p><p>Hello, Blackheath NSW and Cleveland OH --</p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">didn't mean to worry anybody. . .</span>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-24759000902153578072008-01-28T04:11:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:32:02.318-08:00Goodbye to All That<p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0lnmGP3FKJ8XUDKBg_z1ziGuumijF8ulFHlipbqaOnbyN-gBMvvfI7wQbqWB_maBvD2btoRHHMOOdErxFfMTqsnDt7S1tEulPmxyPPQr4VKvoKOhAcUkbg0lSdgfpYOK8ivQ0tg/s1600-h/weldon+kees.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0lnmGP3FKJ8XUDKBg_z1ziGuumijF8ulFHlipbqaOnbyN-gBMvvfI7wQbqWB_maBvD2btoRHHMOOdErxFfMTqsnDt7S1tEulPmxyPPQr4VKvoKOhAcUkbg0lSdgfpYOK8ivQ0tg/s320/weldon+kees.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160509972369709378" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:78%;" >Weldon Kees</span><br /></div><p><br /></p><p>Wonder whether I'm the only person whose first thought on being wheeled into an ambulance was "I have to stop blogging." My guess is no.<br /><br />Anyway it may have been my second thought because, as you can imagine, things at this point were running together a bit. My first thought was maybe more like "This is incredibly weird."</p><p>But there I was with Joe, a sturdy, bear-like human being, and he was cheerfully slapping electrodes under my clothes and we were making a sort of psychedelic small talk.<br /></p><p>In any case I'm okay — I just fainted for the first time in my life and had a small seizure (apparently fairly normal when the brain's deprived of oxygen) and scared my husband half to death.<br /><br />This all happened in a restaurant and he had to shout "Help!" at a certain point and this is not something that Finns (a very reserved people) are wont to do, unless forced to the greatest extremity.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">So the whole thing has taken a lot out of both of us and I just thought I'd keep you (faithful reader) in the loop.</span><br /><br />Will I stop blogging? Probably not <span style="font-style: italic;">entirely</span>, at least for now — but I do have to change the way I do it and the way I do a lot of other things, or these tangled ganglia are going to assassinate me.<br /><br />So (speaking of tangled ganglia) here's one of the finest poems of the last century, for my money — one that, as usual, seems strangely apropos.</p><p><br /></p>ROUND<br /><br />"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.<br />Renan admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."<br />But here dried ferns keep falling to the floor,<br />And something inside my head<br />Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortissoz is dead,<br />A blow to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Herald-Tribune</span>. A closet mouse<br />Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Renan<br />Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."<br /><br />Flaps like a worn-out blind. Cezanne<br />Would break out in the quiet streets of Aix<br />And shout, "Le monde, c'est terrible!" Royal<br />Cortissoz is dead. And something inside my head<br />Flaps like a worn-out blind. The soil<br />In which the ferns are dying needs more Vigoro.<br />There is no twilight on the moon, no mist or rain,<br />No hail or snow, no life. Here in this house<br /><br />Dried ferns keep falling to the floor, a mouse<br />Rattles the wrapper on the breakfast food. Cezanne<br />Would break out in the quiet streets and scream. Renan<br />Admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly." And something inside my head<br />Flaps like a worn-out blind. Royal Cortissoz is dead.<br />There is no twilight on the moon, no hail or snow.<br />One notes fresh desecration of the portico.<br />"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.<br /><br />— Weldon Kees<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><p></p>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-89531556645821417272008-01-22T03:26:00.000-08:002008-01-22T04:35:17.843-08:00Radical Stupidity<p><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cH_E6YSQqTo&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cH_E6YSQqTo&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /></p><p>The phrase "radical stupidity" popped into my head the other day and I'm not sure whether it appeared in order to describe this Ukrainian army recruiting video (which I had not yet seen) or as a promising name for a new school of poetry.<br /><br />I prefer the latter but we can confidently build the church of radical stupidity upon this rock. Because the clip (which is apparently quite real) effortlessly attains sublime heights of cheesiness that Sacha Baron Cohen can only dream of.<br /><br />No translation necessary (as you'll see) but here's somebody's stab at it:<br /></p><p>girl 1: would u take us for a ride on your BMW?<br />BMW driver: even to the end of the world!<br />soldier: hey, i’d like to drown some vodka, girls!<br />girl 1: just a second!<br />girl 2: where do you live?<br />soldier: right here - daytime at work, and at night in the clubs!<br />girl 1: which work???<br />soldier: contract of course!<br />blonde girl: contract?? marriage contract or what?<br />girl 3: army contract, stupid!<br />BMW driver: hey, don’t you wanna ride in my car?<br />girls: forget it, take yourself for a ride!<br />narrator: it’s about time for new heroes! with contract based service in ukrainian armed forces!<br /></p>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-22743097285592134952008-01-18T05:04:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:32:02.809-08:00Self Portrait of Sylvia Plath as Wittgenstein<p><br /><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xmGXRZJQJyGh3SJNDnBzb_txKyIRNRt_ZMn-yT349vZiEzJvfj1wimUJCaUSC3s0MrCojiF5Ku2r-sPhW2JT-bZ8FrsEjIo2aXT0SdfSMKraNpW-LPhLsFRm8mV0apA1kIsKzg/s1600-h/Court+Green+5037.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xmGXRZJQJyGh3SJNDnBzb_txKyIRNRt_ZMn-yT349vZiEzJvfj1wimUJCaUSC3s0MrCojiF5Ku2r-sPhW2JT-bZ8FrsEjIo2aXT0SdfSMKraNpW-LPhLsFRm8mV0apA1kIsKzg/s320/Court+Green+5037.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156785372635121074" border="0" /></a></p><br />My copies of <a href="http://english.colum.edu/courtgreen/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Court Green</span> </a><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://english.colum.edu/courtgreen/">5</a> </span>arrived, featuring a Sylvia Plath Dossier. Just starting to read it but this jumped out at me, from Jason Schneiderman's five-part "Anachronistic Fair Use Self Portraits of 20th Century Sylvia Plath (with 'Daddy' Fixation)":<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Self Portrait of Sylvia Plath as Wittgenstein</span><br /><br />1. There is a Daddy<br />1.1. The Daddy is the case<br />1.2 The Daddy does not do<br />1.3 The Daddy does not do<br />1.4 The Daddy does not do anymore<br />1.5 The Daddy is like a shoe<br />2. There is a daughter<br />2.1 She lives in the shoe-like father<br />2.1.2 The daughter is foot like<br />2.2 The daughter is poor<br />2.3 The daughter is white<br />2.4 The daughter has foot-like lived in the father shoe-like for thirty years<br />2.5 She barely dares to breathe<br />2.6 She barely dares to achoo<br /><br />The whole series is a lot of fun, especially (for my money) "Self Portrait of Sylvia Plath as F.T. Marinetti" and "Self Portrait of Sylvia Plath as Tristan Tzara."<br /><br />Reminds me that I left Longfellow and Wittgenstein hanging last year when things tightened up (not that Henry and Ludwig noticed). Intend to knit those loose ends back together in due time.<br /><br />Also in the dossier and the rest of the issue, as edited by Lisa Fishman, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, and David Trinidad:<br /><br />Dossier: Sylvia Plath<br /><br />Amy Gerstler • Amanda Auchter • Terrance Hayes • Anne Shaw • Jane Satterfield • Kristi Maxwell • Tim Dlugos • Jeanne Marie Beaumont • Baron Wormser • Ron Koertge • Judith Harris • Rachel Loden • Ivy Alvarez • Amy Newman • Rebecca Laroche • Sara Burge • Sarah Murphy • Amy Lemmon • Angela Veronica Wong • Susen James • Leanne Averbach • Kathleen Ossip • Patricia Spears Jones • Robyn Ewing • Peter Davis • Michael Broder • James Brock • Robert Siek • Jim Klein • Nicholas Grider • Meg Barboza • Jean Valentine • Maxine Scates • Diane di Prima • Muriel Rukeyser • Lee Ann Brown • Sylvia Plath • Laura Mullen • Wayne Koestenbaum • Jan Beatty • Jason Schneiderman • Debora Kuan • Mary Jo Bang • Susie Timmons • Jenny Mueller • Judith Kroll • Catherine Bowman • Lee Anne Sittler • Scott Keeney<br /><br />Poems<br /><br />Jan Beatty • Susan Briante • Sarah Blackman • Daniel Khalastchi • Noelle Kocot • Michael Montlack • Chip Livingston • Kristin Abraham • Kevin Carollo • Susan Cataldo • Chelsey Minnis • Ross Middleton • Brian Young • Daneen Wardrop • Margaret Brady • Ron Koertge • J. G. Brister • Neil de la Flor • Maureen Seaton • Amanda Nadelberg • Jeffrey Bahr • Karen Garthe • Mark Yakich • Jenny Mueller • Sharon Dolin • Dorine Preston • Kristi Maxwell • Zach Savich • Kathleen McGookey • Aaron Anstett • Jason Labbe • Grace Ocasio • Noah Eli Gordon • Joseph Campana • Julie Carr • Mary Ann Samyn • Jack Anderson • Jordan Davis • Denise Duhamel • Steven D. Schroeder • Kathleen Rooney • Brent Goodman • Nathan Hoks • Roberto Harrison • Suzanne Rhodenbaugh • Andrea Rexilius • Stephanie Strickland • Nancy Kuhl • Todd Fredson • John Azrak • Kerry James Evans • Sara Michas-Martin • Terita Heath-WIaz • Allison Campbell • Michelle Taransky • Anne Heide • Ron Drummond • Sarah Vap • Jason Schneiderman • Pat Nolan • Jim Klein • Emmy Hunter • Tom Christopher • Ian Harris • Adam Clay • William C. Olsen • Caroline Morrell • Chad Paries • Alice Notley<br /><br />Ordering information <a href="http://english.colum.edu/courtgreen/contact.html">here</a>.Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-46734038805729694502008-01-12T12:24:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:02.924-08:00Nixon Vets the Candidates<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQIIUNqDmEjTgWDfaDMkH6Lo_JRrvDUzAaE2v-1zQITzZ3PcnIyUf4D5E6DcbKlWgED1J7amL8tkLU37D8gSRixyV_uajW0ZX6Z-mVYw6sHIk3OlSkeuGfYpNTdw81_7ghDc5Mng/s1600-h/nixon's+the+one.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQIIUNqDmEjTgWDfaDMkH6Lo_JRrvDUzAaE2v-1zQITzZ3PcnIyUf4D5E6DcbKlWgED1J7amL8tkLU37D8gSRixyV_uajW0ZX6Z-mVYw6sHIk3OlSkeuGfYpNTdw81_7ghDc5Mng/s320/nixon's+the+one.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5154797077654980002" border="0" /></a><br />Dick thinks Susan could have been a little more tactful about his White House years in the <a href="http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/2008/01/poem-for-primaries.html">comment box</a> over the weekend. But he's grudgingly consented to give us the benefit of his counsel on some of his old enemies and new bêtes noire:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Romney</span>:<br /><br />Another rich boy who thinks he has it coming to him, like Kennedy. He'll probably fold, <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part4_side/"> like his candy-ass father</a> after he<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>talked a big game.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thompson</span>:<br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/10/nixon-on-thomps.html">Dumb as hell</a> but friendly, as I said when he was my mole on the Watergate committee. Sam Dash ran rings around him, and he's even dimmer today.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Giuliani</span>:<br /><br />Used to think I saw a bit of myself in him in his better moments. But of course they're not like us. They <a href="http://www.italian-american.com/nixon.htm">smell different</a>. Plus the bastard <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Politics/story?id=3839108&page=1">compared me</a> to Bernie Kerik.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">McCain</span>:<br /><br />Growing on me, especially after he appointed Fred Malek (who <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=181707">counted Jews</a> for me in '71) as his national finance co-chair. Even calls Malek "an inspiring public servant who has served our nation well." Credit where credit is due.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Huckabee</span>:<br /><br />Best instincts of this bunch of clowns by far, even if he does look like Gomer Pyle. What's in the water in <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DD1639F935A25754C0A964958260">Dogpatch</a>, Ark.?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clinton</span>:<br /><br />Whatever it was, she didn't drink it. Now <span style="font-style: italic;">Bill</span> loved the <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902EFDC1E31F936A15757C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all">lucidity</a> of my mind, like Gergen said: he got me.<br /><br />But I always say that if the wife comes through as being too strong and too intelligent, it makes the husband look like a wimp. I mean Pat is spinning in her grave, for Christ's sake. And she never had to lock up the interns.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Obama</span>:<br /><br />We don't <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3366529&page=1">owe the blacks</a> a damn thing. Especially one who thinks he's better than we are.<br /><br />What's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti">Segretti</a> up to these days? We need someone working full-time on that <a href="http://wonkette.com/politics/barack-obama/barack-hussein-obama-democrat-217999.php">middle name</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gravel</span>:<br /><br />Did his best to screw us with the Pentagon Papers, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel">back in the day</a>. Now everybody laughs at him, which is perfect.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Edwards</span>:<br /><br />Elmer Gantry in a $5,000 suit. All that poor-mouthing about his father the millworker: what a load of crap. I know what it means to have nothing, but we're Republicans. We don't talk about it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kucinich</span>:<br /><br />Are you shitting me?<br /><br />The guy I don't understand is the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/vice-president-shoots-hunter/2006/02/13/1139679502642.html">other Dick</a>. Why isn't he fighting for it? Did he set his own office on fire?<br /><br />I'm pinning my hopes on a brokered convention — which could happen if the voters never settle on any of these pygmies.<br /><br />So if they deadlock in the Twin Cities, I'll be there before you can yell Milhous. I'm just saying.Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-58218407248320577922008-01-07T03:52:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:03.518-08:00A Poem for Primaries<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBa3sd0V626fso8iW_vWvPxVLwA88kNncXljZlfZ9RlTtFSh0c890zd5TMOKvIKToXJ0vfZ-eByE12Ya3GhPCAsveukBKNYvGn6iM5rhBdtXhSe3y3Q-MQ7ja1hB9UoQwAU5QmoA/s1600-h/Oliphant+Nixon+Card+One.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBa3sd0V626fso8iW_vWvPxVLwA88kNncXljZlfZ9RlTtFSh0c890zd5TMOKvIKToXJ0vfZ-eByE12Ya3GhPCAsveukBKNYvGn6iM5rhBdtXhSe3y3Q-MQ7ja1hB9UoQwAU5QmoA/s320/Oliphant+Nixon+Card+One.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152701485801850210" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb68rLRfW1e69PAV3fTATTF_LAdhW5jFxNOB-8TT8vVsah697FW7Bn9yrTVEB5sCKEyhPcVJKr7fQNVnfGISrCtRx3yrmAR12s97DJzqFcebLG1C7vCt3RpcxuAYTyaPvX3NwRwA/s1600-h/Oliphant+Nixon+Card+One+Page+Two.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb68rLRfW1e69PAV3fTATTF_LAdhW5jFxNOB-8TT8vVsah697FW7Bn9yrTVEB5sCKEyhPcVJKr7fQNVnfGISrCtRx3yrmAR12s97DJzqFcebLG1C7vCt3RpcxuAYTyaPvX3NwRwA/s320/Oliphant+Nixon+Card+One+Page+Two.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152701661895509362" border="0" /></a><br />The above tricksy dicksiness, of course, from the great Pat Oliphant (born in Adelaide, Australia — who knew), a greeting card in my collection since MCMLXXXII. "Of tendentious or tangential topicality, tickling the turbid, turgid, turbulent twitwits of our tempestuous times," it says on the back.<br /><br />My own recent disappearance owed as much to a medical mystery tour as to my mother's death, fresh as that peck of dirt may be. We were at a cardiologist's office at the height of the recent violent gale and it drove me back to <span style="font-style: italic;">Julius Caesar</span>'s tempests dropping fire, my first WS ever on the page and to passages like this:<br /><br /></p><blockquote>Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man<br />Most like this dreadful night,<br />That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars<br />As doth the lion in the Capitol,<br />A man no mightier than thyself or me<br />In personal action, yet prodigious grown<br />And fearful as these strange eruptions are.</blockquote><br />And those eruptions and passages — given the just-concluded Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary tomorrow— put me in mind of my own WS (but this time Wallace Stevens) spoof, written right after the capture of Saddam Hussein:<br /><br /><blockquote>MILHOUS AS KING OF THE GHOSTS<br /><br /><br />A cold cellar-hole at the end of the day,<br />When faithless pretenders cover the sun<br />And nothing is left but my candidacy—<br /><br />There was dead Checkers with her list of slights,<br />Slow tongue, green bile, black list, white mind<br />And April, cruel as rumors of my demise.<br /><br />To be, on the lawns, where no helicopter lands,<br />Without that preening statuette of dog,<br />That dog surrendered to the moon;<br /><br />And to feel that the light is a Key Biscayne light<br />In which everything is lofted up to the elect<br />And no returns need be tallied;<br /><br />Then there is no use in counting. It comes of itself;<br />All the blue votes turning a brilliant red,<br />Even in Chicago. The wind moves on the lawns<br /><br />And moves in myself. The last Iowa sweetcorn<br />Is for me, the snows of New Hampshire drift up<br />Into an empire of self that knows no boundaries,<br /><br />I become an empire that fills the oleaginous pipelines<br />Of the earth. The bitch is still yapping<br />By gravestone-light and I am whipped high, whipped<br /><br />Up, sculpted higher and higher, cool as a sphinx—<br />I sit with my head like a Rushmore in space<br />And the scrofulous hound smelling blood on my wings.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">From <a href="http://www.wildhoneypress.com/BOOKS/RNSG.htm">The Richard Nixon Snow Globe</a>, Wild Honey Press<br /></span></blockquote><br />Is Christmas over? A good thing, perhaps, to judge from my sleepy progeny:<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lXmKpZmTAptHjo38uMmeKPhMR7Ka6x_SK2EjduwTmZRXfvdve02dlnKX-Ip64oDhFocSPUQzp47yTUxskW-aPQalvyl6y0LeTljZ_J28hsTjPUj-sYzuKbGmIPaBsqxkZ9qS5A/s1600-h/DCP+christmas+2007.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lXmKpZmTAptHjo38uMmeKPhMR7Ka6x_SK2EjduwTmZRXfvdve02dlnKX-Ip64oDhFocSPUQzp47yTUxskW-aPQalvyl6y0LeTljZ_J28hsTjPUj-sYzuKbGmIPaBsqxkZ9qS5A/s320/DCP+christmas+2007.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152715908302030210" border="0" /></a><br /><br />But they're still playing the holly-jolly muzak in the doctors' offices, for which (at the very least) someone should be ritually disemboweled.<br /><br />Too many wake-up calls of late, as if we needed them, but I'll be here as time and vicissitudes permit, with love (real and true) and poesy for all.Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-74786365854303779722007-12-19T05:03:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:03.620-08:00The Moist Lotus Open Along Acheron<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsTWq8cpdtUoR5geoRXV2Sb7vz2P8KCk6b-9RAfaJP_ow0jOLQ5zjiTw9C2AOjwgvPn5VWhyphenhyphen-HuHyMPdT4kB2Vr1j0B3s9grHjEgpSlxlakqzRl_j1OLM_zkDsoJiAiKOwAYHKQ/s1600-h/bellflower.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsTWq8cpdtUoR5geoRXV2Sb7vz2P8KCk6b-9RAfaJP_ow0jOLQ5zjiTw9C2AOjwgvPn5VWhyphenhyphen-HuHyMPdT4kB2Vr1j0B3s9grHjEgpSlxlakqzRl_j1OLM_zkDsoJiAiKOwAYHKQ/s320/bellflower.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5145668992309970802" border="0" /></a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size:78%;">photo by Timo Ketonen</span><br /></div><br />A whelming if not overwhelming time. You'd think I would like a drug called <span style="font-style: italic;">Versed</span>, but I didn't. When they pump you full of Versed and Fentanyl and then (later) tell you to go home and not make any major decisions, you have to wonder what they're imagining.<br /><br />As somebody else must have said (please come forward mysterious personage), I'll cross that bridge when I jump off of it.<br /><br />But things are fine: one is just <span>rather tired</span> of death and tubes and Versed. Flames shooting out the windows of the Old Executive Office Building, as though even the vice-president's <span style="font-style: italic;">walls</span> were longing for release.<br /><br />Goodbye, goodbye <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span> no more water, the fire next time. Or Mayakovsky: "In the church of my heart the choir is on fire!"<br /><br />Indeed. Only a couple of weeks ago the title of an <a href="http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13854">Alan Williamson poem</a> had sent me spinning into the dictionaries: I had heard of <span style="font-style: italic;">psychopomps</span> before, but somehow I had never been besotted with them.<br /><br />Now I was, since the <span style="font-style: italic;">OED</span> said they were "conductor[s] of souls to the place of the dead. Also, the spiritual guide[s] of a (living) person's soul; a person who acts as a guide of the soul."<br /><br />And there was this, too, in the <span style="font-style: italic;">OED</span>, from a letter of Rupert Brooke: "I, Hermes-like, am coming to fetch you psychopompically to Hell." Even if "the handsomest young man in England" (as Yeats called him) has not been kissed by time, this is a missive I'd dearly love to finish.<br /><br />Because wasn't this what I was trying to be for Richard Nixon: his Charon, so that he might see (in Sappho's words, tr. Mary Barnard) "the moist lotus open / along Acheron"?<br /><br />Surely I could not be as cruel as she was:<br /><br /><blockquote>Rich as you are<br /><br />Death will finish<br />you: afterwards no<br />one will remember<br /><br />or want you: you<br />had no share in<br />the Pierian roses<br /><br />You will flitter<br />invisible among<br />the indistinct dead<br /><br />in Hell's palace<br />darting fitfully</blockquote><br />I should be more cheerful by New Year's! Bah humbug, fellow curmudgeons.<br /><br /></div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-38533564533603861662007-12-12T14:27:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:32:04.156-08:00The Important Looking Men (with a Note from Mairéad Byrne)<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2insS2ALQSSagiiqEBlMvYm6Oz17O3qb8xHYvBNeHlswvz0n3jquCiAdoX9hNOJjPqmNME1fZs-RD6Gkahm0yuL6Kb4eQ6k5-xCcMRMq_SxwEIrnSor1Ipg2M28dQnAJp0uR9Qg/s1600-h/byrne_talkpoetry.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2insS2ALQSSagiiqEBlMvYm6Oz17O3qb8xHYvBNeHlswvz0n3jquCiAdoX9hNOJjPqmNME1fZs-RD6Gkahm0yuL6Kb4eQ6k5-xCcMRMq_SxwEIrnSor1Ipg2M28dQnAJp0uR9Qg/s320/byrne_talkpoetry.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143217265987782706" border="0" /></a></p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Late one October night I read all of Mairéad Byrne's <span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">Talk Poetry</span> in one addictive sitting, greedily, as if it were a plate of hot onion and cauliflower pakoras, which it was.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I asked her to say a few words about her poem "The Important Looking Men," her crisp and spirited book or anything else that struck her fancy, and her comments follow the poem.</span><br /></div><br /><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The Important Looking Men</span><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The important looking men are not always the important looking men. Sometimes the important looking men are women. Sometimes the important looking men are the woman with the brown helmet of hair, head tilted attentively. Sometimes the important looking men are not the important looking men but visitors from out-of-town where they are not important either. The tortured artist is not always the tortured artist. The tortured artist is not always the guy in the thin cardigan smoking a cigarette outside the studio. That might be the electrician. The tortured artist is sometimes the small priest who stands in the corner of the salon balancing his cup of tea. Or the woman nobody sees. The lover is not always the lover. The lover can be a liar, refracting images of himself back into infinity. The lover might be this beagle, this couch, this slipper, this child who shouts out to me this morning late for school </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> tumbling from his father's car & again from the side-walk </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Clio's Mom! </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Or this other child, this evening, alone, walking home, who tosses his glorious </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">hello</span> across Camp Street to land at my feet.<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==</span><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQSbsdQR4UTQnYQTHzHSq_GJgx4aozIYkphq5s15fySjRvjeAxAGSyAC2C-jYS1QeZ1aKL1boUllda5siE-AcTlEhrfS1tt7qAr4x3QfO4guHEYhzFKc6vxpz_mrn1AagFG5ulw/s1600-h/byrne_mairead.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQSbsdQR4UTQnYQTHzHSq_GJgx4aozIYkphq5s15fySjRvjeAxAGSyAC2C-jYS1QeZ1aKL1boUllda5siE-AcTlEhrfS1tt7qAr4x3QfO4guHEYhzFKc6vxpz_mrn1AagFG5ulw/s320/byrne_mairead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143235145936635970" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mairéad Byrne writes: </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This poem was originally called "Appearances." You can see that's what it's about. Usually, poems begin with titles for me; this one oscillated between two titles. Ultimately, "The Important Looking Men" was irresistible.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Flat statement is very much part of </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Talk Poetry</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, even flat contradictory statement, as this early poem on my blog indicates:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Wednesday, October 05, 2005</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">WRITING PRACTICE</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I write every day.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But not really.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But really.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This is a new way of speaking.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Talk poetry.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Except for "the important looking men," who are generic, the images in the poem are all very specific for me. "The woman with the brown helmet of hair, head tilted attentively," or "solicitously," as it once was, is a colleague. "The tortured artist" is glimpsed on my way to work. The small priest is Gerard Manley Hopkins, isolated at a soirée hosted by John Butler Yeats, when William was about 17, the star of the show. I guess the woman nobody sees is Emily Dickinson, although she was seen by many she loved. And that's how the poem goes. I didn't always find love where I looked for it but it sprung up around me nonetheless. The child tumbling from his father's car is a boy I know. When I taught poetry in my daughter Clio's third grade class, the children wrote list poems beginning "I wish." He wrote "I wish Clio was my friend." He wrote more than any of the other children. He had a lot of heart and was not afraid to show it. His father was sick at the time I wrote the poem. He was a single parent, his three boys lived with him. He died this year. The second child who shouts out to me in the poem is also a boy. A valiant, friendly boy.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The public schools in Providence </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> and in all American cities probably </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> are very poor. It really grieves me. The children are made grey. But I have faith that they are untarnishable.</span><br /><br /></div>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-21197015474240767182007-12-09T03:50:00.000-08:002007-12-09T06:54:20.388-08:00Speechless<object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CgMCfi4HhyA&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CgMCfi4HhyA&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Woody Allen on the WGA strike, via the union <a href="http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/">web site</a>.<br /><br />Have been a bit speechless myself, for different reasons. It's amazing how sick you can get when you put your mind to it.<br /><br />Actually overdosing on the vitamins and so on but would much rather be out on the picket line.<br /><br />"What say you / soldiers of the lyre, we wait / for some o’clock and then stop / singing? Oh I would stop, oh yes / and let the feckless meadow fill / with xylophones and snow, the striped / tail of the muse slap in her burrow."<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(from <a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780820321691&itm=1#TABS">"Poetry and Sorrow in a 'Right-to-Sing' State"</a>)<br /><br /></span>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-26586421284139593762007-12-03T05:20:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:04.175-08:00Rose, Oh Pure Contradiction<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5-V-lThIk1tZJa7Humsgb5tTZyrL2vPnCeYYhlQOoLZj9uwnXCO0F1GnSovthPr5rGa2Y27G9JOa1gI6T4P-vNJwhHnpFpwfbsntWRIyEyTNL9l84hkFQOH0D5DM0XFiG9oIQMQ/s1600-r/rose.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9V5AAUSYfseDQd0JCE330rLg8q0snqn7Vh5oMYyXl_BVkjLuB4kDCohcidSnW658SbOdnrMbH71ArKkwrBJHBfVak_tZ9JkjnMHNiuDjXaeDc12UnoEgfmBB9Ae_hu9M9eoTUIw/s320/rose.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139751466354908322" border="0" /></a></p><p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size:78%;">photo by Timo Ketonen</span><br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Season of faxed cremation papers, which one shouldn't read, one really shouldn't.<br /><br />But here's arguably the best blurb ever:<br /><br /></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Since Knox favors premise over conclusion, her poems simply speak — they do not explain. In this way they are not entirely unlike scripture. The part that is unlike scripture is the one that’s like “Wait, I was reading these poems and laughing but my hearing aid fell out and then my face just kind of blew off in a beautiful rainbow spray of bullshit-dissolving napalm.”</blockquote><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This from Sarah Manguso, writing about Jennifer L. Knox's </span><a href="http://www.bloofbooks.com/dbn.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">Drunk by Noon</span></span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">. I'm looking forward to the book, and perhaps (with a virulent head cold) living up to its title.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >But what else might one expect from someone capable of writing these lines, as Manguso did in her book </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Siste-Viator-Sarah-Manguso/dp/1884800696"><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">Siste Viator</span></span></a> (wait for the last rim shot):</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">My great-grandmother's lamp is mine now. It is made of rose quartz — that is, it is made of poetry.<br /><br />More poetry: A coin you dropped when you took your pants off is still on the floor. Please come back and pick it up.<br /><br />More: The scar on my hand I got cleaning the house for you has outlasted you. In this way you are indelible, but only as long as I have my hand.</blockquote>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-22002513995657015252007-11-28T05:03:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:04.600-08:00The More Things Change Dept.<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQJY4E5GBDqM8PXxVUd_iRGjHxa6g6n7M1eev-QIIUAtUUZtIY97DMWbQunqEQ1WsqeiRbXB0uiUsNK-yaPXi1-iXb0k4QbsUtlQEy3nL93u4gFHY9b5UWVy-NrkvFi28JylswUw/s1600-h/ebwhite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQJY4E5GBDqM8PXxVUd_iRGjHxa6g6n7M1eev-QIIUAtUUZtIY97DMWbQunqEQ1WsqeiRbXB0uiUsNK-yaPXi1-iXb0k4QbsUtlQEy3nL93u4gFHY9b5UWVy-NrkvFi28JylswUw/s320/ebwhite.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137876303341194674" border="0" /></a><br /></p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content."</span><br /><p><br />"The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts. It feels that if a thing is funny it can be presumed to be something less than great, because if it were truly great it would be wholly serious. Writers know this, and those who take their literary selves with great seriousness are at considerable pains never to associate their name with anything funny or flippant or nonsensical or 'light.' They suspect it would hurt their reputation, and they are right. Many a poet writing today signs his real name to his serious verse and a pseudonym to his comical verse, being unwilling to have the public discover him in any but a pensive and heavy moment. It is a wise precaution. (It is often a bad poet, too.)"<br /><br />"I think the stature of humor must vary some with the times. The court fool in Shakespeare's day had no social standing and was no better than a lackey, but he did have some artistic standing and was listened to with considerable attention, there being a well-founded belief that he had the truth hidden somewhere about his person. Artistically he stood probably higher than the humorist of today, who has gained social position but not the ear of the mighty. (Think of the trouble the world would save itself if it would pay some attention to nonsense!) A narrative poet at court, singing of great deeds, enjoyed a higher standing than the fool and was allowed to wear fine clothes; yet I suspect that the ballad singer was more often than not a second-rate stooge, flattering his monarch lyrically, while the fool must often have been a first-rate character, giving his monarch good advice in bad puns."</p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">All excerpts from "Some Remarks on Humor," adapted by E.B. White from his preface to </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A Subtreasury of American Humor</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, Coward-McCann, 1941.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But of a piece with pretty much everything the </span><a style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);" href="http://jacketmagazine.com/33/humpo-discussion.shtml">Humpolonians</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> had to say in 2007, and most likely of a piece with the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">compleynts</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> and sorrows of the fools of 1257 or 1384.</span>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-26998404092938048462007-11-26T03:19:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:32:05.064-08:00Susan Sontag, An Argument about Beauty<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS3ojVV45amTir_tfPYoOFP5oN3kahPvMY8S3M65zUGnVaq_RygmPm7LcK9p7XcHzNysIxUn8lkwCbIbfH75A0bb2OtwG9Kdhu4ylQD3MDgbnHLZSft3G6TzHK2gw-L_Vt-8cyZg/s1600-h/afternoon+by+Timo+Ketonen.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS3ojVV45amTir_tfPYoOFP5oN3kahPvMY8S3M65zUGnVaq_RygmPm7LcK9p7XcHzNysIxUn8lkwCbIbfH75A0bb2OtwG9Kdhu4ylQD3MDgbnHLZSft3G6TzHK2gw-L_Vt-8cyZg/s320/afternoon+by+Timo+Ketonen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137109136791856850" border="0" /></a></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:78%;">(photo: Timo Ketonen)</span><br /></div><p>Taken in the Finnish autumn afternoon, about a week ago.<br /></p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Found</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Susan Sontag's </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">At The Same Time: Essays And Speeches </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">on the new book shelf at the local library and remembered what a tonic "Notes on Camp" had been for my teenaged soul.<br /><br />I mean, <span style="font-style: italic;">a girl intellectual</span>, and a particularly shameless, even arrogant one. Imagine. I'd been feeling like a freak, sinking down in my seat when the grade curve was outlined on the blackboard, trying to disappear.<br /><br />Not that that feeling evaporated after reading "Notes" in the Westport, Connecticut, public library </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> far from it, I spent years and years thinking that it was somehow weird to want to be both Orpheus and Eurydice. Could one possibly be both singer <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> beloved?<br /><br />These were serious questions decades ago, believe it or not, and perhaps they're still serious questions for girls now. It's certainly depressing getting random toy and tot catalogues in the mail: there's the pink, flouncy, gauzy section, and then there are army fatigues for four year-olds.<br /><br />It's tempting to feel like Rip Van Winkle: did the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties even happen? It's 1957 and Eisenhower's on the golf course.<br /><br />But Sontag (at least in that first blush) was one thrilling, transgressive blow against the idiocracy and I'm still grateful for it, and for her.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">From my favorite piece in the new book:</span><br /><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When that notorious beauty-lover Oscar Wilde announced in <span style="font-style: italic;">T</span><span style="font-style: italic;">he Decay of Lying</span>, "Nobody of any real culture . . . ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned," sunsets reeled under the blow, then recovered. <span style="font-style: italic;">Les beaux arts</span>, when summoned to a similar call to be up to date, did not. The subtraction of beauty as a standard for art hardly signals a decline of the authority of beauty. Rather, it testifies to a decline in the belief that there is something called art.</blockquote><p></p>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-47790589328631071712007-11-19T02:06:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:32:05.196-08:00Concord in the Sixties<p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaa2xcDmwFcSihHGRIM3Q3r20hlzrZSzS2hRIwVeHVOMgvfoVoalMECvknTmU4Y9fSe2dz_zLnMdqK7u_KqzPbqk9YSTnvltNcXGBHp7eKI2hUE2c3pU_DjHWzIED5XXZi1blQWQ/s1600-h/The_Wayside,_Concord,_Massachusetts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaa2xcDmwFcSihHGRIM3Q3r20hlzrZSzS2hRIwVeHVOMgvfoVoalMECvknTmU4Y9fSe2dz_zLnMdqK7u_KqzPbqk9YSTnvltNcXGBHp7eKI2hUE2c3pU_DjHWzIED5XXZi1blQWQ/s320/The_Wayside,_Concord,_Massachusetts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5134508559863932610" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:78%;">The Wayside, Hawthorne's home 1852-</span><span style="font-size:78%;">1864</span><br /></div><p><br /></p><p>The 1860s, that is.<br /><br />Since I'm in no condition to blog I thought I'd turn things over again to someone who shares my mitochondrial (a.k.a. matrilineal) DNA, my great-grandmother's sister Rebecca Harding Davis. My first excerpt from her memoir, <span style="font-style: italic;">Bits of Gossip</span>, which Houghton Mifflin published in 1904 , is <a href="http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/2007/08/walk-with-nathaniel-hawthorne.html">here</a>. That chunk, which I called "A Walk with Nathaniel Hawthorne," is preceded by a bit of background which I won't repeat.<br /><br />This shorter clip includes a hilarious dining moment-of-truth with Bronson Alcott, as seen in part through the eyes of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Also RHD's musings on the Concord circle as a whole <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span> its moral and philosophical airs and impracticalities,<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> especially as contrasted with the actual Civil War, which she had observed firsthand</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span> and a first encounter with Alcott's daughter Louisa, later of course of <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Women </span>fame.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Note: a "second girl" was "a household domestic in a subordinate position," according to </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The Rebecca Harding Davis Reader</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).</span><br /><br /><br />I wish I could summon these memorable ghosts before you as I saw them then and afterward. To the eyes of an observer, belonging to the commonplace world, they did not appear precisely as they do in the portraits drawn of them for posterity by their companions, the other Areopagites, who walked and talked with them apart <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span> always apart from humanity.<br /><br />That was the first peculiarity which struck an outsider in Emerson, Hawthorne, and the other members of the "Atlantic" coterie; that while they thought they were guiding the real world, they stood quite outside of it, and never would see it as it was.<br /><br />For instance, during the Civil War, they had much to say of it, and all used the same strained high note of exaltation. It was to them "only the shining track," as Lowell calls it, where<br /><br /></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">. . . "heroes mustered in a gleaming row,<br /><br />Beautiful evermore, and with the rays<br /><br />Of morn on their white shields of expectation."</blockquote><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">These heroes were their bravest and their best, gone to die for the slave or for their country. They were "the army" to them.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I remember listening during one long summer morning to Louisa Alcott's father as he chanted paeans to the war, the "armed angel which was wakening the nation to a lofty life unknown before."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We were in the little parlor of the Wayside, Mr. Hawthorne's house in Concord. Mr. Alcott stood in front of the fireplace, his long gray hair streaming over his collar, his pale eyes turning quickly from one listener to another to hold them quiet, his hands waving to keep time with rotund sentences which had a stale, familiar ring as if often repeated before. Mr. Emerson stood listening, his head sunk on his breast, with profound submissive attention, but Hawthorne sat astride of a chair, his arms folded on the back, his chin dropped on them, and his laughing, sagacious eyes watching us, full of mockery.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I had just come up from the border where I had seen the actual war; the filthy spewings of it; the political jobbery in Union and Confederate camps; the malignant personal hatreds wearing patriotic masks, and glutted by burning homes and outraged women; the chances in it, well improved on both sides, for brutish men to grow more brutish, and for honorable gentlemen to degenerate into thieves and sots. War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums. This would-be seer who was talking of it, and the real seer who listened, knew no more of war as it was, than I had done in my cherry-tree when I dreamed of bannered legions of crusaders debouching in the misty fields.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mr. Hawthorne at last gathered himself up lazily to his feet, and said quietly: "We cannot see that thing at so long a range. Let us go to dinner," and Mr. Alcott suddenly checked the droning flow of his prophecy and quickly led the way to the dining-room.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Early that morning when his lank, gray figure had first appeared at the gate, Mr. Hawthorne said: "Here comes the Sage of Concord. He is anxious to know what kind of human beings come up from the back hills in Virginia. Now I will tell you," his eyes gleaming with fun, "what he will talk to you about. Pears. Yes. You may begin at Plato or the day's news, and he will come around to pears. He is now convinced that a vegetable diet affects both the body and soul, and that pears exercise a more direct and ennobling influence on us than any other vegetable or fruit. Wait. You'll hear presently."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When we went in to dinner, therefore, I was surprised to see the sage eat heartily of the fine sirloin of beef set before us. But with the dessert he began to advocate a vegetable diet and at last announced the spiritual influence of pears, to the great delight of his host, who laughed like a boy and was humored like one by the gentle old man.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Whether Alcott, Emerson, and their disciples discussed pears or the war, their views gave you the same sense of unreality, of having been taken, as Hawthorne said, at too long a range. You heard much sound philosophy and many sublime guesses at the eternal verities; in fact, never were the eternal verities so dissected and pawed over and turned inside out as they were about that time, in Boston, by Margaret Fuller and her successors. But the discussion left you with a vague, uneasy sense that something was lacking, some back-bone of fact. Their theories were like beautiful bubbles blown from a child's pipe, floating overhead, with queer reflections on them of sky and earth and human beings, all in a glow of fairy color and all a little distorted.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mr. Alcott once showed me an arbor which he had built with great pains and skill for Mr. Emerson to "do his thinking in." It was made of unbarked saplings and boughs, a tiny round temple, two storied, with chambers in which were seats, a desk, etc., all very artistic and complete, except that he had forgotten to make any door. You could look at it and admire it, but nobody could go in or use it. It seemed to me a fitting symbol for this guild of prophets and their scheme of life.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mr. Alcott at that time was their oracle, appointed and held in authority by Emerson alone. His faith in the old man was so sincere and simple that it was almost painful to see it.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He once told me, "I asked Alcott the other day what he would do when he came to the gate, and St. Peter demanded his ticket. 'What have you to show to justify your right to live?' I said. 'Where is your book, your picture? You have done nothing in the world.' 'No,' he said, 'but somewhere on a hill up there will be Plato and Paul and Socrates talking, and they will say: 'Send Alcott over here, we want him with us.'" "And," said Emerson, gravely shaking his head, "he was right! Alcott was right."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Mr. Alcott was a tall, awkward, kindly old man, absolutely ignorant of the world, but with an obstinate faith in himself which would have befitted a pagan god. Hearing that I was from Virginia, he told me that he owed his education wholly to Virginia planters. He had traveled in his youth as a peddler through the State, and finding how eager he was to learn they would keep him for days in their houses, turning him loose in their libraries.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">His own library was full of folios of his manuscripts. He had covered miles of paper with his inspirations, but when I first knew him no publisher had ever put a line of them into print. His house was bleak and bitter cold with poverty, his wife had always worked hard to feed him and his children. In any other town he would have been more respected if he had tried to put his poor carpentering skill to use to support them. But the homelier virtues were not, apparently, in vogue in Concord.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">During my first visit to Boston in 1862, I saw at an evening reception a tall, thin young woman standing alone in a corner. She was plainly dressed, and had that watchful, defiant air with which the woman whose youth is slipping away is apt to face the world which has offered no place to her. Presently she came up to me.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"These people may say pleasant things to you," she said abruptly; "but not one of them would have gone to Concord and back to see you, as I did to-day. I went for this gown. It's the only decent one I have. I'm very poor;" and in the next breath she contrived to tell me that she had once taken a place as "second girl." "My name," she added, "is Louisa Alcott."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Now, although we had never met, Louisa Alcott had shown me great kindness in the winter just past, sacrificing a whole day to a tedious work which was to give me pleasure at a time when every hour counted largely to her in her desperate struggle to keep her family from want. The little act was so considerate and fine, that I am still grateful for it, now when I am an old woman, and Louisa Alcott has long been dead. It was as natural for her to do such things as for a pomegranate-tree to bear fruit.</span>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-27762417947941954122007-11-16T05:42:00.000-08:002007-11-16T06:16:45.716-08:00Paul Robeson in Prague<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">My brother just called me up and sang this song to me, which (given any expectation I ever had of him) was pretty extraordinary.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Our mother liked to sing it to us on Deakin Street in Berkeley, thousands of years ago, and she learned it from this guy.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hBlO8Q23nAA&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hBlO8Q23nAA&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31258360.post-52501586862431936232007-11-08T19:14:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:32:05.487-08:00On an Age-old Anvil Wince and Sing<p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBN3HQh537c9bC5Cye-DbwLCr8y6axmBjR435f-cG1cR_qaCnwDhgqVHZZX3oipaZ3l9aUQs9B5ENH96V3AoEYEmlA8HFQTEy5lSQcaMvtCjrdEvHdsL0dBbTVvoV5E5dOS30iA/s1600-h/Mom+9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsBN3HQh537c9bC5Cye-DbwLCr8y6axmBjR435f-cG1cR_qaCnwDhgqVHZZX3oipaZ3l9aUQs9B5ENH96V3AoEYEmlA8HFQTEy5lSQcaMvtCjrdEvHdsL0dBbTVvoV5E5dOS30iA/s320/Mom+9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131934162416628850" border="0" /></a></p> <div style="text-align: center; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:85%;">Cynthia Ulrich Edelson<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><blockquote><br />O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall<br /><a name="106"></a> Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap<br />May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small<br /><a name="108"></a> Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,<br />Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind. . . .<br /></blockquote><br /></div><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">G.M. Hopkins of course. I seem for the nonce to be almost out of words.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Many thanks to all who sent notes, etheric or otherwise (Susan, Ange, Linh, sweet backchannelers and thought-streamers).<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">That sort of kindness gets recorded pretty deeply, at a time like this </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">more soon, as things start to make sense.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">If they ever entirely do again. . . .</span>Rachel Lodenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07643048091966293914noreply@blogger.com3