Here’s a treat for those who relish fiction with off-the-wall cognitive mayhem – The Hearing Trumpet Suddenly it seemed as if everyone in my online book world had read it (see here and here for here examples). It’s a short novel by Leonora Carrington, better known for her wildly idiosyncratic art. It was written in 1950, first published in 1974,…
Poems by Charles Simic (1938-2023) January Children’s fingerprints On a frozen window Of a small schoolhouse. An empire, I read somewhere, Maintains itself through The cruelty of its prisons. The Election They promised us free lunch And all we got Edna Is wind and rain And these broken umbrellas To wield angrily At cars and buses Eager to run us…
Poetry is critical to a complete understanding of the First World War because in the years leading up to and including the war, poetry played a central role in public and private life. Constance Ruzich, in the introduction to the anthology. It was Paul Fussell who showed us that the young British officer class that went off to the Great…
Digging in the clutter I came across a literary game I played in the back of a college notebook. (I should have been taking notes.) It’s simple. Write down a well-known line from a poem and provide an unsuitable second line. Another way to play: Make up a random and outrageous second line and have someone guess the first. Here…
Two poets in a muddle. Or rather two poems. John Ashbery’s A Mood of Quiet Beauty (from April Galleons 1987) meets T.S.Eliot’s first Prelude (Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917) You can read the originals at those links. In the spirit of OuLiPo – and just for the playful hell of it – I switched out the nouns in each poem in…
I came across “The Consent” when I was exploring Howard Nemerov’s life and work for some other posts. It seems appropriate for about now. The Consent Late in November, on a single night Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees That stand along the walk drop all their leaves In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind…
Stickybeak NOUN: an intrusive, meddlesome, busybody, nosy parker who sticks their nose (beak) into other people’s business. The act of stickybeaking. VERB: to snoop or pry into other’s people’s business. This was a delightful new word for me this week although it’s clearly common currency in Australia and New Zealand. I came across it first in one of a series…
First Grade by Ron Kortgee Until then, every forest had wolves in it, we thought it would be fun to wear snowshoes all the time, and we could talk to water. So who is this woman with the gray breath calling out names and pointing to the little desks we will occupy for the rest of our lives? I read…
We’re not likely to be flying anywhere anytime soon so here’s the next best thing: A trip back in time – to 1919 and a 24 hour tour of Paris. Our guide is the poet Hope Mirrlees. In Paris she was the friend of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Andre Gide, Paul Valéry and companion/ lover of the Cambridge classicist scholar…
“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way.…
In his series of WW1 epitaphs, Rudyard Kipling comments on the all too common fate of a new soldier at the front who – curious about the enemy – cannot resist taking a look and unwittingly exposes his head to a sniper. The beginner On the first hour of my first day In the front trench I fell.…
They say the day you get a boat is the happiest day of your life. That is, until the day you sell the boat. The friend who shared those words had just bought a small sailboat. I think she may have actually sailed it a handful of times, the rest of the time it sat in the driveway. The one…
Many people know that the poet T. S. Eliot was very fond of cats and indeed created some wonderful cat characters and wrote poems about them. Many people also know that he loved practical jokes – things like exploding cigars and farting cushions. They may also know that he was a fan of detective fiction and wrote reviews for The…
OuLiPo meets Anapestic Tetrameter and the mad, bad and dangerous to know Bored Lyeron (If you feel you must read Lord Byron, or if you are unfamiliar with The Destruction of Sennacherib go here.) The Seduction of Sir Knack-a-Rib The Shakespearian came down like the gulf on the wold, And his so-shorts were gleaming like sonnets of old; And the…
Daffodil: good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy. – from the surrealist dictionary definition generator. Windy today so lots of daffodils nodding and bobbing about in the cheese. Here’s something from the Oulipo Compendium that’s not quite Wordsworth: The Imbeciles I wandered lonely as a crowd That floats on high o’er valves and ills When all at once I saw a shroud,…