I wanted something short and sweet for this Poem of the Week, so I went straight to the poet who best sums up those two goals: Kay Ryan. Ryan can be a bit of a hard poet to get into, but I once saw her read at a little library in central Indiana, and she lit up everyone's cold spring night with her outgoing, slightly crusty personality. Here's a good one that feels especially poignant to me these days.
Don't Look Back, by Kay Ryan
This is not
a problem
for the neckless.
Fish cannot
recklessly
swivel their heads
to check
on their fry;
no one expects
this. They are
torpedoes of
disinterest,
compact capsules
that rely
on the odds
for survival,
unfollowed by
the exact and modest
number of goslings,
the S-necked
goose is --
who if she
looks back
acknowledges losses
and if she does not
also loses.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Tolstoy Link to Share
Here's a really good article from The Guardian about Tolstoy and how Russians view him. I really hope the film the article mentions, The Last Station, gets a release somewhere I can see it because it sounds fantastic.
Also, according to the article, Russian schoolkids read War and Peace when they are 14 or 15. Holy crap! When I was that age, there was no way I would have "gotten" that book.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/06/leo-tolstoy-the-last-station
Also, according to the article, Russian schoolkids read War and Peace when they are 14 or 15. Holy crap! When I was that age, there was no way I would have "gotten" that book.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/06/leo-tolstoy-the-last-station
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Favorite Passages: Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
In this blog, I constantly refer to War and Peace and the lit class in which I was required to read it. However, I never mention that we read two other large and unwieldy novels in that class also: Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend. I'm particularly fond of the latter. Our Mutual Friend is a massive, strange, suspenseful blend of mystery novel and social observation. Up until the last 100 pages or so, in which everything I thought about the book and its characters was completely obliterated by the author, I was in total rapture. And no part of the book made me happier than the terrific character of the creepy school teacher, Bradley Headstone. Besides having quite possibly the best character name ever, Headstone is a perfectly incompetent and murderous Dickens character. So, for this week's Favorite Passage, I decided to use the reader's first glimpse at Headstone, a wonderfully-written Dickens description.
From: Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might always be ready to meet the demands of retail dealers - history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left - natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places - this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself.
Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him a constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of what was animal, and of what was fiery (though smoldering) still visible in him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a pauper lad, had chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have been the last man in a ship's crew. Regarding that origin of his, he was proud, moody, and sullen, desiring it to be forgotten. And few people knew of it.
From: Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might always be ready to meet the demands of retail dealers - history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left - natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places - this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself.
Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him a constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of what was animal, and of what was fiery (though smoldering) still visible in him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a pauper lad, had chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have been the last man in a ship's crew. Regarding that origin of his, he was proud, moody, and sullen, desiring it to be forgotten. And few people knew of it.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Magic of Neil Gaiman
Those of you who read my Favorite Passages post from this last Thursday know that one of my New Year Reading Resolutions is to plunge into the waters of Neil Gaiman's novels. I started off the year with one of his story collections, Smoke and Mirrors. It did not disappoint. Some of the pieces were just kind of bizarre, and as a newbie in the fantasy world, I didn't really get them. But the ones rooted in strong human emotion really stuck with me. Stories like "Troll Bridge," "Looking for the Girl," and the sad-but-hilarious "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" get at the heart of disappointment, regret, and bitterness. I was also a big fan of "Mouse," "Foreign Parts," and "We Can Get Them for You Wholesale," all of which are good places to start if you're a Gaiman novice. Meanwhile, the strange but beautiful "Murder Mysteries," a detective story taking place in a pre-human city of archangels, completely hooked me from beginning to end. I couldn't get enough of it, to be honest.
I tend to forget how good Gaiman is at horror. Last month, I mentioned how deeply disturbing I found the images in Coraline to be. Smoke and Mirror's final story, "Snow, Glass, Apples," a horrifying take on the Snow White tale, picked up on that same disorienting break between reality and fairy tales. It was surprisingly intriguing.
Then, of course, there's the story Gaiman sneaks into his Introduction, a short real-world-based-fantasy called "The Wedding Present," which carries the most heart-wrenching finale in the entire book. Only a guy as nonchalant as Gaiman could bury such a story in a section most people never touch when they read a book. I love it.
Anyway, a good start to Gaimanpalooza. A good friend recently lent me some Gaiman novels to check out, and I just bought a copy of American Gods, probably his most famous adult novel, so I should be set for the next few months!
I tend to forget how good Gaiman is at horror. Last month, I mentioned how deeply disturbing I found the images in Coraline to be. Smoke and Mirror's final story, "Snow, Glass, Apples," a horrifying take on the Snow White tale, picked up on that same disorienting break between reality and fairy tales. It was surprisingly intriguing.
Then, of course, there's the story Gaiman sneaks into his Introduction, a short real-world-based-fantasy called "The Wedding Present," which carries the most heart-wrenching finale in the entire book. Only a guy as nonchalant as Gaiman could bury such a story in a section most people never touch when they read a book. I love it.
Anyway, a good start to Gaimanpalooza. A good friend recently lent me some Gaiman novels to check out, and I just bought a copy of American Gods, probably his most famous adult novel, so I should be set for the next few months!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Poem of the Week: "Second Chances," by Richard Hugo
A few months ago, I mentioned reading Richard Hugo's White Center. One of the highlights I noted about the book came in the last lines of the poem "Second Chances." This is a lovely but deeply sad poem about its troubled writer, and I thought it was appropriate as lately I've been giving a lot of thought to misdirected lives and the idea of being someone I'm not. So, finally, here's that poem. I hope you like the ending as much as I do.
Second Chances, by Richard Hugo
I can't let it go, the picture I keep of myself
in ruin, living alone, some wretched town
where friendship is based on just being around.
And I drink there a lot, stare at the walls until
the buzzing of flies becomes the silence I drown in.
Outside, children bad mouth my life with songs
their parents told them to sing. One showers
my roof with stones knowing I'm afraid
to step out and tell him to stop. Another yells,
"You can't get a woman, old man. You don't get a thing."
My wife, a beautiful woman, is fixing lunch.
She doesn't know I dream these things. She thinks
I'm fine. People respect me. Oh, she knows all right
I've seen grim times. But these days my poems
appear everywhere. Fan mail comes. I fly east
on a profitable reading tour. Once in a while
a young girl offers herself. My wife knows that, too.
And she knows my happiness with her is far more
than I ever expected. Three years ago, I wouldn't
have given a dime for my chances at life.
What she doesn't know is now and then
a vagabond knocks on the door. I go answer
and he says, "Come back, baby. You'll find
a million poems deep in your destitute soul."
And I say, "Go away. Don't ever come back."
But I watch him walk, always downhill toward
the schoolyard where children are playing 'ghost,'
a game where, according to the rules, you take
another child's name in your mind but pretend
you're still you while others guess your new name.
Second Chances, by Richard Hugo
I can't let it go, the picture I keep of myself
in ruin, living alone, some wretched town
where friendship is based on just being around.
And I drink there a lot, stare at the walls until
the buzzing of flies becomes the silence I drown in.
Outside, children bad mouth my life with songs
their parents told them to sing. One showers
my roof with stones knowing I'm afraid
to step out and tell him to stop. Another yells,
"You can't get a woman, old man. You don't get a thing."
My wife, a beautiful woman, is fixing lunch.
She doesn't know I dream these things. She thinks
I'm fine. People respect me. Oh, she knows all right
I've seen grim times. But these days my poems
appear everywhere. Fan mail comes. I fly east
on a profitable reading tour. Once in a while
a young girl offers herself. My wife knows that, too.
And she knows my happiness with her is far more
than I ever expected. Three years ago, I wouldn't
have given a dime for my chances at life.
What she doesn't know is now and then
a vagabond knocks on the door. I go answer
and he says, "Come back, baby. You'll find
a million poems deep in your destitute soul."
And I say, "Go away. Don't ever come back."
But I watch him walk, always downhill toward
the schoolyard where children are playing 'ghost,'
a game where, according to the rules, you take
another child's name in your mind but pretend
you're still you while others guess your new name.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Favorite Passages: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
I have come up with a short list of New Year's Reading Resolutions. They include reading more female and contemporary poets, reading more short stories, and re-reading Fitzgerald's novels. But the resolution I'm most excited about is my goal to read as much Neil Gaiman as possible. I've written here a few times before about how much I admire Gaiman as a writer and as a champion of storytelling. His books are strange, fantastical adventures, but they are always rooted in human feelings and relationships. The emotional underpinnings in his fiction are just as important as any scary monster or complicated plot. So while I spend the next three months waiting to hear back from graduate schools, I plan to read a lot of Gaiman to take my mind off things. I think it will be a fantastic time.
In the meantime, here's a passage from his children's novel, Coraline. In this scene, young Coraline is telling a story about her missing father to the mysterious and helpful Black Cat. Coraline is looking for her parents in some weird parallel ghost-world, and she uses this story about a day when her father and her explored nature to explain why her quest is so important. This entire section is really poignant because at the beginning of the book, Coraline feels a bit ignored by her parents, and this scene demonstrates how when it comes down to the moments that matter, Coraline and her parents will fight for each other.
From: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
"We must have walked for about twenty minutes. We went down this hill, to the bottom of a gully where a stream was, when my dad suddenly said to me, 'Coraline -- run away. Up the hill. Now!' He said it in a tight sort of way, urgently, so I did. I ran away up the hill. Something hurt me on the back of my arm as I ran, but I kept on running.
"As I got to the top of the hill I heard somebody thundering up the hill behind me. It was my dad, charging like a rhino. When he reached me he picked me up in his arms and swept me over the edge of the hill.
"And we stopped and we puffed and we panted, and we looked back down the gully.
"The air was alive with yellow wasps. We must have stepped on a wasps' nest in a rotten branch as we walked. And while I was running up the hill, my dad stayed and got stung, to give me more time to run away. His glasses had fallen off when he ran.
"I only had the one sting on the back of my arm. He had thirty-nine stings, all over him. We counted later, in the bath."
The black cat began to wash his face and whiskers in a manner that indicated increasing impatience. Coraline reached down and stroked the back of its head and neck. The cat stood up, walked several paces until it was out of her reach, then it sat down and looked up at her again.
"So," said Coraline, "later that afternoon my dad went back again to the wasteland, to get his glasses back. He said if he left it another day he wouldn't be able to remember where they'd fallen.
"And soon he got home, wearing his glasses. He said that he wasn't scared when he was standing there and the wasps were stinging him and hurting him and he was watching me run away. Because he knew he had to give me enough time to run, or the wasps would have come after both of us."
In the meantime, here's a passage from his children's novel, Coraline. In this scene, young Coraline is telling a story about her missing father to the mysterious and helpful Black Cat. Coraline is looking for her parents in some weird parallel ghost-world, and she uses this story about a day when her father and her explored nature to explain why her quest is so important. This entire section is really poignant because at the beginning of the book, Coraline feels a bit ignored by her parents, and this scene demonstrates how when it comes down to the moments that matter, Coraline and her parents will fight for each other.
From: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
"We must have walked for about twenty minutes. We went down this hill, to the bottom of a gully where a stream was, when my dad suddenly said to me, 'Coraline -- run away. Up the hill. Now!' He said it in a tight sort of way, urgently, so I did. I ran away up the hill. Something hurt me on the back of my arm as I ran, but I kept on running.
"As I got to the top of the hill I heard somebody thundering up the hill behind me. It was my dad, charging like a rhino. When he reached me he picked me up in his arms and swept me over the edge of the hill.
"And we stopped and we puffed and we panted, and we looked back down the gully.
"The air was alive with yellow wasps. We must have stepped on a wasps' nest in a rotten branch as we walked. And while I was running up the hill, my dad stayed and got stung, to give me more time to run away. His glasses had fallen off when he ran.
"I only had the one sting on the back of my arm. He had thirty-nine stings, all over him. We counted later, in the bath."
The black cat began to wash his face and whiskers in a manner that indicated increasing impatience. Coraline reached down and stroked the back of its head and neck. The cat stood up, walked several paces until it was out of her reach, then it sat down and looked up at her again.
"So," said Coraline, "later that afternoon my dad went back again to the wasteland, to get his glasses back. He said if he left it another day he wouldn't be able to remember where they'd fallen.
"And soon he got home, wearing his glasses. He said that he wasn't scared when he was standing there and the wasps were stinging him and hurting him and he was watching me run away. Because he knew he had to give me enough time to run, or the wasps would have come after both of us."
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Rest is Awesome
I finally finished The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Alex Ross's awesome history of 20th century classical music. For those of you who don't know, I love music. The only thing that comes anywhere near my love for books and poetry is my obsession with classical music. And it just so happens that most of my favorite classical pieces come from the 20th century. My two favorite composers are Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich. So I am basically the ideal audience for Ross's book. And I was not disappointed.
Ross performs the miraculous feat of writing very meticulously about music while still making it accessible to general readers like myself. I admit that having taken a music appreciation course and a basic music theory class in college helped me to understand what Ross talked about, but as someone who can't read or really comprehend music in any tangible way, the book was still easy to read. Ross even manages to be unbiased and even-minded, although the careful reader can still see where his prejudices might lie (hence entire chapters on Sibelius and Britten, as well as constant references to Mahler).
I have to admit I enjoyed the first half of the book much more than the second half, probably because these parts take place during more interesting historical times - the world wars, Soviet Russia, etc. My favorite chapters were the ones on music under Stalin and Hitler. The Stalin chapter, "The Art of Fear," centered around Shostakovich and Prokofiev, with riveting details about how their government trapped them as both artists and as people. I've always found Shostakovich an extremely fascinating figure, and Ross is obviously as intrigued by him as I am. He spends a lot of the rest of the book referring back to the tragic Soviet composer. "Death Fugue," the chapter about Hitler's manipulation of Austrian/German music is completely bone-chilling. Ross's depiction of a government that values and undermines its art at the same time is terrifying and relevant. This is what makes the book so wonderful. Ross can seamlessly compare the history of the West in the 20th century with the history of its music.
Probably my favorite thing about the book came from its depictions of famous composers. Ross finds ways to be quietly funny and serious at the same time, celebrating and poking fun at a huge personality like Pierre Boulez at the same time. I came away from the book wrinkling my nose at the snobbishness of Schoenberg and Prokofiev, crushing on that rascal Alban Berg (I think I need to go out and pick up a recording of Wozzeck right away), and feeling deeply sorry for Jean Sibelius. I was particularly interested in the book's section on the influences of folk music on 20th century classical composers. While some composers like Bartok (whose Concerto for Orchestra happens to be my #1 favorite musical piece) took the preservation of folk music in classical forms very seriously, other composers (particularly Schoenberg and the hypocrite Stravinsky) thought the entire concept was ridiculous and derided Bartok for the rest of his life. For some reason, I found these little composer tiffs extremely poignant.
Anyway, all you really need to know about The Rest is Noise is that, for this particular reader, it was a total joy to spend time with. It gave me the chance to geek out about my love for classical music in a way I haven't been able to since I graduated college, and for that, I will always hold the book dear.
Ross performs the miraculous feat of writing very meticulously about music while still making it accessible to general readers like myself. I admit that having taken a music appreciation course and a basic music theory class in college helped me to understand what Ross talked about, but as someone who can't read or really comprehend music in any tangible way, the book was still easy to read. Ross even manages to be unbiased and even-minded, although the careful reader can still see where his prejudices might lie (hence entire chapters on Sibelius and Britten, as well as constant references to Mahler).
I have to admit I enjoyed the first half of the book much more than the second half, probably because these parts take place during more interesting historical times - the world wars, Soviet Russia, etc. My favorite chapters were the ones on music under Stalin and Hitler. The Stalin chapter, "The Art of Fear," centered around Shostakovich and Prokofiev, with riveting details about how their government trapped them as both artists and as people. I've always found Shostakovich an extremely fascinating figure, and Ross is obviously as intrigued by him as I am. He spends a lot of the rest of the book referring back to the tragic Soviet composer. "Death Fugue," the chapter about Hitler's manipulation of Austrian/German music is completely bone-chilling. Ross's depiction of a government that values and undermines its art at the same time is terrifying and relevant. This is what makes the book so wonderful. Ross can seamlessly compare the history of the West in the 20th century with the history of its music.
Probably my favorite thing about the book came from its depictions of famous composers. Ross finds ways to be quietly funny and serious at the same time, celebrating and poking fun at a huge personality like Pierre Boulez at the same time. I came away from the book wrinkling my nose at the snobbishness of Schoenberg and Prokofiev, crushing on that rascal Alban Berg (I think I need to go out and pick up a recording of Wozzeck right away), and feeling deeply sorry for Jean Sibelius. I was particularly interested in the book's section on the influences of folk music on 20th century classical composers. While some composers like Bartok (whose Concerto for Orchestra happens to be my #1 favorite musical piece) took the preservation of folk music in classical forms very seriously, other composers (particularly Schoenberg and the hypocrite Stravinsky) thought the entire concept was ridiculous and derided Bartok for the rest of his life. For some reason, I found these little composer tiffs extremely poignant.
Anyway, all you really need to know about The Rest is Noise is that, for this particular reader, it was a total joy to spend time with. It gave me the chance to geek out about my love for classical music in a way I haven't been able to since I graduated college, and for that, I will always hold the book dear.
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