Monotony

We came across this poem in an anthology, and think the pauses say more than words ever could.

After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries
a New Recipe for Hamburger Hot Dish
Leo Dangel

"How did you like it?" she asked.

"It's all right," he said.

"This is the third time I cooked
it this way. Why can't you
ever say if you like something?"

"Well if I didn't like it, I
wouldn't eat it," he said.

"You never can say anything
I cook tastes good."

"I don't know why all the time
you think I have to say it's good.
I eat it, don't I?"

"I don't think you have to say
all the time it's good, but once
in awhile you could say
you like it."

"It's all right," he said.

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Leo Dangel's focus: rural American life. For more of his poems, look here.

Poet of the week - Mark Strand

The Coming of Light
Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.


Excerpted from The Story of Our Lives by Mark Strand. Copyright © 2002 by Mark Strand.

Look here for more on Mark Strand. (This site includes plenty of links to get you going.)

Carnaval Plea

We're big fans of Brazilian popular music, and of American poet Elizabeth Bishop, who lived in Brazil for many years. She loved Latin American literature and was an accomplished translator. Here's her rendering of one of the hit sambas from Rio's 1965 Carnaval season:

Come, my mulata,
Take me back!
You're the joker
In my pack,
The prune in my pudding,
Pepper in my pie.
My package of peanuts,
The moon in the sky.

From Bishop's The Complete Poems: 1927-1979, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979).

We also recommend Bishop's translation of The Diary of "Helena Morley" - it's a great introduction to everyday life in 19th-century Brazil. The US edition (Noonday Press, 1995) is out of print, but there are lots of used copies for sale on the web. If you want a new edition, try Bloomsbury Magazine's bookshop.

Read more about Elizabeth Bishop here.

Poet of the Week - Naomi Shihab Nye

Half-and-Half
Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.
At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.
This morning we lit the slim candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests weren't fighting
in church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.
A woman opens a window – here and here
and here –
placing a vase of blue flowers
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
She is making soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.

("Half-and-Half" copyright @1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted from "Fuel," by Naomi Shihab Nye.)

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Read Naomi Shihab Nye's The Wreath that Eats Two Ice Cubes.

A lake of finest ale for the King of Kings

We know, we know, it's an unusual title! But we didn't make it up - it comes from early medieval Ireland. The supposed author: Saint Brigid of Kildare. The reason for that line - well, here's Thomas Cahill's telling of it:

"Following [Brigid's] conversion, her father, an extremely wealthy man, was appalled to find his beautiful daughter giving away his stores to beggars. Quite out of control, he threw Brigid into the back of his chariot, screaming 'It is neither out of kindness nor honor that I take you for a ride: I am going to sell you to the King of Leinster to grind corn.' Arriving at the king's enclosure, the father 'unbuckled his sword, leaving it in the chariot beside Brigid, so that - out of respect - he could approach the king unarmed.' No sooner had the father gone off than a leper appeared, begging Brigid for her help. Since the only thing handy was her father's sword, she gave it to him. Meanwhile, the father was making his offer to the king, who must have smelled something fishy, and insisted on meeting the girl before accepting. When king and father came out to the chariot, the father noticed immediately that his sword was missing and demanded to know where it was. When Brigid told him, 'he flew into a wild rage' and began to beat her.

"'Stop,' cried the king, and called Brigid to him. 'Why do you steal your father's property and give it away?'"

"'If I had the power,' answered Brigid, 'I would steal all your royal wealth, and give it to Christ's brothers and sisters.' The king quickly declined the father's kind offer because 'your daughter is too good for me.'"

Cahill goes on to tell us that Brigid's monastery was (not surprisingly) a haven of hospitality.

And here's the grace they said:

I should like a great lake of finest ale
For the King of Kings.
I should like a table of the choicest food
For the family of heaven.
Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith,
And let the food be forgiving love.

I should welcome the poor to my feast,
For they are God's children.
I should welcome the sick to my feast,
For they are God's joy.
Let the poor sit with Jesus at the highest place,
And the sick dance with the angels.

God bless the poor.
God bless the sick.
God bless the human race.
God bless our food,
God bless our drink,
All homes, O God, embrace.

Well, what can we do but agree with Brigid? She knew she was right.

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Look here for a fuller version of Brigid's bio., along with more poetry attributed to her.

Listen to Donal Donnelly read a short passage from Thomas Cahill's book, How The Irish Saved Civilization (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1995).
 
Our sincerest thanks to Thomas Cahill for his writing style and his many books, and to Robert Van de Wyer for his translation of "Brigid's Feast," from his book Celtic Fire (Doubleday, 1990).
 
Last of all, we cribbed "she knew she was right" from novelist Ivy Litvinov, whose story we might tackle in the future.  For now, though, you can read her truth-is-stranger-than-fiction biography here. Our thanks to the late Isaiah Berlin (and Oxford University's archives) for this article.

Dollar Brand, klezmorim and hemidemisemiquavers

It's no secret - we love music as much as we love words. And we like Garrison Keillor's public radio show, The Writer's Almanac. His anthology of works that have been broadcast in seasons past is aptly titled Good Poems (Viking, 2002).Chapters include "Snow," "Yellow" and "Failure," so we decided to post a few poems from (what else?) "Music."

The Fantastic Names of Jazz
Hayden Carruth

Zoot Sims, Joshua Redman,
Billie Holiday, Pete Fountain,
Fate Marable, Ivie Anderson,
Meade Lux Lewis, Mezz Mezzrow,
Manzie Johnson, Marcus Roberts,
Omer Simeon, Miff Mole, Sister
Rosetta Tharpe, Freddie Slack,
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Teagarden,
Max Roach, Paul Celestin, Muggsy
Spanier, Boomie Richman, Panama
Francis, Abdullah Ibrahim, Piano
Red, Champion Jack Dupree,
Cow Cow Davenport, Shirley Horn,
Cedar Walton, Sweets Edison,
Jaki Byard, John Heard, Joy Harjo,
Pinetop Smith, Tricky Sam
Nanton, Major Holley, Stuff Smith,
Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan,
Mr. Cleanhead Vinson, Ruby Braff,
Cootie Williams, Cab Calloway,
Lockjaw Davis, Chippie Hill,
And of course Jelly Roll Morton.

Alley Violinist
Robert Lax

if you were an alley violinist

and they threw you money
from three windows

and the first note contained
a nickel and said,
when you play, we dance and
sing, signed
a very poor family.

and the second one contained
a dime and said
i like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady.

and the last one contained
a dollar and said,
beat it,

would you:
stand there and play?

beat it?

walk away playing your fiddle?

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Other places:

Hemispherical, our music blog.

All About Jazz, for info. on those names and much more.

The Academy of American Poets website.

Nicholas Humbert and Werner Penzel's Three Windows, a video installation celebrating the life and work of Robert Lax.

Last but not least, definitions of those plaguey words in the title of this post. Look here for "klezmorim" and here for "hemidemisemiquaver." (Note: South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim used the nickname "Dollar Brand" on his early recordings.)

To keep me from palpitating....

We know, it's an odd name for a post, but what the hey - it's a fine Irish idiom. We've been reading The Country Girls, a novel by one of Ireland's finest contemporary writers, Edna O'Brien. Her narrator is a rural schoolgirl whose observations on the world around her are keenly compelling. (Witness her good-natured mockery of a shopkeeper-cum-writer who's forever going on about the "...kings and queens walking the roads of ireland, riding bicycles, imbibing tea, plowing the humble earth, totally unaware of their great heredity" and suchlike.)

This short passage grabbed us and wouldn't let go:

"I had looked at primrose leaves for seventeen years, and I had never noticed before that their leaves were hairy and old and wrinkled. Always on the brink of trouble I look at something, like a tree or a flower or an old shoe, to keep me from palpitating."

Yet another passage, this time a portrait of a neighbor in a brief but memorable take:

"Mr. Gentleman was a beautiful man who lived in the white house on the hill. It had turret windows and an oak door that was like a church door, and Mr. Gentleman played chess in the evenings. He worked as a solicitor in Dublin, but he came home at the weekends, and in the summertime he sailed a boat on the Shannon. Mr. Gentleman was not his real name, of course, but everyone called him that. He was French, and his real name was Mr. de Maurier, but no one could pronounce it properly, and anyhow, he was such a distinguished man with his gray hair and his satin waistcoats that the local people christened him Mr. Gentleman. He seemed to like the name very well, and signed his letters J. W. Gentleman. J. W. were the initials of his Christian names and they stood for Jacques and something else."

Are we ready for more of O'Brien's work? You bet your boots!

Transparency

"Through a gap in the trees of the park I can see the blond grass of the meadow - turned quite yellow under the sun like the waters of the old River Plate - and the dark green of the oak woods, offset beyond, the trees so densely leafed that they seem to billow out over the sun-bleached yellow grass like smoke or waves. And, closer to, the sharp clarity of the sunlight on the bushes and the creeper around the house is perfect: the perfect balance of leaf-shadow, leaf-shine and leaf-translucence - absolutely correct, as if worked out by mathematical formulae to provide the ideal visual stimulus. Down by the barn a thick patch of thistle is in seed and the wandering breeze snatches the thistle-down and lifts it sky-ward in small urgent flurries - backlit by the sun so that the down seems to sparkle and gleam like mica or sequins - so much so that it looks like photons of light are taking to the air, flying upwards - rising upwards, blowing away across the meadow - like what? - like glow worms, like lucent moths."

- William Boyd, from Any Human Heart, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

Poet of the week - George Herbert

 
Love (III)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

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Read about George Herbert at The Academy of American Poets web site.

Poet-a-tete - tedious Tuesdays banned!

Last summer we were introduced to the world of performance poetry (aka slam) by D.C.-area poet Cheryl Crockett. She's known around town as the host of Poet-a-tete, a combined reading/workshop/slam session that's held twice monthly. (We even took a super-quick turn at the mike.)

So we know that:

Poet-a-tete is fun.

It's a terrific place to try out new material. We've seen writers grow and grow and then some, and we've enjoyed meeting new people, listening to the featured poets (as well as all the writers who read during the open-mike time), sharing ideas, laughing, getting insight into the hearts and minds of others, and most of all, being moved to create.

And guess what? It's 100% free!

It all happens on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month, in Arlington, VA and Rockville, MD respectively.

See Poet-a-tete for more details.

Please tell Cheryl that you read about it here (and say hi from us, too). You might even coax her into performing her signature piece, "Standard English."

Raison d'etre

Hey, it's no secret - we love books! And writing and... the whole creative process.

We've already started a blog for music fans (Hemispherical) and eventually came to the conclusion that sticking to one topic was too limiting.

Expected areas of coverage: books, poetry (formalist and performance; we're fans of both) and more - maybe ALL of the arts, if we take the notion.

So join us for an unscripted, insiders' looks at what makes art (and artists) tick, and more.