Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Marianne Moore: Voracities and Verities Sometimes are Interacting

___I don't like diamonds;
the emerald's "grass-lamp glow" is better;
_____and unobtrusiveness is dazzling,
_______upon occasion.
_____Some kinds of gratitude are trying.

___Poets, don't make a fuss;
the elephant's "crooked trumpet" "doth write";
_____and to a tiger-book I am reading -
_______I think you know the one -
_____I am under obligation.

_______One may be pardoned, yes I know
_______one may, for love undying.

Moore's footnote:  Tiger-book:  Major James Corbett's 
Man-Eaters of Kumaon

Quote of the Day

"The thing is to see the vision and not deny it; to care and admit that we do"

Marianne Moore, The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 426

More Words Gathered

legerdemain
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French leger de main light of hand
Date: 15th century
1 : SLEIGHT OF HAND
2 : a display of skill or adroitness

With startling legerdemain she presses the reader toward the truth, as Costello has suggested,
and just for a moment we glimpse the genuine, in this case the fact that
Marianne Moore is playing with the word "imagine" and we see an entirely
opposite meaning in the passage.

au courant
Function: adjective
Etymology: French, literally, in the current
Date: 1762
1 a : fully informed : UP-TO-DATE b : FASHIONABLE, STYLISH
2 : fully familiar : CONVERSANT

As different as she was from the fashionably au courant, she was encouraged by her friends' romantic but common insistence on the right to be oneself, while at the same time she was given to distrusting the self.

gallimaufry
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -fries
Etymology: Middle French galimafree stew
Date: circa 1556
: HODGEPODGE

One Laptop Per Child

Check out this video report by New York Time's David Pouge:

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=6ffd976ed367bacae4171dd4999d36431c84b0f5

Robert Frost: Unharvested

UNHARVESTED

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what has made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

New Online Novel Contests

New York Times
October 1, 2007
Publishers Seek Talent Online
By MOTOKO RICH

Joining the growing list of publishers that use public votes to decide what to publish, Penguin Group is teaming with Amazon.com and Hewlett Packard for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From today through Nov. 5, contestants from 20 countries can submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon, which will assign a small group of its top-rated online reviewers to evaluate 5,000-word excerpts and narrow the field to 1,000.

The full manuscripts of those semifinalists will be submitted to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. Amazon will post the reviews, along with excerpts, online, where customers can make comments. Using those comments and the magazine’s reviews, Penguin will winnow the field to 100 finalists who will get two readings by Penguin editors. When a final 10 manuscripts are selected, a panel including Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the current nonfiction paperback best seller “Eat, Pray, Love,” and John Freeman, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, will read and post comments on the novels at Amazon. Readers can then vote on the winner, who will receive a publishing contract and a $25,000 advance from Penguin.

Separately, Borders Group, the bookstore chain, is teaming with Gather.com, the social networking site, and Court TV to solicit unpublished manuscripts from mystery or crime writers. A panel of judges that includes the writers Harlan Coben and Sandra Brown will crown the winner from a pool of finalists selected by voters on Gather.com. The winner will receive a $5,000 advance and will be published by Borders itself.

Link to New York Times Article

More Words Gathered

A note on word gathering:

I am reading extensively the poetry of W.B. Yeats and commentary and analysis of his work, life and times. As I read I gather the words that I recognize but can't fully define (if there was a test) as well as words that are brand new to me. Or sometimes I pick words that are downright silly sounding or looking.

This is something that I used to teach my students to do as they read. Let's say that I demonstrated the technique to them. Whether or not they availed themselves of the strategy is up for grabs. Nevertheless, I became addicted to amping up my reading (and writing) in this way. What can I say, I used to read the "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power" segments in the Reader's Digest when I visited my Grandma on the weekends. My college roommate and I used to read the dictionary on Friday nights. Living now with a non-native English speaker, I am attuned to the nuances of communication and the need for simplicity and clarity--yet I love the splendor of such things:

mawkish
Etymology: Middle English mawke maggot, probably from Old Norse mathkr -- more at MAGGOT
1 : having an insipid often unpleasant taste
2 : sickly or puerilely sentimental

syncretism
Etymology: New Latin syncretismus, from Greek synkrEtismos federation of Cretan cities, from syn- + KrEt-, KrEs Cretan
1 : the combination of different forms of belief or practice
2 : the fusion of two or more originally different inflectional forms

hieractic
Etymology: Latin hieraticus sacerdotal, from Greek hieratikos, from hierasthai to perform priestly functions, from hieros sacred; probably akin to Sanskrit isara vigorous
1 : constituting or belonging to a cursive form of ancient Egyptian writing simpler than the hieroglyphic
2 : SACERDOTAL
3 : highly stylized or formal

fissiparous
\fih-SIP-uh-rus\
tending to break up into parts : divisive
Example sentence: The reorganization of management can have a fissiparous effect on the rest of the company.

palimpsest
Etymology: Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsEstos scraped again, from palin + psEn to rub, scrape; akin to Sanskrit psAti, babhasti he chews
1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

manque
Etymology: French, from past participle of manquer to lack, fail, from Italian mancare, from manco lacking, left-handed, from Latin, having a crippled hand, probably from manus
: short of or frustrated in the fulfillment of one's aspirations or talents -- used postpositively

hypotaxis
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, subjection, from hypotassein to arrange under, from hypo- + tassein to arrange
: syntactic subordination (as by a conjunction)

perspicious
Etymology: Latin perspicuus transparent, perspicuous, from perspicere
: plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation

Garrison Keillor: Ford Hall Forum Address on Cheefulness

Last night we attended the Ford Hall Forum lecture series at Northeastern University. As I learned last night, this series is a ninety-nine years long tradition providing free lectures and debates for the Boston public. We were there to hear Garrison Keillor.

Mr. Keillor is touring and touting his new book, Pontoon. He got that business out of the way right up front in a humorous self-deprecating way, never describing the contents of the book. You can be sure, however, that the work will cheer you up. After a delightful expose of aging and its farcical vicissitudes, Keillor explored how the proper response to such absurdities is cheerfulness. Keillor believes that art should uplift the soul, make us see the world or at least our experiences in a more flattering light, perhaps candlelight for those, like him, who have turned sixty-five this year. He lambastes modern poetry and literature for torturing high school readers with the likes of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", turning potential life-long readers into the opposite.

Keillor embraced the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here was a man who advocated for literature and its relevance for the American way of life. He traveled the country and talked about this ideas. He sold cheerfulness and optimism as a way of life. He paved the way for writers and intellectuals. Keillor rued his most famous protege, Thoreau, who has been sold to young Americans at many graduations speeches as the valiant individualist who walked to the beat of his own drummer--as if it were a good thing to forsake community and the pleasures of society. As if being alone could substitute for the richness of friends and the vitality of life lived in touch with the living.

T.S. Eliot, Keillor noted, was miserable and packaged his agony for all to endure as Art. If only Eliot would have had sex much sooner, the course of modern art and literature in America would be far more virile than its sad state today. Sex, it seems, is good grounds to cause what we all need more of, cheerfulness. Children too seem an antidote to gloom. Keillor described episodes from his nine-year-old daughter's life that reveal how resilience doesn't have to develop thick-skin or cultivate fear and terror and its result, isolation. Children move on from each tragedy or indignity, ready for more experiences, more fun, more of the ever delightful same story read for the fiftieth time if it is read by someone who loves them.

There was a question-and-comment section at the end of the lecture with various accolades and entrapments (involving Keillor's pro-Bush's retirement stance and his personal religious faith stance), all of which Keillor handled with amiable aplomb.

As I left the hall, I overhead one woman, who was glowing, say that "it was like vitamins" for her spirit. I assume she is the kind of person who enjoys taking vitamins. After all, she was flush with cheerfulness.

Indeed, Keillor's comments made me think about my own novel-in-progress. The contents are not cheerful. Yet it makes me cheerful to right it. As I engage in the creative process I come alive in ways that the occasional yoga class, certainly laundry, even eating a fine meal can't rival. Maybe I do need to insert a comic break in my novel, well, just because. Keillor said at some point in the night, "When in doubt, write something funny." Alas, I wish I had the comic marrow-bones to do it. I can barely be funny in real life.

Writing my blog makes me cheerful. There, that is the best justification for blogging I have yet to develop.

Later that night we strolled down Newbury street after a fresh juice at the Trident. It was a fall night, air crisp and new scarves bound snugly against our throats. Suddenly, I came to a full stop and turned to face my husband. "Let's name him Garrison." (Here referring to our yet-to-be-born child.) He didn't think it resonated with either of our last names. But wouldn't that be a legacy worthy enough to pass on to American's new generation? Can you tell that I think Garrison Keillor is a jewel?

Among School Children by W.B. Yeats

I
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way -- the children’s eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

II
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy --
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age --
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage --
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

IV
Her present image floats into the mind --
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once -- enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her Son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Soldier Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts -- O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise --
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Reading and Analysis of poem by Helen Vendler at Harvard:

http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/vendler/index.html