JANUARY 20013
darkness
descending at 4:46pm. Lovely visit
with Barb and Ed yesteday and today.
Movie at the Red River Fritz Lang's forgotten classic "Woman on The
Moon," which delivered just what the title promises. 1929 movie that Hitler suppressed. One character looked a lot like Hitler
without the moustache. The evil
character. Melodrama, Love
triangle, and space rocketry and Moon Landing and finding Gold and death. Total package. Live
electronic organ music accompaniement.
Longish, two and a half hours.
Dinner then at Old Europe.
Undistinguished there I'm afraid but enjoyable anyway.
5pm Jan 1
Twitter is Over Capacity
later this evening--
Nicholas says Wendell Berry's address to NEH the most
important such speech of the year---this passage caught
my skimming eye--
In my reading of the historian John Lukacs, I have been
most instructed by his understanding that there is no knowledge but human
knowledge, that we are therefore inescapably central to our own consciousness,
and that this is “a statement not of arrogance but of humility. It is yet
another recognition of the inevitable limitations of mankind.”6 We are thus isolated within our
uniquely human boundaries, which we certainly cannot transcend or escape by
means of technological devices.
citing from Last Rites , pp. 31 and 35
Why did I not want to take the time
to read the whole (long) piece? I
feel I knnow what Berry says and I was put off by his use of two types and only
two---the Boomers vs the Stickers.
It was the Jefferson Lecture for 2012.
Phil on Barzun
At the end of his book,
Barzun undertakes a bit of prediction and the result is quite intriguing and
witty. He says that scientists and technocrats and businessmen will take
over, and the lingua franca of this new priesthood of the future will be
mathematics, which will serve just as Latin and Greek did for the churchmen of
the dark ages. He adds that the future population in
general will lose the ability to read and write. He adds several
more characteristics until it's obvious that he's describing a new dark
age that he says will eventually produce so much boredom that a few bright lads
will start to look far back in history to find ideas and art and architecture -
in other words, there will be a new reanaissance and following world, just like
the one from 1500 to 2000 that he has spent 800 pages describing.
Clever and sly.
Made me laugh, and he may just be right.
P
Finished Chapter 1 of Naked Singularity. 42 pages. Like it though---full of firey life. Characters, voices from the streets. A night court NY public defender and
six cases and the judge. Bitter,
quiet ironies, wit, humor, subtle, so far. Blurbs on the cover say it is for people of liked "The
Wire." Does feel like that,
in a good way not a derivative way.
TUESDAY
Now it is Friday Planning for the big dinner party tomorrow night.
Meanwhile here's an exchange with Phil. Few days ago, Chris Kline noted on
Facebook how much he liked Papyrus Font.
Hmmm
Oh and today the 5k showed up in the CGSB. Hooray
Possibly, probably, he
wrote/dictated? it while going over his lifetime file of lectures and lecture
notes from all the teaching he had done and his writing.
I like your reminder
that Barzun was French and therefore and immigrant on our shores. I have
long attributed to him, blamed him, for
my failing to have
become a real writer. He published a book back in the 60s or 70s---when I
was very impressionable---that continued
the strunk & white
school of teaching writing---I think Barzun's title was something like
"Simple and Direct" . Anyway, somewhere in
there Barzun says to
the reader with his great (now that I realize too it was french)
authority---"So, you think you want to write
a book, huh?
Well, I can teach you how to do that, if you follow my instructions
carefully enough (of course you won't be able to),
but first we must
determine which of two camps you belong to: there are those who have
something to say and there are those who
simply want to have
written a book. If you are one of the latter, forget it. Close this
book at once, it is not for you."
Well, I was caught
red-handed. Did I have anything to say? I had no idea, nor any idea
how one would ever know that. I slunk off into
the bleak non-writer
camp sunset.
It was back in the day
too, when I had no idea that these books we read even had each their own
"tilt" on things. I think then I thought that
all books shared the
same general weight of authority---that went with having become Books. !
I'm sure a number of
Modernists had already given expression to the ultimate sort of wish for those
days---"what does my life amount
to?---if only I were a
book."
I'm midway into
Pessoa's Book of Disquiet and this is certainly one of his themes. Early
to mid-twentieth century.
Postscript
too----thanks to whatever---I never really really ever got into or got the
French enlightenment writers---never have read Rousseau
and only a tiny bit of
Diderot. But I did gather that many of them the Church had condemned and
banned. I should sue the Vatican
for damages.
On Jan 4, 2013, at
11:16 AM, "J. P. Jones" <jpjones33@hotmail.com> wrote:
It has
taken a while - 400 pages - to discover Barzun's French tilt. Or perhaps
it's just the period I'm currently reading about, but Diderot is the key person
of the 18th century, and nearly everyone mistundstands Rousseau, who was just a
pragmatist with an interest in music, and the key person in the American
revolution, which, of course, wasn't a real revolution since no king lost his
beanie, is Beaumarchais, the author of the original Marriage of
Figaro. In the previous century, the English may have
produced Oliver Cromwell and some poets, but Louis XIV's court and
its artisans were the central personages.
Nevertheless,
throughout the book are some interesting comments. For example, about
Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme's rapturous discovery that he is speaking
prose. "What he spoke all his life was not prose but speech. Prose
is a written form...as artificial as poetry....which took longer to develop
fully than did poetic meters."
Yet,
overall, this book is best suited for some college seminar on Western
Civ. Nothing in much depth. Just a quick overview of damn
near everything.
Phil
------------
Interesting memory chip
there about Barzun and how he crushed my writer'y ambitions. Poor Moi!
EVENING of Weds Jan 9
Got chewed out at Barnes & Noble
in Nashua today for taking photos of the place. Not permitted by corporate policy. Young woman who has been manager there for nine years. Not very nice. So I posted two of the shots on
Facebook this evening to see if they will sue me. No visible customers in either shot. Shots of the architecture of the
interior---which still manages to amaze me---who was it who proposed that
building and okeyed it? Granted it
is a warehouse gussied out as a Roman barn/church, but its still so impressive
and out of place there in poor wee Nashua strip. Must have been the time back 17 years ago when B&N
thought they were staking a claim to Silicon north of boston and they were
going to do it right, just like Palo Alto. Or something.
Had a loaner car from Reilly while
Viala got a 15k mile once-over. So
what could I think to do? Drove to
Nashua and looked in on Trader Joe's.
Very disappointing, glad I didn't drag us to it before this. Lunch at Panera, nothing else seemed
around. Then the much
looked-forward-to browse at a "real" bookstore. Our mistress tagged me right in the
first ten minutes, so that sort of ruined the browse and even so as I scanned
the magazines and the store I could tell the quality had gone down and
remembered that there never had been that much quality there to begin with,
even twenty years ago. Always a
warehouse, B&N has been. Made
a point, then, to go back to Concord, have a coffee at the Coop and buy some
books at Gibsons. Bought one of
those picture books of Berlin.
Back at the ranch in the afternoon, Va had had a good time at PEO and
Ben had made good progress on stripping the bedroom wallpaper. Tomorrow we swim.
Friday Jan 11
Night. Day home.
Illusions of reading all day.
Instead frittered as usual but did work on Doctorcita and talked with
Dawn Lemere at Ventureunlimited printing.
Created a new publisher, too, The Alexander Jerome Cosgrove Press. Not as likely to run into any conflicts
as "Laguna" might--maybe with the Pueblo. Also firmed plans with Marga on Berlin---that is she says
she is interested. So my fantasy
revved ahead and thought---maybe traveling with Marga and Donald would work--at
least for the European capitals.
Va invited the McDs to consider both the capitals and Santa Fe in
May. Lovely written thank-you's
from both Ken and Carole and Pat and Ted.
Was certainly a landmark dinner party, laughter primary.
Sunday late afternoon
Want to copy this paragraph from the
holiday letter that Jennifer Garlitz sent.
"Since my last letter, we sadly
had to say good-bye to the last of our dear grandparents, George (Grandad), who
passed away peacefully at home in his sleep shortly after we all were able to
share our heartfelt good-bye's with him via phone. His attending nurse assured us that he heard everything which gave us
tremendous comfort that he was reminded of how much he was loved and
appreciated before he passed. Few
have met a finer man, grandfather, father, story-teller and golf companion--we
were blessed to have so much quality time with him! "
Jennifer is being very sweet and
loving and I should not take note of her stylistic fine points. I'm glad Dad had such a loving
relationship with Jennifer and her brothers.
Have been wondering about Dick
Mertens but there he is in the new issue of the Chicago magazine with an
article---this one on vaccines.
THURSDAY MORNING AT THE MANSE JAN 17
I had fantasies of reading all
morning, all day. Virginia at the
piano in preparation for her session with Colin McIver this afternoon. Fresh snow outside, quite
beautiful. Beth and Ben painting
our bedroom. Paula has been here
to clean. Last night we saw le
tout Plymouth at Keep the Heat On.
Dave Kent friendly to tell me about their travel plans for France in
October. They and McDs going to
Paris and then renting a "barge" to boat down the rivers. From there to St Maartens (again) and
either this spring or early fall the camper trip across the desert of Texas
using time-shares. Meanwhile I
regaled him "Back" with our plans to go to San An and Santa Fe and
Berlin. Wow, sounds so cool and
brings out the competitive nature of the whole thing. Or just the faint strain
of that in it all. But there is
that strain in everything, like all the multi-strandedness of our lives. From Twitter I get news that Lars Iyer
is speaking in Cambridge next month at the Coop bookstore. I could even go down. My vow to read only one book this
morning (broken within the first ten minutes) was because I scanned a piece
yesterday about the book called The Shallows about how the web has destroyed
our minds. But later I realized
that for years and years I had practiced reading about ten books at a time. I was longing for the invention of
Twitter and did not know it. But I
can't see that I was ever longing for the invention of Facebook. Some really good article somewhere in
the past two months argued, pointed out, that Facebook is the Past (6th grade)
and Twitter is the Future-Present, (that elusive "adulthood" we maybe
long for). Now that I say that I
recall that some languages actually have a verb tense called Future-Present,
don't they? Does English? I used to be an English teacher. But then I used to be a lot of
things. Didn't we all. "Most people are other
people." said Oscar
Wilde.
Got that from Disquiet. Such a book. Every other page bursts with brilliance of the quietest
sort. Maybe every page.
Phil---holy cow--really did stop
working and started writing at 46!
So he really did "become a writer," at least as we all thought
it should have been done. As I
recall he took some classes in journalism and wrote that way for a while, tried
various sorts of writing. He
wanted to make his living doing the writing but it turned out he liked writing
too much---a classic line in any writerly interview. My reply
well I saw
46 the other day and couldn't believe my eyes. So from 46 to 60 you had a
good spell of becoming a writer. Makes a great part of your Interview.
Maybe we should do a full Writer's Interview and publish that somewhere.
Or have it ready for when this next book splashes across the literary
reviews. Could happen! Brown mag might be a ticket to ride.
Back from walk downtown with the
photo album. Gorgeous sunny day with
the fresh snow. Wouldn't really
want to give it up for good for a residency in sunny flatlands, would I?
So my jealousy of Phil or envy of
Phil's career as a writer. Would I
trade anything for that? Thing is
maybe my morning vows would go somewhere if I tried to write as much as
possible every day or most days rather than reading x for y unbroken
spell. I would not trade anything
for Phil's life either at this point or twenty years ago because for one he had
delusions about making his living as a writer and I have never had that
thought. I've always been about
the dreamy aspects of the legend rather than the hardworking features.
Why not just write? Why worry because you haven't written?
Who says "trying to write a novel" would not turn out like your other
projects? And so what if it
did. Do you regret the fifteen
years of painting, of trying to be a painter? For most of those years you were indeed a painter. You painted. You liked it.
Now you can be the writer you've always wanted to be. You'll enjoy it. No one really needs to know. Or if they do, so what? Nothing you can say about any of this
holds any weight because you are at that brand new place in your life when
nothing holds weight.
What if you forwent scanning the web
each day and wrote instead. What
if you gave over reading so much every day and wrote. Blah blah blah blah.
Well, or maybe not. If
Lance Armstrong can cry on camera for the world and "rebrand"
himself, like Tiger Woods and all the others, you can too. If Robert Walser could sit down and
write his books, if Elmore Leonard can, you can too. Writing is such hard work, writing is such x and y. You've read a lifetime of this
creativity stuff, a lifetime of spiritual uplift stuff, a lifetime of
everything.
Virginia just called
Marie-Therese. She came north from
Florida because she was suffering anxiety attacks, depression,
hypertension. So....hmmm, earlier
we had snapshots of her running two miles every day and of Dick being
impossible to live with. Now the
picture complicates in ways we can't figure out and can't opine about. But it is clear evidence, again, that
you never know. No one knows how
any one of us might collapse or turn or spring a leak or develop a condition or
being subject to an event.
Anticipate your four days in Berlin
as wildly as you want. Who
cares? What have you got to
lose?
These pep talks grow tiresome. Repeated endlessly over the years. I did write a slight, slightly snotty
email to Andy Morgan today because he did not reply to my request for his
address or to my having sent him Jeff's poems. Said "guess you didn't think much of jh's
poems." But now I feel bad. I should not try to excite the interest
of these kids in Jeff's work. I am
not a publicist, nor was I meant to become one.
A perfectly snowy snow day.
Friday Jan 18
Bright and cold. Pessoa
saved my ass this morning. His
passages about how perfect the novel he dreams of writing and what happens to
it when he goes to his desk and picks up his pen describe perfectly the life
I'm living these days. The whole
middle part of the book hits bells and targets and chimings at every turn. #s 285ff
#291 "How I envy those who
produce novels, those who begin them and write them and finish them! I can imagine novels chapter by
chapter, sometimes with the actual phrases of dialogue and the narrative
commentary in between, but I'm incapable of committing these dreams of writing
to paper . . . . . (page 250)
I did wake with horror at this
thought---I could stay off the computer by writing everything in a
notebook---the way I did for years and years.
#289 on the perfection and
imperfection of King Lear is so
brilliant. Makes you swell with
envy and swell with envy of your envy.
I want to write these novels in the
voice I hear when I wake in the middle of the night. That voice should be the voice of these stories. Of all stories.
And I thought too---I need not worry
about writing very much each day on these novels. All I need is one or two sentences a day to be able to say
with the proper toss of the head, Oh, I'm working on a novel.
Pessoa and Walser on money: P: Money
is beautiful because it frees us. W:
Only genuinely wasted money would be--would have been--beautiful money.
Post this to Esposito to see if he says
anything about it.
Main quote from this morning: How
confusing it all is! How much
better it is to see rather than think, to read rather than write! What I see
may distress me, but I don't consider it mine. "What I read may distress
me, but I don't have to feel bad for having written it."
"Although the day is gorgeous, I
can't help but think this way. To
think or to feel? Or what third
thing among the stage-sets in the back?
Tedium of twilight and disarray, shut fans, weariness from having had to
live . . ." #285 (246)
SUNDAY about 2:30
Power back on after about a two hour
chasm. Last night we saw the hit
movie "Silver Linings Playbook." Loved it.
Virginia a little less so, not sure why. I identified too much with the breakdown guy played by
Bradley Cooper in Philadelphia.
Later I find out that the writer, Matthew Quick, got his b a at LaSalle
University so I popped him an email asking if he knew Gerry Molyneaux. On his website he's got quite a tale
about how he came to finally become the writer he had always secretly wanted to
become. After a trip to Peru and
the Amazon and elsewhere and finally quit his high school teaching job with
tenure and started writing in his in-laws garage or studio or such. In my role as the guy that the older
actor, the raging bull guy, plays in the movie, I've been messaging Jon Link
and now Brian Henry to proposed they publish a few of Jeff Herrick's poems and
I'll put up $200 for the Andrew Morgan publishing effort. I suppose they hat the idea, they won't
reply to my queries and still I bug them.
I guess, just like DeNiro, I enjoy bugging them with something they
won't even deign to discuss. The
importance of disdain---that great passage on disdain in Pessoa recently.
Losing power really upsets me. We've lost it so rarely. Now it is windy out and beautiful, so
clear and bright and sunny and blue and white. We like the color of our new bedroom paint job. Hope we can get it back to shape soon
this week. Virginia wants to try a
big board under the mattress to make the new bed feel more like the old bed
we've been sleeping on this week.
No reply from Marga yet---maybe she
is off at a conference somewhere.
Maybe she's not sure she wants to go to Berlin after all. Probably we are planning too far in advance. Perhaps. But they planned their big trip to the wedding far---and
then had to cancel at the very last second when her mother died right before
they were ready to leave. Well,
her mother demanded her due. And
wouldn't we all.
Mother always took me to the doctor
when I was a child. At the end of
the seventh grade my father took me to see his doctor. He told him he wanted him to check me
over and make sure I wasn't going to be queer. I didn't know what queer was but it was something newspaper
boys did while they waited for the delivery trucks downtown behind the post
office building and Mother didn't want me to have a newspaper route even though
lots of kids had them and made good pocket money that way. The doctor gave me a simple once over and
told Father I was ok. Nothing to
worry about. The next year I tried
to join the basketball team at St Margaret's grade school because my brother
had been a star for it four years earlier and was now a star in high school
across town for the Christian Brothers' high school, the same one my father had
attended. Father loved to tell
tales about their days and once or twice we would go to the old folks home and
visit old Brother Ephraihm who had been his teacher and they both liked to joke
and kid. We had eight years with
the nuns, the Ursulines, the kind Mother thought she maybe should have joined
and the Order her best friend in high school had joined. They wore black habits, heavy wool,
pleated many times and big sleeves in which they could hide erasers or other
things. Their faces were shelled
in these big stiff white bibs and headthings, under the veils. That last year of grade school I got
put into a game finally even though I was chubby and couldn't
play or run nearly as well as my brother. In the excitement of the game someone threw me the ball, my
chance, and I dribbled fast as I could to the basket and made it. I couldn't believe it. Then I could tell all around me
something was wrong. Hot blood of
shame poured down and up from the floor all over me when I realized I had made
the basket at the wrong end of the court.
A basket for the other team.
I kept going to practice and the games because I had no other choice and
people were pretty good about making fun of me without making too much fun of
me. My brother took to calling me
"Honeysuckle" for some reason, mainly because it made me so mad. I had a wicked temper sometimes. Honeysuckle was the thick,
sweet-smelling vine and flowers that covered the chain-link fence dividing our
yard from the neighbors yards.
Sometime during that year or the next, when no one was home, I got a
skirt out of my parents' closet that was made of black cloth that seemed a lot
like the nuns' habits. Heavy black
and on top of that a gauzier black, like the veils. It was a dress-up skirt for my mother and full when you
whirled in it. I put it on and
made it swirl out and went around and around. I was wanting to be a whirling dervish, I think, years and
years before I ever heard there were such things. My teachers then were men, in the high school, and they wore
ankle-length black robes, the cloth seemed like the nuns' cloth but maybe
lighter. They had funny white
collars of stiff white things that looked like the back part of a small paper
airplane stuck onto the collar.
Mother wanted me to become a priest, I had known that for a while, and
for years she woke me up early at six so I could walk a few blocks down to the
church to serve seven o'clock morning mass. This was supposed to be special and we even read a novel in
high school about a boy who did the same thing. Many times I had to go to the rectory and knock and wake up
Father Longergan. The housekeeper
was not there yet or even if she was he could be late and very sleepy. I served the mass and felt asleep half
the time myself. I would walk back
home through the cold morning, eat breakfast and then go back to school in time
for another mass a half an hour before the school bell, this one usually also a
black mass for the soul of someone but this one also had more ceremony. I had to light six big floor standing
candles that stood on either side of a black fake-coffin, a wooden frame thing
covered with a full black cloth with holy decorations on it. It helped everyone remember that even
though the real body of the dead person was not there the mass we were offering
was for him, the dead person. To
help get him from purgatory into heaven.
At this time too we started to go to confession more often and with
masturbation we had more to confess each week. I didn't call it that and I never talked to anyone except
the priest in confession about doing it even though one time after altar boy
practice Jimmy Butler pulled out his thing and rubbed it and proudly showed us
the white stuff that came out in a sudden bubbling action. My cousin showed me that later that
year too one day on the big porch in front of their house. But after I started doing it I wondered
if I should tell Father Lonergan but I didn't want to tell him so I would
always go to confession when I knew Father Stegmaier was in the box. I didn't know him and he didn't know me
much.
In
those early years of high school the family drama became more and more
clear. Mother wanted me to become
a priest. Father never said what
he wanted but I know he liked the brothers and I never liked the priests as
much as I liked my new teachers, the brothers. I was in the middle in between them. I was my mother's because Father had my
older brother who was the sports star in all the sports and also liked to play
golf like my father did too. And mother took me to the library to see paintings
and to concerts that father never wanted to go to. Father took me to the library too and later I started walkng
all the way over there myself because I loved to read. I got more and more prayerful in secret
as high school went on. Even while
we had spin-the-bottle parties and then necking parties and then in junior year
I started dating a little bit, first Eileen Keach and then Ellen Mary
Waddell. I liked her a lot and she
lived over on the other side of town, her father was a dentist and I liked
walking all the way over there to see her. Mother hated the fact that we lived on the side of town
where we lived, close to Father's store.
She knew the best people lived over near the Waddells and the
Schweningers.
-------
well, maybe that's a start? Worry that I sound too much like
Dennis, of all people?
Just emailed or messaged Brian henry
about jeff. Of course he had
noticed nothing, neither the poems I emailed (junk filter) nor the book from
Amazon. He's said nothing about
the money offer for the kickstarter.
A few messages later and it sounds at least like he might do
something. At least he might give
me an opinion on Jeff's poems. And
so maybe my efforts to get them some attention are not so underhanded or
conniving as I had thought. Maybe
quid pro quo is nothing new in this world, even among poets. Ha
I'm still easy prey for shiney
magazines. Bought a pile at BAM
the other afternoon. Wonder why
that is? Addiction of some sort,
instiable promise of the new. Envy
of other people's lives. Over
imagined comforts of other people's idea of what to have ideas about.
Power on when we got back from
Wally's around 4. Winds outside
now almost 9 howling. At the
moment off in the distance and not directly on the house. Almost time for the sunday night of
tv.
If I continue writing on these
projects--the novel and the memoir.
What will happen?
Monday Jan 21 11:41 Watching the Inauguration
Fixing lunch. Cécile wrote Va that the Michigan trip
might be off and that Emma has been sick for ten days and none of them have had
any sleep. Marga wrote that she
can't join us for the Berlin trip either but that we're welcome to visit chez
castañeda.
Ben and Beth are putting the bedroom
back into place. Va wants to try a
plank of plywood under the mattress to get it to be more firm. Ben says he can do that easily.
We'll see if we do get to Sevilla
this trip. Jane has given us
dates.
Emma sick. Maybe they will not go to Michigan. I hope not. Blizzards and snows way too likely. Maybe they will come later in the
summer to see us and go to Austin too??
Cécile one time hinted something for next summer might be up. Maybe too we will go to France at some
other time in the summer or fall.
Maybe the Berlin trip should be short and sweet. Berlin SEvilla and Madrid and save
France for later. Meanwhile Hotel
Adlon Kempinski is offering atttractive prices for its luxury digs on the
various sites. My new strategy
with the booking sites is to look every day or very often to see if that will
snafu the alogrithims a bit.
great short piece via Esposito of
Sebald giving writing advice
I can only encourage you to
steal as much as you can. No one will ever notice. You should keep a notebook
of tidbits, but don’t write down the attributions, and then after a couple of
years you can come back to the notebook and treat the stuff as your own without
guilt.
•
Don’t revise too much or it
turns into patchwork.
•
Lots of things resolve
themselves just by being in the drawer a while.
Don’t listen to anyone. Not
us, either. It’s fatal.
•
It’s easy to write rhythmical
prose. It carries you along. After a while it gets tedious.
•
Long sentences prevent you
from having continually to name the subject (‘Gertie did this, Gertie felt
that’ etc.).
•
Avoid sentences that serve
only to set up later sentences.
Use the word ‘and’ as little
as possible. Try for variety in conjunctions.
I think I
write too rhythmically and use "and" too much.
I like
most what Sebald says about having something obscure in the work.
•
Fiction should have a
ghostlike presence in it somewhere, something omniscient. It makes it a
different reality.
•
Writing is about discovering
things hitherto unseen. Otherwise there’s no point to the process.
•
By all means be experimental,
but let the reader be part of the experiment.
•
Expressionism was really a
kind of willful avant-gardism after the First World War, an attempt to wrench
language into a form it does not normally have. It must have purpose, though.
It hasn’t really occurred in English but is very common in German.
•
Write about obscure things
but don’t write obscurely.
•
There is a certain merit in
leaving some parts of your writing obscure.
back to the
Italian movie we started a few days ago---I may have seen it a few years back
---
Tuesday almost
2pm
Finally got the
smack-down from Brian Henry I had expected all along for the whole crew and he
came through. Fine. No more said on the matter. I feel bad because I know I was
meddling and couldn't help myself, in the name of "helping a fellow poet
& artist" but perhaps really trying to needle and horn-in or promote
myself as a "kingmaker" or "producer of hidden
talents" or some such.
Bob,
Let me say this again,
but in more detail: I glanced at Jeffrey's poems and saw that several would not
work because of their unusual formatting and that only two of them would work
because they don't use unusual formatting. This doesn't mean that two of them
*will* work in terms of content, style, aesthetics. I mentioned in my previous
email that I'd glanced at them briefly, which in no way implied that I'd read
them carefully enough to make an editorial decision. I haven't had time to
evaluate those two poems, and frankly I'm finding all of this rather
off-putting. Verse isn't even open to submissions, and I am beginning to regret
making an exception here.
Brian
----
So, ok, no
further emails to any of them and an apology to Jeff, slight, because "the
kids" didn't come through as I had thought they might. There's my problem all along--thinking
of them as "the kids" and feeling that old wound of rejection that
hovers around Ethan Paquin and my whole attempt to advance his career through
my correspondence with Rupert.
Strange how one
recycles all of one's patterns of being stupid, but then that's the definition
of stupidity.
Later he added this---which doesn't surprise me
at all -- so I am doubly glad not to have replied to his earlier Chide and
Ruler to the Wrist:
Bob,
I finished my lecture
early and read both Herrick poems a couple of times. I don't like either poem
enough to publish it. "O The I Sings" has some good moments, but I'm
not happy with it overall. It seems to be trying to do what Andrew Joron does,
but with less subtlety and less success.
Brian
=====
Last night we finished the
Italian movie with Tilda Swinton playing a Russian married into a noble
Milanese family. Noble or just
high bourgeous, manufacturing.
Ebert gives it 100% "I
Am Love" is the title. Very
haunting eroticism I thought.
Could not think of the title of Racine's great tragedy but of course it
is Phaedra.
Thursday Jan 24th
Ian and Virginia on the
piano, howling gusts and bitter cold in the super bright sun. Delightful evening with Ann and Dick
Hunnewell last night at Lago.
Bitter cold at night in the house.
We slept back in the old bedroom and cuddled in our cocoon of
blankets. I relented and wore my
silk watchcap.
Today I feel much more
comforted---the oil truck delivered about an hour ago and the check from TIAA
showed up in the bank account. woo
hoo
Already Sunday night and we
go to Boston and The next Day San Antonio on this wee jaunt. Jan 27. Bitter cold
behind us---for good we can
hope---. Very short video hello to
Emma today. She now says "Hiiaalo" The Houghton hold-up is about Jean and
Guillaume getting visas in time.
Who knew French people needed Visas to come here. Maybe they are for working and getting
paid here.
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