Nature etc. etc.: plants and other things that sprout ...

... everything under the sun (and clouds), in whatever landscape. Science and art, mythology, ornithology, philosophy, aesthetics, crawling and flying things, rivers and lakes, oceans, mountains, deserts, books even ...

... and now, to keep it flowing, with its own twin sibling:

Nature etc. etc.: photography

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490

Oh, crap, I spelled plants correctly. According to time-honored affectation, it should be plnats.

ACCEPTANCE
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, "Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be to dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be,"

from West-Running Brook (1928)
Robert frost

#2 Yeah! Again, all subjects batonical!

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

You know, that's interesting. I saw a program on the teevee about four plants that have used humans to spread their populations all over the world and have never gone out of cultivation, even under the toughest of circumstances, almost as if humans have cast their lot with them. They were the apple, the potato, tulips, and, of all things, marijuana. One could probably add the capsicum pepper to the list as well.

Spent the day yesterday up at Tuthilltown Distillery, a micro-distillery up near the Catskills (in Gardnier, near New Paltz, nearish Piero, I think?) Beautiful area that I'm going to plan a fall camping trip to. I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend than hiking, jumping in a cold swimming hole, and then curling up next to a campfire with a good whiskey.

Oh yes, Jane. I know that college town quite well: the nifty little bookstore, the Inquiring Mind, on a side street, which sells my book on consignment; the Mohonk Mountain House not far away, and its perambulation-type trails, which circle the mountain lake (with hand-built Adirondack-style wooden gazebos to relax in along the way); the Shawangunks (know to locals as the Gunks), for serious hikers as well as rapellers ... and in the fall, well, what can I say--I hate eventually raking the leaves in my backyard, but they are something to see while still on the trees.

After yesterdays brutal heat and humidity it is a near perfect day weatherwise. High 70's, low humidity, and the coolest of breezes gamboling through the shrubbery and the trees. Not too hard to take.

A Pillow of Winds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUdG4RiO268&feature=related

The Deserter

Mr. President
I'm writing you a letter
that perhaps you will read
If you have the time.

I've just received
my call-up papers
to leave for the front
Before Wednesday night.

Mr. President
I do not want to go
I am not on this earth
to kill wretched people.

It's not to make you mad
I must tell you
my decision is made
I am going to desert.

Since I was born
I have seen my father die
I have seen my brothers leave
and my children cry.

My mother has suffered so,
that she is in her grave
and she laughs at the bombs
and she laughs at the worms.

When I was a prisoner
they stole my wife
they stole my soul
and all my dear past.

Early tomorrow morning
I will shut my door
on these dead years
I will take to the road.

I will beg my way along
on the roads of France
from Brittany to Provence
and I will cry out to the people:

Refuse to obey
refuse to do it
don't go to war
refuse to go.

If blood must be given
go give your own
you are a good apostle
Mr. President.

If you go after me
warn your police
that I'll be unarmed
and that they can shoot.

Boris Vian

Moving.

Where did Gene post the article about copy editing? Anyway, here's more; it fits here because it is in part about the nature of The New Yorker, and, just to be obvious, this is a nature thread.

http://andyrossagency.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/copy-editing-at-the-new-yorker-wi...

Robert

It's always interesting, I think, to see how someone describes something the reader has firsthand knowledge about: a job, an news event witnessed, a point in time.

I have my own approach, btw, to dealing with lie, lay, and lain in a manuscript, since they still confuse the hell out of me: I reword it so none of them appear. I do that with other things that confound me. Ha! The triumph of the ignorant.

As for the nature of The New Yorker: does anyone else get driven up the wall by their number style? I mean, in nineteen seventy-six Jimmy Carter was elected president. C'mon. What's wrong with 1976? But then, I lost a gig at Henry Holt years ago when they gave me a George Higgins to edit and I encountered his aversion to numerals. I changed something like one thousand two hundred forty-eight--six words used to communicate four digits (and this in narrative, not dialogue) to 1,248.

About Gene, I don't recall him posting an article about copyediting, but he tried his hand at copyediting the book I've just finished and sent to the printer and did a swell job.

Before this summer I had only abstract sympathy for those who lived in places like Texas, and during the Bush era, no sympathy at all, which of course was not fair of me (but that's another story). And now, with the succession of ninety degree days--not quite that now, but tomorrow 92, and the next day 93, again--I have discovered empathy. The thought that once came to mind--why would anyone agree to live there, why don't they move elsewhere?--has been debunked.

I don't know how you all do it. The Willamette valley doesn't even touch your amount of humidity and I could not handle it after 48 years. The last 16 months on the high desert has been bliss... humidity wise anyway. Another El Niño and I may change my mind.

97-94-93-91-89-85-87 this week with the promise of more thunder storms tonight and tomorrow night. Right now, it is crystal clear and 64°.

Wilson, I think there is going to be some getting used to two nature threads.

The Town

You said: "I’ll go to another land, to other seaways wandering,
Some other town may yet be found better than this,
Where every effort of mine is a writ of guiltiness;
And my heart seems buried like a corpse. My mind--
How long is it to be in this decay confined?
Wherever I turn, wherever I lift my eyes,
The blackening ruins of my life arise,
here I have spent so many years spoiling and swquandering."

"You’ll find no other places, no new seas in all your wanderings,
The town will follow you about. You’ll range
In the same streets. In the same suburbs change
From youth to age; in this same house grow white.
No hope of another town; this is where you’ll always alight.
There is no road to another, there is no ship
To take you there. As here in this small strip
You spoiled your life, the whole earth felt your squanderings."

Constantine P. Cavafy

PLOWMEN
A plow, they say, to plow snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no -
Unless in bitterness to mock
At having cultivated rock.

from NEW HAMPSHIRE (1923)

We just had a thunderstorm of about one hour duration move through, coming over the mountain behind us. I enjoyed it from the screened porch and meditated on God's glorious gift of rain, on the earth, on the mostly closed system in which we live and how we relate to it. There were some pretty close bolts, loud claps of thunder less than a second behind bright flashes of lightening. We have been needing this at our house for weeks. It feels like it dropped the temp a good 15 or 20 degrees. It was very nice between the sturm und drang parts.

It brought these to mind:

I'll start off easy with some Marshall Tucker.

Now this might be a little harder for some of you, Rosemary Clooney.

And, to me, the quintessential rainy day song, and no, it ain't Rainy Day Women 12X35, which isn't about rainy days or women or 12X35, however, sometimes I wish I could be what it is about but here's Johnny Ray.

Just for grins, I'll wrap it up with this, The Cascades.

No storms here today. Low 80's with tolerable humidity. Not too much in the way of breezes. Maybe the kind of day to dream about, or remember things past, or passed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xp2lgiAjY&feature=related
Was in the 8th grade at the time of that Cascades song, 1963, the year old JCP finally got an audience with the First Cause.

The storms started rolling in early this afternoon. Several special weather emails came through threatening 50mph winds, 1/2 inch hail and flooding in SE Bend. Nothing but a few drops of rain and lots of rumbling here. Still expected to continue until late tomorrow night. Nothing as spectacular as what you were having though, Gene.

Love the music Gene and Peter! Now, thinking of Woodstock, GA this comes to my mind.

Oh yes, thunderous rain and lightning in the summer, cooling things off; we had it the day before yesterday. When I lived in Berkeley, among the things I missed: thunder and lightning was a close second to autumn leaves.

Good news here: the groceries finally have locally grown tomatoes on the shelves that taste like actual tomatoes. They should be around for a month, during which time I will do everything you can possibly do with and to a tomato as often as I can. This evening I ate three of them for dinner, sliced, dribbled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, dusted with ground pepper and salt. Later I might have another one for dessert.

mmm mmm mmm, Wilson! I have my special teriyaki chicken soaking and just about ready to put in the oven (I was in love with a man from Guam/Hawaii a decade and a half ago and he taught me so much about Asian and Filipino yummies) salad with fresh tomatoes and sticky rice. Damn, now I'm really hungry. gotta scoot! ;-)

21: We have a similar deal going with our strawberries right now.

22: That is SO weird, cause I had teryaki chicken (Hawaiian wok style) for lunch!

Thank you for that, Tani. I have spent a great majority of my life with those people. I love that kind of music, also.

Peter, I have about ten tomato vines that are just groaning with tomatoes. We are swamped. I wish I could send you some. Tomatoes and okra are doing the best. Because of the humidity, or partly due to it anyway, my squash is suffering from mildew. We get lots of flowers, but they don't fruit.

Guam, eh. I lived on Guam for three and a half years between 1954 and 1957. It was paradise for a 9 -12 year old boy. That's where I learned to disarm a live Japanese hand grenade. We would go out looking for ammunition to turn into souvenirs. Every week the paper would have a story about a boy or two getting blown up trying to disarm a bomb. It was "Danger UXB" in real life. Never messed with a bomb, although it was cool when we found a downed Jap Zeke and took it's machine gun and cleaned it up.

Slick... bring me some strawberries, puleeeezzzz!!! I miss valley strawberries. Nothin' like going down to Thompson's or Fuji's farms and getting some of those fresh deep deep red berries. Damn! Slick, you on the east side or west side?

Yikes, Gene! Oly (not his real name) was half Hawaiian and half white. He and his Mom moved to Guam when he was two (1958) and grew up with with his Filipino step-father who was an excellent cook. One of the old fellows called him 'haole' boy but it sounded like Oly and it stuck. He moved to the states in the late 70s. Kinda miss that guy! *sigh*

My Dad was stationed on Guam for a few years around the same time, maybe a bit later. He loved it.

Bohemia

Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

Dorothy Parker

Slick, I guess that must have been before you came along. Sorry you missed it. Do you know where he was stationed? What branch of the service was he in? Or was he a civilian contractor?

You know, as I occasionally tell stories from my life, I look back and think it was actually pretty interesting. I think even the most mundane of us have had interesting lives just by virtue of Being There. But then, too, when I tell these stories, I think they may be a little too much about me.

You are the narrator of your life, as we all are, so unless you just want to present the dry so-called facts--and you're certainly not that kinda guy, Gene--how can your stories be too much about you?

A little cheer from the Sage of Max Gate
GOING AND STAYING
1
The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay:
But they were going.
2
Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
But they were staying.

3
Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
Alike dissolving

Thomas Hardy
from LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER

gene: I think he was in Guam around that same time. I am first kid, born in 65, but he was older then - in his early thirties! So maybe he was there two years or so before you. I really ought to know more. He was in the Navy. I don't remember the name of the ship. I think it was a destroyer. He got in trouble for swimming somewhere you are not supposed to because it is dangerous. I don't know that I didn't know forty years ago. I need to get him alone and just talk but everytime we visit its all family family family! He recently dragged out and scanned some photos of Guam and his kidhood for us, which was I am sure an invitation to talk about it. I'll call him this weekend and mention the photos. I am glad you brought up Guam gene!

Not too bad really. 81. Midling humidity. Breezes not refreshing but not stifling. Storms on the way for tomorrow. Supposed to do a little boating on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. St. Clair is a small shallow lake with Grosse Pointe & St. Claire Shores on one side and Canada on the other. There are never many boaters out there, especially after dark. It's ever so nice to be out there adrift under a starry sky.

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines River
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children
and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

Carl Sandburg

THE MOWER TO THE GLOWWORMS

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer-night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass's fall;

Ye glowworms, whose officious flame
To wand'ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.

Andrew Marvell

Lamps-'You will make me believe that glowworms are lanterns' - proverb
(line 1)
Shining . . . fall - 'glowbands never appear before before hay is ripe, upon the ground, nor yet after it is cut down - Pliny, NATURAL HISTORY XI, xxviii, trans. Philemon Holland. The insect is the countryman's prophet.
(line 7-8)
Officious - attentive
(line 9)
Foolish fires - ignis fatuus, will-o-the-wisp, marsh-gas (methane) spontaneously ignited.
(line 12)

Ah, Pietro (sorry, but I am a bit anal, and in Italian, Peter is Pietro) Carl Sandburg just gave me goosebumps. The whole Chicago thing, you know. The Des Plaines River is a real place, and in Chicago we have everyone, including Hungarians.

Been in a bit of a transition at work so I don't have too much time, but I am popping in and could not resist a comment.

Odysseus to Telemachus

My dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don't recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland.
But still, my homeward way has proved too long.
While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,
it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this place
can be. It would appear some filthy island,
with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.
A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.
Grass and huge stones ... Telemachus, my son!
To a wanderer the faces of all islands
resemble one another. And the mind
trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons,
run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears.
I can't remember how the war came out;
even how old you are--I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong.
Only the gods know if we'll see each other
again. You've long since ceased to be that babe
before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.
Had it not been for Palamedes' trick
we two would still be living in one household.
But maybe he was right; away from me
you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions,
and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

Joseph Brodsky

Been kinda wild and crazy on the high desert this week... sketchy satellite internet... tonnes o' thunder with 7,500 lightning strikes yesterday (11,000 since Sunday) on and near homes in Bend and wildfires, albeit small ones, thank gawd. I was not the only one who thought the mammatus clouds were cool in La Pine.

Hot day, warm breeze. The hummingbirds are feasting at the feeder, the insects chittering, stopping ... starting again, building to a crescendo.

Nice Odysseus poem, Piero.

A succession of gloomy days down here. Low heavy clouds, and a cold fine rain falling. Black water glittering on black roads, because the nights outweigh the days by far. The plnats are always wet, and seem slimy.

I feel a bit like Mariana in the moated grange.

With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"

Tennyson, of course.

When it gets dreary, Sheila, there is of course always TV.

The Price Is Right: A Torture Wheel of Fortune

The show did not start off
auspiciously, the contestants
were nervous and kept fiddling
with the wires attached
to their privates, the men
being especially anxious
over the question of balls.
The women were more querulous.

The first question, a medical subject,
was why had the anti-abortionists
not mentioned, let alone commented on,
the Baboon Heart transplant?
One terrified contestant guessed
it was because the moral majority’s
nervous concern with evolution
precluded their bringing it up.
That hopeful contestant’s face
reflected the malicious light
in the eyes of the host who
immediately threw the switch

A powerful surge shot through
the wires and both sexes screamed
and writhed, to the delight of
the vast viewership, estimated
at 100 million, all of whom,
presumably, were delighted
not to be on the show,
because not one in a million
knew the answer.

Edward Dorn
from Abhorrences, Black Sparrow Press, 1990

Love it!

Wheel of Fortune.

Great poem, Peter.

An Ed Dorn encore.

Ode on the Facelifting of the "statue" of Liberty

America is inconceivable without drugs
and always has been. One of the first acts
was to dump the tea. The drug that furnished
the mansions of Virginia was tobacco,
a drug now in much disrepute.
Sassafras, a cure-all, is what they came for
and they dealt it by the bale altho it
was only a diaphoretic to make you perspire—
people were so simple in those days.
The Civil War saw the isolation of morphine
making amputation a pleasure and making
the block of wood between the teeth,
which was no drug, obsolete. Morphinism
was soon widespread among doctors and patients.
At this date interns, the reports tell us,
are among the premier drug ab/users
of said moralistic nation. "Rock" stars
(who notoriously "have" doctors)
consume drugs by the metric ton
even as they urge teenagers to Say No.
The undercurrent of American history
has been the running aches and pains
of the worn path to the door of the apothecary
to fetch cannabis and cocaine elixirs
by the gallon. It has been all prone
all seeking Florida, Ponce de León
was just the beginning of a statistical curve
whose only satisfaction would be total vertigo.
His eager search for youth has become our
frantic tilt with death and boredom,
in fact we are farming death in Florida
with far greater profit than we are
farming food in Iowa—elixirs are as multiform
as the life-style frauds we implore,
a cultural patchwork fit for a fool
in the only country in the world
with a shop called the Drug Store.

Edward Dorn
from Abhorrences, Black Sparrow Press, 1990

We are an affected society, n'est ce pas?

Just a perfect summer day. Yesterday on the Detroit River a storm blew furiously over us on into Windsor (Ont.). It was quite a sight out there. The freighters were unmoved by the blow but we were tossed around somewhat but as the boat owner is a Merchant Marine I was only mildly terrified. We went out for a little spin trying to beat the storm and didn't quite make it. Got back to the marina and spent the remainder of the day sipping beer and reminiscing about some years ago when we worked for the same eccentric photographer. To be truthful Steve was the more valuable of us, he is now a pretty successful photographer in his own right. I took the job for the fun of being on the shoots. I lugged equipment and kept everybody chuckling with humorous anecdote.
I remember the Dr. John concert at Medowbrook as though it was yesterday. Dr. John was as fat as a pig, Judy Adams was of similar girth, and all the land-tuna in the audience were stuffing their faces with all sorts of nasty looking meat in a tube. It really was such a night.

Not that I have to sell you, Peter, but the protagonist's wife in "Digging Deeper" gives up painting for photography (while he works for the post office, to pay for the chemicals and equipment).

Some personal publishing news:

They're still working on the manuscript of "Digging Deeper"--on a second version, actually--at Epic Press in merry olde England. A few stylistic things were wrong, including the margin width: I'd like more margin on the binding side of the page than in the last book, so the paperback will be easier to read.

On the Italian front: I signed the contract last month, sent it off, and a week or so later discovered that I had more in my bank account than I should've. Turns out the publisher wired the advance to my account, which means they are now invested in me. I do truly think, amicis, that this thing is actually going to happen.

49: Congrats on the Italian version of I think, therefore who am I?! So when is Digging Deeper out?

God knows. I'm just happy they're busily at work on it. It occurs to me, anna, that you might like my other book better in Italian.

Are there any good sex scenes in Digging Deeper like there were in I Think, Therefore Who Am I?

Bravissimo, dear Piero!

Pssst... it's Martin's b-day... he can't be trusted now... he's 30. ;-)

Who is Martin, Tani? Henri, behave yourself. We're talking about lit-rachure.

Well, he changed his nomenclature this morning... He is now known as MeditationesMartini

Oh, Martin, who chews on his glasses. He turns thirty and changes his name? Is that an auspicious omen or a suspicious one? It doesn't matter: the young whippersnapper will always be books to me.

Brent: I do fall into the habit of giving you glib answers in public, don't I? If I talk about sex in the coming book, which spans seven years and includes what I'd guess would be called courtship and marriage, and I tell you what happened when, without the exuberance and sturm und drang that rose out of or influenced this or that coupling, or not, I'd reveal something about my plot line without the heft that I hope makes it work as a true reflection of life.

The book I'm working on now, on the other hand--I'm two chapters in--has lotsa sex.

Hehhhhh. I've been thirty for months if not years, guys. Librarything profile updates sometimes lag behind the inexorable, irreversible, irretrievable terror-cascade that is the forward march of time, if you can imagine. But thanks for the kind wishes anyway:)

Turkey chicks in the backyard, about ten of them, watching their mama wing it to a low branch in the forest. They ambled around in apparent confusion, then took wing one at a time in her direction. But she was on the move again, flapping those big wings higher in the tall trees, with them fluttering up to follow. Was she teaching them to fly?

Filling Station

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, overall
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Elizabeth Bishop

THE TIGER

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy mortal symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feat?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears.
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy mortal symmetry?

William Blake (1757-1827)

Two poems in a day.

THE CIRCUS ANIMALS' DESERTION

I SOUGHT a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the lord knows what.

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain bottle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thoughts and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till, Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

William Butler Yeats
from LAST POEMS (1939)

You're all atwitter today with poesy, Peter. Here, I've been writing up a storm. But coming online, I see a lot on this big wedding taking place across the river, with lotsa accompanying photos, so I can show you the lighthouse at Kingston Point (not Port Ewen, as the caption asserts), not far from where I will eat my ninth or tenth celebratory dinner tonight at my favorite Italian restaurant:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Chelsea-Clinton/ss/events/us/071910chelseaclinton#...

I know that I yammer on, oh well:

Yeats also felt certain deceptions are necessary if people are to hold the right attitude towards truth. Certain deceptions were necessary. He was vaguely in favor of Catholicism, becuse of its legends, dogmas, and hierarchies are such 'necessary deceptions.'
A full understanding of Yeats cannot exist until one basic fact is understood: there was a certain pessimism at the bottom of his vision of the world. This pessimism is the usual 19th C. feeling that the 'world of matter' and the 'world of spirit are ultimately irreconcilable. It emerges clearly in the short dialogue between heart and soul in VACILLATION:

The Soul: Seek out reality, leave things that seem.
The Heart: What, be a singer born and lack a theme?
The Soul: Isaiah's coal, what more can man desire?
The Heart: Struck dumb in the simplicity of fire!
The Soul: Look on that fire, salvation walks within.
The Heart: What theme had Homer but original sin?

Pessimistic assumption that truth can be of no use to man? Art is lies, but Yeats prefers the title artist. In another poem: 'But a coarse old man am I; I choose the second best.' Not the resignation of a sinner who intends to sin on. Manichaean? Spirit is good; world is evil. This emerges in a late poem, THE CIRCUS ANIMALS' DESERTION, in which the poet considers all his early symbols and legends - Usheen, the Countess Cathleen, Red Hanrahan, etc. - and admits that they were merely an attempt to 'evade reality.' (the last stanza of CAD, above)

Art, Yeats is saying is 'escapism.' The reality is the stupidity of the world. And play-acting notwithstanding, we are little more than animals. Just as Swift was revolted by the ladies' toilet. Yeats turns away from the quotidian, of Zola, and his countryman, Joyce. Yet in the end Bloom's borborygms are 'more real' than his own pretty stories. "Shakespearian fish' or fish that lie gasping on the strand?
In UNDER BEN BULBEN Yeats propounds a Shavian notion that the purpose of art is to lead the human spirit upward, towards the god-like. Yet his own epitaph is the buddhistic: Cast a cold eye/on life,on death.

This is partly an overcompensation for the earlier belief in fairy-land; he is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Many great artists have felt that their best work flows THROUGH them, using them as an instrument. Yeats is here declaring: 'Not at all. Man consumes himself by his creation.' There was a famous episode in a Marx Bros. film in which the brothers steal a train, the train runs out of coal, and they begin breaking up the carriages and piling them into the fire; finally they break up the engine itself and push it into the furnace, until the train is only a furnace on wheels. This describes Yeats's conception of the working of the creative faculty.

from Colin Wilson's THE STRENGTH TO DREAM Literature and Imagination.
1962

I love art. Looking at it. Creating it. I don't think it's an escape. Nevertheless, it's overrated.

Busy Busy Busy. Gardens are work now - eat later sorts of things

To Date all in lbs.

English Peas 31.25
Green Onions 1
Kohlrabi 16.5
Green Beans 105
Yellow Squash 219
Patty Pan Squash 43.75
Potatoes 101
Broccoli 2.5
Spaghetti Squash 31
Onions 82
Peppers 153.75
Tomatoes 122
Cucumbers 38.5
Okra 23.75
Cabbage 32.5
Purple Hull Pea 40.4
Carrots 0.5
Corn 65.3

Some things grew well. Some things did not.

Fantastic! But surely you don't eat all this yourself. Does the community share the bounty? Do you sell some of it? And, the logical question: What didn't grow well, and why? Were the tomatoes among the "did not"? I am particularly fond of tomatoes, Paul.

We have a fair number of folks in our little group. Most of it will be canned or go into the 7 freezers that we have between all of us. The tomatoes are doing well, with 122 lbs so far and still producing. We have had lots of fresh tomatoes and fried green ones and put up lots of ketchup. We could use more rain. We have had to pump water from the stock pond twice so far this year and that is a pain. We never sell anything, once we get a years supply put away it is no problem to give away as much as folks are able to carry to the workplace.
It is different every year as to what grows. We try to keep good records and move plots around from year to year. As you can see above the Broccoli, and Carrots were total failures. We will move them to a different place for sure. It does not look like the corn is going to do very well ether. The Kohlrabi went in as a spring planting and we will try for a fall crop on that. A lot of stuff is still producing and other stuff has not come on yet.

Ode to the Artichoke

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.
And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

Pablo Neruda

Just dropping by to let you know it's snowing here. Pretty... and pretty unusual for us lately. Not far from Sydney, Australia, but at a height of 1065 metres.

A reminder:

Our sibling thread for photos is at:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490

But people can supply the link here when they post there. And Henri has graced us with some great ocean waves and pummeled surfers on that other thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490#2116797

>69 Thrin:. Thrin: nice to hear from you again. Snow, huh? In the mountains outside of Sydney. A dose of perspective for us summer people: that heat won't always be with us (though it's quite pleasant today in the Northeast), and we will be complaining about something else in another season.

ODE TO PSYCHE

O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt today, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on a sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjointed by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, Oh happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's saffire-region'd star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Oh brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
When branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by Zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary I will dress
With a wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardner Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm love in!

John Keats

Thrin, I hope you have somewhere bright and cosy to retreat to. Down here on the plains it was rather lovely yesterday. I sat outside absorbing the sunshine after a grim week of cold rain. It felt a bit like recovering from an illness. But back to chilled and grey today. No snow though, it'd make headlines if there was ever snow in Campbelltown.

Some awesome poems back there. I went to a fascinating lecture on the circus animals' desertion when I was at uni, and I'm often reminded of the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. Poor old Yeats, with his vast visions, his glorious Muse, and his heartbreaking disillusionment.

I used to get annoyed at Yeats, with his more-High-Art-than-thou attitude, but these days I'm inclined to believe he had more heart than ego, and that his struggle for Art really was almost as heroic as he thought it was.

I just went searching everywhere for this one - it encapsulates for me the struggle that early Yeats had between his glorious visions and ugly reality - similar to what Porius says in #63 above:

Aedh tells of the rose in his heart

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

From The Wind Among the Reeds 1903

WHY SHOULD NOT OLD MEN BE MAD?

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell,
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.

William Butler Yeats
1939

Worked ever so hard he did Choc. Read UNDER BEN BULBEN, it just about answers your nagging questions. WBY began life as a 'Romantic Poet' and ended life as William Butler Yeats.

>72 ChocolateMuse: ChocolateMuse The snow flurried only briefly I'm afraid; today is wintery windy, but I spied two early daffodils in the garden.

By the way, snow does make headlines up here these days. It used to be a common winter phenomenon but those times seem to be long gone, and last winter was the first in my experience when our ponds didn't freeze over at all.

Thanks to everyone for the beautiful poetry.

Muggy as all get out. Have air but like Richard Brautigan won't give in to the thing. Ghostly still out there save the cricket chorus. How they orchestrate is anyone's guess. Not even Steven J. Gould had a clue. Still, they had phases, but moving they were inept.

Things I miss in Portland: crickets; fireflies; thunder and lightning.

You have other fine things out there Slick.

Yeah, but he can't even pump his own gas!

Two by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Future

The future: time's excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.

Future, who won't wait for you?
Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

The Wait

It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.

Gene's wife's cousin caught a fish:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490#2118396

Holy Carp!

FOR ANNE GREGORY

'Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

'But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'

'I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

William Butler Yeats
from THE WINDING STAIR and other Poems, 1933

Beautiful weekend and I've been cooking up a storm:

Cold Cucumber Soup
Beet Coleslaw
Savory Bread Pudding With Tomatoes and Herbs
Yellow Summer Squash and Corn Soup
Crab and Corn Bisque
Turkey Parmesan

On Entering the Sea

Love happened at last,
And we entered God's paradise,
Sliding
Under the skin of the water
Like fish.
We saw the precious pearls of the sea
And were amazed.
Love happened at last
Without intimidation…with symmetry of wish.
So I gave…and you gave
And we were fair.
It happened with marvelous ease
Like writing with jasmine water,
Like a spring flowing from the ground.

Nizar Qabbani

One more from Nizar, this one was translated by Bassam Frangieh who was my Arabic teacher when I was in college:

Light Is More Important Than The Lantern

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.

Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown

Nizar Qabbani

A couple of swell poems from the birthday girl, and here's a link to a biography of the poet, from which more poems can be accessed:

http://www.adab.com/en/modules.php?name=Sh3er&doWhat=ssd&shid=2

>84 janemarieprice:. Jane: I'm a big ground turkey guy. Is that what your Turkey Parmesan is made with, or turkey slices? And the bread pudding with tomato: you have a recipe?

The crab & corn bisque got my interest.

Here's a nature tale, as described on amazon:

Primal Tears tells the story of Sage, a female born to a human who had volunteered to be a surrogate mother for an endangered species program but is instead accidentally impregnated with bonobo chimpanzee sperm. Sage is raised in a remote part of Oregon, exhibiting characteristics of both her species. Her troubles begin when her existence becomes public knowledge and the government takes her from her family and places her in a research facility. Her escape marks the beginning of a series of powerful events with implications beyond Sage’s story.

The author, Kelpie Wilson, is this month's "underappreciated author":

http://www.librarything.com/topic/94314

I second the request for the tomato and herb bread pudding recipe!

No kidding. A savory bread pudding sounds awesome!

87 - The Turkey Parm is sliced turkey breast. It's also not really a Parm...it just has tomato sauce and cheese, but is more of a gravy. My mom played with some recipe with veal. (Pop's a big hunter so there is lots of turkey - put a picture on my profile.)

Bread pudding recipe is here - a NY Times one. ETA: a great way to use stale bread - we buy baguettes all the time but can never finish them so I cook this a good bit.

88 - That one is not on hand at the moment, but I can get it tonight.

Stale baguettes as an ingredient! You know how many baguettes I usually have lying around to keep my rep as the Baguette Man intact? Every day, superstar that the counter girls see me as, I have no choice but to buy a baguette. And now that I can use all those stale baguettes to make a tomato bread pudding: Oh joy!

Shrimp (or Crab) and Corn Chowder

1/2 lb bacon
3 tbsp bacon fat
2 cups chopped onions
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/2 bay leaf crumbled
2 cups diced potatoes
2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup water
4 cups seafood stock
1 can (16.5 oz) cream style corn
1 can (16.5 oz) whole corn
1 can (13 oz) evaporated milk
2 lbs peeled shrimp (or crab or both)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
Tabasco to taste

Fry bacon, crumble and set aside. Reserve bacon fat. Sauté onions, bell pepper, celery, and carrots in bacon fat. Add bay leaf, potatoes, and water. Cook for 5-10 minutes. Sprinkles flour over mixture, stir well and add seafood stock. Bring to boil. Add corn, milk, salt, pepper, and Tabasco. Simmer over low fire for 20 minutes. Add shrimp or crab and cook for additional 10 minutes. Serve with crumbled bacon on top.

What heaven!

So fpucking hot I've got the air on. I was sitting in a puddle of mazzola oil and said I've got to put the air on. I hate it but just couldn't think or just couldn't think I could think, as old Anthony might put it. How the HOT weather people do it is beyond me. I simply hate it. The ave. temp inn San Diego this summer has been 65. Just right for my old bag-of-bones. I like it overcast and gloomy. The threat of rain, or worse.
I am reading Scott's THE HEART OF THE MIDLOTHIAN, should be gloomy enough, as old Walter looks for the heroic in a non-heroic time. In a thing I wrote with a good friend many years ago we called old Scott, 'Scrap Iron.' A name we stoled from an old MLB catcher named Clint Courtney. It was a perfect name we thought. Scott was truly a great man and how many writers would you name a great man. Not many. He was an heroic man in many ways, and in most of the important ways. Few writers brought to bear on their writings the wealth of experience that was Scotts'. He was also a perceptive critic, something that can't be said for most scribblers. Oh well, good night, good night.

Scott was also quite generous to younger writers was he not?

Jane,
Yummm! Perhaps I can sneak it past my seafood exempt wife? Many additional thanks for the bread pudding. Will whip it up soon. Had to peak at your culinary collection. I see your high marks to Diana Kennedy. Recently aquired The Cuisines of Mexico and Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico Getting something on the menu soon.(Branching out from Rick Bayless =)

Today's nature post. From A Natural History of Western Trees by Donald Culross Peattie page 703 - contrasting the Sequoia with the Desert Catalpa; this modest little tree occupies a vast tract of the West as it is in our times. Call it a world of harsh contrasts, filled with wind and draught, heat and cold. But here this draught-resistant little tree holds its own remarkably well. It is even able to utilize the gusts of the desert that sear the land and make it uninhabitable for many trees with great reputations; for on the winds go sailing, form the Desert Catalpa's opened pods, the tiny seeds that are flat and light as bits of confetti and borne on silken wings. Thus they cross vast arid spaces, to populate the sands of other waterless washes, the cobbles of other arroyos. Swiftly the new seedlings spring up, enduring as readily as a Papago the long blazing summer days that know no shade until, from the lunar and jagged ranges, the sundown shadows rush forth across the long bajadas to the edge of the world. When the summer stars come forth, and hot Antares blazes in the Scorpion, then and then only there steals forth from the lips of the Desert Catalpa's blossoms the ordor of sweet violets.

Scott's generosity knew no limits.

A bit south of Denver on the map, a bit east of the Rockies, perhaps in foothills: the trees and landscape where you are, Eugene, are so different than here in the water-abundant Northeast. Perhaps they have more in common with those in the high desert where Tani lives, near Bend, Oregon. But it sounds like she too has more water than you.

DESERT PLACES
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost
from A FURTHER RANGE (1936)

"I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me."
- Wallace Stegner

Stegner and Frost bumped into each other here and there during their productive lives.

LOOKHOMEWARDANGEL is one of my favorite novels. When I read it as a callow youth it got me interested in all things TW. I tore through whatever was available by him and about him. He was at the Olympic Games wherein Jesse Owens won the 100 in front of the little corporal. What a moment that must have been.

Yes, Stegner was an admirer of Frost and they shared a close friendship.

I am so far behind... Mr Gant said my name was being brought up, so here am I trying to catch up.

Have been up in Puget Sound for my niece's wedding and trying to recover from two very long driving days. (19 hours out of 72; should have been max 12 hours round trip) Friday was the worst... a multi-car/semi truck accident on I-5 in Chehalis all but shut down traffic. It took 4 hours to go 5 miles. Left the high desert at 8am and arrived in Lacey at 7pm. Ugh. Sunday's drive home was a perfect drive through the Columbia River Gorge and down through Tygh Valley and Maupin (very famous for floating the lower Deschutes) but my back and leg are yelling at me.

Okay, am going to read the posts now and find out why Wilson is talkin' 'bout moi. ;-)

Another hot muggy day. The threat of rain is in the air but so far nothing.
9mph gusts out of the SSW. The temp. is slipping at the moment. 80.

Nothing to get paranoid about, TC. Just pleased to see that the Coloradoan (is that how you say it?) has joined us again, between the left coast and the right (which is you). Or are you the left and me the right? I can never get that straight. Oh, yes, and somewhere else in between, where Porius and I are at the moment bound by the very real concepts of Mugginess and Humidity.

98 - I love my Diana Kennedy book (From my Mexican Kitchen) mostly because it has an incredible amount of information about ingredients and basic dishes from scratch.

I be da left, you be da right... and if I am not mistaken (I did live there for 18 months 25 years ago) it is Coloradoans. Is that correct, Mr. Gant?

Oh, and I have been meaning to put this out there for some time now... No need to be formal with TC... I prefer tc... ;-)

tc, you hit it right. Although, never been to Oregon, (pronounced Or-e-g'n by westerners and Or-e-gon by the rest of the country), I have a friend who has a friend in Bend, who works for the Forest Service. He talks fondly of the area, nestled near the three sisters. I'm sure no longer a small mountain town of yester-year.

I hope it is pronounced "Colorad'uns."

The Deer Lay Down Their Bones

I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path,
flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling
water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clam-
bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
Hung like a bird's nest on the precipice brink a small hidden clearing,
Grass and a shallow pool. But all about there were bones Iying in the grass,
clean bones and stinking bones,
Antlers and bones: I understood that the place was a refuge for wounded
deer; there are so many
Hurt ones escape the hunters and limp away to lie hidden; here they have
water for the awful thirst
And peace to die in; dense green laurel and grim cliff

Make sanctuary, and a sweet wind blows upward from the deep gorge.--I
wish my bones were with theirs.
But that's a foolish thing to confess, and a little cowardly. We know that life
Is on the whole quite equally good and bad, mostly gray neutral, and can
be endured
To the dim end, no matter what magic of grass, water and precipice, and
pain of wounds,
Makes death look dear. We have been given life and have used it--not a
great gift perhaps--but in honesty
Should use it all. Mine's empty since my love died--Empty? The flame-
haired grandchild with great blue eyes
That look like hers?--What can I do for the child? I gaze at her and wonder
what sort of man
In the fall of the world ... I am growing old, that is the trouble. My chil-
dren and little grandchildren
Will find their way, and why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-
seven, ten years more or less,
Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf
Who has lost his mate?--I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision:
who drinks the wine
Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment
New discovery may lie. The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
bones: I must wear mine.

Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers. Nice one! Thomas Wolfe was impressed by him also. (from his notebooks)

114 - Corrrect you are: From "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken, updated in 1982 by Raven I. McDavid Jr., and David W. Maurer:

By and large, when a place name ends in "o," you add "an." The exception is if the place name is of Spanish origin; then you drop the "o" before adding "an."

This observed rule appears to work in practice. Idaho and Chicago derive from Native American languages, not Spanish, and their residents are Idahoans and Chicagoans.

San Francisco comes from Spanish, and thus San Franciscans reside there. Residents of other realms with Spanish names are Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Since Colorado is a Spanish word for the color red, we are properly Coloradans, not Coloradoans.

# 113 - We have bumper stickers that say 'Ory-gun' for those across the country who insist on mispronouncing it. ;-)

Well, your friend's friend is probably might busy today as there is a wildfire just south of Sisters that started just before noon yesterday and at my last news report had already burned 2,650 acres and evacuated a dozen or so homes.

Sisters is still a very small mountain town, thank gawd. Very quaint old west architecture downtown (something that is mandatory). The biggest doings in Sisters are the Rodeo in late June and the nationally renowned Quilt Show in July. It's a great jump off point for all recreational activities year round.

Weather this week is absolutely perfect: 89-89-92-89-84-83-82 I am in heaven except for the slight chance of afternoon thunder boomers considering that is how the Rooster Rock fire (Sisters) was started. :-(

>118 highdesertlady:. Tani, or tani (whichever you prefer): I know how loyal you are to your terrain and all things in it, but I've been in Sisters and, no offense, I didn't take it all that seriously. The surrounding mountains, yeah, but it seemed to me hardly a practical place fashioned for live-in people, as distinct from tourists.

>117 eugenegant:. Nice language entry, Eugene: I didn't know that rule, and unlike the rest of you, I'm supposed to, lest I get kicked down the road. So Coloradan it is, to go with Or-e-gun or Or-e-g'n, and Arkansan, which doesn't seem to be covered by the above rules, but what the hell.

>116 eugenegant:. Who knew it was Colorado Appreciation Day? Usually I'm on top of these things, but it just blew by me until about an hour ago, which is when I found the Robinson Jeffers, who was from Pittsburgh, btw, and wrote poems about California, but the poem does have a westerny feel, no?

118 - Yesterday, we had a 74 acre grass fire along the western foothills, blowing the scent of acrid smoke across the city. Likely started by a careless smoker -is my guess. Our temps are in the low 90's, tolerable in the shade but higher than my liking. Give me crisp 60 degree days and heaven on earth becomes closer to my reality.

Great state, Colorado. Although, I believe the correct pronunciation is like saying "color" followed by "ado". Color ... ado. Sounds right to me.

May I name the places I've visited in Colorado?

Mesa Verde National Park. Awesome for an imaginative kid.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison Nat'l Monument. One of the steepest, deepest canyons in the States. There's warning signs at the well-traveled edges, "do not throw rocks into the canyon," because it's so steep you might hit someone camped at the bottom ... two-thousand feet below.

Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. Nothing like driving a car at an elev. in excess of 12,000 feet, like being in Tibet. I believe there's no guard rails over some sections of the road, and some visitors get so spooked by the drop offs that park rangers have to escort them over the pass.

#119 - Silly, Wilson... Tani is cool... I just like the look better of 'tc' than 'TC' cuz that's just how I roll. (as my next soon to be nephew-in-law would say)

Well, Sisters is a sleepy bedroom town as is my town. You do have to go into Redmond or Bend for most things consumerish, but it's a great place to stay when you are recreatin' on the slopes and such. There are a lot of homes for vacation rentals. But as you say the Three Sisters Mountains; left to right Charity (South), Hope (Middle) and Faith (North) are what draws the eyes and feed my soul.

As far as the plural for Oregon residents... we are Oregonians.

117: I thought 'rojo' was the word for red in Spanish. I think Colorado is more along the lines of 'colorful.'

Wow, Jane!!! Love the recipes... the bread pudding looks very yummy! Thanks for sharing these... mmm mmm mmm!

A SERIOUS STEP LIGHTLY TAKEN
Between two burrs on the map
Was a hollow-headed snake.
The burrs were hills, the snake was a stream,
And the hollow head was a lake.

And the in dot in FRONT of a name
Was what should be a town.
And there might be a house we could buy
For only a dollar down.

With two wheels low in the ditch
We left our boiling car
And knocked at the door of a house we found,
And there today we are.

It is turning three hundred years
On our cisatlanyic shore
For family after family name.
We'll make it three hundred more

For our name farming here,
Aloof yet not aloof,
Enriching soil and increasing stock,
Repairing fence and roof.

A hundred thousand days
Of front-page paper events,
A half a dozen major wars,
And forty-five presidents.

Robert Frost
from A WITNESS TREE (1942)

I love it when you post Frost, Por-Man! ♥

Our current 'Three Sisters' town, absent the tourist biz, is Westcliffe, lying snug against the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Currently, still sleepy, but if I predict correct, it will be the next hot resort area.
http://www.downtownwestcliffe.com/photogallery/
Come now, before history repeats itself.

How does she do that little heart?

I been in those mountains, but down New Mexico way.

(alt 3) Wilson... ♥

I mentioned it in one of our previous iterations of Nature (cannot remember which one) but some family friends have a place in Twin Lakes near Leadville. The Rockies are sooooo beautiful! I miss the mountains there but not Denver. Yuck, ptuey! (Sorry, Mister Gant if you have any strong affiliations or loyalties to D town) Course, these days I am all about small towns and the high desert. Anything bigger and I get hives. ;-)

Music to my ears, tc. Howsabout LEON!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1952458...

On a PC, you hold down Alt, then press the 3 on the numeric pad. ♥ I think Meddy posted more info on a previous nature thread a long time ago...

Cold and clear down here in Sydney. Shadows are sharp, but the ground is soft enough to drown in.

ETA I hadn't realised how long I'd had the thread open, and forgot to refresh before posting. ♥

Thanks for the hearty tips, ladies, which don't work on this Mac I'm on at the moment. And anyway, I cannot imagine using it. Or rather, I won't until Henri does.

Ah, c'mon Wilson, I won't tell!

#130 - I love Leon, Por-Man!

Then you won't mind a Dixie Lulla-by
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB-aVj83KAs&feature=related
Hoooooo-hooooo-hooooo-hooo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9CHAMbfZ6A&feature=related
Pure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xp2lgiAjY&feature=related

Those little cutesy-wutesy heart symbols are for girls -- las chicas -- only. No manly man in his right mind uses them. Heart symbols are for wuss-men (i.e., for men who wear pastel-colored sweaters and who like the Carpenters).

What about Capt. & Toenail? What? What?
Tangerine sleeveless sweaters and Karen & Richard can Bread be far behind?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6inwzOooXRU

Captain's once rich wuss-man. I'd be a wuss for money too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEWU25aN67U

Did he make a lot of Bread?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq3biClGRNk&a=GxdCwVVULXdXC_ryOFvjFfGl8rDpPxI...

You can be a non-wuss-man and like some Carpenter's songs.

If you like any Bread song and you're male, you're a wuss.

>136 absurdeist:. I figured.

Here's B.G., not the BeeGees covering a bread tune to of all things an island beat, go figg-your.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6SFg1rqI34&feature=related

He did make money and was indeed an apparent wuss. But hey, his son, the most honorable Dr. Richard Gates, is a pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon at C.H.O.C. (Children's Hospital of Orange County) who performed the two open heart surgeries on my daughter that saved her life when she was a baby, so Bread, by default, because of its lead singer's son, I guess gets a wuss pass. Ergo, Bread: Not wusses, by default. (Now that I've thought about it).

I like some Bread. Everything I Own is a beautiful song. Diary and, even, Baby Ima Want You aren't bad.

And Everything I Own was about your Doc's grand-dad!

142: funny!

Man does not live by Bread alone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaRz-3DYV7c&feature=related

I LOVE it when I getcha all goin'! And yes, I'm a girly, girl.

I also Loves me some Carpenters and Bread and Barbra. Barbra and Karen were my inspiration to sing and ultimately drive my grandmother crazy with this song's lyrics. (For you, G-ma Ella... Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh baby!)

C'mon guys, embrace the ♥heart♥ in you all.

And never forget:

Yes we read Aunt Jane whenever we can.
Just one more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fag7oSyTsug&feature=related

Watcha name, watcha name, watcha name!

On the weather front, I am sitting on the boat in one heck of a storm! We are blowing back and forth and side to side and "maintenant, le déluge"! Can't open the hatch to see if the bimini is still there. Oh well, if it isn't there is nothing I can do about it anyway.

This storm is moving at about 50 mph, so I guess I will go get ready for work and hope it is gone when I am ready to leave.

It’s Time to Mow the Flowers

It’s time to mow the flowers,
don’t procrastinate.
Fetch the sickles, come,
don’t spare a single tulip in the fields.
The meadows are in bloom:
who has ever seen such insolence?
The grass is growing again:
step nowhere else but on its head.
Blossoms are opening on every branch,
exposing the happiness in their hearts:
such colorful exhibitions must be stopped.
Bring your scalpels to the meadow
to cut out the eyes of flowers.
So that none may see or desire,
let not a seeing eye remain.
I fear the narcissus is spreading its corruption:
stop its displays in a golden bowl
on a six-sided tray.
What is the use of your ax,
if not to chop down the elm tree?
In the maple’s branches
allow not a single bird a moment’s rest.
My poems and the wild mint
bear messages and perfumes.
Don’t let them create a riot with their wild singing.
My heart is greener than green,
flowers sprout from the mud and water of my being.
Don’t let me stand, if you are the enemies of Spring.

Simin Behbahani

129 - (Better late than never) Yes, I'm just a small town guy in a big town lie -having grown up in a modest, humble town in Wis. If stars were wishes, I'd pull one down and imagine a sleepy hide-away in northern Idaho. But, reality bites sometimes.

Replacing 'Denver' for Jacksonville in this tune from Ryan Adams entitled Jacksonville Skyline, the story comes close:

Well the banks of the river run through my hometown
born on the dirt roads, and I scraped my knees
well they paved the roads eventually
with neon signs and car dealerships and diners

The soldiers fill the hotels on the weekends
I saw the pretty women as I walked through town

I moved away soon as I turned sixteen
figured I was old enough to go and work a job
well I floated down main street. pools of carlights
overcame me wishin' I was still back home

Denver's a city with a hopeless streetlight
seems like you're lucky if it ever changes red to green

I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness
with 50 cent picture frames bought at a five and dime

I ended up a soldier on the weekend
looking for a vacancy I wasn't able to find
somewhere the night sky hangs like a blanket
shoot it with my capgun just to make it
seem like stars

~R. Adams

Not to take part in this discussion of Denver, which I don't know at all, but I have been in northern Idaho, eugene, in the so-called panhandle, lived in small or smallish towns, and do now, however well-known Woodstock is. Out of those experiences I'd say that hideaways can have their drawbacks; that the people one has an affinity for, or not--their social assumptions, politics, and so on--are of course part of what makes a place livable, and hopefully enjoyable.

Peter, your repeating my neighbor's language exactly, having lived in a small hamlet in Nebraska. The city affords anonyimity. Just another porch light on the horizon. That is definately a dollar in my pocket.

Is that song about Jacksonville, Fl. or Jacksonville, N.C.? Lots of military in both places, but the first verse about the dirt roads and car dealerships reminded me of Jacksonville, N.C.

It's North Carolina. A place I'd like to visit someday. Maybe while there, I'll meet up with Jane, after a nice hike, around a roaring campfire, enjoying her whiskey? =) http://tinyurl.com/266tyka

I used to live in Pamlico County, about 20 miles as the crow flies, and maybe fifty by road from Jacksonville N.C., in Oriental, the sailing capital of North Carolina, although when I lived there it was a forgotten fishing town surrounded by tobacco and the one guy with a sailboat was thought of as odd. Fishing boats were the order of the day. It had about 500 people and was the largest town in the county. I've seen life in the boonies as well as the big city. They both have their advantages (in the boonies everyone knows everyone else, in the city no one knows anyone else) and their disadvantages (in the boonies everyone knows everyone else, in the city no one knows anyone else).

I don't know if you are familiar with the teevee show "Dawson's Creek". I used to swim in Dawson's Creek at the point where it meets the Neuse River. The fellow responsible for the show went to the same High School I went to, but a few years later.

I wonder how many more times I can get away with telling this story.

What makes you think you got away with it before?

I count two times now, Gene, but we're all getting older, or are already there, so who cares?

My wife and I sometimes start to watch a TV show we've seen before, more than once, and she says to me: "I think I saw this, but I don't remember the beginning."

And I say: "I remember the beginning but not the end."

Then we watch it, and recall some things and not others: "Oh, I remember this."

"Really? I don't."

And at the end: "Oh yeah, this I remember."

"It does seem familiar, but I'm not sure ... "

tc, you are not having to evacuate, I hope!

Yeah, I knew I'd told this crowd that story before, Eugene hadn't heard it, and well, by golly, I just never seem to tire of talking about myself. So I decided to tell it to him, too.

Speaking for myself, Gene, and admitting that I am somewhat deranged on the subject of storytelling, I love hearing this stuff; the first time, in reprise, and beyond. Next time I'd suggest you add some details about the flora and fauna, throw in a catfish or two and maybe a hurricane, give that "old guy" a name, describe some of those fishing boats, sketch the main street of that largest town in the county, and slap a title on it. And since I'm in my writer's head, so to speak, the rural-urban advantages to knowing everyone and not was a pleasure to read. (Now don't you go deflecting because you can't take a compliment.)

Let em fly gene.

What? Evacuate? Last thing I remember, she was listening to music, and Lisa was awash. Did I miss something?

Gene,
Tell us what is in the water there, near Dawson Springs. I've read the Neuse River is not exactly a great marine enviornment for biological diversity. What does it smell like? Can the grandkids drop a fishing pole off the dock or would their time be better spent skipping stones across its viscrid surface?

I haven't been there in nearly fifty years, but some fifty to seventy-five miles up the Neuse the old tobacco farmers sold their allotments to industrialized hog farms. As a result of the runoff the river is now filled with Pfisteria, a rather nasty bug that leaves open sores. It's essentially ruined many of the recreational uses of the river, except boating. However, when I lived there the estuary of the Neuse and the creeks running into it were spawning grounds for millions of what we euphemistcally referred to as "stingy nettles", stinging, bell headed jellyfish. From July to October the water was almost gelatinous with the things. Swimming was an endurance sport.

I worked one summer on a small, two-man operated shrimp boat. We never caught much so while we were making our forty-five minute trawls we would heave a couple of buckets over the side, gather as many jellyfish as we could, go to opposite ends of the boat and start throwing them at each other. Nothing can prepare you for having a jellyfish splayed out across your face. It was our version of putting a garbage can over your head and having someone beat it with a baseball bat. Oh, yeah, those were the days. I have more stupid jellyfish stories to tell, but not now. Not now.

As for the grandkids, I think the fishing is still pretty much okay, as long as you don't take infected fish, and I believe it's pretty easy to tell if a fish is infected. Swimming is probably another matter. I would contact the North Carolina department of agriculture, or more properly department of tourism about it. However, I'm sure the coast is okay, if you don't mind the occasional jellyfish, crab bite, or Great White Shark. You know, the stuff that plagues every beach up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The Outer Banks is one great, long wonderful beach. Take 'em to Kitty Hawk. They National Park Service has a nice museum featuring a replica of the first Wright Flyer and the original shed. The different flights are marked off on their original courses.

I liked the Dawson's Creek story (gonna tell my wife!) but I like the jellyfish fight story even better.

Also enjoyed reading post 162. You guys crack me up!

Addendum to Colorado Appreciation Day, featuring the city of Denver, an apparent worldwide conspiracy against the American way of life, and the usual ignoramuses:

http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15673894

That guy is nuttier than a Snickers bar!

168 - hijole

No, Mr. Gant and Wilson, I am probably about 50-60 miles SE of Sisters as the crow flies. Last I heard was that it had grown to over 4,000 acres and the smoke has just drifted down my way in the last 1/2 hour.

#168 - WTF? What a loon. PDX has been promoting cycling for decades. The Yellow Bike Project was started in 1994 and was the 1st city in the US to do so. Unfortunately, there is always a group of people who have to spoil it for everyone else, but it was an interesting experiment.

tani, uncontrolled forest fires in that part of the country must be a major concern. I imagine a shift in the wind and - boom, it's headed for you. Fire, that part of certain excited, volatile gases whose radiation flashes in and out of the visible spectrum, hence flames.

Oy, Gene! Ya, we get kinda spooked when the smoke starts rolling in because that means the winds are up and have shifted. The Rooster Rock Fire spread to 1,000 acres in the first couple of hours, I think. We've been at Extreme Fire Danger (IFPL II) here for weeks. There are possible isolated thunderstorm threats for the next several days and winds 25-30 mph. Not good for fighting wild fires. Temps low 90s down to high 80s.

The last big fire around here was about 5-6 years ago at the La Pine State Park campground not too far from here. You have to be ready to evacuate at a moments notice. If you live up here you should always have a plan or system in place. We have a half dozen or more huge tubs ready to be filled and loaded into the pickup and the jeep. All the camping gear is handy and ready to go as well.

Sojourns in the Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
--but we have changed, a little.

Denise Levertov

That was beautiful, Wilson.

THE GARDEN
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak. or bays;
And their uncessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree:
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toil upbraid;
While all flowers and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So am'rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know, or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair Trees! wheres'e'er your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might Laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wond'rous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasures less,
Withdraws into happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountains sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits, and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy Garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a peace so pure, and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet.

Andrew Marvell 1621 - 1678

Wow... what a beautiful morning for poetry. Was that anonymous, Por-Man?

Sorry tc I forgot to type in Marvell's name. Here's a bonus for my boo-boo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZuxUyNA14

My stetson tipped to tc on the high grass prairie:

High Grass Prairie

Say something warm. Hello. The world
was full of harm until this wind
placated grass and put the fish to rest.
And wave hello. Someone may be out there
riding undulating light our way.
Wherever we live, we sleep here
where cattle sleep beside the full canal.
We slept here young in poems.
The canal runs on without us east
a long flow into Fairfield. The grass flows
ever to us, ever away, the way it did
that war we dreamed this land alive.
The man we hoped was out there
saw our signal and is on the way.
Say something warm. Hello. You can sleep
forever in this grass and not be cold.

~Richard Hugo

A little somethin' from Detroit; signs of life among the ruins:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/arts/design/04maker.html?th&emc=th

Awww! Cowboys Rock!

ETA: Rooster Rock Fire update...

The fire has grown to 6k acres today and is only 30% contained... not quite as smokey here as it was yesterday, but they are concerned about the increasing winds tomorrow. Anyone know how to contain an almost 75 year old man? He has his oxygen on and is out walking in it right now. Arrrggghhh!

A little less rain today.

Robert

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/january-2010/

Clouds painted by Maynard Dixon are some of the best. We had these on the eastern horizon just the other night. http://tinyurl.com/24lcvqa

Now, who'd have thunk there was a real live, really real Cloud Appreciation Society! Where the hell have I been? Por-Man, you have made this girl's day.

Mr. Gant... Some of my favorite memories of Colorado are the afternoon T-storms. Except maybe having to pump gas in the middle of one of 'em! ;-) The blackest of skies to the east with the rainbows were my fav. And there is something about driving down I-25 with the Rockies to my right that I miss. Have not been back there since 2003. *sigh*

. . . the French biologist Jean Rostand has aptly put it, 'no man has a true counterpart.'

For example, there is supposed to be, within variable limits, a certain symmetry about the human body, proportion, shall we say. Yet, sitting idly on a bus a few months ago, I observed across the aisle from me a creation I never expect to see again in this life. It was simply a woman in whom proportion did not exist. Her upper arms were too short in proportion to her forearms, her head too large for her body, her torso out of harmony with her legs. One thing, however, must be made plain. This was no product of thalidomide. This woman, if we stretch the human parameters a little, was normal. I doubt, except for some consciousness that she was not beautiful, that the woman in question ever thought of herself as a genetic anomaly. Yet most certainly she was. Her general appearance to the trained eye was that of a creature manufactured out of disparate, ill-assorted parts. The symmetry factor was lacking. Although one would have to label her, in some vague fashion, 'normal,' she existed in reality in a no-man's land of 'parts.' This she would never know.

Or take the spider-finger syndrome, arachnodactyly. Statistically it appears to have a greater incidence in certain inbred ethnic groups. The hand is tenuous, sometimes lengthy, but the fingers, while otherwise normal, remind one of something in the nature of an insect scampering over a page. Incredibly thin and elongated, they are spider fingers in very truth. Lay people occasionally observe these things half-consciously but they are frequently unaware of their rarity, the storehouse of potential lying below the actual form which these oddities are drawn. They do not know that in their own germ plasm may linger things as unique. Indeed one may occasionally look back upon a fragment of the past, as in the shape of a huge brow ridge, or even see the unknown features of our distant progeny prematurely peeping into existence.

Loren Eiseley
from ALL THE STRANGE HOURS: The Excavation of a Life

DESIGN
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night? -
What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.

Robert Frost
from A FURTHER RANGE (1936)

Noon in Arkansas in early August with a temperature of 84°F. Hard to believe, may have to break out the sweaters.

On Hiroshima Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM

Shouldn't Shane Pogue pronounce "quay" so that it rhymes with "Gallipoli"?

The New York Buddhist Church is at the end of my block, and every year they close of the street on Hiroshima Day for Universal Peace Day. Quite lovely.

Not to change the interesting subject of gigantic radiation clouds, but if anyone is looking for a facsimile dust jacket to a first edition, Mark Terry, who owns Facsimile Dust Jackets, LLC in San Fransisco, has been accumulating a very extensive image collection. He stopped in to see me recently on a trip east to Montana and Colorado visiting family, friends and business associates. He took quit a few scans of jackets in my collection. He digitally corrects and enhances them before printing on high quality stock. Many of his jackets are not listed on his web site, so it pays to inquire. http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com

It cooled last night considerably as we had a late meal outside. The muggy air went off somewhere and there were some much needed cool breezes as we had a few glasses of Spanish wine late into the evening, and early into the morning. Today was not a bad day, either. Mostly cloudy, a few sprinkles, all in all not to hard to take. Maybe another day or two then the heat cranks up for another round.

Who's "we"? You and who?

192> that's a very cool business. I've just returned from giving him some free advertising myself on my blog.

The Dean Martin Society, whomdoyouthink?

#192 - Very cool, Mr G! Thanks for the linkage.

Just catching up with you folks. That storm blew through in pretty short order although we again had a lot of rain. Going home, I take the bus to a place across from the harbor and then take an underpass under Lake Shore Drive to get into the park to walk to the boat. The darned underpasses were flooded and I had to walk the very long way around to get there.

Bicycles: I can't find the article, but I saw the bikes. The company that set up the program in Paris where you can rent a bike to take a short ride and then leave it at another location has done it in Chicago. We have a rack of them in the Daley Plaza. No word on how it is going, but many of us Chicagoans are pretty green, so I would think it could work.

Eugenegant: What is with the guy in Colorado? I have two sisters who live there, and I have not heard a word about him. He might be nuttier than some of the folks in Arizona!

We are set to have three really good weather days in Chicago, and I am looking forward to it. Now, I must get back to Herodotus. He is my responsibility this month and next!

Jane's link to color photos of the Depression on the nature photo thread:

http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.html

On Living

I

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example--
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people--
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front--
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived" ...

Nazim Hikmet

199> Those are some of the best images I have ever seen! I can hear the soulful songs of Guthrie on an endless highway. Thanks, P.

Lisa: what guy in CO are you talking about?

My guess, Eugene, is that Lisa is referring to Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes, who she read about in the Denver Post piece in message #168.

Here's a question I have for you, after noticing, on the map, how close you are to Columbine. Were you living there then, during the shootings, or still back in Wisconsin? And if you were, what was being said about it? I mean, the West, along with the South, has a fixation with guns. Were people questioning laissez-faire gun laws after the student massacre?

S... Lisa is referring to Wilson's post at #168.

VIEW OF A PIG
The pig lay on a barrow dead.
It weighed, they said, as much as three men.
Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes.
Its trotters stuck straight out.

Such weight and thick pink bulk
Set in death seemed not just dead.
It was less than lifeless, further off.
It was like a sack of wheat.

I thumped it without feeling remorse.
One feels guilty insulting the dead,
Walking on graves. But this pig
Did not seem able to accuse.

It was too dead. Just so much
A poundage of lard and pork.
Its last dignity had entirely gone.
It was not a figure of fun.

Too dead now to pity.
To remember its life, din, and stronghold
Of earthly pleasure as it had been,
Seemed a false effort, and off the point.

Too deadly factual. Its weight
Oppressed me - how could it be moved?
And the trouble of cutting it up!
The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.

Once I ran at the fair in the noise
To catch a greased piglet
That was fatter and nimbler than a cat,
Its squeal was the rending of metal.

Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens,
Their bite is worse than a horse's -
They chop a half-moon clean out,
They eat cinders, dead cats.

Distinctions and admirations such
As this one was long finished with.
I stared at it for a long time. They were going to scald it,
Scald it and scour it like a doorstep.

Ted Hughes

Now where did the poet learn to settle his mind like that on to one thing?
It is a valuable thing to be able to do - but something you are never taught at school, and not many people do it naturally. I am not very good at it, but I did acquire some skill at it. Not in school, but while I was fishing. I fished in still water, in those days, with a float. As you know, all such a fisherman does is stare at his float for hours on end. I have spent hundreds of hours staring at a float - a dot of red or yellow the size of a lentil, ten yards away. Those of you who have never done it, might think it is a very drowsy pastime. It is anything but that.

All the little nagging impulses, that are normally distracting your mind, dissolve. They have to dissolve if you are to go on fishing. If they do not, then you can not settle down: you get bored and pack up in a bad temper. But once they have dissolved, you enter one of the orders of bliss.

Your whole being rests lightly on your float, but not drowsily: very alert, so that the least twitch of the float arrives like an electric shock. And you are not only watching the float. You are aware, in a horizonless and slightly mesmerized way, like listening to the double bass in orchestral music, of the fish below there in the dark. At every moment your imagination is alarming itself with the size of the thing slowly leaving the weeds and approaching your bait. Or with the world of beauties down there, suspended in total ignorance of you. And the whole purpose of this concentrated excitement, in this arena of apprehension and unforeseeable events, is to bring up some lovely solid thing, like living metal, from a world where nothing exists but those inevitable facts which raise life out of nothing and return it to nothing.

from WINTER POLLEN And Occasional Prose by Ted Hughes

Oh, thanks. I think Tim Spalding needs to program these threads so they can branch off, like a tree. It would be easier to follow the conversations.

I'll respond later on the Columbine issue later. Right now the Pizza is in the oven and the kudos are hungry. Plus these iPhones are clunky when it comes to typing. Anyone want to gift me a used laptop?

S - Columbine? Feed those kiddos and 'splain yourself. If I had an extra laptop it would be yours. ;-)

Beautiful sunny day today. Menu for the weekend:

Crab, Mango, and Cucumber Salad
Red Snapper in Packages with Carrots and Zucchini
Beet Roesti with Rosemary
Stuffed Tomato Salad
Zucchini Muffins
and probably a steak

Wow, Jane... can I come to your house?

I'll bring a delightful Cabernet...

Heaven. I'll bring a good Spanish bottle.

And I'll bring a Chilean pinot noir I like, and of course a baguette, maybe two.

I'll share that Spanish red with Porios and bring some asiago and garlic marinated olives.

A menacing storm has just passed the Denver area heading out to the eastern plains. The Colorodo Rapids (soccor) will go on! Spinkling rain hitting us as we tailgait in the parking lot.

Pass the crunchy cabbage salad, please! I'll toss over some garlic bread.

What a night. Cool air. The crickets a cricketing. I'm in just long enough to type in my thoughts or what I think are my thoughts. Hotter Sunday. And hellish weather in store for the coming week. A long drive to the North seems to be what the Doktor would ordure, I mean order.

Ditto here. Crickets, lack of humidity, appropriate nighttime air, and hotness comin' in tomorrow and the next day. Alas, I have to go south tomorrow through Monday morn--to Concrete and Pavement Land--in my role as airport chauffeur. My daughter's flying in from Seattle for a week or so.

Small price to pay to be with your daughter.
I saw Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA last night on TCM. What brutal honesty. The mother, played by the incomparable Ingrid Bergman, and daughter by Liv Ullmann. They tore your heart out. And Ingrid Bergman was not doing so well health-wise. She was a giant.

Very pleasant evening here as well. Coolish, slight breeze. Mid 80s most of the coming week increasing to 90ish. Sorry you have to drive to NYC, Wilson, but glad your daughter is visiting!

Maybe today is Philip Larkin's birthday, or maybe it was yesterday. At any rate:

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Pete, where in the hell did you find this amazing distillation of our life stories?

My stories too, which makes it easy. Then I just have to find the poem that captures it.

Yes, of course, thank you, Sandy, while welcoming Steven from Colorado for pointing out that his name is in fact Steven. It's right there on his profile, after all. So, now you know I never read Look Homeward, Angel, in which Eugene Gant is a character.

So, sorry, Steven, for calling you Eugene all this while. And sorry, Tani, for thinking you were again writing in a secret code when you kept addressing our friend from Colorado as simply S. What the hell is she smoking? I wondered.

There are other things I can apologize for; there always are. But I'll leave it at that for now.

This poem is not about Robert Montgomery Knight or maybe it is!

THE RABBIT HUNTER
Careless and still
The hunter lurks
With gun depressed,
Facing alone
The alder swamps
Ghastly snow-white.
And his hound works
In the offing there
Like one possessed,
And yelps delight
And sings and romps,
Bringing him on
The shadowy hare
For him to rend
And deal in death
That he nor it
(Nor I) have wit
To comprehend.

Robert Frost
from A WITNESS TREE (1942)

So, sorry, Steven, for calling you Eugene all this while. And sorry, Tani, for thinking you were again writing in a secret code when you kept addressing our friend from Colorado as simply S. What the hell is she smoking? I wondered.

Ah, Wilson... you crack me up. Of course, I had to fill da Mama in on why there are tears rolling down my face and why my sides hurt. ♥

This Be the Verse fits so well with me too. Of course I would never blame anything on da Mama... but da Papa? Now, that's a different story altogether.

Here's something to add to the enjoyment, dubious though it may be, of the poem PW left us with this fine morning. Here's our poet spreading his good cheer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rjRYSfCJvM&feature=related
Here is our poet again one of the cock-sure 'this is all there is boys', how can he be so certain is what I would like to know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDr_SRhJs80&feature=related
Here's another thought from old Albert Einstein:

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of devoutly religious men.

This is the epigraph for the epilogue IX. in Part One: From Another World of Louis J. Halle's great book, THE STORM PETREL And the Owl of Athena, Princeton University Press, 1970.

Nevertheless, AUBADE is a damned fine effort. Larkin was influenced by the poetry of Yeats & Auden, and he admitted, only after a few pints that, 'deprivation to him was what daffodils were to Wordsworth.' It's hard not to like a fellow who can admit that. He was assisted in some of his irreverent ways by the writer of LUCKY JIM.

Wiki. Though I've been reading Larkin's poetry for some years, now.

I'm glad we are all square that my username is my favorite literary protagonist. My crown jewell on my shelf is a 1929, second Scribners printing of Look Homeward Angel (next to my 1st 1935 printing of Of Time And The River)

Hot 90 degree weather again. Staying indoors out of the sweltering heat, waiting for the afternoon thunder-boomers to roll in.

This one goes out to tc who advised me that the Perseid meteor shower will peak this Thur. & Fri. night. The best time being midnight to dawn on the 12th & 13th, and of course, out of the light pollution of the big cities. Ransick was the previous Colorado Poet Laureate. His stuff is very good; lots of nature themes.

We Watch the Perseids from Cold Canyon from Never Summer: Poems from Thin Air
By Chris Ransick

We lie on the Mexican blanket, spread
over brickle bush & coyote brush.
Through stars make no sound, we tell him, “Hush,
and listen for the shooting stars.” His head
swivels, as late cicadas scratch their songs
for later lovers in the canyon oaks.
The sky, still blue fades black and one star pokes
out to the east, but doesn’t fall. The prongs
of constellations we don’t know arch lights
toward the belt of Perseus, who flings
his meteors to earth on August nights,
and while the lonely last cicada sings,
a burning rock unlaces in the sky,
orange heart breaking, this its final try.

A superlative review of my book, Peter, going way beyond the five stars. I love the mix of your personal life and times with the life and times depicted in the book: to capture a personal sense of truth, which was in fact my own driving force while writing I Think, Therefore Who Am?, as it was with the next book and will be with the book after that. It's the best we can do, after all; accuracy is beyond us.

"Leo's Hexagram." Nice excerpt. Did I actually write that?

Here in the Alps, where I am setting down these observations, we continually run into the same problem. Finding a large blue gentian growing on the turf below the melting snow, we tend to assume it has to be either the Stemless Gentian (Gentiana Clusii) or the Carved Gentian (G. Kochiana). The fact that it appears intermediate between the two makes no difference. We shall have to say which of the two it is when we write up our notes; and so we argue whether it is closer to Clusii (and therefore must in fact be Clusii) or closer to Kochiana (and therefore must be Kochiana). 'In fact' it is neither, since neither Clusii nor Kochiana exists as a fact of Nature, any more than distinct degrees on the scale of a thermometer exist as facts of Nature.

For reasons it would be interesting to explore, these present-day continuums in Nature are less frequent in the animal kingdom, where the existing branch-ends generally appear to be more distinctly separated from one another; but they occur here too. It may be that the Song Sparrow, in its variation from Maine to Arizona, represents a continuum (which the taxonomic authorities have agreed to divide into 20 subspecies, although they might have divided it into more or fewer), and that the Maine and Arizona forms would be listed as two distinct species, respectively, if the intermediate forms had become extinct. When it comes to the Yellow Wagtail group in the Old World, the concept of species appears to break down completely, as it appears to do in the botanical genera Aster and Solidago.

The examples I have given here illustrate a philosophic principle. It is that we inhabit two worlds at once, a world of real phenomena , on the one hand, a world of nominal ideas on the other. The physical gentian growing out of the turf belongs to the world of real phrnomena; Clusii or Kochiana belongs to the world nominal ideas. The one exists in Nature, the other only in our minds. Motacilla flava, likewise, is a nominal concept which cannot quite be made to fit the variegated reality to which we try to apply it.

To state the matter in its simplest terms, we may say that there are things and there are names we attribute to things. The first are real in a sense in which the latter are not. When we argue about the identification of the gentian, then, we are not arguing about what it really is but, rather, about what to call it for the purpose of communicating or recording our observation. What we call it should tell us as much as possible about the reality, but it is not itself a reality.

Taxonomy undertakes to devise a nominal world that will fit the world of physical realities as closely as may be. This undertaking can never be more than partially successful, however, because of an inherent difference between the two worlds. The nominal world is by its nature a categorical world, while the real world is essentially uncategorical. Motacilla flava is a categorical term applied to uncategorical realities. In the nominal world the temperature goes up by categorical steps, by degrees Fahrenheit, while in the real world its variation is continuous. In the nominal world the branches of the Tree of Life diverge by categorical steps - by subspecies, species, genera, etc. - while in the real world the converge continuously.

This is not to suggest that the world of nominal categories is necessarily a fraud. It is a fraud only when it presents itself to us as identical with the world of Nature. Because the centuries-old habit, however, we are prone to confuse the two (to believe that God or Nature created the Stemless Gentian and the Carved Gentian, each according to its kind). When we do this we tend to lose our grasp of reality and to end, perhaps, in a preoccupation with problems that are essentially irrelevant to it.

We understand Nature more truly, then, when we bear in mind that its real existence is independent of the rough nominal description we make of it. Taxonomic systems are a necessity of human thought and understanding, but they can never be quite true to Nature and should never, therefore, be taken literally.

It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who admonished us to think things rather than words.
While we cannot think without words in fact, we can at least understand their limitations in the act of using them.

from THE STORM PETREL And the Owl of Athena by Lois J. Halle, Princeton University Press, 1970

Aww... Thanks, Cowboy! Chris Ransick put it wonderfully. Kinda wish we had cicadas around here (sorta/not really). I cannot wait for Thursday night. Being up here has its advantages.

>231 Porius:. I had a case of deja vu, reading your entry, Peter, and then it came to me: this matter of species, genus, and so on was discussed at length in The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand, around the time of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the debunking of Louis Agassiz's more value-laden catgories; discussed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and William James, among others.

I've read Menand faithfully in the NYRB's over the years. Tony Judt is currently doing the job wonderfully well even though he's far from well. I've learned so much from the NYRB's over the years it's hard to calculate how much. And I would be not happy with myself if I didn't plug for the great great David Levine. He's the absolute best. We miss him.
http://www.irancartoon.ir/gallery/albums/album82/David_Levine_Par_iuo_meme.gif
http://ultimaspaginas.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/edmund_wilson.gif
The poet of our recent discussions
http://storms.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/28/larkin.jpg
http://theatreworld.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/chekhov_anton-1976-by-david-levi...

As it turns out, Tony Judt is not doing well at all, he's not doing at all, he's dead.

What, is he dead? I've been following the essays without realizing. I such a stoopid! It looks as though he passed away this past weekend.

Ah, too bad. To his credit, he saw it coming and continued to write, about it and other things, in NYRB. In fact, I came across Tony Judt years ago in NYRB, when he was writing highly intelligent and interesting pieces about Europe and the European Union, which brought me to Postwar, A History of Europe Since 1945, an 800 page tome, and then The Burden of Responsibility, essays on Leon Blum, Raymond Aron, and Albert Camus.

A year or two ago, in speaking out about Israel and the plight of the Palestinians, the shit brigade went at him. But after bringing the subject up, along with John Mearsheimer and others who were similarly attacked with the canard of being anti-Semitic, we now begin to see some actual discussion on that abomination, which is at least a start.

Large Bad Picture

Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great-uncle painted a big picture.

Receding for miles on either side
into a flushed, still sky
are overhanging pale blue cliffs
hundreds of feet high,

their bases fretted by little arches,
the entrances to caves
running in along the level of a bay
masked by perfect waves.

On the middle of that quiet floor
sits a fleet of small black ships,
square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
their spars like burnt match-sticks.

And high above them, over the tall cliffs'
semi-translucent ranks,
are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds
hanging in n's in banks.

One can hear their crying, crying,
the only sound there is
except for occasional sizhine
as a large aquatic animal breathes.

In the pink light
the small red sun goes rolling, rolling,
round and round and round at the same height
in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling,

while the ships consider it.
Apparently they have reached their destination.
It would be hard to say what brought them there,
commerce or contemplation.

Elizabeth Bishop

TINTERN ABBEY
Five years have past, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. - Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under the dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I might have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft -
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart -
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer thro' the woods,
And now, with gleams of half extinguished thought,
With many recollections dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The courser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.- I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.- That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of they wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgements, nor sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance -
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence - wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

William Wordsworth

Wow! Love the Bishop and Wordsworth guys!

Heat, humidity, torpor ... I spent the day dragging my carcass from place to place. Enervation. The so-called dog days. To have been in suspended animation would at least have been some semblance of animation.

I have always liked Bishop. Staying on the same geographic elements, how about this one from Neuda:

The Sea

The Pacific Ocean was overflowing the borders of the map.
There was no place to put it. It was so large, wild and blue that it
didn’t fit anywhere. That’s why it was left in front of my window.
The humanist worried about the little men it devoured over
the years.
They do not count.
Not even that galleon, laden with cinnamon and pepper that
Perfumed it as it went down.
No.
Not even the explorers’ ship-fragile as a cradle dashed to pieces in the abyss—which keeled over with its starving men.
No.
In the ocean, a man dissolves like a bar of salt. And the water
doesn’t know it.

~Pablo Neruda from Isla Negra

P.S. Just curious -any copyright violation for posting these complete poems on this site? At least the one's not in the public domain?

I'm sure Tim will let you know if and when the lawyers show up.

Maybe a moment or two with the FAQ and the TOS will clear this up.

Yeah, I should likely take take it down...soon. How's the Leatherstocking Tales coming along? I have a 1954 edition edited by Allan Nevins waiting patiently for me to crack open someday.

As I see it, poetry needs all the help--i.e., prospective readers--it can get, and printing poems can serve that purpose. To do this, it would help, where possible, to note the name of the book a poem comes from in "Touchstone" form. For a while I did this, usually after Peter presented a bunch of Frosts, but the poems have come up so fast since, and I also got lazy.

So, "The Sea" by Pablo Neruda appears in Isla Negra, as you in fact noted above, Steven.

Booksellers are in a catch-22 situation over copyrights. On the one hand, excerpts, or in this case whole poems, can sell books, but if you don't defend your copyright you can lose it. That's why you see big corps like Disney jump all over some guy who expropriates an image of Mickey Mouse for his obscure web-site. Not because they want their money (although that's probably part of it, too), but because if they show a history of not defending the copyright it may not be there when Murdoch or Time, Inc. or some other mega-corp expropriates Mickey for their purposes on a much larger scale. Courts have rejected plaintiffs claims when the defendant shows the plaintiff has a history of not defending the copyright.

Change patent for copyright and you have the same issue with inventions.

This poem might or might not be from Geography III: Poems:

A Summer’s Dream

To the sagging wharf
few ships could come.
The population numbered
two giants, an idiot, a dwarf,

a gentle storekeeper
asleep behind his counter,
and our kind landlady—
the dwarf was her dressmaker.

The idiot could be beguiled
by picking blackberries,
but then threw them away.
The shrunken seamstress smiled.

By the sea, lying
blue as a mackerel,
our boarding house was streaked
as though it had been crying.

Extraordinary geraniums
crowded the front windows,
the floors glittered with
assorted linoleums.

Every night we listened
for a horned owl.
In the horned lamp flame,
the wallpaper glistened.

The giant with the stammer
was the landlady’s son,
grumbling on the stairs
over an old grammar.

He was morose,
but she was cheerful.
The bedroom was cold,
the feather bed close.

We were awakened in the dark by
the somnambulist brook
nearing the sea,
still dreaming audibly.

Elizabeth Bishop

ON WENLOCK EDGE THE WOOD'S IN TROUBLE
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
Today the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

A. E. Housman
from A SHROPSHIRE LAD 1896

A SHROPSHIRE LAD appeared in 1896 and LAST POEMS in 1922. Most of LAST POEMS had been written by 1895 and 1910. Laurence H. printed several of the poems that might never have escaped A.E.'s clutches. Imagined imperfections. The pursuit of perfection is there in all of AEH's poems. Lapidary classical phrases in a sturdy forthright Saxon syntax. The mythical Shropshire Lad is preoccupied with soldiers and death. Not unlike AEH's outlook. The poems have always had a mixed reception. Written in direct, simple meters. A perfection within this narrow compass is seldom, if ever, duplicated.

Outside on the deck in back, overlooking the forest, no moon that I can see, though the sky is all but obscured by the jungle of leaves. It's a riot of noise out there, insects clacking away. This was the last of a string of hot days, or so they say, at least so far as tomorrow (forecast: 79 degrees) and the next day are concerned. It occurs to me that I never noted that there are no annoying insects this year--no flies, no mosquitoes, nada--no doubt having to do with when it rained and when it didn't; or maybe not. What do I know? I'm still an urban guy living in the country, however long I might have been here.

Not many bugs here either. Not a mosquito bite. Well maybe something that looks and sounds like Newt Gingrich a little. And a bug that looks like that congressman from Ohio. Or a noisy Alaskan insect, one given us by that fellow from Arizona. Maybe we could call the 'Hammer' and he could render the Republick a service for a change.

It has been coolish here the last couple of days floating in the mid-upper 70s. However, beginning tomorrow it will begin a warming trend to the mid-upper 90s through mid next week. Perseids are tomorrow night!!! Gonna grab a friend who turns 50 on Friday and go out to an old burn down the road and watch 'em. Last year sucked because of the waning moon. This year should be awesome. Can't wait!

It's almost spring here. I read about Levin's early spring in Anna Karenina yesterday, and it resonated.

In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth... Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow-legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers... The dairymaids, hitching up their skirts, their bare, white, as yet untanned legs splashing in the mud, ran with switches after the calves and drove them, lowing and crazed with spring joy, into the yard.
Tolstoy, Pevear and Volokhonsky

The details aren't the same here, but the feeling is. Strong wind blowing life back into us all. I take a day off work tomorrow, and I am going to sow my tomato seeds.

That marvelous description, Sheila, deserves a reward. These guys are British, I know, but they sound Australian to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAM9diIDHqs

249 - All your bugs are down in the city this year. There have been an unusually large number of of the crawlies this year.

You may keep them for the rest of the summer, Jane. I'll probably be getting them back next year.

#252 I hope I haven't deceived you, Piero. It's not MY description. It's Tolstoy's, and Pevear and Volokhonsky's. Maybe you do know that, but just in case, I should make it clear.

And they sound pretty British to me :)

Speaking of bugs, this is Australian bug news - a looming locust plague: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2009348,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Bugs! We have a surfeit of mosquitoes this year. Apparently all of this rain has contributed to a standing water problem which is breeding the darned things. People are complaining that even with mosquito repellent on they are being eaten alive. Even here at the lakefront the little monsters are out in the park. If there is one within a mile it will find me. I hates them.

Excessive heat advisory here for the next two days with low nineties, high humidity and not a cloud in sight. I won't mind staying in all day today.

The Mosquito

When did you start your tricks,
Monsieur ?

What do you stand on such high legs for?
Why this length of shredded shank,
You exaltation?

Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards
And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me,
Stand upon me weightless, you phantom?

I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory
In sluggish Venice.
You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.

How can you put so much devilry
Into that translucent phantom shred
Of a frail corpus?

Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legs
How you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air,
A nothingness.

Yet what an aura surrounds you;
Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic:
Invisibility, and the anesthetic power
To deaden my attention in your direction.
But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer.

Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air
In circles and evasions, enveloping me,
Ghoul on wings
Winged Victory.

Settle, and stand on long thin shanks
Eyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware,
You speck.

I hate the way you lurch off sideways into air
Having read my thoughts against you.

Come then, let us play at unawares,
And see who wins in this sly game of bluff,
Man or mosquito.

You don’t know that I exist, and I don’t know that you exist.
Now then!

It is your trump,
It is your hateful little trump,
You pointed fiend,
Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you :
It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.

Why do you do it?
Surely it is bad policy.

They say you can’t help it.

If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent.
But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan,
A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.

Blood, red blood
Super-magical
Forbidden liquor.

I behold you stand
For a second enspasmed in oblivion,
Obscenely estasied
Sucking live blood,
My blood.

Such silence, such suspended transport,
Such gorging,
Such obscenity of trespass.

You stagger
As well as you may.
Only your accursed hairy frailty,
Your own imponderable weightlessness
Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching.

Away with a pæan of derision,
You winged blood-drop.

Can I not overtake you?
Are you one too many for me,
Winged Victory ?
Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?

Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

D.H. Lawrence

LINES TO MR. FROST
Felled in my tracks by your tremendous horse
slain in its tracks by the angel of good God,
I wonder toward your marvellous tall art
warning away maybe in that same morning

you sqaundered afternoon of your great age
on my good gravid wife & me, with tales
gay of your cunning & colossal fame
& awful character, and - Christ - I see

I knew & can do nothing, and don't mind -
you're talking about American power and how
somehow we've got to be got to give it up -
so help me, in my poverty-stricken way

I said the same goddamn thing yesterday
to my thirty kids, so I was almost ready
to hear you from the grave with these passionate grave
last words, and frankly Sir you fill me with joy.

from DELUSIONS by John Berryman

Berryman died on 7 Jan, 1972. A great year in the lives of the Baby Boomer. Maybe a little too great now that we look back on it from this remove.

'Although mourning and melancholia became the great themes of Berryman's poetic maturity, a weird gaiety comes through his work, sometimes manic, always fragile, yet nevertheless irrepressible . . . It was a kind of intensity of the spirit, buoyant, witty, inventive . . . For years I have been extolling the virtues of what I have called extremest poetry, in which the artists deliberately push their perceptions to the very edge of the tolerable. Both Berryman and Sylvia Plath were masters of the style. But knowing now how they both died I no longer believe that any art - even that as fine as they produced at their best - is worth the terrible cost.'
A. Alvarez, The NY Times Book Rev.

I tend to agree. I prefer the the writers like Anthony Trollope (his mother Frances), Robertson Davies, Robert Frost - those who don't rely on inspiration, but getting out of the sack everyday and pounding out the work.

I know I can be long-winded but I happened upon this fairly recent essay on DFW that illustrates my point above about the Inspiration v. workaday writer tension. My apologies to DFW enthusiasts, I mean his shade no harm, though I can't count myself among the tribe of DFW, certainly. Apropos of all things DFW, this little gem, I think it's a gem, comes in the form of a footnote!

1. This idea of W. was pervasive enough, by 2003, for the ONION to publish a piece devoted to it: 'Girlfriend stops reading DFW Breakup Letter at p. 20':
Claire Thompson, author DFW's girlfriend of 2 years, stopped reading his 67 p. breakup letter at p. 20, she admitted Monday. 'It was pretty good, I guess, but I couldn't get all the way through,' said Thompson, 32, who was given the 7 chapter, heavily footnoted 'Dear John' missive on 3 Feb. 'I always meant to pick it up again, but then I got busy and, oh, I don't know. He's talented, (eyeyahyyi), but his letters can sometimes get a little self-indulgent.'

I'm no DFW fan but this element is cold.
The parenthetical remark 3 lines above is, of course, mine.

Hellishly hot. Very little in the way of breezes to make the situation at least tolerable. If the heat wassn't bad enough there is Newt Gingrich to contemplate. The soft pudgy fellow would take away our cakes and ale. That pfuck has no shame. He no doubt sat in on some of Slick Willie's mothers' lectures. This is what we have in the way of 'idea men', sheesh, we are pfucked, that's all I can say, we are pfucked.

A shift in the weather pattern that hottened us all, more or less, so far this summer. Didn't even hit 80 here today, with maybe the low eighties the next two days. Hot in the South and Midwest, as you say, but in the Northeast:

A frontal boundary brought cooler temperatures with more scattered showers and thunderstorms to the Mid-Atlantic.

As for Newt Gingrich and the other pfucks, Peter, I suggest closing your eyes when you come online so the headlines don't assault you; don't watch news or commentary TV; and eschew newspapers. Works for me.

No Perseids (sp?) meteor shower in this hazy, foggy, soupy, drizzly night, tonight. Oh, well, maybe I shall get some sleep instead...

Yes, overcast all day and now night. But here are a few meteors, Sandy, courtesy of Porius and YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XTBrYWrey0

And this, with music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XVjT1gnYLg&NR=1

Alas, the birthday girl has boged out on me (I found the greatest spot in the old burn too with views of Bachelor and Paulina Peak), but that's okay. She played too hard last night and is lethargic today. So I will sit on my driveway and enjoy a bottle of Merlot and the show. I would go by myself but Da Mama thinks I'll get killed or something out there and the last thing I want to do is freak her out. *sigh* Best laid plans and all that.

Pretty good stuff from Damon Linker (and Primo Levi) ruminating on suffering, death and religious belief in an amazingly brief piece.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/76925/the-most-pressing-question

I was raised religious enough that I understand that point of view, think it contains some essential truths even, but put me in the atheist/existentialist camp.

I thought it an interesting piece, slick, but disagree with the dichotomy (between the religious and those not) at its conclusion. To paraphrase a bit from the text:

Levi and Hitchens believe they are most themselves when they are healthy and free—at the height of their human powers; whatever they may feel or say (or be tempted to say) in moments of weakness or degradation deserves to be dismissed as inauthentic. But the devout insist that human beings are truest to themselves—most authentic—when they are most vulnerable.

And then the writer asks: Which of them is right?

I don't see it as either/or. As human beings, we go through a variety of states, unless our mind-set is fixed, which of course precludes taking in and reacting to all--or at least more--that is human. There are times we feel vulnerable, and perhaps insecure and humble, and times when we're not. These are not "camps." It's the flow of life.

The Perseids were fantastic! Was up until 3am enjoying the show. In fact, just dragged my lazy bones outta bed. Next year I will definitely go either to my spot on the old burn or Pine Mountain Observatory. Too many trees for optimum viewing. But a great time anyway! And yes, Cowboy, I made a wish... several actually.

If Actually Dead

Where did the Sage withdraw to, where did he disappear?
After his many miracles,
the renown of his teaching
which spread to so many countries,
he suddenly hid himself and nobody knew for certain
what happened to him
(nor did anybody ever see his grave).
Some reported that he died at Ephesus.
But Damis does not record that in his memoir.
Damis says nothing about the death of Apollonios.
Others said that he disappeared at Lindos.
Or maybe the story is true
about his assumption in Crete,
at the ancient sanctuary of Diktynna.
But then again we have that miraculous,
that supernatural apparition of his
before a young student at Tyana.
Maybe the time has not yet come for him to return
and show himself to the world again;
or maybe, transfigured, he moves among us
unrecognized—. But he will come again
as he was, teaching the ways of truth; and then of course
he will bring back the worship of our gods
and our elegant Hellenic rites.”

These were the musings of one of the few pagans,
one of the very few still left,
as he sat in his shabby room just after reading
Philostratos’ On Apollonios of Tyana.
But even he—a trivial and cowardly man—
played the Christian in public and went to church.
It was the time when Justin, known as the elder,
reigned in total piety,
and Alexandria, a godly city,
detested pitiful idolators.

by C.P. Cavafy

~trans. Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard

tc53591, how do you wish on a shooting star? Is there a formula? Do you have to keep your wits about you and say something coherent while the star is still visible? Our last settled minister's wife said all you have to do is wish, but I wonder if there isn't a key.

Robert

Merveilleux, Henri.

There must be hundreds of pages in the Kaballah, maybe thousands, devoted to the somewhat same subject. As well as this pop song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZEO1Lug25s

Mr. Durick, the key is to know what you want ahead of time. For the Perseids, one must always make a list of wishes ahead of time and yes, you must keep your wits about you, else you miss an opportunity. And you never, ever wish aloud. ;-)

I will follow your counsel and hope to use your suggestions sometime soon. I am surprised by the never wishing aloud, but I'll bet you you can't tell anybody your wish. Can you wish for something evil? Is that how the masters of the universe on Wall Street have turned the United States of America into a banana republic?

Robert

I changed my mind, Robert, decided to rewrite this entry. In retrospect, it seemed presumptuous. Go ahead and wish on a star if you like.

266: You are right on target with that.

Peter, I believe I cannot tell you what I might wish for without the wish being canceled. Depending on the night, that might have tragic consequences for all humanity or maybe just me.

Robert

I rewrote that entry, and thus turned everything subsequent to it into gibberish. My apologies, Robert. Whereas you seem to think you can create history in advance by wishing, wishing is too--pardon me--wishy-washy for my taste. I'd rather rewrite history after it occurs. Maybe I should join the Tea Party.

270> Gracias, Piero. You really can't go wrong with C.P., who has a poem for just about any occasion or topic or belief it seems.

I like that Joan Osborne a lot. I believe she hit big with "One of Us" right around the same time that Alanis Morissette went HUGE with Jagged Little Pill. I remember Grace Slick saying at the time, something to the effect that, she wished she was Alanis.

The effect on me, every time I hear Joan, I can't help but think of Alanis and Grace as well.

I just thought you oughta know.

Loved Alanis in Curb Your Enthusiasm. My daughter thinks, btw, in my inappropriateness, that I'm like Larry David.

The Coach of Life

Although her load is sometimes heavy,
The coach moves at an easy pace;
The dashing driver, gray-haired time
Drives on, secure upon his box.

At dawn we gaily climb aboard her
We're ready for a crazy ride,
And scorning laziness and languor,
We shout: "Get on, there! Don't delay!"

But midday finds our courage wane,
We're shaken now: and at this hour
Both hills and dales inspire dread.
We shout: "Hold on, drive slower, fool!"

The coach drives on just as before;
By eve we are used to it,
And doze as we attain our inn.
While Time just drives the horses on.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

WHO GOES WITH FERGUS?
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And piece the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

from THE ROSE
1892
William Butler Yeats

I feel like the riders on Pushkin's coach today. And this is why.

I am going for the Merlot while I prepare dinner.

Thanks for the Pushkin and Yeats, P's!

278> Your daughter pays you quite the compliment. Being inappropriate is an art, and takes years of trial and error to master. I applaud your inappropriateness, which I find perfectly appropriate.

Thanks, Tani!, for telling us about your BM account!

Well, if you had been paying any attention to my profile, oh fearless Dicktatur, you would have seen that I have one. ;-p

Yeah, but Larry is such a putz, isn't he?

Nice, cool night. I am going to go out on the back deck now, listen to the crickets, who have calmed down some, and, surrounded by the leaves, smoke a cigar.

I think I will join you, Wilson... I have been passing Merlot around, want some?

It would just make me sleepy, Tani. I already had a glass or two of cabernet sauvignon, which is about my limit. Plus, I've been eating tomatoes all day. I am an aciditic fellow, you might say. But then, my system seems to crave that.

Well, two is my limit as well... I will cork it for another day. (and I don't think you're a putz, so you couldn't possibly be like Larry David) But then, I am not your daughter either. ;-)

Infernally hot & muggy still. Rain promised but no rain yet. Had the bright idea that I should go to a used bookstore today to track down a couple of items. Just so happened it was a 5 story job with no air (conditioning). As you can imagine it was hotter than hell or a 2 dollar pistol in that place. I wandered around for 45 minutes or so until I could stand it no longer. I purchased the book that I came there for, aptly titled THE RAW AND THE COOKED, a whole shelf of books on the great 'Victorian', (late), he died in 1909, eight years after Q.V., novelist, George Meredith - including Priestley's, Pritchett's, Ellis's biography of Boxhill's sage. As I walked out the door and turned right to go to my car, coming towards the door were, four, what I could only describe as Mennonite or Amish folks. Twin daughters followed by parents that looked like Hoss Cartwright and his lady wife. An otherworldly bunch who had a fatally fresh innocence about them seldom scene in this part of Detroit, not the best, by the way, or any other. The twin daughters had print frocks on that you might see in an episode of that family which included 'John Boy' or some such, and the golden radiance of their faces remained in my mind's eye for some few hours after. What they were doing going into this messy, but excellent inner-city bookstore was a matter for some puzzlement on my part for the rest of the afternoon. I thought that the Holy Bible was enough reading for these folks. but what do I know? They made the hell-like weather a little pleasanter, if only for a few moments.

It is the weekend of the Chicago Air and Water Show, and the weather is cooperating. Hot, humid and clear skies. Friends always want to see it from the water, so we had one group yesterday and another today. Keeps me occupied and away from the computer, but I guess it is not such a bad thing to bring the boat out, set the anchor and watch some great acrobatic acts and some very loud and very impressive planes while enjoying the company of friends and family.

Have to admit,however, that I am going to be very glad when it is all over tonight, everything is cleaned up and we go back to just us and the dogs.

Shema

You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Primo Levi

Wow... that was intense, Wilson!

Some explanation.

I assume that Shema refers to the first word in the essential Hebrew prayer all Jews chant in synagogue, and elsewhere, beginning: "Shema Yisroel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echud." Shema being the transliteration for "O hear" (more often rendered as Sh'ma); Adonai meaning God. So, my rough translation is:

"Hear O Israel"--meaning the people of Israel, not the modern state--"the Lord our god, the Lord is one."

Which perhaps might add something to the reading of Levi's poem.

Thanks, Wilson... I kinda knew all that, but was referring to the content being intense. Makes one really think about themselves and how we are living our lives. What we should be grateful for and what we should be doing.

You did? You continue to amaze me, Tani.

I do have some religious background... not that I practice it. Am more of a knowledge seeker than a practitioner.

After another very hot day it is cooling off, slowly, but cooling off. A refreshing breeze for a change. We haven't had to record much of anything on the Beaufort Scale, it seems, in days. All the teacups on Saki's least favorite aunts' shelves are safe for the nonce. It looks like a cooler week ahead. Very happy to send this tropical weather packing.

Raining on and off all day. Last night I actually put on a long sleeve shirt for a while. Back into the high eighties again tomorrow and the next day they say, when I trip down to Pavement City again (where's my chauffeur hat?), but High Summer is most definitely fading here.

We are in the midst of our heat... last night it was 66° at 11pm. NOT normal up here. We usually cool off to low 50s by then. 70° right now and I am in heaven... course I get to go in to a cool house too. Supposed to be 97-98-86-88-82-80-80 this week. We'll see.

Often, getting up in the morning, I assume my mind and body are telling me what it's like to feel old. How would I know otherwise?

Old Age Gets Up

Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks

An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention

The light at the window, so square and so same
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on

Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia

Something tries to save itself--searches
For defenses--but words evade
Like flies with their own notions

Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death's night
Sits on the bed's edge

Pulls its pieces together
Loosely tucks in its shirt

Ted Hughes

Old Ted got it just right, didn' he?

Old men dream that:
1
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
She walks in beauty, like the night,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And ll that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

2
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
3
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1814)

"August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied." ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

MYFANWY
Kind o'er the kinderbank leans my Mynfanwy,
White o'er the play-pen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap-scented fingers I long to caress.

Were you a prefect and head of your dormit'ry?
Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?
Who was your favorite? Who had a crush on you?
Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

Smooth down the avenue glitters the bicycle,
Black-stockinged legs under navy-blue serge,
Home and Colonial, Star, International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge.

Trace me your wheel-tracks,you fortunate bicycle,
Out of the shopping and into the dark,
Back down the Avenue, back to the pottingshed,
Back to the house on the fringe of the park.

Golden the light on the docks of Myfanwy,
Golden the light on the book on her knee,
Finger-marked pages of Rackham's Hans Andersen
Time for the children to come down for tea.

Oh! Fuller's angel-cake, Robertson's marmalade,
Liberty lampshade, come, shine on us all,
My! what a spread for the friends of Myfanwy
Some in the alcove and some in the hall.

Then what sardines in the half-lighted passages!
Locking of fingers in long hide-and-seek,
You will protect me my silken Myfanwy,
Ringleader, tom-boy, and chum to the weak.

from THE BEST OF JOHN BETJEMAN, ed. by John Guest
Betjeman was also a leading authority on architecture, especially Victorian church architecture.

TO PAN
All ye woods, and trees, and bowers,
All ye virtues and ye powers
That inhabit in the lakes,
Move your feet
To our sound
Whist we greet
All this ground
With his honor and his name
That defends our flocks from blame.

He is great, and he is just,
He is ever good, and must
Thus be honored. Daffadillies,
Roses, pinks, and loved lilies,
Let us fling,
Whilst we sing,
Ever holy,
Ever holy,
Ever honored, ever young!
Thus great Pan is ever sung.

from THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS
By John Fletcher

John Fletcher (1579-1625)
J.F. seems to have been the most industrious playwright of his day. Born in the coastal village of Rye, he was educated at Cambridge and came to London in his early 20's. There he consorted with metropolitan poets and dramatists who, recognizing his talent as well as his charm, became his good friends and ready partners. He wrote not fewer than 16 plays himself, and at least another 16 with Francis Beaumont; 2 or 3 with Shakespeare - THE WOMAN'S PRIZE, OR TAMER TAMED (PROBABLY F. ALONE) depicts the domestication of Shakespeare's Petruchio - and more than a dozen comedies and tragedies with other collaborators. He was planning more work in his favorite genre, tragicomedy, when he succumbed to the plague and died in his 46th year.

Flethcher's closest friend and best collaborator was the precocious Beaumont; theirs has been called a 'perfect union of genius and friendship.' They lived together for years; shared the same clothes, the same mistress. Beaumont's was the more dramatic power, Fletcher the lyric talent. F's songs, gracefully moving and seemingly spontaneous in their ease, are as light in texture as they are sure in tone. 'The Faithful Shepherdess was the forerunner of Milton's COMUS. F's fluent couplets of THE RIVER GOD anticipated L'ALLEGRO, and the lines beginning 'Hence, all you vain delights' were amplified in IL PENSEROSO. 'Milton himself,' said A.C. Bradley, 'though he put a greater volume of imagination and sound into the measure, never gave it such an airy lightness, and we must look to Shelley for an echo to these lyrics.
After a period of long neglect, Fletcher's poetry is beginning to attract a new audience and a fresh appreciation. It deserves more than it has received.

from A TREASURY OF GREAT POEMS, Vol. One. from Chaucer to Burns, by Louis Untermeyer, Simon & Shuster, NY, 1967.

Mother, Summer, I

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

Philip Larkin

Larkin must have written that for me... (How do you do that? You know just what I need to hear)

Larkin's was a perfectly, no, immensely satisfying poem. A master at work. Not much merriment, but a master nonetheless.

We who are born in late August understand this so well... Yes, immensely satisfying.

>305 highdesertlady:. Oh, it's you, Tani. And here I thought we had a newcomer on the thread. What is it with everyone changing their names recently?

Second time in the past week or so I've been accused of reading minds. Perhaps I'm being channeled by a higher power, but more likely it's what Peter said, kind of. Just about anything I'd pick out written by this Larkin fellow would be apt. Which reminds me, P: I meant to virtually slap you on the back for your out loud Larkin offering back in #225. What a fine voice, and the two poems presented without the coffeehouse affectation and self-importance that turned me off poetry for years.

I especially liked the Ted Hughes and Betjeman.

The second you must read aloud, even if under your breath. Or, at least, moving your lips as you go. How is Myfanwy pronounced? I think, but my Welsh pronunciation is not reliable, Mu (as in much)-Van (as in Vaughan) - Wee (as in the goat man's whistle).

;-) > 308 You'll know when you know... That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

There doesn't seem to be an agreement on how to pronounce 'lovely little one'.
Miv-ahn-wie
Mi-van-wee
etc. etc. etc.

On a tattered yellow tablet, carefully written in longhand, the restless cowboy pens a heartfelt journal entry:

"I never planned things well enough. There was always a gap between my plan and what happened, and I only responded to things as they came along and hoped I wouldn't get into trouble. I was an offender in the law's eyes. But I always thought differently, as if I weren't an offender and had no intention of being one, which was the truth. But as I read on a napkin once, between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender's acts, and my ideas, which were as good as the gold they mined there where the bright lights were blazing."
(pg. 17 from Rock Springs by Richard Ford

Y'all are givin' me the shivers today!

ETA Wow, with all the rain dancing going on over on the music thread we are experiencing a squall at the moment.

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly--
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads--

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

Ted Hughes

Ted is right on target as usual. We are like hawks and peregrine falcons in some ways. It's in that 'attention' that Montaigne talked of often.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGoNb9JUhVo&feature=related

Okay... Stop it! I just came in from a smoke whilst watching a hawk doing lazy circles above.

It looks as though the CCCC is working to capacity today. As old Charles Fort used to say: 'it steamrolls when it comes steamrollin time.'

ROGER BACON
He had strange dreams
that were real
in which he saw God
showing him an aperture
of the horizon wherein
were flasks and test-tubes.
And the rainbow
ended there not in a pot
of gold, but in colors
that, dissected, had the ingredients of
the death ray.

Faces at the window
of his mind
had the false understanding
of flowers, but their eyes pointed
like arrows to
an imprisoning cell.
Yet
he dreamed on in curves
and equations
with the smell of saltpetre
in his nostrils, and saw the hole
in God's side that is the wound
of knowledge and
thrust his hand in it and believed.

R.S. Thomas

>316 highdesertlady:. Do I got your number, or do I got your number, Ms. La Pine?

Comfortable weather. Average temperatures prevail. Humidity not really a factor. The breezes are playing peek-a-boo but are there somewhere.

Oy ve... do you got my number, Wilson!

Hoo Doggy! We gots us some big lightning!

The high desert lady has a short attention span.

Holy Crap! That was a great storm! Still rumbling...

What about my attention span, Wilson? What'd I miss?

Actually, it's still going on... Not quite as good as last August's storm, but is way cool! Well, maybe I better save that impression for when it's over...

This just in... (okay it was a few hours ago)

At 612 PM PDT... National Weather Service Doppler radar was tracking a
strong thunderstorm near La Pine... or 25 miles south of
Bend... moving north at 30 mph.

Hail up to the size of nickels and wind gusts up to 50 mph are
expected with this storm.

This storm may intensify... so be certain to monitor local radio and
TV stations... as well as local cable TV outlets... for additional
information and possible warnings from the National Weather Service.

Poor dogs are freaking out. Flashes all over the place and loud boomers. Gawd, I love it here!

The Artist

Mr T.
bareheaded
in a soiled undershirt
his hair standing out
on all sides
stood on his toes
heels together
arms gracefully
for the moment

curled above his head.
Then he whirled about
bounded
into the air
and with an entrechat
perfectly achieved
completed the figure.
My mother
taken by surprise
where she sat
in her invalid's chair
was left speechless.
Bravo! she cried at last
and clapped her hands.
The man's wife
came from the kitchen:
What goes on here? she said.
But the show was over.

William Carlos Williams

EMERGING
Well, I said, better to wait
for him on some peninsula
of the spirit, Surely for one
with patience he will happen by
once in a while. It was the heart
spoke. The mind, sceptical as always
of the anthropomorphisms
of the fancy, knew he must be put together
like a poem or a composition
in music, that what he conforms to
is art. A promontory is a bare
place; no God leans down
out of the air to take the hand
extended to him. The generations have
watched there
in vain. We are beginning to see
now it is matter is the scaffolding
of spirit; that the poem emerges
from morphemes and phonemes; that
as form in sculpture is the prisoner
of the hard rock, so in everyday life
it is the plain facts and natural happenings
that conceal God and reveal him to us
little by little under the mind's tooling.

R.S. Thomas

There's an old couch I tried to get rid of years ago. The Salvation Army declined to take because of a candlewax stain on one arm, so it now sits behind the house, beneath the overhang of my woodstove room. Sometimes I sit there, like an old hippie, taking in the backyard and the forest.

Yesterday, and several other days this week and last, in addition to birdsong and the scrabble of small critters on dead leaves, I heard dulcet trumpet notes blown by someone a few houses away. I can't stand radio noise out there, though that hardly ever intrudes on the natural sounds, but I don't mind the trumpet, or the clarinet someone played last year. Actually, I like it. But then, the trumpeter is quite good, whether he (or she) is playing scales or working on a song. Sounds professional, in fact.

THE THREE HERMITS
Three old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea,
First was muttering a prayer,
Second rummaged for a flea;
On a windy stone, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird:
'Though the door of death is near
And what waits behind the door,
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore,
Fall asleep when I should pray.'
So the first, but now the second:
'Were but given what we have earned
When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,
So it's plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men
Who have failed, being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Birth again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They've the passion to escape.'
Moaned the other, 'They are thrown
Into some most fearful shape.'
But the second mocked his moan:
'They are not changed to anything,
Having loved God once, but maybe
To a poet or a king
Or a witty lovely lady.'
While he'd rummaged rags and hair,
Caught and cracked his flea, the third
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird.

from RESPONSIBILITIES (1914)
William Butler Yeats

Nice one, Mr. Yeats.

Where the high desert lady roams:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490#2149716

Ain't it beooootiful! I loves it here! (Well that's a little south and east of here, but I loves it cuz it's Oregon's outback)

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Denise Levertov

Thus we can trace Leonardo's 'obstinate rigor of attention' (the phrase is Paul Valery's) to one fine detail of nature as it caught the sharp eye of Montaigne. Just as we have to be alerted age after age by our own new concerns to go back to Leonardo to see if he wasn't there first, so we must reread Montaigne, the travel journal along with the inexhaustible Essays, with fresh eyes every generation. Fernand Braudel found a mine of information in the journals for his studies of everyday life in the 16th Century. The historian of religion, of Renaissance Italy, of medicine, of economics - Montaigne's obstinate rigor of attention serves them all.

The emotional center of gravity of the journal is, I like to think, the day in the Vatican library when Montaigne, having gazed lovingly at a manuscript Vergil and other treasures, falls into a conversation with scholars and gentlemen about Plutarch. It was his opinion that Amyot's recent translation of the Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks (1559) and of the Moralia (1572) had 'taught us all how to write.' Plutarch had indeed taught Montaigne how to write. It is a common error to say that Montaigne invented the essay. Plutarch invented the essay, and wrote 78 of them; Montaigne invented its name in French and English.

Renaissance, rebirth . . . In his Life of Demosthenes, Plutarch notes that Greek opinion held that 'the first requisite of a man's happiness is birth in a famous city.' Virtue, however, can flourish anywhere, Plutarch says, and as for him, 'I live in a small city, and I prefer to dwell there that it may not become smaller still.' So the Lives and Moralia were written by a family man in a small townin Boeotia, and the Essays were written on a wine-growing estate outside Bordeaux, both by men of the most honest introspection in the history of letters, both skeptics with Stoic minds and well-tempered good natures. It has been said of Montaigne, and can be said of Plutarch, that in reading him we read ourselves.

We all lead a moral inner life of the spirit, on which religion, philosophy, and tacit opinion have many claims. To reflect on this inner life rationally is a skill no longer taught, though successful introspection, if it can make us at peace with ourselves, is sanity itself. The surest teachers of such reflection, certainly the wisest and most forgiving, are Plutarch and Montaigne.

. . . Montaigne's even temperament and habitual affection for life in all its forms was shaped by the ancient, even prehistoric, spirit of Bordeaux, one of the most cultivated provincial towns of the Roman Empire. In its first distinguished literary figure, Ausonius (4th C. A.D.) we can make out affinities with Montaigne. He was half pagan, less than half Christian. He read everything, quoted everybody, and sported an erudition that clearly had for its message that although he lived at a great remove from Rome, Alexandria, and Athens, nevertheless we Bordelais are right up with everything. We read books. We have a university. We have travelled. We are witty and well-mannered.

Bordeaux is still a gracious, very beautiful provincial city, which has been chosen down through history to be the city to which the gov. in Paris retires in time of trouble. It therefore considers Paris imprudent and a bit vulgar, looking to London through ancient allegiances as its spiritual capital.

A Roman tombstone in the Museum of Aquitania states the persistent symbol of Bordeaux: a society of people and animals. This stele is a sculpture of a child holding a rooster whose tail a puppy is pulling. An hour's drive brings you to the prehistoric caves in the Val Dordogne with their murals of 1000's of animals painted and engraved. A city bus takes you to Montaigne's chateau, where he wondered if he played with his cat or his cat with him. Bordeaux is the birthplace of Rosa Bonheur. Did she know that she was continuing the business of the painters of Lascaux? Goya died there, having restated in THE BULLS OF BORDEAUX a subject native to the region for 30,000 years. Every Bordelais has a dog for a companion. The local strays have evolved a breed over the years, the Bordeaux Dog, an affable boulevardier of considerable charm and friendliness. Every restaurant and cafe has its cat (even the bar at the Theatre, where John Adams saw his first play). It is wonderful that Montaigne lies at the corner of the rue Pasteur (doctor of men and animals) and the cours Victor Hugo, whose favorite dog was named Senate. The nostalgia we feel in reading Montaigne, the sense that he was more comfortable in his world than we can ever be in ours, is in part that he knew without embarrassment the animal body in which the human spirit lives. In Switzerland we watch him listening to the doctrines of Zwingli as if he were a very intelligent horse, his common sense as unassailable by Zwingli as a mountain by a snowflake.

It is his poor animal body whose urine is full of painful sand that he takes from spa to spa on his journey. It is with a tame animal's willingness to play his master's games (sit up, roll over, heel) that he kisses the Pope's foot ( thinking God knows what in the inviolable privacy of his mind). He thought for himself, Monsieur Montaigne of Bordeaux. that he remains for us the best example of the sane mind and liberal spirit.

from EVERY FORCE EVOLVES A FORM by Guy Davenport

Wouldn't it be wonderful to know so much interesting material and be able to put it together and write about it like that?

Apropos dogs and cats in Bordeaux, and everywhere else in France: they're all over the place, brought by their masters and mistresses to cafes (where the proprietor will often bring out a special water or food dish put aside for that particular animal), to be fed with silver spoons au table while costumed and coiffed in a manner we might think applies to froufrou French poodles but in fact is universal in French petdom. I am a Francophile in almost all things, but when it comes to animal obsessions, I think they're nuts.

CE52 - 'Frogs' after all.
Slickpdx - I know you would enjoy Davenport's essays. I am a shameless proselytizer, but I love finding new readers for fellas like Davenport, et al.
3 volumes of essays:
1. EVERY FORCE EVOLVES A FORM
2. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE IMAGINATION
3. HUNTER GRACCHUS: Papers on Literature and Art.

Davenport makes more stunning connections than you ever thought were possible. And he's readable!

Love that Levertov, Wilson!

Some nature news from today's Kingston Freeman:

WOODSTOCK -- Town officials have been advised the invasive emerald ash (tree) borer beetle may have made its way to town and affected trees should be inventoried. Alan White, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, said the beetle, native to China, has no known natural enemies in the United States.

"It was first detected in 2002 in Michigan," White said. "There were millions of dollars invested in trying to control it in Michigan, and then in Ohio and various other states in the Midwest, and frankly, there wasn't a lot of success."

No not much success.

On Hearing of a Death

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playiing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I like that one a lot. William H. Gass on Reading Rilke, a book I've had my sights on for too long.

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
1.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon falls, the mackerel crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To the lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

from the TOWER (1927)
William Butler Yeats

I love the thought of those old naked days
When Phoebus gilded torsos with his rays
When men and women sported, strong and fleet,
Without anxiety or base deceit,
And heaven caressed them, amorously keen
To prove the health of each superb machine.
Cybele then was lavish of her geurdon
And did not find her sons too gross a burden:
But, like a she-wolf, in her love great-hearted,
Her full brown teats to all the world imparted.
Bold, handsome, strong, Man rightly might envince
Pride in the glories that proclaimed him prince -
Fruits pure of outrage, by the blight unsmitten,
With smooth firm flesh that cried out to be bitten.

Today the Poet, when he would assess
Those native splendors in the nakedness
Of man or woman, feels a somber chill
Enveloping his spirit and his will.
He meets a gloomy picture, which he loathes,
Wherein deformity cries out for clothes.
Oh comic runts! Oh horror of burlesque!
Lank, flabby, skewed, pot-bellied, and grotesque!
Whom their smug god, Utility (Poor brats!),
Has swaddled in his brazen clouts "ersatz"
As with cheap tinsel. Women tallow-pale,
Both gnawed and nourished by debauch, who trail
The heavy burden of maternal vice,
Or of fecundity the hideous price.

We have (corrupted nations) it is true
Beauties the ancient people never knew -
Sad faces gnawed by cancers of the heart
And charms which morbid lassitudes impart.
But these inventions of our tardy muse
Can't force our ailing peoples to refuse
Just tribute to the holiness of youth
With its straightforward mien, its forehead couth,
The limpid gaze, like running water bright,
Diffusing, careless, through all things, like light
Of azure skies, the birds, the winds, the flowers,
Its songs and perfumes, and heart-warming powers.

Charles Baudelaire (trans. Roy Campbell)

Yes, I say to Bawdy-lair, yes. Tennis-son anyone?

What a coincidence! I put the following poem aside, thinking to use it at twilight sometime, then kept coming across it when the sun was out ... until now:

Evening Twilight

Here’s the criminal’s friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolf’s loping:
slowly the sky’s vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.
Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: “Today
we’ve worked!” — It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gaslights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy planning a coup, she’s there
burrowing into the wombs of the city’s mires,
like a worm stealing from Man what it desires.
Here, there, you catch the kitchens’ whistles,
the orchestras’ droning, the theatres’ yells,
low dives where gambling’s all the pleasure,
filling with whores, and crooks, their partners,
and the thieves who show no respite or mercy,
will soon be setting to work, as they tenderly,
they too, toil at forcing safes and doorways,
to live, clothe their girls, for a few more days.
Collect yourself, my soul, at this grave hour,
and close your ears to the rising howl.
It’s now that the pains of the sick increase!
Dark Night clasps them by the throat: they reach
their journey’s end, the common pit’s abandon:
the hospital fills with their sighs. — Many a one
will never return to their warm soup by the fire,
by the hearth, at evening, next to their heart’s desire.
And besides the majority have never known
never having lived, the gentleness of home!

Charles Baudelaire

More Bawdy-lair, do I wake or sleep?

SOLOMON TO SHEBA
Sang Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her dusky face,
'All day long from mid-day
We have talked in the one place,
All day long from shadowless noon
We have gone round and round
In the narrow theme of love
Like an old horse in a pound.'

To Solomon sang Sheba,
Planted on his knees,
'If you had broached a matter
That might the learned please,
You had before the sun had thrown
Our shadows on the ground
Discovered that my thoughts, not it,
Are but a narrow pound.'

Sang Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her Arab eyes,
'There's not a man or woman
Born under the skies
Dare much in learning with us two,
And all day long we have found
There's not a thing that love can make
The world a narrow pound.'

William Butler Yeats

Pumped up my bike, put on my headband, opened the garage door yesterday afternoon and rode to town and back ... forgot, however, to close the garage door when I reentered the house.

I keep garbage there, in the garage, collect it until there's enough to take to the dump. Just about all the thrown-away food goes in the compost heep, but some hardened bits of baguette make it to the garage ... which is what the raccoon (I assume) was interested in when it ripped the plastic bags to shreds last night--but quietly; didn't wake me up at all.

HENRY JAMES
It was the eloquence of the unsaid
thing, the nobility of the deed
not performed. They looked sideways
into each other's eyes, met casually
by intention. It was the significance
of an absence, the deprecation
of what was there, the failure
to prove anything that proved his point.

Richness is in the ability
of poverty to conceal itself.
After the curtains deliberately
kept drawn, his phrases were servants moving
silently about the great house of his prose
letting in sunlight into the empty rooms.

R.S. Thomas

La Rebelle

A furious Angel plunged from sky like a hawk,
Gripped the sinner with rough ahnds by the hair,
And shaking him, shouted, "You shall obey, do you hear?
I am your Guardian Angel. No back talk!

Learn to love (for you must, and no grimaces!)
The poor, the spitefull, the deformed, the dumb;
For you must spread for Jesus when he commes
A rich carpet of Charity where he pases.

That is Love! Before your heart expire,
Let the glory of God set it afire;
That is the true Delight that cannot rot!"

Then the Angel, cruel as kind,
With giant hands twisted him till he whined;
But the damned soul still answered "I will not!"

~Baudelaire (my fave from him)

SHE WEEPS OVER RAHOON
Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
Where my dark lover lies.
Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
At gray moonrise.

Love, hear thou
How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
Ever unanswered and the dark rain falling,
Then as now.

Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold
As his sad heart has lain
Under the moongray nettles, the black mould
And muttering rain.

from POMES PENYEACH
James Joyce

Drizzly, gray day here. Perfect for curling up with a book.

A delightfully cool evening here in southeastern Michigan. The windows are wide open and cool breezes dash through the house like some airy Wilma Rudolf & co. A coolish week on its way. Temps. to average 79 and dry air, blessed dry air is the forecast. I'd like to think that we've seen the last of the hot weather but I have a feeling that Summer has one more good pop in its arsenal.
The winds are out of the NE at 10 mph. Heaven must be like the raw days of Spring, the cool nights of Summer, the Golden days of Fall, and the first wintery days of Winter. It must feel like old Dickens felt like when he got a letter from his old flame Maria Beadnell, at that time Mrs. Wynter, after 20 years of silence. The excitement for 'the Sparkler' was almost unbearable. But it dissolved almost instantaneously when they finally met. The bloom was off the Rose. The pernickety Dickens went to great lengths to avoid from meeting her thereafter. More later in the form of a review of LITTLE DORRITT. I shall wait a bit so as not to seem too anxious to appear on the 'hot list.' Dignity in these matters is of uppermost importance, isn't it?

True enough, Peter. Be discreet lest you end up a celebrity.

Peter, at 62 I have the feeling that I shall always remain an angler in the Lake of Darkness. Dona Tartt and her minions need not worry. Number 1 on the hot list so-called is about as famous as I'll get.
Though I have been recognized on busses and planes for my membership in the basketball coaches fraternity. And I am pretty well known in the basketball community in Ca. My brother's in the San Diego Hall of Fame and I make sure the balls are put away, the towels are picked up, and I give some of the poor kids on the team a ride home if they can't get one by the time I leave, which is often, bad luck for them, well past their bed time. I have easily spent more money on the poor kids over the years then I have made through my basketball salary. Lucky that I can make some money teaching during the second semester and tutoring of different sorts gets me some filthy lucre. I have a basketball camp every Sunday. I charge the kids who haven't much money nothing and dun some of the wealthier parents as much as 40 dollars a head for 2
and one half hours. Of course if I stayed there year around I could make a pretty decent living just off basketball, but I love the climate here in Mi. and after all this is where is was born, for crying out loud. Forgive me I'm in a chatty phase, and it's hard to be, as you say, discreet, when the chatty phase is upon, me.

You can make an exception in my case I'm a celebrity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PO0toknW28&feature=related

Porius, my dear... that was an awesome review and I look forward to the next one.

I have been remiss... The poetry has been wonderful this weekend, thank you! And I will leave you with these:

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Dorothy Parker

I adore her snarkiness and that we share a birthday with Claude Debussy.

Many thanks HDL. The Parkers' are pithy as always. I think it was DP who responded, 'how could you tell' upon hearing of the death of 'Silent Cal' Coolidge. I ran a 'jug' and an after school program at a place called Coolidge Middle School. I had some great inner-city kids to work with everyday. There's really nothing quite as satisfying as working with these at risk kids. I was broken-hearted when the two middle schools in the area consolidated and my second youngest brother the principal was re-located and I was squeezed out of a job to make room for some greenhorns who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

What's a 'jug'?

What's a 'jug'?

Tani, thank you so much for lobbing this softball for us guys to smack out of the park, but I'm going to refrain and restrain myself from responding ... because I'm a gentleman.

ROFLMFAO!

I know damn well what 'jug' you are referring to 'Rique!!!! I just can't imagine Porius running your kind of jug at an after-school program... You are such a Dog! :-p

Oops. Ruff ruff.

;-) you crazy Dicktatur!

A jug is a detention center for kids who have to be dismissed from their classroom. Enreeky got a mind like a sewer.

Well, duh... that makes sense! LOL!

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget--I kept saying--that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago--
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef--they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

Czeslaw Milosz

Near record temperature yesterday -95, and already warm this morning setting out the garbage. Off to Court to mitigate my son's 7 felony charges of burglary -taking sunglasses and gum from an unlocked, parked vehicle with 3 other boys who did worse. Joint and Several. He's learning the impact of association.

"In my room the world is beyond my understanding;but when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud." ~Wallace Stevens

'Poetry must be irrational' is another adage in Steven's notebooks. Poetry has to appear as nonsense in a world of senseless violence. In insisting on poetry's irrationality, Stevens is really insisting on its separate order: the order of feeling and the imagination where, at our best, we seem to have our being and where our instincts seem to tell us that we belong.

Stevens, like Emily Dickenson, is a poet we need to read whole. Individual poems display an obscurity that fades away in a knowledge of all the poems. Each poem has a way of being a commentary on the others. Bate's edition of fugitive poems and variants is the more welcome for that. It is, indeed, an extra volume of Stevens in its own right, and has enough good poems to outshine many in a lesser poet's lifework.

from THE HUNTER GRACCHUS by Guy Davenport

I no doubt posted this poem a few times before but I like it so much, here it goes again:

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.

Wallace Stevens

Who never wore the mask of the poet out in public.

Thanks for the reminder, Steven, not about youthful pilferage (at sixteen, I stole a pair of wire cutters from a department store), but that I haven’t posted the temps and weather info for a while:

Today’s predicted highs (in Fahrenheit):

Little Rock 97
Denver 90, according to authorities, but according to our correspondent, 95
Atlanta 93
Taipei 93 aka 34
Los Angeles 92
Toledo 86
Chicago 85
Detroit 83
Portland, Ore. 81
New York City 78
Woodstock, N.Y. (still more rain) 73
Brussels 71 aka 22 (rain)
Sydney 61 aka 16 (rain)

And thanks to you too, Peter, for reminding me that I'm running out of cigars and have to order a box. I eat ice cream occasionally, yes, but it's while smoking a stogie (sorry, Wallace) that I feel like an emperor.

Another cool night here under, I'd like to say gibbous moon, but that would be wrong. Well not even under the moon because it is mostly cloudy out there. The crickets have no thoughts about the sort of moon they would like to be under. The breezes are out of the N at 10 mph. The humidity is a little less than ideal at 75%. Tomorrow will be a comfortable day, with temps not rising above 80 or so.

Finally stopped raining here, though there might well be more tomorrow. The streams are swollen, running milk chocolate brown. Temperature was supposed to hit a high of 73, but it topped out at 66; almost as chilly, relatively, as Sydney, Australia. Forecast calls for a high of 68 tomorrow, but judging by today, and the feel of it, might be in the low sixties. I actually put on a pair of long pants today. Forecasters say it will dry out and warm up, into the eighties, in time for me to make my annual pilgrimage to the venerable old racetrack at Saratoga on Thursday and make my usual contribution.

Scarves and long sleeves still making their appearance here in Sydney, Australia, but magic has returned to the air, and the sky is flat blue. The first blossoms are on the plum trees, and all the wattle is in bloom.

Outside my window is all blue and gold and green.

Sounds lovely, Rena! Missin' your face around the place! How be you?

It has been chilly the last couple of days. Saturday was maybe 70, yesterday not much higher. Probably around 75-76ish. Tomorrow me and the besties are going up to Paulina Lake in the Caldera and celebrate being crones together. Two of us are 9 days apart, so we mix 'em up when we can. Supposed to be around 80-85ish... We'll see.

At least we don't have all that humidity you guys have back east! I could not live in that.

See-gars, ponies, foods with mustard, or mustid as you New Yawkehs might say. I got one little tip: speed rating.

Yeah, HDL, that humididity can give you heartburn on your arse, as old John Joyce would say.

Choc, I close my eyes and see that padre, Eric Idle, leading the 'Bruces' in a pray-yeh.

Tani, I been great, but busy. I think I'll have to remain sporadic this week, and be entirely absent next week. I've missed my own face around the place! Been able to read your posts here and there, but not write my own so much. :(

No worries, Rena! Busy is good. Just wanted you to know you're missed. Your impending spring sounds beautiful...

For some reason the grass in my backyard hasn't grown since I mowed it back in ... July, was it? Who can remember? Life has been elongated this summer.

Well no, some grass has grown. It's not crab grass exactly, but something else, less coarse, topping out at two or three inches, sharing diminishing space with the increasing moss, which I applaud. That, and tiny pine tree growths, at least a hundred popping up here and there. So maybe I do have to mow again one of these days, lest I'll be living in the forest instead of looking at it. And I'm not one of those whatchamacallits who enjoy the dark Hansel and Gretel witches and old crones thing that seems to turn Ms. La Pine on nowadays.

One must pick and choose what turns them on... I like the designation. It fosters wisdom and power. :-p Have you never heard of women turning 50 and having a Croning party? I suppose not...

Damn, it's cold this morning! 30 something out there. (colder than a witch's...) Fall is definitely around the corner.
(okay, I am not a pagan, but sometimes, I wonder)

Quite cool here today and still overcast though I don't think the rain will break (mostly because I brought an umbrella today). Recent foods: steak with cole slaw, tomato salad, and grilled corn; stuffed chicken leg with brown and wild rice; grilled sausage and zucchini. I recently received a brand spanking new copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and am reading it cover to cover - something I have done with only one other cookbook.

>377 highdesertlady:. Just pulling your chain, Tani. No reason to stick your tongue out at me.

>378 janemarieprice:. Stuffed with what, Jane?

#379 - ROFLMAO! And, honestly, it's too damn early here to be ROFLMAO) Well, at least you now know that's what I was doing, Wilson! ;-) Okay, off to the showers and on to the bestie's house for our day at the Lake! Cya~!

#378 - Jane, yum!

Seems between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the weather is the same here, cooler (77) and cloudy with some rain. It's a nice change from sunny and hot.

Nice aquisition Jane. Soak it up.

From big sky country, one from Dan Gerber

August Afternoon: Napping in a Cabin near Ennis, Montana

Seven different shades of green
well up and reach out
and wrap their slender arms
around my shoulders and thighs.
My friend Jim asks if I have a pencil.
I realize it's only a dream,
and I'm not obliged to write it down.
I don't want to wake up yet,
to leave the tendrils I'm loving.
A horse nickers in the deep summer grass,
and I'm willing to believe--
though he stamps his foot,
and I hear the swish of it through the window--
that he's grazing in the green of my dream.
Now I hear someone trying to start
a rusty old pump-wheel,
but it turns out to be sandhill cranes
yodeling extravagantly
from the bog beyond the river willows.
"Do you have a pencil," he asks.

CRAZY JANE TALKS WITH THE BISHOP

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

"Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried,
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

from LAST POEMS (1936-1939)
William Butler Yeats

The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats...is it worth reading?

Peter appears to think so. Out of 132 LT entries, his is the only review:

bloom bloom get out of the room. (5 stars)

Porius, Oct 10, 2008

I got the title from a Marvin Mudrick essay on Harold Bloom's 'Transumptive' reading or something to that effect.
I read Bloom's study YEATS and didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I was either too smart or too stupid to know - I suspect too stupid. At any rate it was not a pleasant experience. Hence my sarcastic, and all-too-cryptic review. I will amend that tomorrow. For now I'm off to have some oysters, etc., and a few beers and some music at a little place in east Det. And yes Yeats' AUTOBIOGRAPHY is worth the trouble EF or any of you out there with a little time on your hands, etc. etc. etc.

In fact, I never write in the margins of books, but some do:

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive--
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!"--
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page--
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil--
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet--
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Billy Collins

I can't begin to tell you how good that poem was, P. Blake after his bet-noir Sir Joshua. the girl-in-love at the end, priceless.

ESCAPIST - NEVER

He is no fugitive - escaped, escaping.
No one has seen him stumble looking back.
His fear is not behind him but beside him
On either hand to make his course perhaps
A crooked straightness yet no less straightness.
He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.
He seeks a seeker who in his turn seeks
Another still, lost far into the distance.
Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.
His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.

from IN THE CLEARING (1962)
by Robert Lee Frost

Ohhhh, Piero, pardon the ♥hearts, but I am in ♥love♥ (with that poem).

I tried making those hearts, Sheila, on both an Apple and a PC, and failed miserably.

♥ alt+3 (3 on the numeric keypad)

Here's a list. None of the lists seem to be both complete and easy to read.

Robert

Here's an even better list, on LT: http://www.librarything.com/topic/59470#1841768

I so agree, Mushkaya! Thank you, Wilson!

As ever, Love the Frost Porius!

Anyone else having trouble loading this thread?

*hints*

Maybe he's waiting for 400 or 1,000!

Ya read my mind, ladies. I woulda made a thread switch already except last week I had a nerdish guy come in and add some memory to my old machine, and as a result, though I'm not moving at breakneck speed, I can go a bit faster than I used to. But I'm aware of the invidious--or is it insidious?--class system in modern life (it's why I defended poor bardsfingertips on the other thread, with his no doubt dottering machine), which requires us highly developed types to consider the plight of the memory deprived (I am not speaking here of old age). So, we will not attempt to set a new world record on this thread, or compete with the insanity elsewhere. We will switch soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ...

By Jove, I think I've got it! Thanks, Robert♥, Sheila☻(what the hell is this?), and Ms. La Pine♣(sheesh!).