Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Priestdaddy
by Patricia Lockwood
Riverhead Books, May 2017
336 pages

This book. Is so. Funny heartbreaking beautiful. It is about family, warts and all. It's about religion, and being female, and writing, and poetry, and memory, and growing up, and going home. It's about love, and all the good and all the pain that can bring.

Priestdaddy is technically a memoir, but if you're looking for a straightforward, average memoir, this is not that. You had better be prepared to let Lockwood take you on her journey in her way, because she's not going to conform to your expectations. The writing is spectacular, unsettling, and bursting out at the seams. She spirals into digressions with the virtuosity of a scatting jazz vocalist, like she's galloping through the English language with her hands white-knuckled on the reigns, leaving this reader breathless and slightly disoriented and utterly thrilled. Sometimes she writes like her father, the titular priest, plays guitar: with gratuitous effusion in a way that almost (but not quite) makes sense.

Lockwood's family has an astonishing number of warts. They are eccentric in a way that is so astounding, sometimes shocking, that it's almost hard to believe - Lockwood is a standard-bearer for the adage that "truth is stranger than fiction" because I'm pretty sure some of the things she writes about would be considered too outrageous to be allowed in a novel. Nothing escapes her sideways gaze; the gaze is both pointed and compassionate. Sometimes she is full of anger. But she also loves expansively, if in complicated ways.

This whole book is complicated. It's funny and erudite and full of light and sometimes she's talking about things that are crass or horrible. She writes about her childhood in ways that the memories come across as both sharp and slightly unreal, as childhood memories often do. She indulges extravagantly in hyperbole, such that sometimes you're not sure when to take her seriously, and then she will reach right into your chest cavity and grab hold of your beating heart with a furious concision and you take everything absolutely seriously and feel sick. And then in the next paragraph you will love the people in her life, because she obviously does, and she is holding them tenderly so that you do too.

I know this is not a book for everyone; if you are easily offended by coarse language or bodily functions or any whiff of blasphemy, you will probably not make it past the first chapter. Likewise if you can't handle chronological jumping, digressions, or someone poking and prodding at language just to see what she can make it do. But I loved it, and I can't stop talking about it or thinking about it, and I am delighted at the feeling that Patricia Lockwood is just getting started.

two books by Kim Thúy

Ru
by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischmann
Random House Canada, 2012 (originally published in French in 2009)
141 pages

Mãn
by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischmann
Random House Canada, 2014 (originally published in French in 2013)
139 pages

Here's a thing I don't do often: read a book, and then immediately go out and find whatever I can by the same author and read that too. I did it in this case. And the strange thing is that - I liked Ru. I respected Ru. I didn't think I'd loved it. But perhaps, in some way that my own brain didn't quite clue in to, I did? It helped, too, that Mãn had just come out very recently, and working in a library, I had it to hand immediately.

It's a little hard to hang on to either of these books in specifics, in that they don't have much in the way of characters or plot. But they do have imagery and tone, and somehow Kim Thúy has managed to make those the driving force of Ru, and to a lesser extent Mãn. The latter does have more plot, and significantly more character. This may or may not be a good thing; I liked them both, and originally thought of Mãn as being the stronger, and underrated. But it's Ru that has stuck with me more clearly. Both explore the life of a woman who has come from Vietnam, as a refugee (in Ru) or after the war (in Mãn). The war plays a large role in both these novels, as does the experience of coming to a new country - in this case, Canada - and making a life here.

One of the meanings for the word "ru" is lullaby - Thúy explains this at the beginning of the book. In many ways, Ru struck me as a series of images that might bubble up before sleep. Ru and Mãn don't even really have chapters; they have paragraphs, or sections. Sometimes a section is a line or two long. Sometimes it's three, maybe five pages. I'm not sure there were any sections longer than that. Each is a painstakingly crafted image, memory, or moment, from a first person perspective. The narrator can be a bit dry, or maybe a better way to describe her is "reserved," but one gets the impression that she is always trying to be honest. Some of the sections are connected. Some of them are not, other than they have the same narrator.

Both start fairly slowly, especially because (to me at least) the format can come as a bit of a shock. Because neither book is structured as a typical novel, and without the usual components like a solid, chronological plot or dialogue or conventional characterization to hang on to, one can feel a bit adrift for the first little while. I worried about this, when I started Ru, because it's not a long book. I needn't have worried.

The books - most especially Ru, but Mãn as well, to a lesser extent - unfold like a series of beautiful blossoms, each page or section a memory, hanging off each other like a delicate string of pearls. If you hold them lightly, something wonderful happens. The reader does a lot of the work, filling in blanks. Nothing is explicit. But gradually a picture begins to develop - of Vietnam, of the life of a "displaced" person, of how a person can break apart and slowly be put back together, but never again without scars. Mãn, with its more explicit plot, does a lot more of the work for the reader. Which means that though I think it's stronger in some ways - it gives one more to sink one's teeth into - it also imposes itself on the reader, where Ru almost feels like it comes from within.

Neither one of these books will take you very long to read. And both are worth it. But if you're going to read just one, read Ru. Be prepared to open yourself to it, no matter how slow or odd it seems at first, as a reading experience; you will be rewarded.

Winter by Adam Gopnik

Winter: Five Windows on the Season

by Adam Gopnik

House of Anansi Press, 2011

210 pages

Disclaimer: I love winter. So does Adam Gopnik. And I have decided that I'm going to try to stop apologising for this love of mine, as fashionable as complaining about the snow and cold weather is: winter is a wonderful season, and Gopnik spends quite a lot of time validating my fondness of it. If you thought that maybe five lectures and 210 pages was too long to spend talking about winter, you would be wrong. Gopnik manages it and one gets the impression he could have kept going. And this reader - and most readers, I'd wager, even those who have no love of cold and ice - would have been pretty happy to keep following.

Winter is part of the Massey Lectures series, the printed version of the spoken lecture series heard every year on CBC's Ideas. I quite like the idea of reading each of the lecture series, although I haven't gotten very far with this mission and they just keep on piling up (there is a new one every year. How am I supposed to keep up with that?) 

Gopnik's love for this season - this accident of nature, this clockwork shift to ice due to an axial tilt as our planet orbits the sun - is incredibly well-informed. If you look at the tags on this post, you'll get an idea of the sorts of range this book has. He starts with an exploration of the way the way winter has been viewed through the years has shifted, from being a season of bitterness, loss, and hardship, to being a season of warmth, light, and fellowship. He proceeds to an investigation of the polar winter, winter as place, and specifically the draw it held for Victorian explorers. The third lecture is essentially about Christmas, and the place it holds in the Western secular holiday year, as our festival of cold and light. Then there is an extended digression into winter sport, which is mostly about ice hockey, though he spends a serious amount of time looking at the advent and evolution of ice skating period. (Gopnik is a hockey fan, and is quite clear about that, so the entire chapter devoted to expressing his love of the game is not a surprise.) And finally he looks at what it may mean to us to lose winter, either by moving away from it, or by the self-inflicted wound of climate change. Throughout each chapter he is looking at the psychology of winter; that is, what does winter instill in us, culturally, individually? What ideas and thoughts and meanings do we instill into the season? What is winter, exactly, and what has it been?

Books like this that investigate a single idea from so many angles tend to really capture me, particularly if they're done well, and I think this book is. The writing style is very informal - Gopnik's introduction explains that things, as written out, are essentially transcripts of some practice lectures he gave, with a bit of tightening for readability. At times, when a sentence construct felt a little weird, I read it out loud to myself and that fixed the problem. Gopnik is thoughtful, funny, insightful, and relaxed. He circles around particular points and draws his arguments tighter and tighter. He lets the reader in on secrets, he tells us fascinating facts, he laughs at the absurd even as he respects it.

But there was a bit of a thing, and I almost hesitate to even bring it up, because the problem with noting something like this is that, these days, it can be enough for people to pillory the book and the author unfairly. (It can also be enough to earn me the label of "too sensitive" and I hope I don't deserve it in this case, but I am wary of that too.) It was noticeable, and it did bug me, so:

Gopnik is looking a lot at history, and it is a primarily male history. There are not a lot of women in this book. Franny Mendelssohn, sister of the more familiar composer, gets a brief, positive mention. Anna Brownell Jameson, the writer of Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada - her diary, essentially - gets a lot of page time in the first lecture. And that is about it, except for some nameless skaters flirting with men in images of skating in Central Park, affectionate mentions of his wife and daughter, the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen, and then - the throwaway and unnecessary reference that solidified my feeling that maybe Gopnik should have been paying a bit more attention to the issue of gender in his lectures - a Playmate makes a very baffling metaphorical appearance. It's not that the book feels like a frat party, exactly. I don't think Gopnik is generally disrespectful of the female, the feminine, and certainly not of individual women. But I was noticing a lack, and then the Playmate comment made me actually wince. It wasn't offensive on its own, but given the lack of female presence in the book, it took on a bit more of a profile than it should have.

The thing is, history, as written by most, and as enrolled in these lectures by Gopnik, is very heavy on men and very short on women, and these lectures are a look into the history of our relationship with winter. Men feature prominently. Women don't as much, so when they do feature, I'd like it to matter. I'd like it to not be played for laughs. I'd like it to not feel a little bit as though we are the temptresses, the objects of desire, that our only relationship with winter is as it allows us to express our otherwise forbidden sexuality (as in his argument about the social role ice skating fulfilled for women and gay men around the turn of the twentieth century). Given his admiration and respect for Anna Brownell Jameson, I don't actually think Gopnik really does think of women only in this way. Unfortunately the book doesn't quite reflect that.

There is still lots to love about this book, and lots of really excellent things about it. Sure, Gopnik overreaches his point sometimes, or gets a little repetitive as he circles around his argument; but mostly it's well-written, very accessible, entertaining, thought-provoking, funny, gentle, kind. He captures the feeling of winter, particularly in his first chapter and the chapter on Christmas, the awe and wonder and affection and respect that I hold for the season. It is hard for me to know if someone who isn't as fond of winter as I am would be swayed by his argument, but I think it would be pretty difficult not to be touched by it. Recommended, for Canadians especially: we whinge a lot about this season. I don't think it would hurt us to think about it a little more deeply than just complaining about shoveling and cold.

Bellwether by Connie Willis

Bellwether
by Connie Willis
Bantam Spectra, 1996
196 pages

Have you ever had that weird thing happen where something you've read or heard in one part of  your life connects randomly and neatly with something in a completely different part of your life? For example, I finished reading Bellwether and then CBC's The Current had a major piece on the ethics of corporate policies preventing the hiring of smokers the very next morning. It was startling. It was also very, very cool to see how prescient Willis in fact is. And it gave me a whole different perspective on the real-life issue. And hearing people discuss the real-life issue gave me a bit of a different perspective on the book, too.

I adore To Say Nothing of the Dog. I was therefore very keen to get to this book at some point, and I was kind of feeling stuck with my reading. Darla had reviewed it not long ago, so it was on my radar. And my local library had this available as an eBook and it wasn't on hold, either. And like To Say Nothing of the Dog, this book is an ideal combination for me: amusing and not totally serious about itself, but with some serious intellectual meat and chock-full of literary references. Even better, this book is steeped in the poetry of Robert Browning and science lore.

Sandra Foster, our first-person narrator, is a sociologist and statistician working for a company named HiTek. She researches fads, and is currently trying to find the source of the women's hair-bobbing fad of the 1920s, a task she likens to the historical task of trying to find the source of the Nile -- but more difficult. In addition to her research project, she is coping with a hopelessly awful interdepartmental assistant, attempting to discover the secret of a chaos theorist coworker who seems to be totally immune to fads, and trying to rescue classic novels and poetry from being discarded from the local library due to lack of popularity.

There is not a lot at stake here, except for perhaps Sandra's funding and therefore job, and the extreme long-shot odds of winning a Neibnitz Grant, the most prestigious and lucrative scientific award around. Sandra is an engaging narrator, taking us on wonderful, erudite tangents that circle around to the relevant; sharp, funny, and sarcastic. So it becomes quite important to us that she get her funding, that she find the source of the fad, that she is happy. It is impossible not to root for her, even when she is a bit clueless (very rare) or a bit prickly (not quite so rare). It's also hard not to root for her because the things she's up against are often totally ludicrous.

If I had one complaint, and it's not even really a complaint so much as an observation, I don't think this book is quite as subtle as To Say Nothing of the Dog. (I know, I know, I keep comparing, and it's not entirely fair.) It's a short book, and the things Sandra is up against are so over-the-top it becomes almost impossible to believe that she wouldn't be able to overcome them. Management at HiTek is an amalgam of all of the worst possible things about management in a large corporation. Dr. Alicia Turnbull is terribly one-dimensional. Flip, the interdepartmental assistant from Hell, is ... well, the interdepartmental assistant from Hell. She's so awful it's almost impossible to comprehend how she could even make it through a day, doing things like feeding herself and walking up and down stairs. On the other hand, she is not one-dimensional. She's actually a pretty interesting character. Awfully horrifying, but interesting.

The thing is, it's fun. It's smart fun. It's satirical fun. So I can forgive the unsubtle, larger-than-life ridiculousness of what Sandra ends up observing and coping with herself. I can forgive the dig at libraries discarding unused materials, even the really good ones, to save shelf space (because it is uncomfortably true) and I can agree that there is a disturbing analogy to be made between human behaviour and the behaviour of a flock of sheep. It's funny, and it's not, because it's true.

Suffice to say, I think you should read this. It's not long and it's totally, wonderfully worth it. I have purchased Blackout sight unseen (while I was purchasing Bellwether at the same time) and I don't do that often. But Connie Willis is turning out to be an author I want to have on my shelves. She re-reads well, if both To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether are any indication -- I finished Bellwether the first time, and am already halfway through it again. I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog three times now, with a fourth coming up when I inflict it upon my long-suffering genre book club. With both there are new things to be discovered, and wonderful writing to be savoured. And you will come out the other end feeling just a little bit smarter, and maybe even a little bit wiser.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

The Anthologist
by Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster, 2009
243 pages

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

I think I should by rights hate this book, since it's the narrator talking directly at me in stream of consciousness, and that's an unusual and very difficult conceit to pull off... but the further I get into it the more I like it, and suddenly I find myself grinning and nodding along like an idiot. It's a courageous choice, and having worked, it brings the reader so close to the narrator that one can't help but love him and feel for him, even if we are well-acquainted with his foibles and flaws, both the ones he points out to us and the ones he inadvertently reveals.

Paul Chowder is, above all, easily distracted. Teaching us about proper poetry meter and having just blasted iambic pentameter to pieces, we end up in a totally different (and totally recognizable) place:

See those four numbers? Those are the four beats. Four stresses, as we say in the meter business. Tetrameter. Four. "Tetra" is four. Like Tetris, that computer game where the squares come down relentlessly  and overwhelm your mind with their crude geometry and make you peck at the arrow keys like some mindless experimental chicken and hurry and panic and finally you turn your computer off. And you sit there thinking, Why have I just spent an hour watching squares drop down a computer screen?

Heh. And also, sigh.

Another note that keeps cropping up is birds. Paul is not (or claims not to be) a big fan, which is one place where he and I differ. Frankly, we differ on a lot of things, although not on our computer game-playing habits.

You hear that bird? Chirtle chirtle chirtle chirtle. With birds it's different. Birds are very different than we are. They don't know what an upbeat is. They go, Chirtle chirtle chirtle chirtle. And then the next time they might just go, Chirtle -- chirtle chirtle. It's like some kind of wigged-out aimless Gregorian chant. And then sometimes: Chirtle chirtle. And then: Chirtle chirtle chirt? Questioning. You don't know where you are with that.

This is an interesting book in that I kind of want to quote all of it for you. It is extremely meandering, so there's not a lot of forward momentum, other than the fact that I am enjoying Paul's thoughts so much I want more, more, more. And sometimes I go backwards and read bits over again. It's not a very efficient way to read, all this stopping and quoting. This is not a very efficient sort of book, though.

There is a kind of tenderness here, an exposure that is both sweet and sad. Paul is a lovely man, a poet suffering from an absolutely debilitating case of writer's block over a summer during which his partner of eight years has left him and he has to write an introduction to his anthology of collected rhyming poems. At the beginning he seems like he's a run-of-the-mill procrastinator, but the further we get into the summer and into Paul's story we understand that he's not just procrastinating. He's having a true crisis. It's not the sort of crisis he respects -- most of his favourite poets were true sufferers, and he doesn't count himself among them either as a good poet or a true sufferer. But he is suffering, and the reader sees that, and even as the reader shakes their head at his folly they also understand, completely, that he just can't write.

And then we get further in and little pieces of mystery begin to unfold; why did Roz leave? Does she still love him? Why can't Paul teach? Why rhyme? What's wrong with iambic pentameter? What on earth has happened to shake Paul's confidence so badly?

And when the answers are revealed -- not with drama, but in tiny ways that could easily slip by without the reader's notice, except that the reader has been paying close attention because Paul really does know how to use language -- they are perfect and understated and understandable and sometimes not singular, but a confluence of factors leading to the present circumstance.

This is an intimate book, a splendid book that goes on just long enough and drifts to a close in a beautiful way. There is subtlety, a careful scrutiny of the small, and an acknowledgement of the absurd and the universal. I know much more about poetry than I did when I started it, too, but that's totally beside the point. It is a gift to spend a week in Paul Chowder's gentle, distracted, intelligent, funny head and I will be coming back to this book again. This is one of those books that makes it hard for me to decide whether or not to search out more by the author; what if his other books aren't anything like this one? I can't imagine that there's anything else out there quite like this one. But then, if this book is anything to go by, Baker knows how to write. I'm looking forward to reading more.

FreeVerse: Snow Geese (Oliver)

Reason number 1001 why I like taking yoga classes: my instructor reads good poetry, unironically, to us. Today when she read this, I got goosebumps. Also, it was cold in the room... but seriously, the imagery is lovely and the sentiment is something I am working hard to take to heart.

Also, and I don't know whether this is an embarrassing thing to admit or not, but I believe Mary Oliver is new to me. I get the impression that a lot of people know who she is and have discovered her before. She's new to me but this won't be the last poem you see by her here, I suspect.

Today's poem I have snagged from Famous Poets and Poems. Thanks to Cara at Ooh... Books! for hosting FreeVerse!

Snow Geese
by Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

FreeVerse: three haiku by Basho in translation

Six more weeks of winter, and so today I am breaking out the winter haiku plus one that reminds me to look forward to summer. I picked up The Essential Basho, a collection of the writings of Matsuo Basho (1644 -1694) and there is some absolutely wonderful, wonderful stuff in here. I'm just getting started, but I leave you with three. Translation is by Sam Hamill, the book was published in 1999 by Shambhala. Sam Hamill also has a book of Issa's poetry that might be easier for me to find than The Autumn Wind.

Thanks to Cara for hosting FreeVerse over at Ooh... Books!

***

Normally spiteful --
but not even the crows
this snowy morning

***

All the stones are dead,
the waters withered and gone --
winter and nothing

***

Even these long days
are not nearly long enough
for the skylarks' song

FreeVerse: Vowels (Bök)

In honour of my first challenge, here's a poem from Eunoia by Christian Bök, the Canadian experimental poet. I'll be writing more about this book for sure. I thought this poem was appropriate, given that Eunoia as a whole is all about the vowels.

Thanks to Cara for hosting this weekly celebration of poetry at Ooh... Books!

From Eunoia by Christian Bök, published in 2001 by Coach House Press:


Vowels

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows

so we love
less well

so low
so level

wolves evolve


UPDATE: Evan from Coach House posted this in the comments, but I'll do it here, too: there's a Eunoia trailer on YouTube! Check it out, it's wonderful. It will give you a hint of the impressive scale of Bök's undertaking. And also it will likely make you giggle in places.

clover, bee, and reverie: yes, I am signing up for a challenge

Let's just say that one of my hard-and-fast book blog rules is "no challenges." Thus far, I have been tempted by many, but have always come to the recognition that I am not cut out for book challenges. Too much pressure. I know this about myself and my reading style.

Ah yes, my brain whispers to me. But what about poetry? Haven't you broken your self-imposed, if admittedly soft, "no memes" rule for poetry already?

Damn you, brain.

Okay, so yes. Lu and Jason have come up with a poetry challenge and I am about to join it, due to prodding from brain and a little bit of encouragement from @Nymeth. (By which I mean, she was like, "hey, did you know about this?") It's a new year, time to try new things, I say. But this is it. One challenge. No more challenges.

This is my first challenge, and I'm not sure how it will go, so I'm going to start small. Really small. Smallest, in fact. I am officially aiming for the Couplet level - two books of poetry by the end of December. I have enough books of poetry that I'm excited about reading to aim for Limerick at least, but no pressure, kiirstin. No pressure. If I manage Couplet I can upgrade, right?

The two books I am thinking of are:

• Eunoia by Christian Bök, which we have had on our shelf for a long time and which, ten years ago, I read parts of but never read completely. Added bonus, he's Canadian.
  
• The Autumn Wind: A selection of the poems from Issa, translated by Lewis Mackenzie. Haiku. I am not sure I'm going to be able to get this book, but I'm going to try. I'm also not entirely sure whether or not I can read an entire book of haiku at once, but I've got nearly a year, so that's less than one poem per day of the 250 in the book. That means I will have to buy it, since the library won't let me keep it for 250 days...
  

Other possibilities include more Michael Ondaatje, if I can get my hands on a collection I haven't read yet; W.H. Auden is also on my radar and would be a new poet to me. Tennyson, perhaps, or Yeats. I have been wanting to read Allan Ginsberg's Howl again -- that was a favourite in my early university days. Perhaps Sylvia Plath or Margaret Atwood, since I notice this list is extremely female-light, or Emily Dickenson, whose work inspired the name of this challenge.

If this is what challenges are supposed to feel like -- really exciting -- then I'm going to be in trouble. 'Cause I'm liking this feeling.

FreeVerse: Preludes I (Eliot)

The first piece of theatre I clearly remember going to see was Cats. For those few who may not know, this is a spectacle musical with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics largely taken from T. S. Eliot's poetry, his Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. It is about cats. There is a loose storyline, I guess, but largely it's just a giant homage to cats of various types and temperaments, and cats in general. I was eight and an aspiring cat lady; we had seen the commercials on t.v. and I was desperate to go, so my mother, wise woman that she is, took me for my birthday. I can still remember some of the songs and the costumes. And then, some other wise human got me Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and since I have been a confirmed Eliot fan. Sadly, I don't know where that little book has gone, so I won't be posting one of those poems. Maybe sometime in the future when I find it again.

I have a special soft spot for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock of course. I do recommend that if you haven't read it, you do. One of the favourite segments for quotation is this one:

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

And I do love that. But today I have gone a little further afield in Eliot's poetry to bring you one of his Preludes. I love the feeling this one evokes. I also advise whispering it out loud -- it has a sort of rhythm that isn't immediately obvious if not heard on the tongue.

Thanks again to Cara at Ooh... Books! for hosting this weekly celebration of poetry!

From The Waste Land and other poems by T. S. Eliot, this edition published by Faber and Faber originally in 1972:


Preludes

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

FreeVerse: Welcome Christmas (Dr. Seuss)

So, for what will be my final FreeVerse post of the year, I bring you some Dr. Seuss lyrics from my favourite holiday movie: the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Dr. Seuss, like Ogden Nash, was never one to let the non-existence of a word stand in his way. The version I post here comes from this website.

FreeVerse is brought to all of us by Cara at Ooh... Books! Head on over there for more poetry!

Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day! May all my readers have a wonderful holiday full of peace and joy, no matter what holiday you celebrate. I'll be back on the 26th.


Welcome Christmas (Reprise)
Lyrics by Dr. Seuss, 1957

Fa who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas, Come this way!

Fa who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day.

Welcome, Welcome
Fa who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose
Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp

Fa who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
bring your cheer
Fa who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome all Whos
Far and near

Welcome Christmas
Fa who rah-moose
Welcome Christmas
Dah who dah-moose
Christmas day will always be
Just so long as we have we

Fa who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas
bring your light

Welcome Christmas
Fa who rah-moose
Welcome Christmas
Dah who dah-moose
Welcome Christmas while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand

Fa who for-aze
Dah who dor-aze
Welcome, Welcome
Christmas
Christmas
Day

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost)

Thanks to Cara at Ooh... Books! for another week of poetry celebration! Stop by her blog to see what poetry others have got for us this week. I've picked a poem this week that many, many people already know, but it's definitely worth celebrating and highlighting. Aaaand... as I am linking this entry, I see that Cara and I are on the same wavelength. Different entries, same poem, that's okay, right?

This is one of my favourite snowy poems, and my favourite Robert Frost poem, which is saying a fair bit. It's another one my mother has memorized and would often quote to us, and we had the Susan Jeffers' illustrated book. I think her illustrations are part and parcel of how I feel about this poem -- she has captured the muted feeling of a snowy woods in the evening absolutely perfectly.


Do try to find this book if you haven't seen it. It's absolutely worth it, and a marvellous example of illustrated poetry. The poem itself is so beautiful it never fails to make my throat tight.


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

FreeVerse: There Were No Signs (Layton)

Was at our annual luncheon for all the library staff today. There were lots of lovely little moments, lots of great conversation, lots of laughing. It's a group of very intelligent people, so the conversation is often quite lively. We're all very passionate about public libraries and their place in the community, which means there is at least one thing we all have in common.

The high point for me, though, was when the past chairman of the library board read poetry at the end of his speech. You could almost hear the intense appreciation from the audience as he read, the collected intake of breath when he finished. His speech, with which he ended this poem, was a brief one about the exciting plans for new branches, and renovating old libraries so they better serve their purpose now. But to end it with a poem by a well-loved Canadian poet was a stroke of genius on his part. He read it simply and very well, and it was to me a brilliant example of how poetry can enter the everyday and make it extraordinary.

Now, because there is a definite "DO NOT REPRODUCE THIS" statement on the pdf form on which Irving Layton's poem There Were No Signs appears, I shall not reproduce it. I shall instead link to it, and hope you all enjoy.

There Were No Signs by Irving Layton

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, and I really shouldn't have, that FreeVerse is a non-meme run every Wednesday by Cara over at Ooh... Books! Thanks for the opportunity to celebrate poetry, Cara!

FreeVerse: When you drive the Queensborough roads at midnight (Ondaatje)

More Michael Ondaatje. I hope no one is getting bored yet. I just discovered this one in his collection The Cinnamon Peeler, which I am growing to love.

From The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje, published in 1989 by McLelland and Stewart:


When you drive the
Queensborough roads at midnight

do not look at a star
or full moon. Look out for frogs.
And not the venerable ones who recline
on gravel parallel to the highway
but the foolhardy, bored by a country night
dazzled by the adventure of passing beams.

We know their type of course, local heroes
who take off their bandanas and leap naked,
night green, seduced
by the whispers of michelin.

To them we are distinct death.
I am fond of these foolish things
more than the moon.
They welcome me after absence.
One of them is my youth
still jumping into rivers
take care and beware of him.

Knowing you love this landscape
there are few rules.
Do not gaze at moons.
Nuzzle the heat in granite.
Swim toward pictographs.
Touch only reflections.

FreeVerse: Ogden Nash

Inspired by Cara's funny limericks of last week, I went out out this week to deliberately find one of my favourite poets: the marvellous Ogden Nash. He makes up words with impunity to rhyme with what he wishes, and occasionally even manages to inject a little bit of education. I have always enjoyed his animal-based poetry specifically, and the first poem I could recite was a Nash (helped a lot that it was short):


The Panther
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther.


I am pretty sure that I drove my parents nuts with that one, the last two lines of which would set me off into shrieks of high-pitched little girl laughter.

A few more Ogden Nash gems collected from two websites:


The Lama

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet a silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.


The Ant

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?


The Dog

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I say the dog is full of love.
I've also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.


The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other milk.


FreeVerse is hosted every Wednesday by Cara of Ooh... Books! Head on over there for other poems or to add yourself to a celebration of poetry in all its forms.

FreeVerse: Charge of the Light Brigade (Tennyson)

Today's FreeVerse falls on Remembrance Day here in Canada. I thought of posting In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, given that he grew up not so far from me, but then "Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do & die" floated through my head. I want to post Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, because very few poems for me bring home that feeling of terror, waste and incredible, brutal, individual bravery as this one -- and his charge at the end, not to forget but to honour, is perfect for today. Perhaps strangely, or perhaps not, this was one of the poems that my mother used to read to us when we were kids. I think she has it memorized. It was my introduction to Tennyson, and remains my favourite poem of his.

FreeVerse is hosted by Cara over at Ooh... Books! so head over their to find out more, or to join!

This poem, complete with punctuation, was found on the website of the University of Virginia, where they have digitized an original hand-written manuscript.


Charge of the Light Brigade

Half a league half a league
Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns' he said
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred

'Forward the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
Boldly they rode & well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd;
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

FreeVerse: Happiness (Milne)

I'm going to be away from computers and internet all day on Wednesday, is my suspicion, so I am testing Blogger's scheduled publishing capabilities. I do hope this won't sprain them -- it's simply a day in advance. In case you have forgotten, Wednesday is FreeVerse day over at Ooh... Books! and I have been thoroughly enjoying participating. I'm not about to let something paltry like having no internet stop me. We'll talk about novels, and writing one in November, and whether or not something like that might stop me, when we come to that bridge.

I have had a certain poem in my head for years. It pops up every once in a while to sing-song in my ear, and I knew I would have to post it sooner or later. Sooner, most likely. I had a copy of A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young when I was very young indeed, and even before I could read something about Ernest H. Shepard's simple black-and-white ink illustrations drew me in. I think I can trace my secret love of cloche hats to Shepard's very fashionable mothers.

There are many, many wonderful poems in this book, some of which I have memorized and some of which I had apparently forgotten. But today, I give you the poem that will not leave me alone, particularly when I am walking anywhere at speed and especially if it happens to be raining.


From When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne, published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart, originally in 1925 -- I have a 1999 reprint here:


Happiness

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh--
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

FreeVerse: Buried 2 iv (Ondaatje)

It is Wednesday, and Cara's hosting FreeVerse over at Ooh Books! Please go check it out. There's some wonderful and very timely spooky poetry being read and posted!

That said, I am going with something slightly less topical. This might become a bad habit of mine, posting only tried-and-true poets instead of expanding my horizons. That said, I am reading the Griffin Poetry Prize anthology from 2001, and while I found a poem by Fanny Howe that started out marvelously, it fizzed towards the end. Perhaps next week I will have a new-to-me poet.

Instead, one of my favourite verses by an absolute favourite poet and novelist, Michael Ondaatje. I have reviewed Handwriting in its entirety before, but I did not post this. This poem gives me shivers. The whole of Buried 2, but this verse particularly. I would strongly recommend for full effect finding this entire volume, because the emotional weight and beauty of the poems grows cumulatively and with each re-read. There are also threads of theme and language weaving in and out of each poem, subtle and delightful, giving the reader the added pleasure of recognizing where they've seen that line or thought before.


From Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1998:


Buried 2

iv

What we lost.

The interior love poem
the deeper levels of the self
landscapes of daily life

dates when the abandonment
of certain principles occurred.

The rule of courtesy - how to enter
a temple or forest, how to touch
a master's feet before lesson or performance.

The art of the drum. The art of eye-painting.
How to cut an arrow. Gestures between lovers.
The pattern of her teeth marks on his skin
drawn by a monk from memory.

The limits of betrayal. The five ways
a lover could mock an ex-lover.

Nine finger and eye gestures
to signal key emotions.

The small boats of solitude.

Lyrics that rose
from love
back into the air

naked with guile
and praise.

Our works and days.

We knew how monsoons
(south-west, north-east)
would govern behaviour

and when to discover
the knowledge of the dead

hidden in clouds,
in rivers, in unbroken rock.

All this we burned or traded for power and wealth
from the eight compass points of vengeance

from the two levels of envy

FreeVerse: Ode to some yellow flowers (Neruda)

Cara over at Ooh... Books! has come up with an idea I absolutely love and am very excited about. I have been thinking about poetry a lot lately. I've been thinking about Tennyson, to be exact, but I haven't got any Tennyson here today so for my first installment of FreeVerse, I'm going to fall back on an old favourite of mine: Pablo Neruda. He is as wonderful in English as he is in Spanish... but I digress. I have written about Neruda and poetry in translation before.

I don't know much about reading poetry other than for the sheer joy I get when reading perfect language. So I'm not going to analyze; every Wednesday, I'm just going to pick a poem I love, or a poet I love, and post.

This is Cara's explanation of the "non-meme":

FreeVerse, hosted here [Ooh... Books!] every Wednesday, is supposed to be just that—free. The name, in true poetic style, is supposed to have layers of meaning.

1. 1. Of course, free verse is a style of poetry, but all styles and forms will be celebrated.
2. 2. Verse can can be read for free on the web.
3. 3. Anyone is free to participate . . . or not.
4. 4. Posts entered into Mr. Linky can be vlog poetry readings, written poetry (by well-known poets or by YOU), reviews of poetry collections, analyses of poems. In short, posts can be anything to celebrate poetry and broaden our readers' exposure to all forms of verse. (Oh, they don't even have to be from that Wednesday. You can post permalinks for any poetry-related posts you want more people to read.)
5. 5. FreeVerse is also a nod to my love of sci-fi and fantasy. It brings to my mind the ideas expressed by the words universe, omniverse, multiverse, and the like. FreeVerse is all of those things for poetry.

This week, from my edition of Neruda's Odes to Common Things (translated by Ken Krabbenhoft, published by Bulfinch Press in 1994, ISBN 0-8212-2080-2):


Ode to some yellow flowers

Rolling its blues against another blue,
the sea, and against the sky
some yellow flowers.

October is on its way.

And although
the sea may well be important, with its unfolding
myths, its purpose and its risings,
when the gold of a single
yellow plant
explodes
in the sand
your eyes
are bound
to the soil.
They flee the wide sea and its heavings.

We are dust and to dust return.
In the end we're
neither air, nor fire, nor water,
just
dirt,
neither more nor less, just dirt,
and maybe
some yellow flowers.

Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje

Today I have my favourite book of poetry for you. Reading is progressing slightly better than it has been, and my hope is to have a flurry of reviews this week -- all of the shorter things I have been half-reading -- but today I want to tell the world about Michael Ondaatje's Handwriting.

I bought this book, about ten years ago, on a whim during my first Ondaatje kick. I'd just read The English Patient and loved it, and In the Skin of a Lion and really liked it. The poems in this slim little volume surpass both and this is one of my favourite works in the English language.

Ondaatje's novels always hover just on the edge of poetry. I know that some find his work difficult because he's not so much about plot or even characters always (although he does have a knack for creating a memorable character, and his plots are fascinating and unconventional); he is about the language and the imagery and the impressions that a paragraph can leave on a reader. In a lesser wordsmith I might find this highly irritating, but with Ondaatje I'm perfectly happy to float along. Also, I know at this point what I'm getting into when I pick up his novels.

Handwriting is a set of poems that are so rich. I react to these poems viscerally -- I can smell, taste, see -- they are dark and smoky, sorrowful, sensual, full of history and pain and love and beauty. There's humour, bright and unexpected, and threads between poems where Ondaatje finds a theme and connects them across the volume; sometimes it's a phrase that finds its way into a new poem and a new interpretation, sometimes it's an expansion of a concept. They are about Sri Lanka, Ondaatje's country of birth; it hosts many of the poems, and the rest are about being absent from it. Many of them pay homage to Sri Lanka's long history and depth of culture, and others are laments for its conflicts and pain.

These poems connect the reader to history and culture and human experience in a way that news reports and history books can't. I read these poems and hope that, for all of our sakes, Sri Lanka can find peace. Given the conflict there recently, these poems resonate even further with me now, despite the fact that they were written over ten years ago. If you have an opportunity to find this little book, please do, even if you don't normally read poetry. Now is a perfect time to read it.

From Handwriting:

The First Rule
of Sinhalese
Architecture

Never build three doors
in a straight line

A devil might rush
through them
deep into your house,
into your life