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larryhammerReading Wednesday for the second Wednesday in a row, whee!
Finished:
Italy, Samuel Rogers, without once highlighting a quote for saving -- which says something about the type of poetry. Not necessarily the quality of the poetry, just that it's aiming not for striking phrases but rather at building its effects with larger structures (in this case, verse paragraphs). Today we prize compression and the tight line, so it's not likely to be popular among contemporary readers. Pity.
The Foresters: A Poem, Descriptive of a Pedestrian Journey to the Falls of Niagara, in the Autumn of 1804, Alexander Wilson, otherwise better known as the most important American ornithologist before Audubon. In his early adulthood, Wilson was a Scottish poet moving in Burns's circles, but he emigrated to America at 27 after serving prison time for a verse satire that cut libel laws too closely, and after holding a series of odd jobs, including school-teacher, he took up drawing and studying birds. He died of dysentery during a field expedition. The trip in question started outside Philadelphia and covered 1200-odd miles round-trip in 2 months, by foot to Cayuga Lake and thence by boat, to a destination that few had seen -- though I note enough sightseers were coming through by then that a ladder had been set for climbing down to the base of the falls.
The poem itself was first serialized in a magazine in 1809-1810, then five years later published as a book reprinted a few times over the next couple decades. According to one overly harsh biography, "It is not altogether a dreary waste of words, but whether he could have spent his time more profitably in writing a simple prose narrative of the journey, as Ord has hinted, is another matter. Its chief fault seems to lie in its length, excessive detail and more than occasional careless composition." I won't argue the careless composition, but using verse (in this case, a serviceable example of the slightly ponderous late-18th-century style, with intermittent metrical monotony) allowed Wilson, per its genre conventions, more discursiveness into both narrative observation and local color -- and that's exactly what I'm interested in at the moment, with this dive into travel verse. I'd add as a weakness that Wilson's poetic powers are not up to describing Niagara itself, or even its effect on mere humans,* though he does try gamely. Oddly, given American publication, the extensive endnotes are clearly written for a European audience -- which is sometimes helpful to a modern American reader. Content warning: unapologetic European imperialism.
All-but-finished:
The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, F. C. Yee, which works through every possible meaning of "crush." I tracked this down because the mysterious new student in Genie's class is the Monkey King himself (not a big spoiler: it's on the flap copy). Basic story: the two of them need (for spoilery reasons) to track down 108 demons, all of whom were killed in Journey to the West and recently escaped in a mass-breakout from the underworld -- and they want payback. The book does a good job at fast-moving, entertaining YA, and excellent job at remixing the Monkey King mythos. (Watch out for Guanyin.) (And the college application essays.) Am a few chapters from the end, but calling this done for these purposes.
Did not finish:
Provenance, Ann Leckie, which was starting to catch interest, finally, when the library reclaimed it. I've put myself back into the request queue to try again later.
Working on finishing:
World of Cultivation and various poetry anthologies.
* "They should have sent a Byron," I kept thinking.
---L.
Subject quote from "The Foresters," Alexander Wilson -- and no, that's not his description of Niagara, but rather a frontier town.
Finished:
Italy, Samuel Rogers, without once highlighting a quote for saving -- which says something about the type of poetry. Not necessarily the quality of the poetry, just that it's aiming not for striking phrases but rather at building its effects with larger structures (in this case, verse paragraphs). Today we prize compression and the tight line, so it's not likely to be popular among contemporary readers. Pity.
The Foresters: A Poem, Descriptive of a Pedestrian Journey to the Falls of Niagara, in the Autumn of 1804, Alexander Wilson, otherwise better known as the most important American ornithologist before Audubon. In his early adulthood, Wilson was a Scottish poet moving in Burns's circles, but he emigrated to America at 27 after serving prison time for a verse satire that cut libel laws too closely, and after holding a series of odd jobs, including school-teacher, he took up drawing and studying birds. He died of dysentery during a field expedition. The trip in question started outside Philadelphia and covered 1200-odd miles round-trip in 2 months, by foot to Cayuga Lake and thence by boat, to a destination that few had seen -- though I note enough sightseers were coming through by then that a ladder had been set for climbing down to the base of the falls.
The poem itself was first serialized in a magazine in 1809-1810, then five years later published as a book reprinted a few times over the next couple decades. According to one overly harsh biography, "It is not altogether a dreary waste of words, but whether he could have spent his time more profitably in writing a simple prose narrative of the journey, as Ord has hinted, is another matter. Its chief fault seems to lie in its length, excessive detail and more than occasional careless composition." I won't argue the careless composition, but using verse (in this case, a serviceable example of the slightly ponderous late-18th-century style, with intermittent metrical monotony) allowed Wilson, per its genre conventions, more discursiveness into both narrative observation and local color -- and that's exactly what I'm interested in at the moment, with this dive into travel verse. I'd add as a weakness that Wilson's poetic powers are not up to describing Niagara itself, or even its effect on mere humans,* though he does try gamely. Oddly, given American publication, the extensive endnotes are clearly written for a European audience -- which is sometimes helpful to a modern American reader. Content warning: unapologetic European imperialism.
All-but-finished:
The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, F. C. Yee, which works through every possible meaning of "crush." I tracked this down because the mysterious new student in Genie's class is the Monkey King himself (not a big spoiler: it's on the flap copy). Basic story: the two of them need (for spoilery reasons) to track down 108 demons, all of whom were killed in Journey to the West and recently escaped in a mass-breakout from the underworld -- and they want payback. The book does a good job at fast-moving, entertaining YA, and excellent job at remixing the Monkey King mythos. (Watch out for Guanyin.) (And the college application essays.) Am a few chapters from the end, but calling this done for these purposes.
Did not finish:
Provenance, Ann Leckie, which was starting to catch interest, finally, when the library reclaimed it. I've put myself back into the request queue to try again later.
Working on finishing:
World of Cultivation and various poetry anthologies.
* "They should have sent a Byron," I kept thinking.
---L.
Subject quote from "The Foresters," Alexander Wilson -- and no, that's not his description of Niagara, but rather a frontier town.