Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

Time for another installment in that intermitant feature, a Reading Wednesday report. Aside from a backlong of Yuletide fanfic, I finished one book:

Batgirl at Super Hero High by Lisa Yee, which is book #3 of a series of YA tie-in novels for the web-based animated series DC Super Hero Girls (which frankly amazes me: it's an officially produced high school AU focusing on female supers, including future villains). We've read with TBD some of the younger-suitable material (early readers and comic books) but this is definitely too old for them. Enjoyed it as escapist fluff reading by a good writer. FWIW, I now have #1 from the library, but haven't gotten into it yet (partly because the opening, in which naive Wonder Woman first leaves Themyscira, skirts embarrassment humor).

Ongoing:

As far as the Big Brick aka Minford & Lau's Classical Chinese Literature v1, am a little short of halfway through (I'm up to the Six Dynasties period of disunion between the unified empire of the Han and Tang dynasties) but am a little more than halfway through all my available renewals from the library. Oops. I may jump to chapters covering topics I'm less well read on (that is, skip the High Tang poets).

Poems Dead and Undead ed. by Tony Barnstone and Michelle Mitchell-Foust, which is yet another Everyman's Library pocket anthology. I want to like this more, but it hadn't really engaging me. This may be me -- I think I was expecting something with more monsters, but that's another anthology by the same editors. Certainly the idea of poems grouped into corporeal undead / incorporeal undead / devils+angels strikes me as a good thing, and I'm meeting new stuff that I like. And yet. Have picked my way about halfway through.

Plus boning up on canon for my Yuletide assignment, but I can't talk about that oops.

---L.

Subject quote from "The Ballad of Mulan," Anonymous tr. John Frodsham.

Missed Poetry Monday last week because I was in the hospital waiting to have a kidney stone removed. So here's a belated High Holiday poem:


Yom Kippur, Taos, New Mexico, by Robin Becker

I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer
        to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness

is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder
        in the cry of the magpie that I am

still capable of inflicting pain
        at this distance.

Like a painting, our talk is dense with description,
        half-truths, landscapes, phrases layered

with a patina over time. When she came into my life
        I didn’t hesitate.

Or is that only how it seems now, looking back?
        Or is that only how you accuse me, looking back?

Long ago, this desert was an inland sea. In the mountains
        you can still find shells.

It’s these strange divagations I’ve come to love: midday sun
        on pink escarpments; dusk on gray sandstone;

toe-and-finger holes along the three hundred and fifty-seven foot
        climb to Acoma Pueblo, where the spirit

of the dead hovers about its earthly home
        four days, before the prayer sticks drive it away.

Today all good Jews collect their crimes like old clothes
        to be washed and given to the poor.

I remember how my father held his father around the shoulders
        as they walked to the old synagogue in Philadelphia.

"We're almost there, Pop," he said. "A few more blocks."
        I want to tell you that we, too, are almost there,

for someone has mapped this autumn field with meaning, and any day
        October brooding in me, will open to reveal

our names—inscribed or absent —
        among the dry thistles and spent weeds.


Disclaimer: I am not Jewish, but I live in a Reform Jewish-observing household. Also, I am not in Taos, but I live in the state next-door. And yes, doors do swell and tighten during the summer rainy season.

---L.

Subject quote from "Augustine," Vienna Teng.

Reading Wednesday, with a few things to report --

Finished:

Poems of the Sea ed. by J.D. McClatchy, another Everyman's Library pocket anthology, which I snorked down like wahoo. I especially appreciate the songs and chanteys section. And ending with Whitman. Not quite as good as the seasons one, but close, and scratches a different itch anyway.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which I greatly enjoyed, despite stalling a few chapters from the end for a week -- it's been that kind of reading time. Ragtag crew of a wormhole boring ship heading into a recent civil war zone on the prospect of a very well paying job, but unlike much space opera, the politics are downplayed to focus entirely on the crew and their relationships. I like the ways generic and individual characteristics are handled, and the whole crew in general. Want the sequel, even though it focuses on the character thread I'm least interested in.

In progress:

On Wings of Song ed. by J.D. McClatchy, yet another Everyman's Library pocket anthology, this one all about birds. My main complaint here is that there are too many very short sections, with title pages that take up space that could have been devoted to, yanno, poems. Am about halfway through, having just finished reading about owls.

Classical Chinese Literature v1 ed. by Minford & Lau -- crunching to about ~¼ in, having reached the Han dynasty. (One advantage, albeit a dubious one, of volume 2 being existentially challenged is not having to cross the Ming Dynasty without a camel, which is never fun.) I do like the editors' focus on how translations have been handled over the centuries, highlighting how western understanding of China and Chinese has changed -- as well as making sure ALL the modes are covered in reasonable depth. I think I very much need my own a copy of this.

---L.

Subject quote from "Paradise Lost" book XI, John Milton. Yes, I know, him.

New job has been eating up my brain, thus the relative lack of posts. Including, even, mentioning the new job -- it's more technical editing than writing, which is exactly where I want to be, and for a company that makes medical devices, which is good work. Lots and lots of required training, though, given being heavily regulated — thus brain.

But despite that, here's something for a Poetry Monday:


Ghost House, Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
    And left no trace but the cellar walls,
    And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
    The orchard tree has grown one copse
    Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
    On that disused and forgotten road
    That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
    I hear him begin far enough away
    Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
    Who share the unlit place with me—
    Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
    With none among them that ever sings,
    And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.


From his first collection, A Boy's Will, near the start. That's a lot of layers of time for such a short piece.

---L.

Subject quote from "Your Last Drive," Thomas Hardy.

A Poetry Monday without comment:


Meeting Point, Louis MacNeice

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream’s music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise—
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body’s peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.


---L.

Subject quote from "Snow-Bound," William Greenleaf Whittier.

Slightly late, but still in time for Reading Wednesday:

Finished:

The Four Seasons ed. by J.D. McClatchy. This has immediately become one of my favorite anthologies ever. Heartily recommended.

In Good King Charles's Golden Days by Bernard Shaw. Shaw's influence is all over 20th century drama, isn't it. Parts of this could have been written by a young Stoppard.

A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil. This one is set just after the Great War, and its shadow looms over civilian life. Read it while recovering from a kidney stone attack, and it did the job admirably of distracting me without any need for serious thought. Not her best or even most interesting, but a solid instance of her sort of schoolgirl stories.

In progress:

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism by Bernard Shaw, which is lucid and entertaining, if marred by occasional bits of condescending. Would that more books on economics were written this well. Maybe a quarter of the way in? -- it's hefty, but quick reading.

Love Poems ed. by C.N. Edwards, which is the sort of anthology where the illustrations are much of the point: there's an old painting opposite every poem. (The cover has Klimt.) Not many poems that are both good and new to me, so far, though many lovely paintings I hadn't met before. Overall, acceptable as a member of its class. The text is oddly marred by proofreading errors, including several instances of two stanzas being run together. Am ~½ through.

---L.

Subject quote from "The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron," George Chapman.

Reading Wednesday is nigh. In fact, it's here. And I done been readin'!

Finished:

I Shall Seal the Heavens. Finally. I have to say, this is epic: The author knows how to plot on an enormous scale, and how to build up the stakes in order to tear down everything you think you know is safe, before pulling back more of the curtain to show a wider stage. (The first timeskip is startling enough, and successive ones have stronger impacts until the climactic one that's as baffling as it is shocking.) There's a couple narrative patterns that get a little tiresome and in the final arc, the author resorts to using an unreliable POV, apparently to up the tension but the effect is to make some reveals feel like ass-pulls, but those are quibbles. I won't say that the treatment of women is unproblematic, but it's better than typical for Chinese popular lit and some female characters are given complete respect by the narration. I do recommend this to anyone in search of a timesink* and interested in current trends in Chinese fantasy.

An Interpretation of Friends Worship by N. Jean Toomer, a Friends General Conference chapbook found randomly on Project Gutenberg. I've no idea how much sense it make to anyone unfamiliar with Quaker practice, but I found it spoke to my condition, to use the Friendly phrase.

The complete flower fairies of Cicely Mary Barker. I've one book of hers and read at least one or two more over the years, but having them all together as on that official website is nice. Archive binge! This is a good example of a mixed-medium art form: each {poem + picture} is a unit -- they require each other, and are significantly weaker when separated. (The sentiments are not very Chinese, but the genre certainly is.)

In progress:

The Four Seasons ed. by J.D. McClatchy, another Everyman's Library pocket hardcover poetry anthology. Needless to say, I'm All Over this one. Lots of good stuff, too. Am halfway through Summer (following Western tradition, it starts with Spring).

In Good King Charles's Golden Days by Bernard Shaw, which is a quite Shavian if somewhat rambly imagining of a 1680 meeting between Isaac Newton, George Fox, and Charles Stuart, with interruptions by three royal mistresses. And others.


* At 1600+ chapters, it's freakin' HUGE. The translation is somewhat over 3 million words long, or roughly the size as all the Jordan-only volumes of The Wheel of Time.

---L.

Subject quote from a recent episode of Saga Thing.

For Poetry Monday, another sample from an Elizabethan sonnet cycle:

Sonnet 61 from Idea, Michael Drayton

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes—
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!

(See also this performance.)

Drayton was possibly the best of the second-tier Elizabethan/Jacobean poets, a thoroughly professional writer who turned his hand at every poetic genre of the day, handling all of them with solid craft and a deft ear. He spent most of his life working as secretary to various patrons, never especially high ranking ones.

What I especially like about Idea, especially in its final form (Drayton revised it extensively over 25 years, and this sonnet first appeared in the last edition), is that he rarely loses sight of the ostensible purpose of the sequence -- namely, to seduce, and most of its sonnets are acts of rhetoric trying to convince someone of something: his beloved, himself, his audience. This gives the poems a dramatic tension that's lacking in far too many of his contemporaries. I wouldn't want him as my lover, not acting like this, but it makes for damn fine poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from "Break It Down Again," Tears for Fears.

For Poetry Monday, continuing the (non)argument of Wyatt and Gascoigne, a pome from Astrophil and Stella:


Sonnet 31, Philip Sidney

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that even in heav'nly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case,
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?


See also sonnet 39. Sir Philip was the Elizabethan courtier par excellence, in the opinion of his contemporaries, and a damn fine writer. Astrophil and Stella is not actually the first sonnet sequence in English, but it was the first Petrarchan one -- and it sparked a fad for them, including Shakespeare's famous, incomplete one. It's also, IMNSHO, the best of the Elizabethan sonnet cycles, as it tells a complete, dramatic story, and including drama is something that only Drayton also managed. Note that Sidney is not actually a practicing Petrarchan lover -- he spends a lot of time arguing against several of the conventions, even while embracing the genre.

---L.

Subject quote from "Passing Afternoon," Iron & Wine.

For a Poetry Monday, let's reach back half a millennium for a poem, shall we? We shall:


"They flee from me that sometime did me seek," Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
    With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
    That now are wild and do not remember
    That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
    Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
    When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
    And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
    But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
    And I have leave to go of her goodness,
    And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.


Plus ça change, and all that. Wyatt was a diplomat for Henry VIII (including the embassy to the Pope asking for annulment from Catherine of Aragorn), and he brought back to England the continental manner in Renaissance poetry -- he wrote the first sonnets in English as imitations of Petrarch, whom he also translated, and he was constantly experimenting with style and form in his lyrics. (Though, interestingly, that "newfangleness" is straight out of Chaucer, meaning fickleness.) Of course, being a courtier in Henry's court was dangerous: he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of having an affair with Anne Boleyn and was freed only after her execution, which he witnessed and wrote about.

---l.

Subject quote from "The End of the Play," William Makepeace Thackeray.