The book contains multitudes, and a critical discussion of it can begin nearly anywhere. What should we most urgently address when reading The H.D. Book? It must be said that writing an essay such as this one does the work a great disservice, limiting us to one or two facets of a seemingly endless array to examine. One could build a university on the learning between these covers. But bemoaning the limits of critical inquiry can only get us so far; it is enough to be aware of them. As such, I would like to focus on what I see as one of the general themes of the text: its engagement and critique of rational modes of thinking, and the place of poetry in critiquing such logic. Following this thematic thread, I hope, will also bring into focus Duncan’s relationship to his poetry.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A confounding tome ...
... The H.D. Book by Robert Duncan | Quarterly Conversation.
Hmm ...
... Maverick Philosopher: Why Exaggerate?
But isn't exaggeration, in the instances cited, just hyperbole, done for rhetorical effect and not meant to be taken literally?
Sound like lights ...
... Citizen Kane | Rosebud and the Radio | By Tom Nolan - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The visuals in "Citizen Kane" would be complemented by (and even take cues from) audio techniques carried over from radio. The rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue of near-simultaneous speakers—a staple of Mercury radio scenes—animates sequences in Kane's editorial offices, in a Congressional hearing chamber, and in the newsreel-makers' projection room. Musical stings, such as a snicker of notes from a muted brass section, punctuate certain bon mots. The narrative's momentum is almost relentless—as in a Mercury radio play rushing to fit a complex saga into a single hour without once losing a listener's attention.
Check it out ...
... Poetry Pairing | Images of Transit Riders - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In case you wondered ...
... How Google Translate works - Features, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The corpus it can scan includes all the paper put out since 1957 by the EU in two dozen languages, everything the UN and its agencies have ever done in writing in six official languages, and huge amounts of other material, from the records of international tribunals to company reports and all the articles and books in bilingual form that have been put up on the web by individuals, libraries, booksellers, authors and academic departments.
RIP ...
... Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, dead at 64 | The Australian Eye. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thought for the day ...
Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.- Hamlin Garland, born on this date in 1860
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Launch ...
... DownWithTyranny!: Introducing "Will Cuppy Tonight". (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the mid-thirties, he was fired after a three-week trial stint as a New York Postcolumnist because his editor felt that obscure, convoluted pieces on Victor Hugo, Lady Godiva, the planet Saturn, and various fish were not precisely the sort of topical witticisms the Post's subscribers were believed to prefer.
Face blindness ...
... You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know | Books and Culture.
Prosopagnosia ... is not a mental illness, not like the paranoid schizophrenia that Sellers finally claims as an explanation for her mother's behavior. The condition, both a genetic inheritance and an end result of Sellers' bewildering childhood, comes as an inability of the brain to put together the parts of the face; Sellers knows who her friends are, but when she sees them, noses and mouths don't register as belonging to that particular person. Even her mother's face is something that Sellers cannot visualize.
Hmm ...
... If It Feels Right - NYTimes.com.
Whatever else might be said of my class mates and me at St. Joe's in the very early '60s, we did take moral issues seriously. (Thanks to Dave Lull for correcting my grammar.)
Nerve-wracking tension ...
... instead of 'Glee': ‘You Deserve Nothing’ by Alexander Maksik - Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Ed Champion.)
Early on Mr. Maksik’s echoes of Camus are faint, but later, when he paraphrases and quotes directly from “The Stranger,” the parallels between Will and Meursault become nearly impossible to ignore. The novelist is not only modernizing “The Stranger” but demonstrating its enduring relevance ...
Thought for the day ...
If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.- J. B. Priestley, born on this date in 1894
Monday, September 12, 2011
Back in ...
... Book Blog – Likely Stories, from Booklist Online � Blog Archive � Runway Noir. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Do without ...
... Richard Wagner’s Music Is Effectively Banned in Israel - Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)
Well, here's one case where Nietzsche was spot on. I'm not much of a Wagner fan. An awful lot of his music strikes me as banal. As for whether his music should be performed in Israel, I suppose I'd be inclined to leave it up to Israeli audiences. If they programmed and no one one attended, it would demonstrate that Wagner was not a valued commodity in that venue. Hence, no reason to program his music, since no one would want to hear it.
... Wagner was after something more radical: He proposed to do away with the covenantal order of traditional society. Nietzsche had him pegged. At first intoxicated with Wagner, he awoke with a hangover and wrote: “Whence arises all evil in the world, Wagner asked himself? … From customs, laws, morals, institutions, from all those things on which the ancient world and ancient society rests.”He went on: “Wagner’s heroines, once they have been divested of their heroic husks, are indistinguishable from Madame Bovary.”
Well, here's one case where Nietzsche was spot on. I'm not much of a Wagner fan. An awful lot of his music strikes me as banal. As for whether his music should be performed in Israel, I suppose I'd be inclined to leave it up to Israeli audiences. If they programmed and no one one attended, it would demonstrate that Wagner was not a valued commodity in that venue. Hence, no reason to program his music, since no one would want to hear it.
Predicting is difficult ...
... especially the future: Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana - The Daily Beast.
Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.
Grief observed ...
... The Millions : My Biggest Fan.
The brain episode had changed him in other ways as well, a fifteen degree shift of his personality into someone more outwardly friendly, chatting up the van driver on his way to rehab, for example. My mother often accused him of sliding into one of his “intellectual funks,” which made him seem non-present in a given moment, which I’m now certain was him “working” a particular tricky case over in his head, a trait I know I share since one of my more frequent answers to my wife’s questions is “huh?”
Thought for the day ...
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.- H. L. Mencken, born on this date in 1880
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Versioning ...
... NY Times: “Paper of record” no more? — Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Plus ça change ...
... The Social Affairs Unit - Web Review: Theodore Dalrymple on what Chekhov can teach us about the London riots. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... who are we that we should forgive what people do to others? That kind of forgiveness is for God, and in us partakes of the sin of pride. We are not God: we are earthbound creatures, condemned to do merely our best, which includes, or ought to include, our best to suppress and prevent the crime that causes so much human suffering.
Quite a bunch ...
... The Elizabethans | A.N. Wilson | Review by The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe, the establishment of the Virginia colony, the formation of the East India Company: the older generation of historians celebrated the Elizabethan age for laying the foundations of the ‘British Empire’—a phrase, Wilson reminds us, that was coined by Elizabeth’s astrologer, John Dee. But historians never stand outside their own time. Where once Sir John Hawkins was a brave seadog, now he is the reviled father of the Atlantic slave trade. Where once Edmund Spenser was the poet of fairyland, now he is the author of a political treatise advocating genocide in Ireland.
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
Well, looking at the paper itself, I see that the book page is part of the fall roundup. But I can't seem to locate that page online. If I ever find it, I'll post a link.
Thought for the day ...
Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.- Sir James Jeans, born on this date in 1877
Saturday, September 10, 2011
In case you wondered ...
... Holy War — By Nigel Cliff — Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Penal colony ...
... The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress — By Beryl Bainbridge — Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Harold is irritated by Rose and her smoking habit; she doesn’t wash enough; she seems remarkably incurious about the landscapes she’s passing through. Rose finds Harold boring and fastidious, intently spraying the camper van with insect repellent. No one has a sharper eye than Bainbridge for human foibles and pretensions; no one better understands importunate human needs and the urgent desire to assuage them, whether it’s a stolen cigarette in a car park or soulless sex in a hotel bedroom.
Thought for the day ...
... if you do not even understand what words say,
how can you expect to pass judgement
on what words conceal?- H.D., born on this date in 1886
Friday, September 09, 2011
I'm a day late ...
... story of my life: If it's Thursday, it's IOW Verse Day - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
What women have to stand on squarely is not their ability to see the world in the way men see it, but the importance and validity of their seeing it in some other way.- Mary Austin, born on this date in 1868
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Take my verse ... please
... These are the poems, folks by David Yezzi - The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A poem ...
August
Every year right about now
A day arrives bidding
Summer farewell, air and sky
Mimicking October, making sense
Out of cadence and finale.
Epitaph and prophecy,
It is an ache for time
Already spent or running out.
Thought for the day ...
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.- Siegfried Sassoon, born on this date in 1886
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Highly original ...
... Stephen Crane's strange singing by Michael Dirda - The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Prescription reading ...
... Sick literature: what to read when you're ill | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The thick of life ...
... The Best Proletarian Novel Ever Written���Main Feature���Jewish Ideas Daily. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: Labor and Literature (which Dave also sent along).
Thought for the day ...
If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now.- Elinor Wylie, born on this date in 1885
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Well-rounded ...
... Book Notes | Books and Culture: Ethan Allen: deist, patriot, military hero, bestselling author.
Called to engage ...
... Adam Zagajewski: The Poet of 9/11 - The Daily Beast. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Differentia ...
... How Art Can Be Good. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
All humans find faces engaging—practically by definition: face recognition is in our DNA.
I seem to recall that in T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom there is an episode in which someone draws a portrait of a Bedouin chieftain and the nearest he or his tribesmen can come to identifying what the drawing represents is seeing some similarity between the lines on the paper and the horns of some animal. I am sure their face-recognition skills were as good as anyone's. They just couldn't read a drawing.
That aside, I pretty much agree with all the rest.
Poet of shards ...
... Patrick Kurp on Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewicz | Quarterly Conversation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Faith and Scripture ...
... Smithereens! | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Why then do biblicists go wrong? Because they mistakenly assume that the Bible contains no errors in whatever it says, always speaks clearly, and therefore can be understood correctly by any able- and fair-minded individual who reads it inductively.
Thought for the day ...
Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.- Robert M. Pirsig, born on this date in 1928
Monday, September 05, 2011
A singular biography ...
... Deep in a Dream - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No matter how the writer may try to have it otherwise, most biographies are simply one thing after another. The life of a junkie is not just one thing after another, it is the same one thing after another -- and yet there is not a page in Deep in a Dream that is not engaging, alive, demanding a response from a reader whether that be a matter of horror or awe, making the reader almost complicit in whatever comes next, even when, with the story less that of a musician who used heroin to play than that of a junkie who played to get heroin, it seems certain that nothing can.
Reading and poetry ...
... With Dyslexia, Words Failed Me and Then Saved Me - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
The world is a living image of God.- Tommaso Campanella, born on this date in 1568
Sunday, September 04, 2011
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