Winter 2021: ...and you're reading WHAT?!

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

I finished the Maigret novel last night. They're all quite short. I think Cather's Song of the Lark is at the head of the queue right now and it will get auditioned this evening, but I have a fistful of interesting books available and if the Cather doesn't grab me quickly she has some very strong competition lurking in the pile.

I read Donald Davie's ESSEX POEMS: 1963-1967 (1969). A nice object, a book with line-drawing illustrations. The tone is bleak. Some moments in the poems hit home, but a lot of is rather oblique and obscure to me. It's curious to recall that Davie was grouped with the Movement, as these poems are much less directly communicative and obviously coherent than Larkin's. He draws on Pasternak (whom I don't know). He was also a Poundian, and I think I can see a Poundian touch somewhere here, for instance in the tendency to repetition that Larkin wouldn't have done.

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

― change display name (Jordan),

Which?

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

I've read HOMER'S ODYSSEY (2006) by Simon Armitage. This version of the epic takes less than a day to read. It's brisk, communicative - in fact it's basically the script of a radio play. It doesn't contain that much obvious poetry, nor Homeric epithets. But it conveys a story well, makes certain things clearer to me, and delivers the encounters with the Cyclops and Sirens especially vividly (the Cyclops' dumb voice; the Sirens' circling song).

My sense is that the things that seem most exciting about the Odyssey (the encounters with particular monsters and threats) are things that Homer, or most versions, said very little about; and that most of the text is generally about relations between people - Odyssey, the suitors and other less interesting characters. If I'm right, it's odd that someone invented such vivid monsters and adventures and then made relatively little of them.

But the business with Eumaeus, the suitors, the scar, the bow, are all clearer to me now than they were before.

It seems to me that Moore peaked in the 1990s, with FROG HOSPITAL and BIRDS OF AMERICA; that before that, she was a bit brittle (SELF HELP), and after it, a bit unfocused (GATE) - but also that her talent is great enough and consistent enough that even the lesser Lorrie is better than the best of most other people.

― the pinefox, Saturday, February 13, 2021 4:17 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree with the latter half of this, i found bark mostly very bad, but otherwise yeah this is the progression. frog hospital still so great

Bark has "Wings," one of her very best.

Finished the Wang book, which got better as it went on and I got into the rhythms of it.

Read a journal with some friends' writing in it this morning, and going to read another issue in a little bit.

I've been reading Beddoes' "Death's Jest-Book" before falling asleep every night, and it's been having a funny effect on my dreams, which is kind of neat! I am enjoying myself immensely whilst reading it, tho I am usually a little stoned on good indica as I rest my head, so maybe that's it.

Late this afternoon, I'm picking up a package from a friend whose become a distributor for UK-based Face Press— it's the SEVEN chapbooks by JH Prynne that they released during 2020. Cost me a pretty penny, but Prynne stuff is so scarce in the US that even if I don't like something, I can easily just keep it and sell it for an absurd amount of money in a few years. But I adore Prynne, so think I'll be okay with all of it :-)

halfway through Magda Szabo's Abigail. after the very emotional start, it's been in a bit of a rut, taking too long to go through the motions to bridge the major plot points.

gave up on The Hate U Give, everything was predictable. guess i'm not a young adult any more.

My sense is that the things that seem most exciting about the Odyssey (the encounters with particular monsters and threats) are things that Homer, or most versions, said very little about; and that most of the text is generally about relations between people - Odyssey, the suitors and other less interesting characters. If I'm right, it's odd that someone invented such vivid monsters and adventures and then made relatively little of them.

― the pinefox, Saturday, February 13, 2021 3:54 PM (yesterday)

i read emily wilson's translation of the odyssey recently. it was highly acclaimed when it came out and i can see why: it reads really well. even the bits that i had remembered being a little dull are easy to get through in this version. odysseus does emerge as a more interesting character (and more of a bastard, honestly) here than in other versions i've read. but this readability may have come at a bit of a cost. after reading it i went to look at reviews and found one by a classics scholar who complained that, by writing in shorter lines than homer (lines of about 10 syllables, as opposed to lines of 15 syllables in the greek), wilson had shortened the entire poem by a third! so, probably not the only translation anyone should read, but i wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

something that stood out to me in this version is that almost all of the famous fantastical adventures -- the cyclops, sirens, circe -- are told in flashback by odysseus, who is described by homer in terms that wilson chooses to translate as (for example) "the lord of lies" and "the master of deceit." in other words, it's at least possible that he's making it all up!

J.D.: yes on your last point - they're told to the court of the Phaeacians. There's a tale-within-tale structure here. I hadn't quite picked up on your thought, that it was invented. I did read a big LRB review of Wilson.

As a Joycean, I observe that this tale within tale structure doesn't really get transferred to ULYSSES, where we see most things first-hand.

something that stood out to me in this version is that almost all of the famous fantastical adventures -- the cyclops, sirens, circe -- are told in flashback by odysseus, who is described by homer in terms that wilson chooses to translate as (for example) "the lord of lies" and "the master of deceit." in other words, it's at least possible that he's making it all up!

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.),

Daniel Mendelsohn's book touches exactly this point.

Donald Davie: PURITY OF DICTION IN ENGLISH VERSE (1952).

I think 'diction' here means something like: the vocabulary that a poet allows himself or herself to use, as appropriately poetic. I don't feel that DD defines it terrifically clearly, though as critical writers go he is quite clear.

I am not certain that I get the argument yet. I might only read the first half of the book. It's in an edition that also contains its follow-up, ARTICULATE ENERGY.

The main thing that one would notice about DD, like Empson, is his tremendous intimacy with the English poetic canon. Wordsworth, Pope, but also Gray, Goldsmith and a lot of poets now never mentioned. He knows them all and can summon them at will, like notes on his piano.

yeah, it is interesting that the monster part of the Odyssey is so short; agree that it's mostly a story about relations between people, but that's why I like it so much. There's such nuance and delicacy to his interactions with Nausikaa and to the way he and Penelope carefully re-establish contact after twenty years. That moment when Odysseus finally gets to Ithaka, and it's completely unchanged but he doesn't recognize it and everything looks strange to him, sticks in my mind more than any of the monsters.

Really enjoyed the let's Talk About Myths Baby retelling of teh Odyssey. NOt getting as into the Aeneid but I think I have more webinars I'm watching at the moment.

Got further into the Sword iN the Stone. Wondered this morning where camelot was sourced from then foun dout thsi afternoon that it was from this The once & Future King source too.
Surprised to see TH White was English or Rajish or whatever. I thought the tone indicated he was American. Quite enjoying it though or at least when I'm not wondering how much shorter an owl is than a hat because of description in it.

Today I've read 3/4 of Seamus Heaney's WINTERING OUT (1972).

Not getting as into the Aeneid

The Odyssey is more of an organic foundational myth establishing what it means to be culturally Greek, while the Aeneid is far more synthetic and derivative and the identity being established is political, imperial and hegemonic.

pinefox, I thought of you the other day because I read this interesting article in LitHub about Ciaran Carson, a review of Heaney's North, and literary culture in the internet age. https://lithub.com/when-talking-about-poetry-online-goes-very-wrong/

I'm finally reading Lorrie Moore (the one you think), and it's great.

― change display name (Jordan),

Which?

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, February 13, 2021 4:48 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Birds of America. I don't know why I waited to so long to read her (aside from the odd NYer story), given that she teachers here and I have a number of friends who have been students or worked with her.

yay! that book is perfect.

I read two books this weekend that I'd attempted before and failed to stick with, The Left Hand of Darkness and Nightwood. Both, of course, turned out to be incredible. Nightwood was a fun Valentine's Day read.

Table: I know of Carson's review way back, but not this latest discussion - thanks; sounds interesting.

Reading the Saunders Russians book too. It's good! I suppose it's a testament his enthusiasm that I increasingly want to skip the Saunders bits to read the stories instead. It reminds me a little of the Hal Hartley short that made me want to read "Notes from the Underground" as a teenager.

I finished WINTERING OUT last night. A lot of it is familiar but I'd never read the collection straight through. It's in two Parts, though the nature of the parts isn't made explicit. Is the second more about family?

My overall feeling, repeatedly, was the feeling I have registered before about Heaney. Namely that what his poems are actually getting it is often surprisingly obscure, and, in particular, the poems often tend to end on a mysterious, unresolved note. They're not even 'ambiguous' as that would seem to suggest hesitating between clear possibilities. Here, I often don't know what the point was and often can't be sure that a poem has ended till I turn the page and see that a new poem is starting. If asked for an example of all this, I'd say ... most of the poems. The exceptions are the ones that are clear and communicative.

If Heaney shows a consistent strength amid this, I suppose it's just texture: that line by line, he often has a sense of sound, of natural substances like earth, water, plants; a semantic or at least material richness. I'm not sure that he is often putting that in the service of any larger meaning, or if he is, I'm often not getting it.

A fact about Heaney, especially early Heaney, remains: the absence of 'modern' materials in the poetry - like, say, cars, radio, TV. What his poetry live with is, again, earth, roots, streams; things that might be hundreds of years old. There are exceptions to this, probably more so in later work, but consider the contrast with Auden & Spender as 'Pylon Poets' of the 1930s.

A few poems standing out:

* I love 'A New Song', where he seems to be occupying a gallant ballad form and filling it with beautiful words, names, sentiments, and a hint of insurgency.

* 'Gifts of Rain' I suspect is the most accomplished, major work in this book. It might seem to nod to larger things like 'history', but maybe it's more just about ... rain. Just a modern epic poem rendering the element: water, flood, soaking, in the fields and hills. I was in a seminar many years ago where the tutor got us to unpack how this poem worked, and it was a revelation. But I can't now remember what was said, or what I learned that day.

'The Tollund Man': here, at last, he seems to be saying something, pointing us somewhere, and the famous last stanza still stands as strong.

Not to forget the italicized poem on the dedication page, later adapted into 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing', and quite standing out from the rest of this book in its bleak, sardonic ... modernity!

I then started Simon Armitage's translation (2007) of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT.

I like this, and I appreciate Armitage's work in making these old stories and poems accessible to us now. As far as I can tell, this book is much closer in length and dimensions to the original than his ODYSSEY was. It also picks up on what he says is an alliterative mode in the original, very thoroughly - that is, literally every line has 3 or more alliterations. A piece of formalism, if you like. He also brings out things like the richness of the feast and of Gawain's armour. I think this book is really good. I'm glad to have the chance to learn from it more about literary history.

I'm about 2/3rds through Bleak House now. I was losing the plot a bit in the middle when 2 new characters seemed to be added every chapter - but its getting good now. Also: there was a spontaneous combustion which was pretty funny.

Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier. First page: ok this is going to be heartbreaking. Tenth page: wow you incredible shits.

(another one, like age of innocence, that i've read and can't remember a thing about)

I finished the Symbols, Signals and Noise by JR Pierce. I liked the chapters on information theory itself better than the later chapters where he draws connections to other fields like physics, cybernetics, art and psychology. I feel satisfied that it did give me a better sense of some of them foundational work in the field. I'm always somewhat in awe of mathematicians who come up with novel and non-obvious proofs. Now on a much lighter note, I'm reading Code of the Woosters by Wodehouse.

Finished The Return of the Soldier, one of the incredible shits managed to turn herself around and gain some considerable compassion and the story was very moving; at the same time it's a brazen document of extreme classism, literally viewing the poor as "insect things", "repulsively furred with neglect and poverty", and not mere victims of circumstance but sour and squalid and ugly to their very marrow.

I finish SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Basically very good, helped by its seasonal, wintry flavour and its uncanny atmosphere. If anything the jovial last conversation between the two title characters, revealing the true identity of the lady in the castle etc, maybe undermines this and makes it less mysterious than it ought to be. The sense of sexual tension between Gawain and that lady, remarkable in such an old story, is also undermined by the assertion here that it was all a test cooked up by her and her husband, and that she's Gawain's aunt anyway (so maybe she was using magic to look young, as she was to make the Green Knight look green?).

As far as I know, Simon Armitage kept to a line by line translation so every line of his is a version of the original line. He keeps the alliteration extremely well. He sometimes uses anachronisms, which might sound a good idea, but might come out as pointlessly bathetic - 'just the job' (line 1856), 'mega-blow' (2343). But those are few. The translator also keeps stuff that a modern adaptation might get rid of, like the lament about women's tricks (page 110) and the ending, which culminates in 'AMEN' and 'HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE'; which I note means 'Shame on anyone who thinks bad of it', but has been left untranslated from whatever form of Middle French it was.

I recommend this book.

Oddly the Green Knight eventually gives up his real name, which is Bertilak de Hautdesert. This is oddly unclimactic as most people can't have heard of him outside this poem. His name on Google directs straight to Green Knight. Wiki says:

Etymologies
The name "Bertilak" may derive from bachlach, a Celtic word meaning "churl" (i.e. rogueish, unmannerly), or from "bresalak", meaning "contentious". The Old French word bertolais translates as "Bertilak" in the Arthurian tale Merlin from the Lancelot-Grail Cycle of Arthurian legend. Notably, the 'Bert-' prefix means 'bright', and the '-lak' can mean either 'lake' or "play, sport, fun, etc". "Hautdesert" probably comes from a mix of both Old French and Celtic words meaning "High Wasteland" or "High Hermitage". It may also have an association with desirete meaning "disinherited" (i.e. from the Round Table)

Last night I started Dante's INFERNO, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers. (Is this still the most read English version?) Her very long introduction was rather off-putting, so eventually I skipped to the poem. I found that I was able to read it.

A question arises, for me. When people say (as Sayers, and everyone, does) that Dante is sublime and wonderful, do they mean the poetry, specifically, in Medieval Italian (the eloquence of the vulgar)? But if so, most people in England can't read that (unless there's more continuity with modern Italian than I realise). Eliot said, I always recall, that he liked reading Dante in Italian even though he didn't know Italian. As though it was an instance of 'pure poetry', 'pure sound' or the like.

Or, do they mean that it's sublime in translation? In which case, presumably the translation matters? (I'm interested in Alasdair Gray's.)

Or, do they mean that the content is sublime: the journey with Virgil, Beatrice and so on? Here I'm more doubtful. I sense that how you respond to the material depends somewhat on your own predispositions.

This isn't, by the way, to suggest that 'everything is always lost in translation'. Kafka, Brecht and, a bit differently, Beckett (from French to English) are sublime in translation.

I also continued with Donald Davie's PURITY OF DICTION IN ENGLISH VERSE. A chapter on syntax suddenly arrived at hair-raising conclusions about Ezra Pound - the kind of thing that you find you've seen quoted elsewhere before, but are suddenly encountering in the original:

"the development from imagism in poetry to fascism in politics is clear and unbroken" (p.86).

Davie, a great Poundian, ought to know. But maybe the sentence is deceptive, in that it really only refers to EP, but Imagism actually involved a lot of other people, most of whom did *not* share his political trajectory. As a statement about EP, it is almost tautologically true, but as statement about Imagism as an aesthetic, it's unproven at best.

Started on the Third Ear Band book when I couldn't sleep last night. Not really looked in it before. It has a lot of released text from various sources reprinted. Magazine articles and interviews and things. Most of it pretty interesting. IT does have a new chronology that i don't think has appeared before.
& the cd that came free with the book is really good. Not sure how well it represents the tracklisting on an unreleased lp by the Electric Ear Band cos it runs pretty short. BUt it is pretty consistently good and some of it has hypnotic groove to it.

Wish there was recording o the Hydrogen Jukebox the electric band that had its gear stolen which begat the acoustic Third Ear Band . There is some later material recorded towards teh end of teh 70s under the name apparently which might be interesting in itself.

Also picked up 1491 and read about a chapter. Interesting stuff. Author starts teh main part of the book looking at the Mayflower separatists relationship to the native Americans local to where they are trying to set up a colony and what agency there is on the Native side which has been overlooked for centuries. like there were pull factors to them helping these white folks out they weren't simply being used instrumentally. Which was a portrayal they had for a couple of centuries at least, merely being pawns to white agency.

Still working away at the David Olusoga book Thew World's War about the colonial involvement in the First World War or back to it after having the last Ugly Things fulfilling the same role. Want to read some more Olusoga and would like to hear about similar roles played by colonial troops in WWII too. I think there was more recognised involvement though racist attitudes remained.I think memorial monuments etc were still as hard to come by for the non caucasian elements of the armed forces.

For reference:

Heaney translated the start of the Divine Comedy:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-05-23-bk-38605-story.html

Alasdair Gray did finish his Dante:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/24/paradise-dantes-divine-trilogy-part-three-by-alasdair-gray-review-a-fitting-finale

I'd like to read that.

Finished Commodore by Jacqueline Waters, a book sent to me as part of a thank you for a gift I made to Ugly Duckling Presse. Had never read her work before, and was quite surprised by how much I loved it. Strange, observational to the point of slipping into stand-up realm at moments, pointedly critical of certain structures of capital...nice book.

I read Clive James' translation most recently, pinefox.

have about 100 pages left in lolita and i'm well into the half of it i've never read before; it never stops being lightly comic, mostly bc humbert's small and large misfortunes are so ironic and deserved that i can't help laughing at them and at him. he's such a pretentious shithead and misanthrope. but also the second half of the book is genuinely the most horrific part, pretty much nonstop sexual abuse either alluded to or directly described (i most wanted to throw up when he forces her to give him a handjob in her CLASSROOM)

the lolita podcast i've been listening to dwells extensively on the cultural misinterpretation of the book, and reading it... it's hard to not notice that the only time dolores seems interested in humbert is when she thinks it's a game, a kind of adult performance/play that she's attracted to because she's a child who longs to be an adult and is in a frustrated purgatory between the two, but from the moment humbert first rapes dolores it is 100 percent clear she is 1) dealing with extensive ptsd 2) constantly trying to escape him. when she suggests they go on the second road trip and is suddenly sweet to him, it's clearly a manipulation meant to foster her escape (which, to some degree, her future abuser, clare quilty, is designing, which is the sad and fucked up dead end of this book, that she can only escape her abuser by running off with another pedophile, but she displays such cunning in this section of the book that it feels like she's discovering her own agency anyway)

(at least as much agency as she can possibly have in a society that routinely sexualizes her, violates her, and then discards her)

read 'the daughter of time', which is breezy and well-written and quite convincing about richard iii's innocence

otoh JT kind of showed her ass with the insistence that (a painting of) richard's face demonstrated his nobility. and her examples of famous false historical events seems to lean oddly toward the people with actual power being 'not that bad'

She does that face thing all the time. If someone has light blue eyes, dark blue eyes, oddly-set eyes or a haunting resemblance to a person or animal that you've met earlier in the story, you know they're a murderer or at least a pathological liar.

I still really like her books, esp. Brat Farrar and The Singing Sands. She also convinced me about Richard III, even though I don't trust her at all.

Brad, Kubrick's screen version doesn't end the way you seem to be expecting the book to end---don't know how the book actually ends, since I still haven't read it (see my posts upthread re last 1/3 of Kubrick's treatment, and the recent book about the supposed real-life basis of the novel).

i haven't seen the kubrick film yet but i do know that it ends differently (dolores doesn't die, for one)

but she does run off with quilty

Donald Davie, ARTICULATE ENERGY. On the question of how syntax works in English poetry and whether it's good for poems to be syntactically proper. DD tends to think so, more than many modern poets would do. It's a good bracing perspective. His chapter on Fenollosa has clarified Fenollosa a bit for me, but I'm still not sure how far I really get Fenollosa, or agree with him.

DD in his later statements can say things like 'that hideous decade, the 1960s', which go too far into indiscriminate 'conservatism' - where I suspect more care is needed.

Prynne on Davie:

Davie wanted very much to be a poet. I think he probably knew in his heart of hearts that he actually wasn’t a poet, though he cared enough about poetry to commit himself to substantial efforts to develop some way of ­expanding his own writing practice. He was part of that Movement group of poets who wrote very defensively and traditionally...

Davie always writes very highly of Prynne.

What little of Davie's poetry I have read hasn't done a huge amount for me; but then the same is true of Prynne's.

I was mostly interested in it because I knew Prynne was Davie's student, but have always found Davie's poetry to me just utterly useless.

Prynne, on the other hand...