Rap out a daffodilly of a poem

For the last day of National Poetry Month (a back-to-work Monday morning) I thought that perhaps we could all use a good laugh. Here is the entirely familiar Wordsworth poem "I Wandered lonely as a cloud" remade for the new generation of tourists to the Lake District. Secret footage of the Lake District mascot, a large red squirrel named M.C. Nuts, cavorting in the daffodils with an un-Wordsworthian swagger, has been made available to us all.

Last Saskatchewan showcase

Shelley Leedahl has written two children's/young adult novels, three adult books, and two poetry collections (another poetry collection is forthcoming). This indefatigable Saskatoon-based author never seems to stop. She writes, parents, travels, takes photographs, runs, takes and teaches classes, and I just don't know what else.
Talking down the Northern Lights (Saskatoon: Thistledown, 2001) is a collection of intimate, domestic-themed poems, looking at subjects from childhood to motherhood to marriage. Here is one I hope you'll like:

Forever: A Retrospective

Take love, then, from the beginning
Through hand-holding breathlessness
to these complacent days, our passion worn
thin as the heels of our socks.
Desire itself is stuffed in a shoebox
and shoved beneath the bed.

When I was eight I took my turn
in the closet with Donnie and his skin
smelled like lemons. I wish we could stay here
forever, but even as those words
left my tingling lips, I knew I’d killed
something and sure enough, the closet
was never the same again.

My sixteenth year journal is written
in codes but in every margin forever,
forever, as if I could toss my love
like a kite toward the boys
And it would always come back
untangled.

Love after love: the realization,
forever is not the point, never was,
but there it is again, scribbled
on Taylor’s first valentine. Embossed
on my friend’s second wedding invitation.

Shelley A. Leedahl

Governmentally approved reading?

Take a look at Yann Martel's website, What is Stephen Harper reading? He proposes to send a book fortnightly to our Prime Minister, to point out the meaning and vital importance of the arts to a truly lived life. The arts are being badly treated by this government, with international promotion program funding cut entirely, literacy program funding diminished, Canada Council events ignored, etc. As an artist, Yann Martel felt obliged to try to open a dialogue. Interesting; we'll have to see if there is any response at all.

A Poet Laureate

Saskatchewan first had a poet laureate in 2001. This inaugural poet was Glen Sorestad. Glen Sorestad was born in Vancouver, but has lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for many years. He was an influential figure in literature, with he and his wife Sonia founding Thistledown Press in 1975. (The same press which has just published Kate's short story collection All in Together Girls) They retired from Thistledown in 2000, but Glen is still writing beautiful poetry. An example of such:

Aide Memoire

The world begins and ends in memory;
what I remember is what I am.

Did that blade of grass I plucked
as a boy to vibrate with my breath

really burst the air with shrillness?
A remembered world holds truth

and realities far clearer than echoes.
In the cupped hands of remembrance

the thin green reed of what we are
trembles with a sound so rare.

Glen Sorestad
From: Leaving Holds Me Here: Selected Poems. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2001.

Lines from Saskatchewan

As we come closer to the end of National Poetry Month, I thought I'd share a few poets from my home province of Saskatchewan. Anne Szumigalski was born in England in 1922 and died just a few short years ago, in 1999. She was a huge presence in literary circles, being a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild, and the literary journal Grain, among other things. She was a Governor General's Award-winning poet as well. Here is a poem from her posthumous collection, When Earth leaps up. (London,ON: Brick Books, 2006)


Untitled ("glory to the queen …")

glory to the queen whoever she is
wherever she finds herself as she moves
up and down round and round
all the spaces that are hers

once she was a young thing and jumped
easily over any fence any line
now she's an old woman thick and earthy

by tomorrow she hopes to leap
out of this skin and into a new one
a skin like petals like leaves

Anne Szumigalski

A Canadian Connelly

Another Canadian writer I admire is Karen Connelly. She wrote two travel books which I read years ago and simply loved. The first, Touching the Dragon, is a journal about her experiences living in Thailand as a teenager, moving and honestly written. (It won a Governor General's award for non-fiction in 1993). One of the things she says in this book that I've always remembered is, "Thailand has whittled the world into a great sliver and lodged it beneath my skin. I do not think of one country; I think of them all with an unmanageable scope of vision." She has continued her travelling life. Her second book, One Room in a Castle, is a grouping of letters and short fictions about her travels through France, Spain and Greece. It is a small, pleasingly hand sized volume, full of luminous phrases and meditations. (It is a favourite as it also has the good associations of being my first Christmas present ever from my now husband.) But not only is Karen Connelly an accomplished non-fiction writer, she has penned a recent novel about the tortuous existence of a political prisoner in Burma, The Lizard Cage. It has been described as a deeply layered work about the transforming power of language and of love (thanks to her website)

She has also always been a poet, and I'd like to share one example from her numerous works of poetry.

Nightingales

Chill spring evening

on the island.

The sky falls from lilac

to the purple of over-ripe figs

to the dark-blue bruise of Libyan glass.

The sky falls deeply

into the Mediterranean, medi terre,

the sea in the rich middle

of the earth, heaven in water.

If we leave the windows open

and play music in the dark,

the nightingales return

to the garden like exiles

coming home.

Karen Connelly ( from the book The Border surrounds us)

***Update: Karen's novel The Lizard Cage has made it to the shortlist for the Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers! Winner to be announced June 6. Good luck, Karen!

Atwoodian versification

Margaret Atwood, Canadian icon, is receiving the Grand Prix award at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, even as I speak...um, type. She is so amazingly prolific at novel writing and at poetic production; such a clever and amusing woman, she is someone I really admire. Here is one short poem:

Habitation

Marriage is not

a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge

of the desert

the unpainted stairs

at the back where we squat

outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder

at having survived even

this far

we are learning to make fire.

Margaret Atwood

You can also hear Atwood reading her poetry at this poetry site.

A Second Shakespeare

Shakespeare's poetry within his plays is also remarkable, and worthy of quoting here. Many artists have been inspired by his words to create their own renditions of his songs; many of them have done so for productions by the Stratford Festival. One such speech set to music is from Cymbeline, sung by Loreena McKennitt.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winters' rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' th' great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

A group of songs was written for the recent production of As You Like It, by Steven Page of Canadian band The Barenaked Ladies, with a cd available at the Stratford Festival that year.
One of my favourite productions is the reading of Twelfth Night recorded in 2000, songs written by Berthold Carriere and sung by Steven Sutcliffe as Feste (he may be better known for his Broadway role of Younger Brother in Ragtime, for which he received a Tony nomination.) It is unfortunately not shareable as it is only on audiocassette. This verse is sung beautifully:

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?
O! stay and hear; your true love's coming.
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Shakespeare spoken and sung is always a treat; each year I await a new version of something well known. This year Shakespeare's tragedies are being highlighted: Othello, King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, with only one comedy, The Comedy of Errors. So I will have to wait and see what will be sung.

Shakespeare's poetic nature

It's the 23rd of April, the date of Shakespeare's birth and death. His writing has always been a big influence on me, and so in his memory, a sonnet familiar and lovely.

Sonnet XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Dystopian Reading

To go with my future-looking Earth Day poem, I thought I'd share a list of some dystopian novels. I've also noticed the Dystopian Challenge going around, so perhaps I'll find some more that I haven't read, in other people's book choices.

1. The Chrysalids / John Wyndham : a classic story of David and his baby sister Petra, who live in a post-apocalyptic world where genetic mutations are forbidden. Mutated livestock are killed, mutated humans are banished to the unliveable regions known as The Fringes. David and Petra realize they are mutations, but not obvious ones - they are telepathic. When it is discovered, they flee to the Fringes, pursued by zealots including their father. Rescue is at hand, and they are taken to a new civilization in what was once New Zealand.

2. The Children of Men / P.D. James : a dark, dark story about a world in which all women are infertile. Civilization is breaking down, there are wars and environmental disasters and rabid xenophobia (wait, is this supposed to be imaginary?). One disconnected man is pulled back into life when he is entrusted with the safety of one young woman, a special woman, as she is pregnant. Recent movie was pretty good, though with some graphically violent scenes.

3. A Scientific Romance / Ronald Wright : David Lambert, a scientist, is present for the rematerialization of H.G. Wells' time machine in a deserted apartment in England, circa 2000. He jumps in and sends himself 500 years into the future, where he discovers the ruins of London. It is clear that something has gone very wrong with humankind's future prospects, and it is up to David to figure out what has caused England to become both semi-tropical and utterly deserted.

4. The Handmaid's Tale / Margaret Atwood : in Gilead, a fundamentalist future society, women have strictly regimented roles. There are dress laws and regulations governing every element of a woman's life. Offred, a handmaiden, is supposed to bear a child for her master, Fred, and his wife. As he is likely sterile, she becomes pregnant by another household employee, and then has to be smuggled out of Gilead. Hard to summarize this one; but I was especially impressed by the afterword, Offred's official story that she has recorded before disappearing.

5. The Forever Formula / Robert Bonham : a 17 yr. old boy wakes up from a long nap. A very long nap; his neighbour has kidnapped and cryogenically frozen him, to awaken him in the far future. The boy's father was a scientist who discovered a formula to allow people to live forever; when the boy wakes he realizes that this formula did not also provide eternal youth. Many people are now after him, believing that he has the formula for youth tucked away in his brain somewhere. A wonderfully active story, I read this repeatedly in middle school.

Oh, yes, for extra fun, try Ray Bradbury's story The Pedestrian, where a hapless writer gets arrested for taking a walk at night, while everyone else is inside with their televisions.

A Verse for the Earth

Today a verse that focusses on the role of humanity on our planet. On Earth Day, I think about how we are driving ourselves to extinction as fast as we possibly can. I do hope that all the good things people try to do will have some slowing effect, but I'm always doubtful that humanity will change its ways. A poet from the early years of the 20th century, Harold Monro was prescient, foreseeing the population explosion that would sweep through the coming century. His poem The Earth for Sale is very critical of the effect of humanity on the earth; I present to you the opening and closing stanzas, and hope that you will be sufficiently intrigued to read the entire poem.

The Earth for Sale

How perilous life will become on earth
When the great breed of man has covered all.
The world, that was too large, will be too small.
Deserts and mountains will have been explored,
Valleys swarmed through; and our prolific breed,
Exceeding death ten million times by birth,
Will halt (bewildered, bored),
And then may droop and dwindle like an autumn weed.

How shall we meet that moment when we know
There is no room to grow;

******

******

Man makes himself believe he has claim
To plant bright flags on every hill he swarms;
But in the end, and in his own wild name,
And for the better prospect of his fame,
Whether it be a person or a race,
Earth, with a smiling face,
Will hold and smother him in her large arms.

Harold Monro

Gordon Korman retrospective

I was rereading some Gordon Korman this week. For those of you who don't know, he is a Canadian author (now based in New York) who writes juvenile and young adult novels. He is famous for writing his first book, This Can't be Happening at Macdonald Hall!, as a school project when he was in Grade 7. And having it published shortly thereafter. It is a classic, and still very, very funny. It became a series, starring Bruno and Boots, mischievious residents of a boys' school. In addition to this series, Korman began writing some stand-alone books. This week I was rereading A Semester in the life of a garbage bag. In this one, two high school boys, Raymond and Sean, get thrown together for an English project studying modern poetry. For various reasons, they have to make it a stunner and get high marks, so they decide to write an exposé of obscure Canadian poet Gavin Gunhold. Then they discover that he only wrote one poem and then died, in 1949, so they decide to create a body of poetry to support their paper. Their attempt to write meaningful poetry, in between having to plan social events for the school, trying to play well on the varsity team, and impressing girls, is a hopeless cause; but inexplicably their paper succeeds beyond their wildest dreams, making Gavin Gunhold into a celebrity. At this point, they must recruit Sean's wisecracking grandfather to impersonate Gunhold. Much craziness ensues. Gordon Korman knows how to write an over the top, amusingly adventurous high school story. The first poem the boys try to write is truly awful, but I've always remembered it, and somehow it has a poignancy to it.

Fruit Fly by Gavin Gunhold

Due to the tragically short life span of the average fruit fly,
College is not really an option.
Caps and gowns don't come in that size anyway.

If you need a good laugh, or something for a reluctant reader, try one of Gordon Korman's many, many stories of boys, school and chaos.

Oh what a beautiful morning!

Today is a lovely day here; after weeks of grey drizzly cool weather, we have a sunshiny day - a perfect one, not too cold, not too hot. A gorgeous Spring day, and on my walk to work this morning I heard birds everywhere, and then church bells. It was a glorious start to the day. And it made me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was always so thankful for the beauty of our world.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A little light entertainment

Since I'm quite preoccupied today with preparing for children's preschool programs, I'll share with you a little light verse:

The Purple Cow
Ogden Nash

I never saw a purple cow

I hope I never see one,

But I can tell you this right now:

I'd rather see than be one.

And some years later, when he must have been heartily sick of it:

Ah yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow"

I'm Sorry now I wrote it

But I can tell you Anyhow

I'll Kill you if you Quote it!

Anna of all the Russias

Anna Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko near Odessa, Ukraine, in 1889. She took, as her pen name, the name of her Tatar great-grandmother, since her father didn't want her to disgrace the family name by becoming a "decadent poetess". He would never believe that these days she is a shining star rather than a disgrace, but so she is. Here is a sampling of her poetic style, this one showing an almost Emily Dickinson-like flair:


Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust--of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth--of a violet,
and gold--has no perfume.

Watery--the mignonette,
and like an apple--love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.

1933 --Translated by Jane Kenyon
Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Originally published (in the Russian) in the book Reed, 1924

A Dreamy Read

The Dream life of Sukhanov / Olga Grushin
Toronto: Penguin, c2007.
368 p.

I read this novel very slowly. Not because it was hard going, or at all boring, but because the uses of language and imagery were so striking that I had to give myself time to savour each example. I was completely won over by this book - it's the first this year to which I would give an unreserved 5 star rating.

It details the life of Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov, a well-placed bureaucrat in Soviet Russia. He is the editor of 'Art World', and a respected art critic, who has stifled all the Western artistic impulses of his youth to become a proponent of Soviet Realism.

The story opens with

"Stop here", said Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov from the backseat, addressing the pair of suede gloves on the steering wheel.

He and his wife are attending a retrospective exhibition for his father-in-law's 80th birthday. It was on his father-in-law's advice years ago that he shifted allegiance to the Party line, and now he is part of the celebration of pictures of "tractors in wheatfields" and "rosy-cheeked girls with cabbages". When Sukhanov is leaving, however, he bumps into a decrepit old friend from his young, idealistic days. This encounter sets off a chain reaction of memories, which begin invading Sukhanov's dreams, unsettling him. These memories become more and more insistent, until he is awash in a haze of dreamy recollection both while sleeping and awake.

The story is hypnotic, as Sukhanov begins to lose everything he has denied his soul to gain: his son leaves home, his daughter moves in with her married boyfriend, he is fired, his wife wants to live, alone, at their country home. Piece by piece his carefully constructed persona is being dismantled. He began as an artist, and early in the book he has to write - as a respected Soviet art critic - acceptable essays on corrupt Western artists, like Dali or the Impressionists. The early contrast between Soviet Realism and Dali is especially telling, as Sukhanov's life slowly descends into a surrealist nightmare. The novel raises large questions: what is art for? Can true art (or artists) exist within a stifling political culture?

Grushin is an astonishing writer, who has produced a breathtaking first novel. Not only is her subject ambitious in scope, her technique is flawless. The imagery is strong and original, perfectly suited to an artist as protagonist. Her metaphors are fresh and serve to reinvigorate our perceptions. I especially like the way that the point of view shifts suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, from third-person narrative to first person as Sukhanov falls into his past. It is very effective, and shows Sukhanov's decline as it becomes more frequent. Some examples of her imagery at work:

Below, the Moscow River moved its slow, dense, brown waters, and from their depths emerged a flimsy upside-down city that existed only at night, created by a thousand shimmering intertwinings of streetlights, headlights, floodlights. The walls, the churches, the bell towers of the underwater city trembled with a desire to break free, to float away with the current, to leave the oppressing, crowded, dangerous Moscow far, far behind; but the night held them firmly, and they stayed forever tethered to their places by infinite golden chains of reflections.

...gradually, as Moscow slid back faster and faster, the spaces between the buildings widened until precipitately, without so much as a comma, they changed
into fields bracketed by fire-tipped rowan trees and punctuated here and there by the exclamation point of a leaning bell tower or an ellipsis of dilapidated log houses -- and Sukhanov envisioned the whole drive as one endless, unstructured, rambling sentence, and thinking of Nina, of the girl she had been once, of the woman she was now, was barely able to follow all of its clauses, until, veering from yet another unpaved turn in the local road, they arrived quite suddenly at the long-sought period of his country home.

I don't usually enjoy stories in which the main character loses touch and the narrative becomes disjointed; it often feels as if the plot has overtaken the author. In this case, however, it succeeds due to the author's mastery of her craft. It is perfectly reasonable that Sukhanov should descend from the heights of emotionless Soviet Realism to a reverie of perception nearly Impressionistic, and finally to a world of Surrealism. Read it slowly to savour her skill. Her sparkling technique is matched by her ability to make us care about a middle-aged Soviet apparatchnik in an existential crisis. Highly recommended.

A rugged Canadian poet

One of the first narrative poems I read was in high school, way back when. It was a well known Canadian poem, David, by Earle Birney, which I think most high school students have to read. It tells the story of two young men who go mountain climbing together and are struck by tragedy. There was some controversy over it, with people assuming it was autobiographical and Birney therefore pretty much a murderer. He of course insisted it was creative fiction.
It has stayed with me, and I will highlight a little of it here. It's very long, and I couldn't find a full version online, but if you want to read a slightly abridged version, you can find it in this Wellness Newsletter. Or, you can get it at your library, I hope anyhow.

A few favourite, melodious lines are:

...mountains for David were made to see over,
Stairs from the valleys and steps to the sun's retreats.

The ice in the morning thaw was a gurgling world of crystal and cold blue chasms,
And seracs that shone like frozen saltgreen waves.

And then tragedy:

I swayed and shouted.
David turned sharp and reached out his arm and steadied me,
Turning again with a grin and his lips ready
To jest. But the strain crumbled his foothold. Without

A gasp he was gone. I froze to the sound of grating
Edge-nails and fingers, the slither of stones, the lone
Second of silence, the nightmare thud. Then only
The wind and the muted beat of unknowing cascades.

It's a horrifying and haunting poem which you will not forget if you've read it. Although I usually find Earle Birney a bit much for my taste, this poem is truly notable.

Mouse and Me

I was at the post office this week to mail off, what else, a book. This particular post office is a counter in the back of a stationery store, in an old creaky floored heritage building. I stood in line for a while, and when the woman in front of me finally moved up to the counter, I noticed something at her feet. Thinking she'd dropped something, I looked down, only to discover a tiny black mouse, scurrying in circles before dashing toward me. Actually it was dashing toward the display unit beside me, a wonderful hiding spot, but the instant it took to see the mouse and realize it was heading for me was enough to make me dance a little jig and try not to scream. I ended up making a strange squeak as I hopped up and down, and then rather embarrassedly looking around, ready to explain "A mouse!". But no-one was looking at me. Not the person behind the counter, not the people close in line behind me (a little too close with all the sneezing going on) - nobody was looking up. Either a) they were all regulars and so already blasé about the presence of the mouse or b) they were all thinking, Just back away and don't meet her eyes...
Since I therefore had nobody to share the mouse sighting with, I am telling you all now :)

An abridged poem, just for that little scared mouse; you can read a few verses here, or hear the entire poem read by a Scotswoman, here.


To A Mouse

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
***
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Robert Burns

Sunday Mornings

A quick excerpt of verse for a Sunday morning; the poem "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens has been mentioned as one of Bloglily's favourite 100 poems, and it is certainly one of mine as well. The opening two stanzas follow.

Sunday Morning

I.
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II.
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

Where there's life, there's hope!

An inspirational stanza by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all

I think that hope must spring eternal, as I suddenly have hope that I can take on another Challenge! I am limiting myself to one, as I am STILL working on my Chunkster reads!! Plus slowly working on the Reading Across Borders and O'Canada challenge books also. But, I need to shake up my intensive fiction jag a bit, and so I'm going to take on the Non-Fiction Five. Yes, I really am. Here is my working list, with a couple of alternates:

1. Driving Mr. Albert / Michael Paterniti


This is popular non-fiction, with a scientific bent. I've always loved reading about science, and who can beat Albert Einstein for interest?

2. I May be some time / Francis Spufford

History; fits in with my recent Polar Reading focus, and has lots of info on my beloved Titus Oates !

3. The Case for Vegetarianism / John Lawrence Hill

A book of philosophy/ethics, on a subject which you know interests me. I never worry too much about why I'm a vegetarian, so it is difficult sometimes to explain to insistent questioners. Maybe this will provide some intelligent reasoning I can use!

4. Art Objects / Jeanette Winterson

A collection of essays on art, creativity, etc, this has been on my TBR shelf for quite some time

5. The Arcanum / Janet Gleeson

The story of the discovery of porcelain in the West. Sounds great, but has been on my TBR for a couple of years.

Alternates:

Rumer Godden / Anne Chisholm (biography)
Lake of the Prairies / Warren Cariou (memoir; about growing up in Saskatchewan)

The Last Self-Help Book you'll ever need / Paul Pearsall (self-help/psychology; love the subtitle...)

This list may change before the deadline of April 30th, but I think this is it!

Singing Poetry

There are a few favourite old ballads I enjoy; one is Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman. I know it's a bit clichéd, but, I still like it. I appreciate the images evoked for me by his words, and also the inspiration it has given to others, to musicians like Loreena McKennitt. She does a haunting version of The Highwayman, so much so that I find it difficult to read the poem now without feeling her rhythms overlaid. She is astonishing; sample a bit of her version here.

The Highwayman starts like this:

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door...

It is an intensely romantic love story, and a perfect one to recite on a ghostly night. To read it all, go the this Poem of the Week site.

*If you are so inclined, there is even an animated "music video" of the poem, set to Loreena McKennitt's music.

Spring and Growing Things

I have a brief poem to share by Saskatchewan poet Lorna Crozier. I really enjoy her poetry, always current and since she is from my home province I can always find something slightly nostalgic, too.
The Spring is here and things begin to grow...

In Moonlight

Something moves
just beyond the mind's
clumsy fingers.

It has to do with seeds.
The earth's insomnia.
The garden going on
without us

needing no one
to watch it

not even the moon.

Lorna Crozier

Imperfect carnations

Wallace Stevens is a favourite poet of mine; I especially like the last few lines of this one. He was brilliant.

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Wallace Stevens

We have a Lucky Winner!

The winner of the draw for Lucky Girls (drawn out of the lucky Easter basket) is
KAILANA!
The book will be winging its way over soon...

Leisurely enjoyments

After a very nice long weekend, I am going to try to remind myself to stay as peaceful and open to beautiful moments during the work week. Here is a poem which says it best:


Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

W.H. Davies

Changing Light

Changing Light / Nora Gallagher

I've just read this unusual book; an unusual one for me for the simple fact that I had not heard anything about it before reading it. I hadn't heard anything about the author before, had not seen any prepublication information, hadn't heard anyone talking about it at all. So I came to it utterly fresh. When I saw it and read through the first few paragraphs, I thought, I must read this. And I am so glad I did.

The novel tells the story of Eleanor Garrigue, a painter living in New Mexico in the 40's. She lives half the year alone there, and the other half with her domineering husband in New York. (like Persephone, she thinks.) In 1945 there was also a large concentration of scientists living in New Mexico, in Los Alamos, working on the atomic bomb (or 'the gadget' as they call it.) One of the scientists, Dr. Leo Kavan, leaves the compound after an accident which kills one of his coworkers, and he himself receives a dose of radiation poisoning, the effect of which he can not calculate. He runs in the night, and one morning Eleanor finds him beside the river, ill and incoherent. She takes him home to recuperate, and they are so drawn to one another that they eventually become lovers. I particularly liked the characterization of Eleanor and Leo. Both of their backstories were well developed, leaving us with rich, identifiable people. A few of the other characters were not so fully drawn. With Eleanor representing Art, Leo representing Science, and Eleanor's friend Father Bill representing Religion, there are many discussions and parallels drawn between their respective work. Eleanor and Leo are both "changing light" through their work. For me, the title also evokes one of Proust's observations, that a change of light can change your perspective on something just as much as might a change of locale. Leo, especially, experiences this as he comes to realize the human toll likely to result from the destructive capability of the bomb he has helped create. His desire is to put the genie back in the bottle, but all his attempts to recommend this are brought to naught as finally, the US government wants to use the bomb to "get it's money's worth" from the research they have been funding.

Meanwhile, back at the compound, people are wondering where Dr. Kavan has got to. Through Father Bill, one of the Los Alamos men, David Stein, discovers Leo's whereabouts and tracks him down. After all the anxiety about this very event, the result is rather weak, or anti-climactic. Recognizing that Leo and Eleanor are in love, much as he is with his wife, David lets Leo go, to continue his attempt to contact the President in order to ask him not to use the bomb.

But I enjoyed this book very much. The flaws were small; sometimes Gallagher was a bit heavy-handed with her views, putting speeches into the character's mouths rather than letting things reveal themselves organically. When Leo says that using the bomb would be "a crime against humanity" I wondered whether that was a phrase in common parlance in 1945. However, this was a unique presentation of a part of history I haven't read much about, and it was irresistible. Gallagher is strongest when describing New Mexico itself (her childhood home) and when describing Eleanor's interior life. This book begins on Easter Weekend, 1945, and talks about war, about destruction, and yet about resurrection, both of hopes and of love. A timely, thought-provoking read. Recommended.

*Something I wasn't aware of before searching out more information about this book; the characters are loosely based on real people. Eleanor on Georgia O'Keeffe, Leo Kavan on Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard, and David on David Greenglass, Soviet spy and brother of Ethel Rosenberg. It didn't make any difference to the reading though; it's wonderful whether or not you might know anything about these people.

Easter Monday

Another Eleanor altogether; but a heartbreaking poem about wartime, also timely.

Easter Monday

In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said, ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –
It was such a lovely morning’, Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, “This is the eve.
Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.’

That Easter Monday was a day for praise.
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
There are three letters that you will not get.

Eleanor Farjeon

Lucky Girl!

I've been hearing a lot about Nell Freudenberger lately, not least from Dove Grey Reader. So I picked up Lucky Girls, a short story collection by Nell last week, and have just made my way through it. She is certainly an assured writer. This collection holds five stories, each about a young American woman in foreign climes (although in the final story the foreign setting is by association only). She is skilled at presenting moments of emotional distress without becoming maudlin; in one story a young girl living in India sees her mother leaving for Afghanistan and Turkey:

The morning of our departure I watched my sister climb into the backseat, her chuni trailing out the door like a tail. I wanted to follow her but I was worried about my suitcase. When my father crouched down next to me, I asked him if he could please put it on the roof. Instead he took my whole body in his arms, and
then turned me around, so we were both facing the car. When my mother kissed me, I couldn't move my arms and I was sandwiched for a moment between the
two of them, a heaven of attention both perfect and fleeting.
"How would you like not to go to school today?" my father asked.
"I'm not going to school," I told him. "I'm going to Afghanistan."
"You take care of Daddy," my mother said, but they had orchestrated it carefully, because she was in the car, and the car was pulling away before I understood what was happening... I remember thinking that they were coming back around the block, that they were just testing the car and would return for me when they were certain that it worked. Still, there was this incredible anxiety about my suitcase, which was not yet on the roof with the others. "My suitcase," I said to my father, who was pinning my arms at my sides.... "They forgot my suitcase," I said, as I watched Vivian stealing my mother and my sister, driving them off to Afghanistan, where they would draw their own map in watercolors, live on white toast and milk chocolate, and climb very carefully through a range of glinting colored knives.

This collection seems to me to be part of what has been called "Peace Corps writing", the movement toward North Americans writing about their experiences elsewhere in the world. I was moved by some of the stories, but also felt a little left out of some kind of insider meaning, as if I was missing something. She uses French phrases sans translation, and although I can read French, it just felt like these characters were of the kind who would pepper their conversations casually with other languages. Each of the women (again excepting the final story) were privileged by wealth to be able to access a sort of cosmopolitan mobility, something of which I have no experience whatsoever, not even by association. But a book is not supposed to reflect only one's experience, or what is reading for?

Freudenberger showed a skillful hand at composing these longish short stories about young women at a point of crisis, and overall I was impressed. I admire her talent and her success at being published and feted, but I don't think I'll reread it. I'll pass it on to another reader and see if it resonates with them. If anyone would like to claim Nell's Lucky Girls, leave your name in the comments and I'll draw for it in a week (on April 10).

Eastertide

An Easter poem from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. This applies in England, I'm sure, though here today I'd say that the trees are wearing white, not blooms, but snowdrifts. Still, similar in effect, and I'm sure that soon we'll be seeing some blooms, soon, really!

II : from A Shropshire Lad

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman

Common longings

Something to wish for; time does not change all longing, I'm sure people feel the same today. The first two stanzas of this 17th Century poem:


The Wish

WELL then! I now do plainly see
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings,
Of this great hive, the city.

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
And since love ne'er will from me flee,
A Mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me.

Abraham Cowley

Keeping (too) busy

A poem most of you will know; but relevant to the feeling that there are just too many things to do! Too many books to read, too many challenges to take on... it seems Ms. Millay was braver than I in the number of projects she was able to juggle, and quite poetically, too.

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

It gives a lovely light!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Here a challenge, there a challenge

I've been looking around at some of the many challenges underway at present, and I want to do them all! Carl's Once upon a Time challenge sounds so tempting; I love fantasy and would really enjoy getting to some of the books I keep meaning to read. And the By the Decades challenge is a great concept; as Clifton Fadiman once said, whether you read only new books or only old ones, either way you're dated. With this challenge you keep current with the old and the new! The Spring Reading Thing and the Non-Fiction Five are also making me think of books I have on the bottom of various stacks. But alas, reading material is infinite, while time is all too finite. I am still working on my Chunkster Challenge (sadly neglected of late), and with work and various and sundry other duties, I don't think I can committ to any more reading assignments quite yet. I am eagerly checking out everyone's challenge lists, though, and adding still more ideas to my "To find and read someday" list. I await reviews...

Scents of Spring

Today I offer a few lines from Alfred Noyes' poem The Barrel Organ. It brings to mind that other famous line, by Browning: O to be in England, now that April's there...
This poem describes the effect of hearing the barrel organ in the streets of London and of all the songs it plays, one of which is as follows:

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,
The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)
And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky
The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London.

I found this a pretty piece, yet it also has a great swing to its rhythm. It also makes me think of the perfumes of blooming Spring (which I hope we will be experiencing soon, as after a raising of false hopes the weather has decided to bring SNOW to us today...)
And when I think of perfumes, I also think of Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume, which I have been meaning to read since my sister bought herself a copy - when I was in Grade 9. Is there any statute of limitations on TBR items? I also recall the recent discovery of the world's oldest perfumery, in Cyprus. Pretty neat stuff.
And, of course, I can't discuss perfumes without quoting Helen Keller on scent :

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across

thousand of miles and all the years you have lived

Oh for a Booke

A poem for the bibliophiles among us. I know there may be some...

(gorgeous painting by Warren Dennis)

O for a Booke

O for a Booke and a shadie nooke,
eyther in-a-doore or out;
with the Greene leaves whispering overhede,
or the Streete cryes all about
where I maie Reade all at my ease,
both of the Newe and Olde;
for a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke,
is better to me than Golde.

John Wilson

Time is flying...

I have a really hard time getting up in the mornings - I am so not a morning person. But all could be well if I could only have this clock. Thanks to Jill for bringing this to my attention; she saw it at Mental Multivitamin, whose original posting has sent a wave of covetousness across the blog world!

Apropos, a poem on the subject of fleeting time:


To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.


Robert Herrick

Along the Swan's Way

As mentioned on my husband's blog, April brings the swans back to the Avon River in our town. This is a true sign of spring for us, and in honour of the swan release and of National Poetry Month, here are a few lines for your perusal. Despite the fact that it is Spring here, and that our swans are tame and have their wings clipped, so they will never fly away, I still love this Yeats poem. I hope you do too.

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W.B. Yeats

Happy April, It's Poetry Month!

Ah, April. It's enchanting, and what better way to enjoy it than through poetry?

The 31st of March

A cold insistent rain swells the buds.

Swamp maples begin to redden, a scarlet

that taunts the corner of the eye.

Lichens swell and fur the oak boughs.

In Paradise Hollow, a mourning cloak

idles past like an animated kerchief

haunting bare branches. Look: the wood

cock rises in feathered desire.

Green uncoils pressed against earth,

grasses, moss, bulb spears pricking up,

the tiny leaves of pesky chickweed.

The first slug of spring extends itself

like a yawn across the sand. My next

year splits open to show its first color.

Marge Piercy