My chocolate of choice:
Books read recently by J. Zimmerman
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My chocolate of choice:
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Reader's Bill of Rights [after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life
from November 2003 Utne Magazine] includes the rights to:
 Skip pages
Not read
Not finish
Not defend your tastes
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T.S.Eliot:
'no verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.' 'I have never been able to retain the names of feet and meters, or to pay the proper respect to the accepted rules of scansion.' Burton Raffel's (1984) How to Read a Poem, p. 247, quoting TSE without citations. |
{ March : san-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2016 }
In her Preface, Amelia (whose poetry and translations have been widely published) gives this terminology and a wide range of possible topics for the form:
| utamonogatari (poem stories), the general descriptor in Japan for this hybrid genre, were being written and enjoyed there from almost 1,200 years ago. . . . Based on the Japanese utamonogatari, 'tanka tales' seems to me the best umbrella term to cover this very wide range of writings one can see now, from autobiographical fragments and diary entries, to descriptions of natural scenes, journeys and foreign locales, and (apparently fictional) stories. |
Amelia's pieces are mainly narrative and autobiographical, with the prose and poetry connecting linearly. Her adept mingling of title, prose, and tanka shows her to be a writer to study, as in this extract from the middle of her two-page piece "Night Games" (a satisfyingly multi-layered title) about her teenage joy of playing night-time tennis in a decade when the convention was that players wore white and only white, or in her words "white was de rigueur":
That night I dared to be different; not for the first, nor the last, time in my life. from under my brief white tennis frock I flashed legs clad in scarlet tights . . . just to see what happened |
The book shows how social and political events plausibly affected Shakespeare and nurtured his creation of three great tragedies of 1606:
The accession of the Scottish King James VI to the English throne (as James I) was shortly followed by the 1605 Catholic-inspired Fifth of November Gunpowder Plot, for which Guy (Guido) Fawkes was particularly blamed. The following year was rich with paranoia about religious terrorism and rebellion, about possession and witchcraft, about attempts by James to astonish and impress (such as the King of Denmark, King Christian IV), and about the return to England of the Plague (two years earlier more than thirty thousand had died in Plague in London alone).
The book details the changing times and laws and royal desires. These caused not only new plays to be written but also alterations of not only vocabulary but some outcomes of existing plays.
The chapters are:
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In pressing the case for Union [of England and Scotland], the Scottish monarch had foisted
upon his subjects an identity crisis where none had existed before.
What was proving unsettling for the culture at large proved to be a gift to a dramatist
who had made a career out of exploring identity crises — be they political,
familial, marital, or religious.
p. 41. |
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It is easy to forget that what sets the Gunpowder Plot apart from subsequent infamous
terrorist plots ... is that in this case nothing happened.
... The catharsis would have to await the capture, torture, and spectacular public
execution of those responsible. England's dramatists, forbidden from writing about
current events except obliquely, must have looked on in grudging admiration.
p. 102. |
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Macbeth ... begins and ends with the killing of a Scottish king. In its use of
squibs in the opening scene — small fireworks made of brimstone and saltpeter that
made a slight but noisy explosion — it must have even smelled like
a Gunpowder play.
p. 130. |
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Those who believe that his play [Macbeth]
was written to flatter King James fail to see that if Shakespeare wished
to fawn over his monarch, there were easier and more remunerative ways to do so.
p. 153. |
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Successful dramatists know that their plays best please when rooted in what
audiences long for or dread; people tend to weep at tragedies because they
are mourning their own real or imagined losses.
p. 204. |
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The theater, which provides such insight into almost every other aspect of daily life,
disappoints when it comes to plague. Dramatists of the day delved into almost every
troubling or taboo subject ... But one thing that they [playgoers] never saw depicted
were plague victims or their symptoms. Even a passing mention of plague is rare.
... For playgoers in 1606, all too familiar with plague sores and God's tokens,
these terrifying images were more than metaphoric and more terrifying
than they can ever be for us.
p. 277. |
A worthwhile book: I would have appreciated a joke or two, but author James Shapiro sticks to his topics with a straight face. Lots and lots of historical context that enriches Lear, Macbeth, and Anthony and Cleopatra. And even though it's dense, it's very readable: I would read a page or two over a cup of tea, and suddenly find I'vd completed another chapter.
See more at the publisher's site: Simon and Schuster.
Only about 70 of the over-600 pages seem to be on the life and work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), and his themes especially of "women in private moments and the complications of desire" [p. 362]. Many of the other artists (Pieter de Hooch and others) also have paintings worth attending to, or at least that's the thesis of this NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art illustrated tome.
A sad tale of betrayal and loyalty, and bad parenting.
Other Hardy's read include:
On the short list for The 2015 Booker Prizes.
Ribbons
(12, 1) Winter 2016 issue.
Includes:
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I usually focus on a poet's concerns and general style, however when a tanka shouts
'genius,' I also analyze the structure, how the various elements are organized.
p. 92. |
The title might stand for the main character, Serge Carrefax, or for communication (an essence of the book) or for the four section titles:
Books by Tom McCarthy:
On the short list for The 2010 Booker Prizes.
As in Clive James' "The Truthteller" (New Yorker, January 18, 1999) essay on Orwell and his collected works under Peter Davidson, Orwell's main political beliefs were:
James writes: "capitalism was a disease, socialism was the cure, and Communism would kill the patient". and "Fascism, he proclaimed, was just bourgeois democracy without the lip service to liberal values, the iron fist without the velvet glove".
James asserts that: "Orwell was the first to use the term 'cold war', in an essay published in October, 1945, about the atomic bomb".
On the short list for The 2015 Booker Prizes.
A lot of authors braid modern culture through their novels. Don DeLillo (such as with Point Omega) and Margaret Drabble (such as with The Sea Lady) and Jonathan Franzen. (such as with Purity) are among the many modern authors adept at this.
Powers is in that club, here latching on to terrorism, gene manipulation, and the composition of avant-garde new music. The book has three problems: too large a ratio of intellectualism and modern culture to human interest; mainly uninteresting characters; a plot that withholds so much that without strong recommendations I would have given up before it got interesting about three-quarters of the way through.
On the long list for The 2015 Booker Prizes but thankfully not on the short list.
Other books by Haruki Murakami:
Earlier-read books by Huber:
{ February : ni-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2016 }
"Dating from the 6th century B.C., the TAO TE CHING looks at the basic predicaments of being alive, giving advice that imparts balance and perspective — a serene and generous spirit. The TAO is about wisdom in action."
Mitchell's version of the entire 81 chapters is poetic and unpretentious. A good complement to the excellent The Wisdom of Laotse (1948, 1975) (possibly the clearest and deepest generally available introduction to the Tao) with notes and introduction by Lin Yutang.
Includes: "In the House of the Latin Professor", "The Book of Hours", "The Machinist, Teaching His Daughter to Play the Piano", "Old Men Playing Basketball",
Even after reading it decades ago, it is particularly timely and painful to re-read now, with the increasingly totalitarian leanings of so many political systems. An apt refresher.
Drabble's read include:
Brilliant. Wonderful prose poems.
Also watched the 1-hour YouTube of him reading from the book - great, great, great.
Both include:
"Imago",
"Bees of Eleusis",
"Blade",
"Circle".
I love a poet where I want to do what he/she does ... even though I cannot!
Presence #54,
the haiku journal.
Includes my haibun "Cold River Dawn" [p.48].
Also includes five book reviews by Matthew Paul, a man who likes to speak his mind in taking-to-task books with haiku he finds weak; a subset of his criticisms [to be aware of, perhaps, before submitting a book for review] are [retaining Briticisms]: "language doesn't quite seem to convey what it's striving to say", "quasi-metaphor that seems to be reaching for some elusive mystical sense" "rather clunky first line" "unclear what Compton wants the word to do", "a little pretentious", "superfluous", "top-heavy", and "let down by the absence of a verb" [pp.62-63]; and "clunky pun", "bit forced", "over-stuffed", "un-haiku-like, exuberant similes and metaphors" [pp.65-66]. "
47.1 (Winter/Spring 2016) of
Modern Haiku.
Includes a haiku by moi.
Stanford Forrester (editor)'s bottle rockets
17:2 (aka number 34) (2016).
I like the geekiness of his narrator, including his division of the book into numbered chapters each with their own numbered subsections every page or two. One wonders if the sections were written out of order and then assembled into the book.
It's a meditation of confusion and disorder and randomness, all of which he and he colleagues attempt to control:
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The Great Report still had to be composed.
... Even if it wasn't composed in a way that conformed to any previous anthropological model,
it nonetheless had, somehow, to find a form.
... How could I elevate the photos I had pinned on my walls, the sketches, doodles, musings,
all the stuff cached on my hard-drive, the audio-files and diaries not my own —
how could I elevate all these from secondary sources to be quantified, sucked dry, then
cast away, to primary players in this story, or non-story.
Above and beyond this, how could life as lived
become transmogrified from field-work into work, the Work?
... And then, as Present-Tense Anthropology
TM,
could it somehow be passed on, communicated to (or even replicated by) collaborators
who might, through the very act of recognizing it, cause it to be simultaneously registered, logged, archived ...
Could that be it ...? How would it work ...?
pp. 78-79. |
He represents his boss's company at yet another conference, this one in Frankfurt:
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The theme of the conference was — for once! — not The Future.
It was The Contemporary. This was even worse.
It was, of course, a topic to which I'd given much thought: radiant now-ness,
Present-Tense Anthropology
TM
and so forth.
But I wasn't ready to give all that stuff, all those half-formed notions, an outing.
Besides which, I'd started to harbour doubts about their viability.
p. 99. |
And finally after appearing in a New York symposium — "I didn't have to give a presentation or a lecture or anything like that - just sit on a bunch of panel discussions" — he was "accorded almost sycophantic reverence, simply for being (as it was stated time and again) one of the Koob-Sassen Project's 'architects' or 'engineers.'"
He wants to go to Staten Island:
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14.4 I wanted to go there. Why? I don't know. Why does anyone do anything?
I was, as I'd anticipated, depressed. I'd been this way for months. Despite the project's
evident, or apparent, success ... Nothing meant anything to me.
Present-Tense Anthropology
TM?
The Parachutist Mystery?
Trashed, pulverised, dissolved back into the whimsy-froth from which they'd bubbled up
... and yet the rich and vivid island dream had stayed with me, cached itself somewhere
deep inside
... something would happen if I went to Staten Island.
... And something would make sense — if not the whole caboodle, at least something.
pp. 178. |
Read the book to discover the end!
Books by Tom McCarthy:
One of the
Best books read in 2016.
On the short list for The 2015 Booker Prizes.
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One of the
Best books read in 2016.
While it's logical, factual, and makes sense, it's depressing in terms of the murderous effect of Homo "sapiens" on the planet. e.g. "Homo sapiens is ... an ecological serial killer".
Another of Harari's points is that humans did not domesticate wheat but wheat domesticated humans - because it is the people who live in the houses ("domus" in Latin) and that thanks to wheat, "The agricultural revolution kept more people alive in worse conditions."
Many insights, including:
{ January : ichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2016 }
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One of the
Best books read in 2016.
Also a four-page appreciation of poet miriam chaikin (1924-2015), including one of my favorite of her
I have nothing to do today and intend to do it slowly |
ENCOUNTER
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive. Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. 1936 |
One of the
Best books read in 2016.
Explores the work of cartoonist Hergé.
Chapters:
A beautifully written appreciation of Bewick's art, personality, and his ability to walk in all weathers from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Cherryburn, Durham, Berwick-upon-Tweed, etc. Some of the history (like the many family deaths and the great flood of Newcastle on the night of Saturday 17 November, 1771, when the Tyne overflowed, breaking houses and bridges) is poignant.
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Bewick never went mad, like Clare, or soared to the visionary heights of Blake.
There was, however, terror and loneliness as well as humour in his art,
and this too had a powerful appeal.
Charlotte Bronte ... and her sisters were taught at Howarth by their father, Patrick: they had copies of Dyche's Spelling Book and Aesop's Fables, both of which Bewick illustrated. ... In [Bewick's] History of British Birds ... she saw a great deal. ... When we first meet Jane [the heroine in Jane Eyre], she is a small girl taking refuge in the window seat at Gateshead Hall, clutching a copy of Bewick's Birds. ... Ignoring the text, Jane goes straight to the pictures, to the arctic seas that are Bewick's 'unknowable places', to the broken boat on the shore and the phantoms of the night. |
I specially liked the inclusion of cultural behaviors, which make a lot more sense after muddling through learning a little about 1950's Japan — the bossy blokes, the compliant wives, the apologies, etc. The plot was a wonder of convolution which also gave a lot of opportunity for most of the men to give, receive, owe, etc. favors.
Matsumoto is a well-known and acclaimed literary writer, known especially for his short stories; he has received Japan's most important literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize. This book was his first foray into the mystery genre. In Japan it was called Suna no Utsuwa (Vessel of Sand).
The protagonist, Inspector Imanishi, writes haiku such as
"The grass springs back — after a nap — at Koromo River"
A father, a son, and two son clones (there may be many more) of the one (and disappointing-to-the-father) first son appear. The sons look the same physically and are played by the same actor, demonstrating the outward biology mechanism. But they have hugely different personalities, an approach that espouses the view that personality is purely due to nurture. This unrealistic view allows the playwright to explore different attitudes to cloning. 'Clone rivalry' looks like a potentially more violent version of 'sibling rivalry'.
Delightful to get the actual discussions of the process of intuiting theories, expressing them in mathematics, identifying experiments to show consistency or to disprove the theories, particularly in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, QCD, etc.
On the whole, I wanted more from the haiku. For the Alice in Wonderland collection, the prose selects material from the original, but the senryu didn't do anything that the prose wasn't doing.
The Terracotta set was the most interesting of the collection, both in topic and words. I haven't read Gary Geddes' book, and given how much Radmore leaned on the original prose of Alice, I imagine that much of what I appreciate in the haibun is directly quoted from Geddes. This bring up my major distress with the post-modern appropriation (even with permission) of other people's work. Unless the poet italicizes or otherwise differentiates what is her own work from what she is quoting, I'm irked to not know what's what, which would be much more interesting to me.
For the Ocean piece, I didn't get on board. It feels vague. So I was disappointed - even though it had my favorite of her poems:
storms fish in cooking pots swimming hardI'm glad to have read it of course — nice to see a poet who stay with a topic. From my attempts at this kind of thing, I know it takes diligence.
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Related pages:
Books on Buddhism.
Books on Learning Spanish.
Poetry - Learn How to Write Your Own.
Forests of California and Trees of the World.
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