Sharp Sand

Actual Size Abstraction

jd — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:26:59 +0000

Stone Age Flutes

jd — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:11:07 +0000

Human beings seem to be inveterate makers of pattern, whether musical, visual, or verbal. The people who hollowed out the bird bones and cut holes at regular intervals were also making stunning pictures on the walls of caves and, I have no doubt, singing songs to their children and telling each other stories. All of these activities have pattern making at the heart. Other animals can recognize patterns in the world around them; human animals seem to be the only ones compelled to consciously create patterns — in the air, on the walls, with their voices.

I’ve just been reading Ellen Bryant Voigt’s delightful little book, The Art of Syntax – another in Graywolf’s really excellent The Art of series* — in which she makes explicit the patterns and variations in several poems serving as exempla.After all these years of writing poetry, Voigt’s little book excites me about what originally excited me — making shapes with words. With James Longenbach’s The Art of the Poetic Line, Voigt’s book would serve the intermediate student of poetry as a fine introduction to the art.

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*Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext, another entry in this series, is a rich source of insight about the textures of literary fiction.

James Ensor

jd — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:34:34 +0000

There’s a show at MOMA I’d like to see, of James Ensor’s proto-modernist paintings. I find my own aesthetic roots in the period of western art and literature that runs from the end of the 19th century through the First World War — the period of what is sometimes called High Modernism. The NY Times reviewer, Holland Cotter, calls Ensor “an aggrieved traditionalist with a pop culture itch,” words that I might apply to myself. Ensor also labored all his life away from the centers of culture where artistic reputations were made. Ensor strikes me as paradigmatic of modernism in his combining of high and low culture and his subversion of technique by technique. [A barely adequate Wikipedia entry here; Google image results here.] One loves the old modes and methods even when they are no longer viable and one is reduced to parody and pastiche.

Dawn Birds

jd — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:34:14 +0000

Even before dawn, when the sky is just lightening around four o’clock, a few birds begin turning up. I don’t know which birds they are — from the timbre they might be robins, but this is not daylight robin song. Just a kind of quiet noodling around. Lovely to lie there in the dark listening then drift back down into sleep.

In Which I Remember Richard Nixon

jd — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:32:43 +0000

He really was as bad as we thought at the time. And Reagan comes across in these recent tapes as a bland and lawless vacuity without a shred of integrity of allegiance to anything but power. And Nixon and Reagan gave birth to George W. Bush. All the characteristics are the same. The idea that the executive is above the law; a world view built on the worst of 19th century social Darwinism; and utter incuriosity about other people and other places. I have a such a visceral reaction to these creeps, perhaps, because my step father was a sort of cheap knock-off version of the same cluster of attitudes. I take these sons of bitches personally. Which is why it’s such a relief to have Barack Obama as president, despite the fact that he has deeply disappointed me on civil liberties issues, particularly the half-measures he’s taken to do away with torturing people in my name. With Obama, I at least get the impression that he has thought through the issue and made a conscious decision based on what he believes to be the good of the country. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Obama works through health care reform. I fear that he will compromise away significant change and wind up serving narrow interests; whereas venality drove Nixon and Reagan and Bush, a dangerous idealism may turn out to be Obama’s weakness.

Beloit Poetry Journal / Verse Daily

jd — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:10:52 +0000

I had three poems appear recently in the Beloit Poetry Journal and Verse Daily picked one up for today’s feature. It’s one of my favorite poems and about fifteen editors turned it down over the years until BPJ took it. (Thanks to David Graham for mentioning the Verse Daily feature on the New Poetry list.)

The New Honda

jd — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:47:41 +0000

Very sober color, don’t you think? Honda calls it “polished metal,” but Carole call’s it “graphite” and says the car is the color of No. 2 pencil lead.

The Saga Continues

jd — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:04:29 +0000

By going to a different dealer (65 miles away), I think I have found the Honda Civic I’ve been looking for. In fact, this dealer, in Plattsburgh, did not have the car but was apparently able to trade another dealer for it. I’ll know tomorrow morning whether this transaction has actually taken place or whether it it has resulted in another mirage vehicle. I’m going to have to accept an automatic transmission, which is okay by me despite the fact that I think of myself as a standard tranny kind of guy. In the old days when I was learning about cars automatic transmissions were sluggish and didn’t get very good mileage; modern automatics get better mileage than a stick, I’m told. And I’m not looking to squeal my tires.

Update: The dealer just called and they actually have the car on the lot — had to send someone to Massachusetts to get it. Turns out that Honda just doesn’t manufacture very many Civics in the coupe model, especially ones with the snazzy trim package I picked out so I could get heated seats. (Oh, California readers may laugh, but I tell you such amenities are no laughing matter in January in the North Country.)

Update: The car is parked in the driveway. Very easy to drive, comfortable. Went by the local dealership and got my deposit check back from them, cancelling that order.

Weather Report

jd — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:48:19 +0000

Gardening: We’ve been having alternating days of sun and rain, which has been good for the stuff growing in the yard — both the stuff we want growing there and the stuff we don’t — but I’ve been finding the cool rainy weather a little depressing as I begin to recover from the Upper Respiratory Infection, i.e., cold, From Hell. But today it’s sun and I’m feelin alright, as the old Joe Cocker song has it. Yesterday during a break in the rain I hauled all the bonsai and indoor plants outside and put them in their summer quarters. Today I ought to pull weeds and put a few herbs I bought last week into pots.

Reading: I read The Idiot in Hanoi and I’m trying to write an essay about it that works with the idea of being beside one’s self. When I got home and had the bad cold, I plunged into the last three novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubury-Maturin series, which I’ve now completed over the last three summers, though I think maybe I missed one volume somewhere in the middle. I’ll probably read through the series again at some point, but not for a while. I read O’Brian’s books the way Carole watches certain kinds of HBO shows, because they are respectable, intelligent entertainment that still don’t demand complete concentration. Then — and this is weird — last night — without even realizing that today would be Bloomsday — I picked up Ulysses and began to read it for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. I’ve never gotten more than 100 pages into it, but I think this time I’ve caught the music. Stephen’s symbol for Irish art, “the cracked looking glass of a servent,” strikes me as an appropriate metaphor for modernist art in general, including Dostoevsky’s novel. The image in the glass is doubled and displaced; that it belongs to a servent might at first seem to devalue it, but we know that servents are often more free of illusion that their masters.

Update: There was a good short essay by Colum McCann about Ulysses in yesterday’s NY Times.

Unbelievable

jd — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:14:17 +0000

Before I left for Vietnam, I put in an order of a specific Honda Civic with the local dealership. I understood that I would have to wait until the end of July for delivery; but when I returned, I was told they could find me a 2009 with the same specs. They have now told me, on four seperate occasions over the last two weeks that they “had a car,” only to have that car somehow slip from their grasp. On two occasions, I have actually come to the dealership expecting to drive away in a new Civic only to be told that “the other dealer sold the car before we got there to pick it up,” and on the one occasion when they actually got the car, it was not the model I wanted. Dealmaker Honda of Potsdam NY has taken all the fun out of this process. I’m thinking of taking the three grand I was going to use as a down payment and buying a junker to drive for a couple of years. I have only bought one new car in my life and this was supposed to be something of a treat, but these idiots have completely drained the pleasure out of the deal. And the whole dealership system for distributing cars is idiotic — one ought to be able to buy a car entirely on the internet, with maybe three showrooms per state so you could test drive a few actual cars. But this system of competing little principalities is inefficient and idiotic. I hope they go out of business.

Update: I suppose it’s a little stupid to get this invested in buying a car. In any case, I’ve told the delaer to just order me a 2010 Civic that will come on a truck in late July rather than fart around trying to find a 2009 in the right configuration. I put in my first “order” two months ago and it will be nearly two more months before delivery — How is this an efficient or reasonable way to sell cars? Or to sell anything?