Mark Strand on CBC

The CBC recently expanded its podcast lineup, and its program Writers & Company is finally available as a podcast. The program for April 1st, I have just learned, is a long and excellent interview with Mark Strand. If you're a poetry lover, you'll love this interview.

The CBC only archives its podcasts for four weeks, so if you hurry, you might be able to get it here (direct download). If not, it's available in a streaming version on this page. You can subscribe to Writers & Company in iTunes here, or simply pick up the RSS feed here. The Writers & Company home page is here.

Greek & Roman love poetry

That's the topic this week on the BBC's excellent program In Our Time. Melvyn Bragg and his guests start with Sappho and end with Ovid. A really interesting program and well worth the 40 minutes or so it will take from your busy, busy life.

You can get it here and you can thank me later.

[Update: a commenter pointed out that you can also read a summary of the program here. However, both he and I strongly recommend you listen to the podcast. I always find that doing the dishes or some other such chore is much more enjoyable when you're learning something at the same time. Thank you Paul Grieg (even if your blogger profile is maddeningly blocked, so I can't even visit your blog to thank you for the tip).]

White day in spring, song sparrow
alights in a naked maple,
the first hopeful bird
in the yard.

No mystery, this telepathy,
buzzy trills and tremolos
come to mind,
byproducts of a vital message
missed.

The sensible hen is somewhere
south where April snow
knows to fall
as rain.

Joshua goes to D.C.

The Washington Post Magazine ran a really excellent article this weekend. The premise of the article was an incognito performance by violinist Joshua Bell in the Washington D.C. Metro. Read the article to find out how discerning Washington commuters are.

From the article:

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

My favourite quote by Bell, referring to the $32 he made in just under 45 minutes: "That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."

He was joking, of course. I'm bet the insurance premiums on that violin are more than many people make in a year.

Meb bought a "new" typewriter...

Hope she didn't get the last one. What a nostalgia trip.

Not long ago, I re-joined a live (as opposed to on-line) poetry workshop after a hiatus of a couple of years. I find the immediate and honest feedback a refreshing change from the goings on in some on-line spaces. One of this workshop's members, Maxianne Berger (this isn't the first time FFTMC has mentioned Maxianne's name), recently sent me a few links to some of her wonderful poetry, and I want to pass them on to FFTMC readers. I think you'll find them well worth the click.

Two poems in the Hamilton Stone Review

Two poems in ars poetica

A poem at Les Wicks' Australian Collaboration page for last years Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival. The poems are in alphabetical order, so scroll down to a bit to read the ver funny Ode to a Round Tuit.

A translation of Maxianne's book How We Negotiate was also recently published by Écrits des forges. The translation is entitled Compromis.

Enjoy.

The International Edible Book Festival

I recently learned about the International Edible Book Festival. I love this sort of thing, which just happens to combine two of m favourite things: books and food.

Satires of Circumstance

From the title of this blog, you might easily guess that I am a fan of Thomas Hardy. I think FFTMC is one of the best novels of the Victorian era, and novels like Tess of the D'urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also among my favourite novels.

You would perhaps be surprised to learn, therefore, that until today, there was not a single volume of Hardy's poetry on my shelves. I have a few poems in anthologies, but that is the extent of my acquaintance. Maybe it's because his poetry has been so vilified by so many critics over the years.

I haven't read any of those critiques, but certainly his poetry has the reputation of not being up to the standard of other great poets of the 19th century. I am trying to read him with an open mind--trying to let him be who he is. I must say, there's something very likable and approachable about what I've read so far. Yes, it does tend to be dark and morose, but for it to be otherwise would be surprising knowing his prose. And yet I find there is a great deal of black humour also, and I have always felt that the combination of tragedy and comedy the mark of an excellent writer.

So with that preface, I'd like to share the following vignettes of Hardy's that I discovered today. I found them quite compelling. I have two or three favourites among this lot. What are yours?


SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

I

AT TEA

The kettle descants in a cozy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husband's face,
And then at her guest's, and shows in her own
Her sense that she fills an envied place;
And the visiting lady is all abloom,
And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know
That the woman beside her was first his choice,
Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . .
Betraying nothing in look or voice
The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,
And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

II

IN CHURCH

"And now to God the Father," he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.

III

BY HER AUNT'S GRAVE

"Sixpence a week," says the girl to her lover,
"Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide
In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover
The cost of her headstone when she died.
And that was a year ago last June;
I've not yet fixed it. But I must soon."

"And where is the money now, my dear?"
"O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was SO slow
In saving it--eighty weeks, or near." . . .
"Let's spend it," he hints. "For she won't know.
There's a dance to-night at the Load of Hay."
She passively nods. And they go that way.

IV

IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT

"Would it had been the man of our wish!"
Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she
In the wedding-dress--the wife to be -
"Then why were you so mollyish
As not to insist on him for me!"
The mother, amazed: "Why, dearest one,
Because you pleaded for this or none!"

"But Father and you should have stood out strong!
Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find
That you were right and that I was wrong;
This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .
Ah!--here he comes with his button-hole rose.
Good God--I must marry him I suppose!"

V

AT A WATERING-PLACE

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,
The man and his friend, and regard the bay
Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,
Smile sallowly in the decline of day.
And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -
A handsome couple among the rest.

"That smart proud pair," says the man to his friend,
"Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks
That dozens of days and nights on end
I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links
Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .
Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!"

VI

IN THE CEMETERY

"You see those mothers squabbling there?"
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!'
Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!'
Another, 'How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!'
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.

"And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don't know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!"

VII

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

"At last I behold her soul undraped!"
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
"My God--'tis but narrowly I have escaped. -
My precious porcelain proves it delf."
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

VIII

IN THE STUDY

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
A type of decayed gentility;
And by some small signs he well can guess
That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

"I have called--I hope I do not err -
I am looking for a purchaser
Of some score volumes of the works
Of eminent divines I own, -
Left by my father--though it irks
My patience to offer them." And she smiles
As if necessity were unknown;
"But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles
I have wished, as I am fond of art,
To make my rooms a little smart."
And lightly still she laughs to him,
As if to sell were a mere gay whim,
And that, to be frank, Life were indeed
To her not vinegar and gall,
But fresh and honey-like; and Need
No household skeleton at all.

IX

AT THE ALTAR-RAIL

"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom,
And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own
It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -
'Twas foolish perhaps!--to forsake the ways
Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.
She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
'It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
What I really am you have never gleaned;
I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.'"

X

IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed
Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed,
With a start, as the band plays on outside.
"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment
Because of our marriage, my Innocent."

"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air
To which my old Love waltzed with me,
And I swore as we spun that none should share
My home, my kisses, till death, save he!
And he dominates me and thrills me through,
And it's he I embrace while embracing you!"

XI

IN THE RESTAURANT

"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,
It will pass as your husband's with the rest,
While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
Will be gleaming at us from east to west;
And the child will come as a life despised;
I feel an elopement is ill-advised!"

"O you realize not what it is, my dear,
To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,
And nightly take him into my arms!
Come to the child no name or fame,
Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame."

XII

AT THE DRAPER'S

"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
_I_ shall know nothing of it, believe me!"

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
"O, I didn't see you come in there -
Why couldn't you speak?"--"Well, I didn't. I left
That you should not notice I'd been there.

"You were viewing some lovely things. 'Soon required
For a widow, of latest fashion';
And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man
Who had to be cold and ashen

"And screwed in a box before they could dress you
'In the last new note in mourning,'
As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
I left you to your adorning."

XIII

ON THE DEATH-BED

"I'll tell--being past all praying for -
Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,
And got some scent of the intimacy
That was under way between her and me;
And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost
One night, at the very time almost
That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,
And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

"The news of the battle came next day;
He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,
Got out there, visited the field,
And sent home word that a search revealed
He was one of the slain; though, lying alone
And stript, his body had not been known.

"But she suspected. I lost her love,
Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;
And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,
Though it be burning for evermore."

XIV

OVER THE COFFIN

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose they both had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
--"I have called," says the first. "Do you marvel or not?"
"In truth," says the second, "I do--somewhat."

"Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .
I divorced that man because of you -
It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
But now I am older, and tell you true,
For life is little, and dead lies he;
I would I had let alone you two!
And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs' days."

XV

IN THE MOONLIGHT

"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

"If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!"

"Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!"

"Ah--she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?"

"Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during her life I thought nothing of."

Nora, The Piano-Playing Cat

OK... this is too cute for words.

Jorge Luis Borges

To kick off the new year, the excellent BBC program/podcast In Our Time is featuring Argentine short story writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Check it out here. I haven't listened to it myself yet, but I'm sure it will be very interesting; this program rarely fails to please.

I wish all my readers a very Happy New Year, full of the only thing that really matters: love.

Christmas card season

'Tis the season for exchanging Christmas cards. I rarely send them, but we manage to get a few despite our grinch-like card etiquette.

Anyway, I can always count on getting a few from various clients and/or colleagues, and one such card just came in the mail. The message, hand written, was so perfect and poem-like that I thought I'd share and wish the same to my readers:

Pour 2007
De l'air pur,
De l'eau claire
Et de l'encre à profusion.

I love it.

Andy Mckee - Drifting - www.candyrat.com

I often get asked what kind of music I like, and as a musician, I have a hard time answering. Of course I have preferences, but mostly, I like anything played by a "real" musician. And by that, I mean someone who plays as naturally as they breathe. I just stumbled on this guy through the magic of YouTube, and he fits the bill as well as anyone.

Grammar Geekfest

A couple of interesting sites for grammar geeks (and let's face it, if you're a poet, you should be a grammar geek--even, and perhaps especially, if you like to break the rules, you should know what they are first).

Anyway, the first is from the Language Log, an interesting site I recently stumbled upon. Lots of interesting posts in the archives, including a statistical look at one of those silly rules of the English language: "i" before "e" except after "c". Don't let the statistics scare you off; it's surprisingly readable (and actually kind of funny, in a grammar-geek sort of way).

The other is yet another podcast and website (lately I've been thinking I should change the name of this blog to Poetry and Poets in Podcasts): Grammar Girl. Much of what you hear in the podcast is transcribed on the website, but the podcast is quick and painless (or, as Grammar Girl likes to say, "quick and dirty"). The podcasts usually run four to five minutes, so they don't tire your patience, and Grammar Girl has a nice, laid back attitude towards grammar, a refreshing change for a subject that tends to have almost as polarizing an effect as religion. She also talks about both British and American usage, which is refreshing too. I must say that she has cleared up a couple of nagging questions for me (quick, what's the difference between "toward" and "towards"?). Plus there are lots of links and references at the end of each transcript on the site. I highly recommend it.

Roald Hoffmann

I have just discovered a marvelous poet named Roald Hoffmann. I learned of him this morning while listening to the Scientific American podcast (go here to listen or subscribe to the podcast; the part about Hoffmann starts at 10:58 into the program for November 15, 2006).

So why was a poet featured on a science podcast? Well, because Hoffmann just happens to be a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry (1981). His site contains a wealth of his poems that you can browse through. I really enjoyed my reading at his site. His poetry has a simplicity and innocence to it that conveys his obvious wonder in the face of nature. I doubt he'll win the Nobel for literature, but for me, as someone who feels a great sense of wonder in the universe as science describes it, he's worth reading.

Podcast on Alexander Pope

This week's BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time is on the 18th century English poet Alexander Pope. You can listen to the program from the website or download the audio file. You can subscribe to In Our Time (a really excellent program that discusses a different historical figure or event each week) on the In Our Time home page, or search for it in iTunes.

Get it while it's hot. The BBC only keeps its programs up for a week. If you miss it, drop me an e-mail. I might still have it. ;-)

[update:] In the comments on Frank Wilson's link to this post, Ed over at The Bibliothecary pointed out that while the podcast is only available for download for a week, In Our Time keeps an archive of all past programs, where you can listen to a streamed version. I stand corrected, but let's face it, streaming audio is sooooo 2004.

Fantastic machine

I first saw this video when friend emailed it to me with the question, I know its mechanically possible, but is it musically possible?

To me, the question should be the other way around. Musically, the piece is possible, but mechanically, I doubt we have the technology to do this.

But what a feat of animation it is. I'm in awe. If anyone knows where this comes from and/or where I can see the whole thing, please let me know.

Fall Geometry

Like a plaid shirt in a pumpkin field,
autumn juxtaposes spheres and cubes.

You are the small box of thoughts
in a crop circle extending out to the horizon.

October sun, box and harvest moon are three
points connecting a line across your world:
the base of a triangle pointing to zenith.

Walk the line carefully to the earthbound
anchor of a white rainbow, grasp the tangible
corners of this moment. From there

you will see the crisscrossing scars
of reapings past and yes, glimpse the gaudy
crosshatching of glory yet to come.

Leaving

You stand in the cold like a graveyard monument,
letting wind and rain rip at that pretty yellow
dress and peel it off, shred by shred.

Clearly drawn to winter, you yearn
for the cleansing anti-fire of ice on skin
while snow falls and rises about your delicate waist.

Spindly fingers wave at me, playful and accusing,
shaming me to venture outside and lean my cheek
against your frozen face for one last hour.

Though I ache with the thought of you,
I stay inside, rotting in this dark room,
cool and damp, lit dimly by a December fire.

Spring will be here soon, I tell myself, knowing,
like a forest knows fire, that it will be too late,
that green will clothe your body by then.

Insignificance complex

Lately I've been having a hard time writing poetry. I wouldn't say I'm blocked so much as I'm feeling like anything of any significance has already been written. I know in my heart that's not true, but sometimes it's hard to convince yourself.

I have also been listening the the podcast of Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac lately, and on Tuesday, he read a poem that so perfectly expressed how I've been feeling that I am overlooking my normal abhorrence of poems about poetry and linking to it. The poem is called "Rereading Frost", by Linda Pastan.

You can subscribe to the Writer's Almanac podcast via or in

My friend Bud Bloom has just put up a fascinating post on Donald Hall, current U.S. poet laureate and husband of the great Jane Kenyon. His post starts with a touching poem by Hall called "Retriever," written in memory of his wife.

Which reminded me that last year I wrote one in her memory too, though I of course never met her except through her poetry.

Dust Jacket Photograph II (in memoriam J.K.)

Photons touched you once then died
on film—-a worthy sacrifice, now fossils
set in printer’s ink and hard stock.

Eyes left a daydream to focus
on the lens, lids held open by dark
irises, the corners of your mouth
only just north of indifference.

What a presumption to read you,
though life is one long presumption,
the search for meaning in other faces.

Your head, heavy in your hands, the secret
bee ring on your finger climbing
toward the flower of a face
that never really opened into the sunlight.

Technorati Tags: Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Poetry