MarysLibrary

Beautiful and Pointless

David Orr, the poetry critic for the NY Times, tells of meeting a woman at a party and when she asked the question we all ask of new people these days, "What do you do?" he said, "I'm a poetry critic."

"Oh! How can you do that? Poetry is so . . . so PERSONAL."

And so Orr begins his slim book Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry, by addressing the question of just how personal modern confessional poetry really is. Writing about one's misery and disappointment and personal failings can start to sound the same when everyone is doing it, and not very cleverly at that. But one of the most personal poems he knows, says Orr, is John O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died," and especially the last few lines:

"... I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

"and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing"

It made me stop breathing for a moment.

Orr quotes from dozens of modern poets and has an entertaining chapter about the formalists, one of whom includes in his book of sonnets a 14-line poem with one word per line. Is it a sonnet? I think it is and I loved it as I did all of these essays.

The Sword of Summer

Rick Riordan's Sword of Summer takes place in Boston, the Hub of the Universe. By that he means that Boston is the place where one can pass most easily between the nine worlds of Norse mythology. The statues of the ducks from Make Way for Ducklings provide easy access to the world of dwarfs or Helheim or this world of humans. And Valhalla is a five star hotel right there on Newbery Street.

If you love Boston you will enjoy the many adventures of Magnus Chase on the Longfellow Bridge, Bunker (really Breed's) Hill, Long Wharf, and Southie, which looks much like the dark, gritty dwarf world. Magnus is the son of Frey and once he realizes Boston is the famed Viking Norumbega and finds his father's sword in the Charles he is off on adventures with a rogue Valkerie, a deaf elf, and a dwarf who wants nothing so much as to open his own shop featuring his clothing designs (chain mail neckties and that sort of thing.)

Thor, a classic air-head jock, misses the book's culminating fight because he's eager to get back to his television for the next episode of Game of Thrones. For the Viking funeral of the brave Valkeries who die fighting the fire giants, the heroes commandeer a swan boat and set it afire on the pond in Boston Common.

And so it goes. The second volume in this projected trilogy is called The Hammer of Thor and it looks like it will be published in October 2016.

Merry Christmas!

 

May your puddings all be plum!

Anita Brookner and the Tortoise Market

In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you.

And in any case it is my contention that

Aesop was writing for the tortoise market.

Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. 

            -- Anita Brookner

Travels in Vermeer

Michael White is a poet who teaches at UNC Wilmington. A few years back he was in the middle of a nasty divorce and decided on a whim to use his frequent flyer miles to "get away." He chose to go to Amsterdam for no reason he can now remember. He expected to enjoy the Rembrandts in the many museums thereabouts.

But it was a Vermeer that knocked him off his pins. He became so obsessed that he decided to travel about and see every painting by the Dutch painter that was on public view. First he read some books about Vermeer, in particular Edward Snow's A Study of Vermeer (1994) and Lawrence Gowing's Vermeer (1955.)

As he goes from one country to another, one museum to another, one painting to another, his understanding and appreciation of Vermeer grows and develops and he shares this intellectual and emotional trip with the reader.

He also shares his ongoing problems with his soon to be ex-wife and their tussle over custody of his beloved daughter. And he tells some amusing (sometimes verging on heartbreaking) stories about his forays into the world of Internet dating.

A delightful book and a good way to get to know Vermeer better before heading into the more academic studies of the painter. No illustrations except for the cover (above), so you need to get to the library and find a collection of good reproductions of the painter's works.

Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall . . .

This is one of the first pieces of verse that I memorized and I'll bet it was for you, too. (I'm very careful with eggs to this day.) Most of us learned "by heart" the nursery rhymes and other verses we encountered as small children, often before we could read.

Oh, how I love to go up in a swing . . .

Rote learning, teaching by asking children to memorize things, is so far out of fashion at the moment that you'd probably get less criticism if you robbed a bank.

Aye, tear her tattered ensign down . . .

But when I was in school it was the tail end of the era when children were asked to memorize things: the multiplication table, the US states and their capitals, the periodic table, and most important to me and to the author of this book, poetry.

Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul . . .

Even in college, my Shakespeare professor made us memorize: Hamlet's soliloquy, the sceptred isle speech from Richard II, the quality of mercy speech from The Merchant of Venice. "What news on the Rialto?" from the same play, I memorized on my own. (Apparently nobody else did, however, as when I say that I get blank stares.)

 But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead . . .

I spotted that quote in a novel a while ago and the author wrote to tell me no other reviewer had noticed it.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice . . .

Now comes Catherine Robson, who grew up in England and is now a professor at New York University. In Heart Beats she makes the case for requiring children to memorize poetry. She talks at length about three poems that were often assigned to children to memorize, Casabianca (The boy stood on the burning deck . . .), Elegy in a Country Churchyard (The curfew tolls the knell of parting day . . .), and The Burial of Sir John Mooore after Corunna (Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note). I don't know that last one but I know parts of the other by heart, and if you are reading this blog you probably know them too.

Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair.

I'm talking about this book without having read it ($45, no Amazon discount, new and so not eligible for interlibrary loan, Santa tapped out.) I have read instead a lengthy review by William H Pritchard who is Henry Clay Folger professor of English at Amherst College. (I wonder if my SATs are good enough to get me into Amherst where I could major in English and take courses from Professor Pritchard.)

Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on a wide wide sea . . .

Robson feels strongly that memorizing poetry, preferably poetry with a strong meter, contributed something to a child's education that they could absorb no other way. She is not concerned so much about whether a poem is "good" or "bad" but rather values verse because it gave children something that they took with them, whether they were to leave school at 14 and work in a coal mine or were part of a family who read aloud or recited poetry in front of the fire in the evening.

The mirror cracked from side to side, the curse has come upon me cried the Lady of Shallott .  . .

Because I'm just old enough I did a lot of memorizing in school and so I carry with me hundreds of verses that are there when I need them. I'm sorry, as is the author, that children today will not be given that treasure.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Heaven; Until Death shatters it to fragments.

First posted 14 Dec 2012

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall . . .

This is one of the first pieces of verse that I memorized and I'll bet it was for you, too. (I'm very careful with eggs to this day.) Most of us learned "by heart" the nursery rhymes and other verses we encountered as small children, often before we could read.

Oh, how I love to go up in a swing . . .

Rote learning, teaching by asking children to memorize things, is so far out of fashion at the moment that you'd probably get less criticism if you robbed a bank.

Aye, tear her tattered ensign down . . .

But when I was in school it was the tail end of the era when children were asked to memorize things: the multiplication table, the US states and their capitals, the periodic table, and most important to me and to the author of this book, poetry.

Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul . . .

Even in college, my Shakespeare professor made us memorize: Hamlet's soliloquy, the sceptred isle speech from Richard II, the quality of mercy speech from The Merchant of Venice. "What news on the Rialto?" from the same play, I memorized on my own. (Apparently nobody else did, however, as when I say that I get blank stares.)

 But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead . . .

I spotted that quote in a novel a while ago and the author wrote to tell me no other reviewer had noticed it.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice . . .

Now comes Catherine Robson, who grew up in England and is now a professor at New York University. In Heart Beats she makes the case for requiring children to memorize poetry. She talks at length about three poems that were often assigned to children to memorize, Casabianca (The boy stood on the burning deck . . .), Elegy in a Country Churchyard (The curfew tolls the knell of parting day . . .), and The Burial of Sir John Mooore after Corunna (Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note). I don't know that last one but I know parts of the other by heart, and if you are reading this blog you probably know them too.

Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair.

I'm talking about this book without having read it ($45, no Amazon discount, new and so not eligible for interlibrary loan, Santa tapped out.) I have read instead a lengthy review by William H Pritchard who is Henry Clay Folger professor of English at Amherst College. (I wonder if my SATs are good enough to get me into Amherst where I could major in English and take courses from Professor Pritchard.)

Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on a wide wide sea . . .

Robson feels strongly that memorizing poetry, preferably poetry with a strong meter, contributed something to a child's education that they could absorb no other way. She is not concerned so much about whether a poem is "good" or "bad" but rather values verse because it gave children something that they took with them, whether they were to leave school at 14 and work in a coal mine or were part of a family who read aloud or recited poetry in front of the fire in the evening.

The mirror cracked from side to side, the curse has come upon me cried the Lady of Shallott .  . .

Because I'm just old enough I did a lot of memorizing in school and so I carry with me hundreds of verses that are there when I need them. I'm sorry, as is the author, that children today will not be given that treasure.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Heaven; Until Death shatters it to fragments.

First posted 14 Dec 2012

The Insanity Offense

The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens by E. Fuller Torrey

More than 50% of “rampage killers,” men (they are almost always men) like the one who killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech a few years ago and the one who recently killed five people and grievously wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and several others in Arizona, are seriously mentally ill and untreated. More than 60% of men who kill their own children and 75% - that’s three out of four – women who kill their children are seriously mentally ill and untreated. More than 10% of the prisoners in American jails and a larger percentage of people arrested for non-family violence are seriously mentally ill and untreated. Between a third and half of the people who are homeless and living on the streets and eating out of garbage cans, as best can be determined, are mentally ill and untreated.

We have stringent state laws in the US that prevent involuntary hospitalization and involuntary treatment of people even with extremely serious paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, even if they are delusional and violent. A few such people who have been treated against their will have been awarded millions of dollars when represented by civil liberties lawyers to make certain they continue to go untreated – and in all too many cases remain on the street, eating garbage, threatening and attacking their families, sometimes murdering others. The laws require a person to be threatening “imminent” violence – which means with a knife in hand and moving forward, and so also means years of increasingly frequent and threatening incidents and a history of assault, even with a baseball bat, knife, gun, or other weapon, is not enough to allow a judge to force the mentally ill person to remain in treatment and to continue to take medication.

In The Insanity Offense, E Fuller Torrey, makes a plea for more sensible and humane treatment of these people who are, by the nature of their illness, unable to make a sane decision whether to be treated or not. Before the middle of the 19th century people who were insane were kept imprisoned and chained. Today we are doing much the same thing, because leaving such people untreated leads to staggering numbers of the mentally ill residing in our jails and prisons. In the more than 3,000 counties in the United States there is not one with a hospital housing more mentally ill people than the county jail. The jails are our new mental hospitals. The costs, and not just the costs in money, are staggering.

Torrey’s case for sensible laws that allow involuntary hospitalization and treatment of the most seriously ill is convincing. Sick people who are released from hospitals without further treatment are alarmingly vulnerable – they are attacked, raped, murdered in much higher percentages than the general population. They fill our jails and take up the time and resources of our police system. They are now a large percentage of the people who attack police and are killed by them. And the very seriously mentally ill are found in disconcertingly high percentages among those who attack and murder their families, neighbors, and complete strangers.

We used to have mental asylums, places where, ideally, the sick and vulnerable were given asylum, and could be protected from themselves and others. But deinstitutionalization from the late 1960s through the late 1990s has put most of these people at the mercy of themselves and others.

We cannot call ourselves a civilized nation and continue to treat the most vulnerable among us in this way.

 

This was previously posted in 2012

More than 50% of “rampage killers,” men (they are almost always men) like the one who killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech a few years ago and the one who recently killed five people and grievously wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and several others in Arizona, are seriously mentally ill and untreated. More than 60% of men who kill their own children and 75% - that’s three out of four – women who kill their children are seriously mentally ill and untreated. More than 10% of the prisoners in American jails and a larger percentage of people arrested for non-family violence are seriously mentally ill and untreated. Between a third and half of the people who are homeless and living on the streets and eating out of garbage cans, as best can be determined, are mentally ill and untreated.

We have stringent state laws in the US that prevent involuntary hospitalization and involuntary treatment of people even with extremely serious paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, even if they are delusional and violent. A few such people who have been treated against their will have been awarded millions of dollars when represented by civil liberties lawyers to make certain they continue to go untreated – and in all too many cases remain on the street, eating garbage, threatening and attacking their families, sometimes murdering others. The laws require a person to be threatening “imminent” violence – which means with a knife in hand and moving forward, and so also means years of increasingly frequent and threatening incidents and a history of assault, even with a baseball bat, knife, gun, or other weapon, is not enough to allow a judge to force the mentally ill person to remain in treatment and to continue to take medication.

In The Insanity Offense, E Fuller Torrey, makes a plea for more sensible and humane treatment of these people who are, by the nature of their illness, unable to make a sane decision whether to be treated or not. Before the middle of the 19th century people who were insane were kept imprisoned and chained. Today we are doing much the same thing, because leaving such people untreated leads to staggering numbers of the mentally ill residing in our jails and prisons. In the more than 3,000 counties in the United States there is not one with a hospital housing more mentally ill people than the county jail. The jails are our new mental hospitals. The costs, and not just the costs in money, are staggering.

Torrey’s case for sensible laws that allow involuntary hospitalization and treatment of the most seriously ill is convincing. Sick people who are released from hospitals without further treatment are alarmingly vulnerable – they are attacked, raped, murdered in much higher percentages than the general population. They fill our jails and take up the time and resources of our police system. They are now a large percentage of the people who attack police and are killed by them. And the very seriously mentally ill are found in disconcertingly high percentages among those who attack and murder their families, neighbors, and complete strangers.

We used to have mental asylums, places where, ideally, the sick and vulnerable were given asylum, and could be protected from themselves and others. But deinstitutionalization from the late 1960s through the late 1990s has put most of these people at the mercy of themselves and others.

We cannot call ourselves a civilized nation and continue to treat the most vulnerable among us in this way.

 

This was previously posted in 2012

Bare ruined choirs . . .

Shakespeare Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Foreshortening

                                              . . .Too violent,

I once thought, that foreshortening in Proust --

A world abruptly old, whitehaired, a reader

Looking up in puzzlement to fathom

Whether ten years or forty have gone by.

Young, I mistook it for an unconvincing

Trick of the teller. It was truth instead

Babbling through his own astonishment.

            -- James Merrill, The Book of Ephraim

These Old Shades

Georgette Heyer is inimitable. Not that lots of writers haven't tried. But the depth of her research and the cleverness of her wit make her Regency romances, and her Georgian romances like These Old Shades - which takes place in about 1755 - impossible to imitate successfully.

These Old Shades is Heyer's second novel. The title refers back to the characters in her first, The Black Moth (1921),  which was written to entertain her brother, a hemophiliac who was often bedridden and in pain. She first planned to bring back the characters from that book, and in a sense she did, because you can create a chart with a direct correspondence between, for example, Tracy Belmanoir, the Duke of Andover, nicknamed "Devil" in her first novel and Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, nicknamed "Satanas" in the second novel. Old shades have returned. And some of them appear in later novels as well.

The illustration above is from the Sourcebooks Casablanca edition of the novels and is one of a series of similar covers and spines that were carefully put together by the publisher's design department. The paintings used are acquired from the Bridgeman Art Library and the Fine Art Photographic Library. An interview with the assistant manager of design, Dawn Pope, can be found here. Because the women in Heyer's novels are so unique and strong, Pope puts a woman on each cover and tries to find a portrait that reflects the character from the novel.

The story? Too complicated to relate here and besides you will want to read the novel. Just let me hint that there is a car horse and carriage chase, a revenge plot, a reformed rake, and a satisfying ending.