June 27, 2009

Second City

I spent last week in Chicago on business. I only get there once or twice a year, and rarely get a chance to spend much time downtown. This time I was there for most of a week, staying in a hotel in what was originally the 'Carbide and Carbon" building - a tall skinny edifice on Michigan Avenue designed after the black, green, and gold designs on a Champaigne bottle, if we are to believe the stories.
The Rock
Chicago used to be referred to as the "Second City" - when it was second largest int he U.S. after New York. In recent years, with the building boom and the creation of Millennium Park, Chicago boasts an impressive skyline and a great focal point for civic events. I enjoyed some alternative music by The Dirty Projectors and The Sea and Cake, and had an even better time at two nights of Mariachi concerts - with all events attended by diverse crowds of at least 20,000 people - all enjoying the evening and getting on well together.

Chicago is also home to the Art Institute, which opened its new Modern Wing earlier this year - making it the second largest art museum in the U.S. Thanks to business donations, it is open two nights a week in the summer - free to the public.

Size notwithstanding, it is an excellent museum, with a broad collection well displayed, and is very popular with locals and visitors alike. It is also a museum that allows picture taking, which gave me an opportunity to captrure some paintings and do photo studies of several sculptures. I have added these photos to the Facebook page for The Other Pages. There is good variety and subject matter for writing. My favorite is piece in the museum - The Rock by Peter Blume.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=86883&id=17383669929&ref=nf
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=86897&id=17383669929&ref=nf
Enjoy both albums. Well, perhaps considering one artist's rendering of a "Portrait of Dorian Grey", enjoy may not be the right word.

All for now,

-_Steve

Posted by Steve at 07:16 PM |

May 20, 2009

Too Many Topics

When I have gone for a long period without writing, I tend to get over-ambitious and choose a rather complex topic to start up again. This spring has been particularly busy with happenings - both in terms of items in the news and in terms of anniversaries of past events. In keeping with this awkward tradition, this post covers sonnets, detective stories, and the entire English language.

One recent study in the news commented that while English is only the 3rd most commonly spoken language (after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish), it is still by far the most common language on-line. The widespread use of English around the globe contributes to its continuing evolution as a language – particularly in terms of vocabulary. Sometime this spring the 1,000,000 word was recognized. When does something earn the status of being an official word in the language?

The gold standard used to be inclusion in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) – which has a staff devoted to assessing usage an judging when common usage reaches a level to be recognized. The OED remains the gold standard for dictionaries (http://www.oed.com/ ) but its editors admit that since we have a living language, no one book (regardless of how many volumes it contains) captures the language in its entirety. Web-based search engines now scout for words on-line, and count frequency of use for ‘new’ words – this is where the estimate of one million English words comes from.

One of the most prolific, and the most recognized writer in the English language was English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Today marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of Shakespeare’s sonnets. While he is most known for his plays, his 154 sonnets (http://theotherpages.org/poems/sonnet01.htmloems/sonnet01.html)  show how wonderfully concise he could be in shaping the language to make a point. Shakespeare is credited with adding (or at least being the first to use in print) over 16,000 words to the language.

His sonnets also showcase his technique of ‘playing’ on words – using a well chosen word that carries two meanings – both of which make sense in the context of the work, though the meanings may be very different. Most of the sonnets take an individual metaphor, and carry it through in great detail, with a twist or a turn toward the end to grab attention or make a point. Sonnet 143 is a good example:

CXLIII.

Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:
    So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,'
     If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.

There are many mysteries associated with Shakespeare’s sonnets, including who the major characters were in real life (the Fair Youth, the Dark Lady, the Rival Poet), whether Shakespeare actually wrote all of them, how they came to be published, and who the inscription to the book refers to.

This should be no surprise to anyone who has read or seen Shakespeare’s plays performed. His comedies (the ones in which everyone gets married at the end) all depend on misdirection and, of course, mistaken identity – with the truth not revealed until the end.

If you’ll excuse a rather strained topical and temporal segue -- modern readers, moviegoers, TV watchers, etc. have become addicted to a similar concept or literary conceit in the form of the ‘mystery’, or more specifically, the ‘detective story’ – where we follow the logic of the search until the truth is revealed at the end.

An American author and poet, Edgar Allen Poe, is credited with writing the first ‘Modern’ detective stories, featuring C. Auguste Dupin. We know Poe mostly for his darkly themed poetry and short stories, but “The Murders in the Rue Morgue (in the street of the dead)”, published in 1841, established the key elements for a seemingly infinite procession of detective stories and police procedural dramas to come. In keeping with Poe’s predominantly dark themes it starts off with a particularly horrific and graphic crime to grip the reader’s attention.

The story is also a ‘locked room’ puzzle -- the kind especially well suited to a master of deductive reasoning ….. like Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and this week marks the sesquicentennial (150 year anniversary) of Doyle’s birth in Edinburgh, Scotland. Doyle wrote 56 stories around the characters of Sherlock Holmes and his friend/biographer Dr. Watson. Watson, who, like Doyle himself was a medical doctor, provided an effective foil for Holmes, making the obvious assumptions and errors that made Holmes’ leaps of deduction all the more dramatic.
Actor Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes

Doyle was not much for writing verse. There are only two poems in the collection (http://theotherpages.org/poems/poem-cd.html#doyle2oems/poem-cd.html#doyle2 ) by him, and they lack the excitement of his prose. His famous detective and his descriptions of London crowded out his other characters and settings, except one. Doyle’s Professor Challenger – whose Lost World was an archetype for many more stories, and perhaps deserves an article of his own.

Posted by Steve at 05:10 PM |

April 22, 2009

Earthy Topics

Happy Earth Day everyone. Earth Day is celebrated in the U.S. on April 22nd and internationally on the Spring Equinox. (in March in the northern hemisphere). If I was doing a good job of keeping up with my schedule (instead of gardening and playing Wii Tennis with Alex), I’d have all of the Nature-related parts of the Subject Index updated.

Sorry, not there yet. But we can at least look at a poet whose works celebrated nature in striking and memorable ways. That would be Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest whose unusual rhymes and sprung rhythms are best appreciated when read aloud. Some, like Inversnaid may take a few practice runs before you can say recite them and stay in rhythm. The overall effect is excellent though, and the last two pleading couplets are especially topical on Earth Day:

 

Inversnaid


THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

How would this be for a English class assignment – write a poem about things with dots. From Hopkins we get a short piece - a prayer and a sonnet that celebrates nature with images and alliterations and a basket full of synonyms titled Pied Beauty: This is a ‘Curtal Sonnet’ by the way – a format condensed by Hopkins to 10 ½ lines.

 

Pied Beauty


GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded 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

The purpose of Earth day was to recognize that our perceived human progress comes at a price, and we should stop and give thought to what we do, and just how much impact it has on the world around us. Here is a poem about deforestation (on a small and personal scale), from a small village where Hopkins like to walk, along the river near Oxford:

 

Binsey Poplars

 


FELLED 1879
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, all are felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.
O if we knew but what we do
When we delve or hew--
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch her, being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even when we mean
to mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
Gerard Manley Hopkins


--Steve

 

Posted by Steve at 12:55 PM |

April 05, 2009

April is National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month in the U.S. and Canada (although Great Britain celebrates it in October) so we will continue to emphasize what is going on in the poetry collection.  March 21st is actually the UNESCO World Poetry Day.

The month starts out with significant additions to our collection of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar.  Dunbar is one of those poets whose conciseness and clarity of style often makes poetry seem effortless. As is always the case, it takes great effort to be both succinct and memorable. In his short life (he died from Tuberculosis at age 33) he generated a fairly large body of work covering a wide range of topics. 

Dunbar wrote both short and long works whose language is quite readable today.  You’ll find him far easier to read and appreciate than many poets of his time. Dunbar wrote books and essays as well as poems, including novels with depth and arguments on political, economic, and racial issues. Dunbar could write biting satire – like Theology for instance,

          THERE is a heaven, for ever, day by day,
          The upward longing of my soul doth tell me so.
          There is a hell, I'm quite as sure; for pray
          If there were not, where would my neighbours go?

And he could also write poems that would easily be mistaken for other noted American or European authors – a good example is Sunset, which ends with:

While in the south the first faint star
Lifts to the night its silver face,
And twinkles to the moon afar
Across the heaven's graying space,
    Low murmurs reach me from the town,
    As Day puts on her sombre crown,
    And shakes her mantle darkly down.

He could also write a very smooth song lyric, and many of his songs, both in and out of dialect, are still effective today even without the musical setting. Here is the first stanza from Discovered:

     SEEN you down at chu'ch las' night,
          Nevah min', Miss Lucy.
     What I mean? oh, dat's all right,
          Nevah min', Miss Lucy.
     You was sma't ez sma't could be,
          But you could n't hide from me.
     Ain't I got two eyes to see?
          Nevah min', Miss Lucy.

Writing in dialect, by the way, is not easy to do – particularly in English, where our options for annotation are limited. In his many works written in dialect, Dunbar captures regional accents, personalities, and emotions as well as anyone.

About 40 new works by Dunbar have been added, mostly in bookshelf editions of Lyrics of Lowly Life (http://theotherpages.org/poems/books/dunbar/dunbar06.html) and Lyrics of the Hearthside (http://theotherpages.org/poems/books/dunbar/dunbar05.html). Dunbar’s works were initially self published, then after some success, published in several ‘overlapping’ volumes. This makes updating the author index a little messy. The dates cited may not always be the earliest publishing dates, but they are the editions from which the Poets’ Corner text was taken.

 

--Steve

 

Posted by Steve at 04:01 PM |

March 29, 2009

Changing the Subject (not yet)

After re-formatting the main author index files, I’ve moved on to the Subject Index, created years ago by Jon Lachelt. Unfortunately, while there are 13 author index files, there are 54 subject indexes. I’ve completed two initial examples, on Life (http://theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/life.html) and People (http://theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/people.html).  Let me know if you like the changes. Recommendations on additional selections are appreciated.

--Steve

Posted by Steve at 09:41 PM |

March 22, 2009

Running the Tables

In case any of you are NOT watching the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments or out enjoying the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, you may have noticed that stage one of the collection's major overhaul is complete - all of the main author index files have been converted to a single, consistent format. I hope everyone likes green.

 

There are several parallel efforts, including link-backs from Wikipedia and some added Faces of the Poets added to the indexes. I have also added new works from Joseph Addison, Lascelles Abercrombie and William Blake. Blake's index entry has also been re-done. Several new poets (new to the collection, at least) were also added. These include Scottish doctor John Armstrong, and Scottish songwriter John Skinner and English War poet Edmund Blunden. This is a good mix of styles and longer and shorter works.

 

The added songs by Blake cover a wide range in tones, and Fair Eleanor is a suprisingly graphic horror story. Armstrong's Epistle to a Young Critic is a bit thick with its references to recognized classics as well as to his contemporaries, but has some good quotable lines, and some searing criticisms. Skinner's Reel of Tullochgorum was a favorite of his friend Robert Burns (they corresponded in verse) and is played by musicians to the present day.

 

Blunden is a little reminiscent of Muriel Stuart in his themes, particularly in his poem Forefathers
...
These were men of pith and thew,
   Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
   Built the barn, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watched their sons
   Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
   As my father once watched me;
...

Unrecorded, unrenowned,
   Men from whom my ways begin,
Here I know you by your ground
   But I know you not within--
All is mist, and there survives
   Not a moment of your lives.

Like the bee that now is blown
   Honey-heavy on my hand,
From the toppling tansy-throne
   In the green tempestuous land,--
I'm in clover now, nor know
   Who made honey long ago.

and Reunion in Wartime, which ends with:

 


The church clock with his dead voice whirred
   As if he bade me stay
To trace with madman's fingers all
  The letters on the stones
Where thick beneath the twitch roots crawl
  In dead men's envied bones.

--Steve

Posted by Steve at 02:45 PM |