The World's Most Dangerous Job

If there is any way to judge the value of a poem, it's probably the reaction it provokes, by imagery or emotion. It would be easy to find a poem by Robert Frost that reinforces the idea of the idyllic life of a farmer. Even easier is finding a poem outlining the horrors of rural life. Small wonder he gave it up and moved to England.

I can't even read this again, it was so powerful. It's called "Out, Out -" [on page 247] of the Major Voices and Visions anthology] and I wasn't even able to finish it, but the imagery clung to my thoughts and disturbed me the rest of the day.

It makes no sense, however, to mention a poem affected you profoundly and then not talk about it because it's just too painful to think about, so I'll add some tiny bits I gleaned from other Frost poems.

Frost seems to like the phrase, "the long scythe whispering to the ground" - which he used twice, just in this book. I have to say, I like it too. It has a nice cadence that calls to mind the swinging action and sound of the scythe (my dad used used one and the scythe does make this shushhhhh-shushhhhhing when it swings through the grass, very much like a whisper - a nice change from the gas-powered machinery prevalent today).

Another phrase was final line from "The Wood Pile," "the slow smokeless burning of decay" - which I also found evocative. It called to mind piles of wood chips that "cook" even in winter and give off steam. Something that I like about Frost is that he often has a story to tell, and I like a good story. In the case of "The Wood Pile" it's a conundrum. Why was this neatly stacked pile of wood left behind? Even better, it's a mystery story! Why does the farmer's wife just run off in The Hill Wife? Boredom? Is it related to a poem printed earlier (but not from that group) about the couple breaking up over the difference between how they handled the death of an infant? What was Frost's married life like? Inquiring minds want to know!

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - this photo always reminds me of that title:

Okay, that poem wasn't in this collection, but every time I see this photo I think of it. Anyway, that's all for Frost. I have lots to do and miles to go before I sleep.

A Narrow Fellow

It's all I can do to not mention That Song in reference to Emily Dickinson's poetry. I read an article in Vanity Fair decades ago and shortly afterward got into an argument with a roommate who said all of Dickinson's poetry could not be sung to That Song. Then I proceeded to sing all the examples she dug out to That Song. Consequently, I have happy memories of Ms. Dickinson and go around singing "Because I would not stop for Death he kindly stopped for meeeeee!" But the same might be said about Edna St. Vincent Millay ... or José Martí, and about as accurately. In other words, not terribly.

Still, I have trouble relating to the content of Dickinson. I did see a lovely one that resonated with me immediately:

986

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides -
You may have met Him - did you not
His notice sudden is -

The Grass divides as with a Comb-
A spotted shaft is seen -
And then it closes at your feet [Yipes!]
And opens further on -

He likes a Boggy Acre
A floor too cool for Corn -
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot -
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I though a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone -

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me -
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality -

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone.


I think that concludes rather nicely - with that flash of iciness at the ribs (in my case, anyway) that suddenly coming upon such a "narrow Fellow" brings. The meter is irregular and takes some fudging to sing to That Song, stretching that final "Aaaaaand" to it's chilling climax. Great fun!

Song of ME ME ME!

Walt Whitman was slow going. As much as I understand that his use of the first person was to represent America, the "Song of Myself" still reeks of a towering ego (and he does refer to himself in it as "Walt" so I think the "It's Really About America" dodge doesn't hold water). You'd need a towering ego to think you are speaking for an entire country, even in reference to its diversity.
I also needed a dictionary to read this, as he seems to mix esoteric language with childishly made-up terms ("omnific" versus "foofoos"). His spelling is bad ("extatic") and he has a tendency to exaggerate, especially with numbers ("decillions" "sextillions" "quintillions"). So the words egocentric, hyperbolic, and epigrammatic spring to mind. "Song of Myself" is an onslaught, but I was still able to tease out little bits that I liked.

I guess the grass is itself a child .... the produced babe of
the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

...

Whoever degrades another degrades me .... and whatever is
done or said returns at last to me.
And whatever I do or say I also return.

...

I hear the trained soprano .... she convulses me like the
climax of my love-grip;
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches unnamable [sic] ardors from my breast,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
It sails me .... I dab with bare feet .... they are licked
by the indolent waves ...
[Hmmm, they're starting to pall on me now. I like the euphemism of the "love grip," which I find funny while it probably horrified his audience, but I totally agree about the trained soprano.]

...

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of
heaven...
[The blackberry is the rose that bears fruit. It lives on the fringes and brings sweetness to life, as well as a touch of bitter. There's no bitterness, though, that a touch of salt can't assuage.]

...

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals ....
they are so placid and self-contained.
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long,
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied .... not one is demented with the
mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

Yeah, I must have dropped my tokens, too, Walt, speaking as one who is demented with the mania of owning things - and not even real things anymore. I don't have room for real things. Now I own virtual things and fritter hours of my time searching for more.

I would enjoy this more if it weren't so ponderous. I'll continue to read Whitman, but I'm relieved to be able to get on with Dickinson and sing all her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

They Call Me "MISS Coraline"!

Coraline by Neil Gaiman


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Nicely drawn. Good story. I was just reading some graphic novels today and saw it hiding behind Beowulf Glad I saved it for last! Heh, I have some button eyes in Second Life that I think are cute (see above picture), but now they seem a bit more sinister. Good thing I read this in the daytime! I've been acquainted with Russell's artwork (in collaboration with Gaiman) in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries, a very very very creepy book, especially the framework story! This story brought all that horror back to me.

Coraline is bored with her parents and her life, but when presented the opportunity of a life of endless amusement and devoted and doting parents, she chooses the chance to be bored on occasion. The mirror existence turns nightmarish and she embarks on a mini-quest to escape her "other mother," the Beldam. She will submit to having the button eyes sewn on if she can't locate her parents (in a rather obvious place, I thought) and the souls of three other children who were duped before her. All she has to help her are her courage, the cat, and a talisman: a rock with a hole in it. Oh, and those three kids.

And I wonder if that well is deep enough ...

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POST Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book has all the elements of the usual mystery story, but somehow seems to surprise. I didn't yell at this book once. The only quibble I have is that, unless someone in the de Luce family was an insane horticulturist that brought a sprig back as a specimen from a trip to North America, plants that produce urushiol don't grow in Britain. Okay, maybe it was a mango tree, but it sounded very much to me like it was poison ivy.
Aside from that, it was great fun! Flavia, the 11 year old chemist, is confronted with a mystery when she finds a man dying in the cucumber patch. [Note: I thought that type of poisoning was supposed to be instantaneous.] She must solve the mystery because her father has been detained, helping police with their inquiries and being fitted up. He, in turn, is covering for someone else.
Can Flavia exonerate her father before either the real murderer or one of her sadistic older sisters gets her? Read on!

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