Monday, 26 March 2012
Friday, 23 March 2012
Spring light
Shadows on trees, just up the road
So we are having a spring that's more like summer (it makes me dread to think what summer will be...) but our news is that in a few days we set off south for visits, a mini road trip and a few other things. I didn't want to leave that musicals post up as my end-of-term assignment however so instead here's a poem. It's an old one (an online Poetry Bus one) that first saw the light of PCs here but has since had a tweak or two to end up reading like this:
Different walks
There is walking,
And then there is this:
Giant steps stretched out around a tiny town,
Bright lights that hang just too low down,
Dry mouth, long night, somewhere to be,
Feet moving, moving, constantly.
And then again there is walking,
And then again there is this:
The pansy by the path with its soft, soft face,
The daffodils singing uninvited, as ever,
The blackbirds busy, everything just so,
So vibrant, so violent, so full, this life.
RF 2010.
I guess it's a kind of spring poem... certainly the daffodils are hard at work here right now.
We'll try to post a few photos from the road (maybe we'll even manage a mystery tour like the one we had back here).
Friday, 9 March 2012
Music, novels and misunderstanding
Sometimes there's just so much a person could write about*... but today all I will offer you is a quote from the book “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer (2002). I read the book this week... which means I'm a bit late to it, I suppose, as it's ten years old already (and that means it's already been the hot new book... and the totally cold don't-be-seen-with-it book... as here... so it's probably due for a rebirth around now). I picked it up (from the library... and they only had it in large print... my first time...) mainly because after reading about his later book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (the film of that one being up for Oscar this year) I thought “oh heck, I haven't even read the first one yet!”. But now I have. Cultural honour is preserved.
I'm not going to analyse “Everything is Illuminated” right now (visitors here are intelligent people – read it yourselves... see what you think) but basically, for those of you haven't got to it yet, it is one of those multi-perspectived, keep-you-on-your-toes numbers (we jump about from 1791 to 1941 to the present day on a regular basis... and then also round and round between these and other years... much of it in translated/awkward English). I could further enlighten you by telling you it is a fictional account of a young North American Jewish man's trip to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis... and that the project started life as a real trip of a similar nature (that Safran Foer made from the US to Ukraine in 1999). I should also tell you, I think, that it's not for people who like nice tidy endings to their books (may as well save some of you the time...). However, I certainly thought at least some of it was very good... but you can read other reader responses here and an interview with the author here. I would also point out that the author was in his early twenties when he wrote this first novel and that it's certainly a better piece of work than most of us could have managed at that age (well, me anyway...). How well it will last as the years flick past and the youtube wonders come and go... that's harder to say. It did make me want to try another of Safran Foer's books at least (thinking, for example, how I liked Zadie Smith's 2000 novel “White Teeth” but loved her 2005 best-so-far “On Beauty”).
But anyway... to the quote. “Everything is Illuminated” really has everything – comedy, magical realism, historical horror, a dog, tenderness, lots of shagging – but the passage (ahem) that caught my eye was this section from the novel's “The Book of Antecedents” (a record of everything to do with the fictional Ukrainian shtetl** Trachimbrod, where much of the action takes place, kept by its residents over the years). I suppose I do, in a quiet way, collect quotes about music so here is another one:
"IFACTIFICE
Music is beautiful. Since the beginning of time, we (the Jews) have been looking for a new way of speaking. We often blame our treatment throughout history on terrible misunderstandings. (Words never mean what we want them to mean.) If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand. This was the origin of Torah chanting and, in all likelihood, Yiddish – the most onomatopoeic of all languages. It is also the reason that the elderly among us, particularly those who survived a pogrom, hum so often, indeed seem unable to stop humming, seem dead set on preventing any silence or linguistic meaning in. But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word."
It's just a quotation... but there's a fair amount in it. If you want a poem about music instead... handily there's one in my last post.
* Things I could write about include: Gardening (well, someone's got to do it now Mum's gone... see photo above), Bill Hicks (I watched “The Bill Hicks Story” last week), Jane Austen (I also watched, for contrast, “Becoming Jane”... surprisingly enjoyable actually... even if it was hard to think of actress Anne Hathaway as anyone other than herself...), the whole Joseph Kony/ Invisible Children film and responses (here, here and here) issue, that “Make Bradford British” TV programme on recently (white English people... almost impossible to articulate my feelings about some of what they come out with sometimes), the continuing Donald Trump Scottish golf farce (new article here)... and that's before you even get started on Scottish independence matters... trouble-making clergy and about a million other things... good job I've been doing some yoga, that's all I can say...
**Yiddish for small town
I'm not going to analyse “Everything is Illuminated” right now (visitors here are intelligent people – read it yourselves... see what you think) but basically, for those of you haven't got to it yet, it is one of those multi-perspectived, keep-you-on-your-toes numbers (we jump about from 1791 to 1941 to the present day on a regular basis... and then also round and round between these and other years... much of it in translated/awkward English). I could further enlighten you by telling you it is a fictional account of a young North American Jewish man's trip to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis... and that the project started life as a real trip of a similar nature (that Safran Foer made from the US to Ukraine in 1999). I should also tell you, I think, that it's not for people who like nice tidy endings to their books (may as well save some of you the time...). However, I certainly thought at least some of it was very good... but you can read other reader responses here and an interview with the author here. I would also point out that the author was in his early twenties when he wrote this first novel and that it's certainly a better piece of work than most of us could have managed at that age (well, me anyway...). How well it will last as the years flick past and the youtube wonders come and go... that's harder to say. It did make me want to try another of Safran Foer's books at least (thinking, for example, how I liked Zadie Smith's 2000 novel “White Teeth” but loved her 2005 best-so-far “On Beauty”).
But anyway... to the quote. “Everything is Illuminated” really has everything – comedy, magical realism, historical horror, a dog, tenderness, lots of shagging – but the passage (ahem) that caught my eye was this section from the novel's “The Book of Antecedents” (a record of everything to do with the fictional Ukrainian shtetl** Trachimbrod, where much of the action takes place, kept by its residents over the years). I suppose I do, in a quiet way, collect quotes about music so here is another one:
"IFACTIFICE
Music is beautiful. Since the beginning of time, we (the Jews) have been looking for a new way of speaking. We often blame our treatment throughout history on terrible misunderstandings. (Words never mean what we want them to mean.) If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand. This was the origin of Torah chanting and, in all likelihood, Yiddish – the most onomatopoeic of all languages. It is also the reason that the elderly among us, particularly those who survived a pogrom, hum so often, indeed seem unable to stop humming, seem dead set on preventing any silence or linguistic meaning in. But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word."
It's just a quotation... but there's a fair amount in it. If you want a poem about music instead... handily there's one in my last post.
* Things I could write about include: Gardening (well, someone's got to do it now Mum's gone... see photo above), Bill Hicks (I watched “The Bill Hicks Story” last week), Jane Austen (I also watched, for contrast, “Becoming Jane”... surprisingly enjoyable actually... even if it was hard to think of actress Anne Hathaway as anyone other than herself...), the whole Joseph Kony/ Invisible Children film and responses (here, here and here) issue, that “Make Bradford British” TV programme on recently (white English people... almost impossible to articulate my feelings about some of what they come out with sometimes), the continuing Donald Trump Scottish golf farce (new article here)... and that's before you even get started on Scottish independence matters... trouble-making clergy and about a million other things... good job I've been doing some yoga, that's all I can say...
**Yiddish for small town
Monday, 5 March 2012
New Orleans and music
Preservation Hall, New Orleans, 29th April 2011. Preservation Hall Jazz Band feat. Leroy Jones (seated, front left).
"You know, there's this mood about the music, a kind of need to be moving. You just can't set it down and hold it.”
Sidney Bechet "Treat it Gentle"
A little while ago I mentioned jazz musician Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) in a post back here. Last week I finished reading Bechet's memoir/autobiography “Treat it Gentle” (1960) and I would highly recommend it if you're interested in music, jazz music and/or New Orleans. Bechet started off in New Orleans and, whilst there are a lot of interesting sections in the book, for me the strongest ones are the ones set in that city. He details what the city was like in the early twentieth century (amazing!) and (with great aplomb) how he got involved in being what he calls a “musicianer” whilst still a young boy there.
We absolutely loved New Orleans when we visited it at the end of April 2011 (back here). Even full of tourists it is an irresistible place. After a life of travelling and touring Bechet says of it simply: “New Orleans, that was a place where the music was natural as the air. The people were ready for it like it was sun and rain.”
I've been listening to a fair bit of Bechet too... and so feeling a bit Philip Larkin (it was hearing his poem about the musician on the radio that started this thread). Funnily enough this week on her 6 Music radio show (here) Cerys Matthews read another Larkin poem (near the end of the show) about jazz called “Reference Back” (you can find the poem to read on this page).
Anyway, at one point whilst listening to some Bechet I had one of those 'flash of awareness/poem moments' and then wrote this:
poem temporarily removed
You see? Non-stop poems now...
Sidney Bechet "Treat it Gentle"
A little while ago I mentioned jazz musician Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) in a post back here. Last week I finished reading Bechet's memoir/autobiography “Treat it Gentle” (1960) and I would highly recommend it if you're interested in music, jazz music and/or New Orleans. Bechet started off in New Orleans and, whilst there are a lot of interesting sections in the book, for me the strongest ones are the ones set in that city. He details what the city was like in the early twentieth century (amazing!) and (with great aplomb) how he got involved in being what he calls a “musicianer” whilst still a young boy there.
We absolutely loved New Orleans when we visited it at the end of April 2011 (back here). Even full of tourists it is an irresistible place. After a life of travelling and touring Bechet says of it simply: “New Orleans, that was a place where the music was natural as the air. The people were ready for it like it was sun and rain.”
I've been listening to a fair bit of Bechet too... and so feeling a bit Philip Larkin (it was hearing his poem about the musician on the radio that started this thread). Funnily enough this week on her 6 Music radio show (here) Cerys Matthews read another Larkin poem (near the end of the show) about jazz called “Reference Back” (you can find the poem to read on this page).
Anyway, at one point whilst listening to some Bechet I had one of those 'flash of awareness/poem moments' and then wrote this:
poem temporarily removed
You see? Non-stop poems now...
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Oh go on then... a poem
Weird picture I took the other night. I'm big on reflections at the moment.
So there have been some murmurings about poetry here and elsewhere. Have I given up on poetry altogether (answer - about once a week... no maybe once a day...)? Will I be putting together another book of poems (I'm thinking about it at the moment actually... maybe a pamphlet... I have a title anyway...). Have I stopped putting poetry on the blog (proper poets don't post online anyway you know... bah!)? Oh the joy it would be to have Faber & Faber publish my every word and not need to have these concerns... but it's not looking likely for now so in the meantime here is the first poem of mine on here for a while. It's one I wrote last year for a project that pretty much came to nothing and so far only a couple of people have read it. See what you think.
poem temporarily removed
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Quick protest link
Just a quickie (after that last long post what else could it be?). Former Chumbawamba band member Alice Nutter had a play called "My Generation" on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday. It's about politics and protest (and ordinary lives in Leeds) and I listened to it today. If you've got two hours to give over to listening, I'd recommend you give it a try too. It's on the i-player (here) till Sunday late evening. Plenty of swearing but only where appropriate, I assure you.
x
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Sunday, 1 January 2012
And in with a poem...
So – Happy New Year friends and visitors. 2012... sounds kind of dramatic, doesn't it? This time last year we were just about to set off on our big 6 month trip abroad but right now we have no such adventurous plans. This year will see our girl move into high school (adventures of some kind for her in store, no doubt - it's her above with her film guide xmas gift...) but for us adults it will be... well, who knows? Just another year? Something completely different and unexpected? One thing I do know... at some point I will have to decide how much of 2012 I am going to spend trying to do something with the huge poem I have just written... a lot, a little, none at all..? Will it be wasted time? Does anyone really want a 142 verse rhyming poem in 2012? For now I'm avoiding thinking about it. We've still got visitors, girl is still off school, there are lots of other things to do and think about...
One good thing is that I've managed to read a little over Xmas. Lately I've been reading one of my presents (Nile Rodgers' “Le Freak”... he of Chic – a great read, what a life story...) and before that I read “The Room” by Emma Donoghue. I'd never heard of Donoghue's 2010 book until it was recommended by Kat Mortensen a little while ago (who told me nothing other than it was something like brilliant/unusual) but soon after that I spotted a copy in a charity shop and so paid a whole 99p for it. It's got quite a best seller look to it and whilst in theory I don't have anything against bestsellers (who wouldn't like to write one..?) in practice I do often find that they're a bit slight or predictable or something else that doesn't work for me. “Room”, however, is every bit as good as Kat said it was. And though it starts off fairly grim it has so much else going on once you get into the story. You can find critiques of the novel around of course, if you look for them (especially highfalutin ones) but I'd have to say that there are sections of it that I really loved and I found the central character (who to me was Ma, much more than the young narrator, Jack) a magnificent portrayal of a young woman. The book is about many things and that's partly what makes it good. Yes, there is the story of the room (which you'll either know about or you won't... as I say I had read or heard nothing about the story and I'm sure this helped me get more out of the book... I went in with no preconceived ideas) but there is so much beyond it too – about family, childhood, relationships, modern society. It's not everybody’s idea of Xmas reading but it worked for me. There's only so much Santa I can take.
One character in “Room” quotes poetry now and again. First there is a bit of Louis MacNeice's “Snow”, later a bit of T.S.Eliot's “Burnt Norton” and then there is a little from this poem by Emily Dickinson (punctuation and so on below from Faber & Faber's “A Choice of Emily Dickinson's Verse”, 1968):
One good thing is that I've managed to read a little over Xmas. Lately I've been reading one of my presents (Nile Rodgers' “Le Freak”... he of Chic – a great read, what a life story...) and before that I read “The Room” by Emma Donoghue. I'd never heard of Donoghue's 2010 book until it was recommended by Kat Mortensen a little while ago (who told me nothing other than it was something like brilliant/unusual) but soon after that I spotted a copy in a charity shop and so paid a whole 99p for it. It's got quite a best seller look to it and whilst in theory I don't have anything against bestsellers (who wouldn't like to write one..?) in practice I do often find that they're a bit slight or predictable or something else that doesn't work for me. “Room”, however, is every bit as good as Kat said it was. And though it starts off fairly grim it has so much else going on once you get into the story. You can find critiques of the novel around of course, if you look for them (especially highfalutin ones) but I'd have to say that there are sections of it that I really loved and I found the central character (who to me was Ma, much more than the young narrator, Jack) a magnificent portrayal of a young woman. The book is about many things and that's partly what makes it good. Yes, there is the story of the room (which you'll either know about or you won't... as I say I had read or heard nothing about the story and I'm sure this helped me get more out of the book... I went in with no preconceived ideas) but there is so much beyond it too – about family, childhood, relationships, modern society. It's not everybody’s idea of Xmas reading but it worked for me. There's only so much Santa I can take.
One character in “Room” quotes poetry now and again. First there is a bit of Louis MacNeice's “Snow”, later a bit of T.S.Eliot's “Burnt Norton” and then there is a little from this poem by Emily Dickinson (punctuation and so on below from Faber & Faber's “A Choice of Emily Dickinson's Verse”, 1968):
The Soul selects her own Society ―
Then ― shuts the Door ―
To her divine Majority ―
Present no more ―
Unmoved ― she notes the Chariots ― pausing
At her low Gate ―
Unmoved ― an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat ―
I’ve known her ―from an ample nation ―
Choose one ―
Then ― close the Valves of her attention ―
Like Stone ―
by Emily Dickinson
And that's it for today. Good wishes for 2012... and beyond.
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