"Noodling Around" with Translation--A Side Bar

I guess I'm going to drive a rust-red '72 Bonneville to the demolition derby of "beautiful car wrecks" that C. Dale describes.

The phrase noodling around has a different meaning here in Kentucky. It means to fish for catfish by literally trying your hand at it, sticking your bare arm into a dark underwater hole and grappling around for catfish. No hooks, no reel, no poles, and no lures--your hand is the only thing-a-ma-bob in the tackle box; it's also live bait.

Isn't it a beautiful thought, though, that translation's like that, that all poetry's like that? Wading around in language instead of water; probing, prodding, pulling out something that might be a marvelous catfish, might also be a snapping turtle, a behemoth of a crawdad?

And in what other two pasttimes are you actually the line?
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This isn't noodling (or hogging, or dogging, or rassling), but I like it anyway:



PS And, yes, I've noodled before, and I have the river rash to prove it.

We Interrupt Our Programming to Bring You This Interrogative Friday News Bulletin

I'm taken aback! Does Mr. McCain think that his pick of Sarah Palin and Tall is going to sway voters with a lifelong belief in feminism to vote the GOP ticket--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who think that QUALIFIED women should be advanced and paid the same as QUALIFIED men...This is blatant pandering, and intelligent voters, male and female, should see right through this strategy.

In the Almanac of National Politics, Palin is described as "an avid hunter and fisher with a killer smile, who wears designer glasses and heels, and hair like modern sculpture." I don't think this will be enough to appeal to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits. They and the other women I know are intelligent voters, who won't think that Palin's appearance in Vogue (perhaps her biggest national exposure before this nomination) is enough reason to support a misogynistic ticket that's now added a former beauty contestant to its slate.

Palin's anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-middle class, anti-gun control, anti-gay rights, and also under investigation for a political scandal RIGHT NOW. I predict Joe Biden will annihilate her in any debate; Palin also makes Mr. Obama seem as experienced in foreign policy as Henry Kissinger. How can Mr. McCain think that the person a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States of America can have less political experience than one of the antiques dealers in my area?

Shiny teeth and big hair aren't assets that translate from the runway to the rotunda. I am hopeful that Palin's VP bid will end similarly to her Miss Alaska race--runnerup.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Well, not quite yet. She's also anti-polar bear.

This Week's Words of the Day: Why Use a Simple Word When a Complex Word Will Do?

A.Word.A.Day, with Anu Garg

maquillage
PRONUNCIATION:
(ma-kee-AAZH)

MEANING:
noun: Makeup or cosmetics.


ETYMOLOGY:
From French maquillage (makeup), from maquiller (to apply makeup). Ultimately from the Indo-European root mag-/mak- (to knead, to fit) that is also the source of words make, mason, mass, match, and mingle.


USAGE:
"Wearing black boots and black Levi's, chains around his wrist and neck, a striped vest, a goatee, and a Caesar haircut, Kevyn Aucoin, 31, the Michelangelo of maquillage, stares intently at his canvas, brush in hand. The canvas is the delicate face of Kate Moss."
James Servin; The Face Maker; Harper's Bazaar (New York); Jan 1994.


This is a word I love, because it reminds me of a poet I love, Lynda Hull. Here's a a selection from her Collected Poems. Poetry comes from poesis, the made thing; maquillage is the made-up thing. Read the last line of this heartbreakingly beautiful poem, then go back and look at the faces, the facades in the imagery....

Maquillage


After nestling champagne splits in ice
I'd line the bottles behind the bar. Tapped,
they made a chilly music, an arsenal
of bells you called it. When I circled my arms
around myself I could count ribs
under my cotton shift. Rochelle sat at the stage's
edge warming her satin costume. She
couldn't bear the cold cloth. On the way
to your rooms I'd adjust blue lights for her.


René, that year you were the only father
I'd admit. Before opening each evening
we'd sip wine coolers on the balcony,
watch the day burn out over the square
and fountain with its cluster of stone cherubs.


With a straight razor you'd shave your face,
clean, then smooth indigo on your lids
and draw the lines of your mouth. Nights
you shook too much I'd do your face,
the wig, make you talk. It became a way
of managing the days, evening's slow descent
until the city turned in its fever
and music rose through the floor.


I'd serve while Rochelle balanced
on a sequined ball, stepping down
to the blown sound of blues. She'd gyrate
till she'd lost it all and you'd glide, joking
among tables, benevolent in a rayon kimono.


All night the river of men swerved
under their solitary stars, and we'd go on


minor players waking startled to the care
or harm of unlikely hands, surprised
to hit the lights and find the place
so shabby: numbers on the wall, the butts
and broken glass. Quiet after closing,
I'd lean by the door and smoke, hear
the fountain erode cherub faces.


You're nowhere I know anymore René.
The future we predicted is the past
and different. You're the empty room
morning pours into through a torn shade,
that place you said most nearly spells peace
in the heart, narrow glasses on the ledge
reflecting the horizon.


Tonight, children's quarreling rises
from the yard. For a moment, through shutters
the city relights itself until it's time
for music to shiver the floorboards,
the hour of plumage ...


But that was long ago. I was only seventeen.

Misery and Travail: Gloom, Despair, and Agony, Oh Me

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail." Theodor Dreiser

I am the worker bee dancing as best she can these days, the saddlebags on my legs pollen-full, yet still I'm working, gathering, ...Won't someone please declare today International Day of Lethargy? I want to doze in the depths of the last blue hydrangea and proclaim a cease-fire on fall. The maples are already searing scarlet. The last of the cukes and tomatoes hang heavy on their respective vines. I am heavy-bored (just like Henry) of putting up pickles and pesto and marinara.

In my best Chi-lites falsetto, I write another letter to myself:

Free Will Astrology: Cancerians Get to Pick!

Here's the one I chose:

"The real secret of magic is that the world is
made of words," said the sage Terence McKenna, "and that if you know
the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you
wish." I'd go even further and say that you can actually shape your world
through your use of language. Do you really want to live amidst infertile
chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then
speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Or would
you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with meaning and beauty and
interesting mystery? Then be discerning and creative in how you speak,
primed to name the novel truths that are always being born right in front
of your eyes. Of course you always have the power to create heaven or
hell through the words you choose, Pisces, but right now is a potential
turning point when you could form good new habits.
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My composition class is a joy--a novelty, a necessity, a nuanced discussion. I'm sneaking in poems, left and write (typo intentional)!

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Have you seen these gems? Linked above...

Interrogative Monday--Langston Hughes and Nike

I cannot wait to use this in class!

Interrogative Friday: God and Nancy Willard's "Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him"

This section of Job (books 38 to 42) has always reminded me of Nancy Willard's "Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him" (next Friday's poem). The illustration above is one of Blake's engravings, where God's measuring the dimensions (verse 5). Blake also wrote one of the great interrogative poems, "Tyger, Tyger".

Taste and see that THE LORD is a more thorough cross-examiner than Sam Waterston.

Job 38 (NIV translation)

The LORD Speaks

1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:

2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-

7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?

8 "Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt'?

12 "Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,

13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?

14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.

15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.

16 "Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?

17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.

19 "What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?

20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!

22 "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,

23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?

24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,

26 to water a land where no man lives,
a desert with no one in it,

27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?

28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?

29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens

30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?

31 "Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?

32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?

33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?

34 "Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?

35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?

36 Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?

37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens

38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?

39 "Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions

40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?

41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?

________________________

Verse 40 is one of the sources for the title of my manuscript.

Then We Came to the End

Read it! It's amazing. The author, Joshua Ferris, has a story in the New Yorker that's also smashing ("The Dinner Party"). It's available online. Look at placement in this story--gestures tell so much about the characters. The protagonist's discombobulated, separated, almost dissociated at times. Brilliant writing here.

I love short stories almost as much as I love poetry. They work on me in the same exquisite spine-tingling way. A good story gives me that "zero at the bone feeling" Dickinson describes.

Mme Monet: La Robe Japonais

Kimono uchiwa tatami floating world courtesan

TELL A DREAM, LOSE A READER* ALERT: I dreamed that I was given a robe like this by my husband. The robe was so heavy with embroidery that it nearly bent my back. Embroidery--making the best, dragon--passion, robe--personal issues, wanting to loosen control.

* At Sewanee, the quote above is attributed to Alice McDermott. I have it on an index card on my memory board.

Interrogative Friday: Cavafy

Waiting for the Barbarians—Constantine Cavafy

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What's the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city's main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor's waiting to receive their leader.
He's even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying their elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
There are no barbarians any longer.

Now what's going to happen to us without the barbarians?
These people were a kind of solution.

____________________________

This is a barbed political poem--one I offer up when my students say writing isn't political. I'm going to teach it with writings by Machiavelli and (gasp!) Dubya in the first unit for Comp. 101.

Coraline: Eagerly Anticipated

Great children's book, great movie, being directed in Nightmare Before Christmasstop-action claymation style, by the same director. I hope Danny Elfman does the music! (Loved Oingo Boingo, by the way).




Who links to me?

Quantum Pastoral

I know this is over 5 years old, but sheep writing poetry?!?

Each sheep had a word sprayed on its back, and when they came to rest a new text was created. A spokesman for Northern Arts called the scheme "an exciting fusion of poetry and quantum physics."

Here's a pastoral created by quantum mechanic-sheep.

Warm drift, graze gentle, White below the sky, Soft sheep, mirrors, Snow clouds.

WTG, Frank O'Hara!

Thanks to Jilly at Poetry Hut Blog for the link.

AMC's Mad Men is really a great show.

Mucha-Do

When I was but a college girl the first time (not this last year but 25 years before that), I wore my hair plaited with red poppies from the VFW in an exact replica of the A. Mucha print above. Ah, sweet braids of youth...What has happened to all the time I used to have to attempt the exotic? I cannot remember the last time I've done anything to my hair other than wash it and wear it. And, well, brush it. I used to have the best hair, and now it's merely clean.

Interrogative Poetry Friday: "Curiosity, observation, and a great deal of joy in the thing." Marianne Moore

Poems that appear on Interrogative Poetry Friday will include questions. I'll post each poem in its entirety and then give my first impressions/draft notes as I read it carefully for 15 to 30 minutes. I'm starting with a poet who really loves to interrogate the universe and the self--May Sarton.




Question
by May Swenson


Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

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My annotated draft


Question
by May Swenson (epistomology/parable?)


Body my house (the body's addressed--aging/who's speaking?)

my horse my hound (alliteration, note falling away of sound in the 3 H words)

what will I do (plaint/contemplate?)

when you are fallen (Frost's that other fall we name the fall--Eden, dead in combat/action?)
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Where will I sleep

How will I ride

What will I hunt (interrogative/investigative openings go to "will" and then verb motor skills--infant child/adult?--these tie up with house/horse/hound as well?)

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Where can I go

without my mount

all eager and quick (quick: fast open, to the quick/essential, alive)

How will I know (ow--ow--eye rhyme--perfect go know)
in thicket ahead (my beloved lines are these three)

is danger or treasure (sonics of er-treas are reversed as are meanings)

when Body my good (sonic od of body and ood of good)

bright dog is dead (1st true rhymes in slant-rhymes--"hound")

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How will it be (becomes more strictly rhyming)

to lie in the sky (internal rhyme)

without roof or door (vowels again--house link)

and wind for an eye (slants/perfect be sky eye start again)

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With cloud for shift (sonic cloud-hid--clouds will cloud change shape as the body is transformed)

how will I hide? (moves toward...some (funeral)shift/shroud, some final question--punctuation suggests closure but also links to the title)

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What's going on with all the rounded/extended "o" sounds in this poem--write it out on paper

Many slant rhymes, also many rhymes--yoking of end rhymes to slant/often perfect rhyme at the beginning of the next line--like a needle through thread--embroidered rhyme--whoa, I like this idea! smoking on the yoke of a dress....

Tone: Child/second childhood, journalism of aging? Questioning to learn about the world (monosyllables) and also about the end of the world? JOurnalism in the repetition of What/where/how/; What/where/how/...ending with how/how--and all the when (Not an IF in the poem)
Great chain/change of being--idea of a "private mythology/epistemology")

Idea of a dog's life???? the physical-spiritual-intellectual (dis)connect

Emily Dickinson's "I started Early--Took my Dog..."
Daniel Anderson's "Elegy for a Dying Dog"
Bill Matthews' "Loyal"
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RECOMMENDED/TO READ:
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (fiction)
Collected Poems