Monday, November 15, 2010

The Running Dog, Who Paused, Distending Nostrils, Then Barked and Wailed

Gah, I'm a dope, still forgetting I'm on blooger rather than typepad, accidentally plunging publish rather than save draft, this post appearing on blogrolls within seconds of oops. My apologies. You can follow along as I try to cobble together some coherent semblance of a completed post (with all the typos and fixed typos that go with that).

Was going to write about Planet, poetry, re: Marianne Moore - I've been trying to get Planet to read poetry, with no success. Right now she's being forced to read Thomas Fucking Hardy's "Ruined Woman," an especially shitty poem even by Thomas Fucking Hardy's standards. I helped her with an essay on it last night. Jeebus, what a shitty poem on any and all levels. (She's had to read Thomas Fucking Hardy's Motherfucking Mayor of Motherfucking Casterbridge and Tess of the Fucking D'Urbervilles. She says her English teacher hates Thomas Fucking Hardy too, but MCPS teaches to the test, and AP English is chockful of Thomas Fucking Hardy.) To be honest, for this post, I hadn't got past the Thomas Fucking Hardy part yet, had already been distracted by something else shinier, more fun.

To be honest, I'm thinking how this could be turned into bleggalgazing - what is the etiquette for a fuck-up like this, leave an empty link? publish an unfinished post? I've haven't bonebleggaled much, much less directly, this month. I'm hopeful, though doubtful, this self-inflicted scratching doesn't self-induce.

  • Show trials are bad.
  • Criminal charges? Debate.
  • What we talk about when we talk about books.
  • No good DC novels?
  • Yes, I didn't find Delmore Schwartz funny at 17. I know better now. 
  • UPDATE! If the above paragraph on Hardy had made it to this post when it had been published by design rather than by accident (it wouldn't have, most likely), most of the "fuckings" and "motherfucker" would have been deleted - one of the last phases of proof-reading is to excise all but the most necessary "fucks," "fuckers," "fuckings," and "motherfuckers." As for Hardy, I had to read Jude three times for college, once when I was farting around jucos, once for my undergraduate and once for my graduate degrees at Hilltop. I'm sorry, Jude getting hit with the pig's pizzle, the dorf named Father Time who hangs himself and his family? Jeebus. I don't doubt Hardy's importance in the development of the novel (I do doubt he had any importance in the development of poetry), I understand why he's in the high school curriculum, I just don't want to read any ever again.
  • UPDATE! On the other hand, my fuck-up gave me the opportunity to type the word "dorf," which makes five of me and mine laugh, including me.
  • Neil Young's personal memorabilia destroyed in fire. Holyfuck.
  • Sweet Magnetic Fields cover.
  • Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
  • 1966-1971, 1977-1981, and suck since?


    DOGS ARE SHAKESPEAREAN, CHILDREN ARE STRANGERS

    Delmore Schwartz

    Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.
    Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,
    Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,
    The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils,

    Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister,
    The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night,
    As if she understood the wind and rain,
    The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert.
    —O I am sad when I see dogs or children!
    For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean.

    Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children
    Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions?
    And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly
    Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature?
    The dog in humble inquiry along the ground,
    The child who credits dreams and fears the dark,
    Know more and less than you: they know full well
    Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well:
    You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean.

    Regard the child, regard the animal,

    Welcome strangers, but study daily things,
    Knowing that heaven and hell surround us,
    But this, this which we say before we’re sorry,
    This which we live behind our unseen faces,
    Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
    Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
    For we are incomplete and know no future,
    And we are howling or dancing out our souls
    In beating syllables before the curtain:

    We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.


    9 comments:

    1. I can only tell you what I do; and, lord knows, I'm hardly the standard. I type "UPDATE" for a substantive change (much as you do); typos I just fix (sometimes). Often I reread immediately upon hitting 'publish', and if I discover a problem I just fix it. I want it to read well for all those future millions who will be searching WoW for clues to the ultimate meaning to my vast future oeuvre. Also, sometimes links and pics disappear from the ether; in such cases, if I discover broken links, I try to refind them (if I even remember what they were) and relink them mostly without comment. My blog is my notebook; I need it for future reference. All are free to peek.

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    2. The issue wasn't that it needed *updating,* the issue is I didn't mean to *publish* and did, and so fast is the feed at blooger that there *is* no pulling it back from viewers' readers and blogrolls. With typepad, the feed ran hours - sometimes days - so if I goofed and accidentally published, it was easy to pull it back.

      I'd already planned to delete - or reduce to a bullet - the Hardy, but oh well.

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    3. Planet's a really smart girl. She would probably get into poetry if it didn't suck so much.

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    4. Dorf.

      If I publish accidentally, I instantly correct it—for posterity. Yuk, yuk. Tough titty for the readers and blegrolls. They'll get updates, no?

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    5. I'm probably not enough of a book snob to comment but Pelecanos is a brilliant chronicler of DC. If nothing else one must read Hard Revolution. It speaks to the soul of the city.

      (I've read them all and wait for the next.) Then again, poetry leaves me cold, always feels like the easy way out.

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    6. Hardy? Turgid crap. Rots your brain.

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    7. Oh, and did I mention that Hitchens is an insufferable snot? With or without cancer?

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    8. This? Is why, deep in my greasy little heart, I will ALWAYS love E7 and Planet just a very tiny little bit more than I love you.

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    9. I'll bet Old Black or his favorite train sets weren't in that shed of Neil's.

      Still, the odd bit of irreplacatable* geochronical* artifactery*, now lost to ashes will most certainly be missed.

      *signed, a George W. Bush prufreeder

      ;>)

      ReplyDelete