praying for a nerve cell with all the soul of my chemical reactions and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

Found that last night. I'd completely forgot about Dara until Biblioklept wrote about The Lost Scrapbook a few weeks ago. I went to find my copy and couldn't, was afraid it might have been accidentally scooped up in a bookshelves purge some months ago. The above is a first edition, I bought it immediately after reading the glowing review excerpted on the back by Richard Powers. Book arrived, I left it on the floor, and Katie

(the one on the right) chewed and slobbered on it. I put it on a bookshelf to dry out and there it remained, buried behind others, until discovered last night when looking for something else. Read twenty pages, I know myself too well enough to not express a judgment to myself yet*, but... the hold-up scene early is promising. What else I want to note is Richard Powers: He hasn't a novel since 2009's Generosity. His 2006 Echo Maker I've called the best 911 novel I've read. Mention of possible future Nobel for Powers used to circulate. I haven't thought of or heard anything about a new Powers in two, three years. Wiki suggests there's a 2014 novel on tap.

• Greyhoos said XTC's cover of All Along the Watchtower is one his three favorite covers and Charlie in comments to same post offered his list of three best covers - and thanks to both! - but the greatest cover of all time is the Futurehead's cover of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love. Nothing comes close.
• One post on Veterans Day, a second post on Veterans Day.
• There are a couple of new sites in Newest Gag First and Newest Gag Second. Check them out when they float to top of self-updating blogrolls.
• Please consider sending Arthur the coins in your pocket.
• An object lesson in where bigotry comes from.
• Joyless nihilism and the latest Star Trek movie.
• *The pattern of my novel reading this past year: initial over-enthusiasm at first fifty pages, diminishing enthusiasm leading to boredom over the next fifty, listening to music, reading poetry, abandoning the novel by the 150th page. 
• Kraftwerk as religious music.
• Britten's centenary in Britain v America.
• Via above link, the Britten Centenary website.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Which won't get to me first, Hamster's Britten playlist or Mr Alarum's Bill Orcutt playlist?

HYMN

A.R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go on out

     over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

and over the hills of tall hickory

and over the crater lakes and canyons

and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

past the blackset noctilucent clouds

           where one wants to stop and look

way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

up farther than the loss of sight

    into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest

     coelenterates

and praying for a nerve cell

with all the soul of my chemical reactions

and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire

You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

and if I find you I must go out deep into your

    far resolutions

and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves