- I always loved George best.
- Looking forward to hell.
- The internet and authoritarianism.
- The language of neoliberal education.
- Incremental despotism.
- The coming reckoning for capitalism.
- Bleggalcide note.
- Maggie's weekly links.
- This is why Sanders running is important.
- Let X =
- Books upcoming in 2019.
- A kind of forgiveness.
- > I don't do previous year retrospectives <
- > though 2019 perspective is there will be more, much more, of what I don't write about here <
- > Deleted bleggalgaze <
- They seem monotonous.
- 138 novels read in 2018.
- { feuilleton }'s weekly.
- Another year of Wellington.
- Re-ups for the end of 2018.
- Another new late James Tate poem below
JAMES TATE
0)with regard to heaven and hell, as a teenager i thought dante's divine comedy could be harmonized with the concept of reincarnation if one saw this world in which we live in [to the extent we do live in it - 'people don't die or live, people just float' - and also 'THIS is the future - you got to LIVE it or live WITH IT'] as purgatory
ReplyDelete0.2)i was intruigued to read one buddhist teacher's perspective on recollections of past lives - yes, he supposes, people do sometimes recall past lives, maybe even recall them instead of just imagining them [reading the akashic record, one might say] - but these are not their past lives, as there is no "self" that reincarnates - it's a past life, not your past life
1)with regard to poems by james tate, here's one i read to missus charley yesterday -
The Memories of Fish
Stanley took a day off from the office
and spent the whole day talking to fish in
his aquarium. To the little catfish scuttling
along the bottom he said, “Vacuum that scum,
boy. Suck it up. That’s your job.” The skinny
pencil fish swam by and he said, “Scribble,
scribble, scribble. Write me a novel, needle-
nose.” The angel executed a particularly
masterful left turn and Stanley said, “You’re
no angel, but you sure can drive.” Then he broke
for lunch and made himself a tuna fish sandwich,
the irony of which did not escape him. Oh no,
he wallowed in it, savoring every bite. Then
he returned to his chair in front of the aquarium.
A swarm of tiny neons amused him. “What do you
think this is, Times Square!” he shouted. And
so it went long into the night. The next morning
Stanley was horribly embarrassed by his behavior
and he apologized to the fish several times,
but they never really forgave him. He had mocked
their very fishiness, and for this there can be
no forgiveness.
– from Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate, published by Ecco Press, 2005.
1.5)joshua cooper writes of this poem
it demonstrates a wonderful blend of tragedy and comedy so often evident in his poems. I also enjoy the poem’s enjambment and hidden technical aspects, such as its use of sonic elements (alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, etc.). They’re subtle; they don’t jolt you out of the poem, yet they’re still doing a great deal of work to pace the poem and its reader.
1.6)i looked up enjambment
(in verse) the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza
1.7 this morning as i watched the talking heads discuss mitt romney's op-ed about trump's character, i heard more than one person suppose that mitt is now getting even for the humiliation he was put through as he attempted to become trump's secretary of state - like stanley's fish, he has not forgiven