Thursday, December 9, 2021

Truths Are Forced on Poets by a Rhyme

Jeff patterns: when I fall wonderfully in thrall to a novel the second thing I do is start thinking what I will read next, this reminder that I *do* love reading fiction so overwhelms me I begin considering what next novel to read while I am finally again reading well and so fuck up the current novel and ruin the next. I'm in the Big Blue Bible I've been banging here, just ordered from Powells Everett's *Telephone* and Eliot's *Felix Holt* and Mievilles's *Perdido Street Station,*  as I read the Big Blue Bible I catch myself down a half-read but not remembered page wondering which of those three I should read first when I finish the Big Blue Bible and start wanting the Big Blue Bible to end rather than loving it unconditionally like I did before I noticed I loved it unconditionally and started thinking about what to read next. 

Thankfully I finally abandoned baseball for once and all before I acknowledged that the players union wants the universal DH for money reasons while owners want to keep National League pitchers batting for money reasons and I actually stopped listening to local Nationals pxp last season before the Nationals shitlord owners dumped the best shortstop in baseball for money reasons, I now have no tribal loyalty to any team in any professional mock-gladiatorial circus; in retrospect I'm glad the Orioles are an American League team and still owned by the Angelos, if they were a National League team and not owned by the Angelos and Jon Miller still did the local play-by-play I might still need to die on the DH hill, I liked the Nationals, I once loved the Orioles, people can vouch. No more plastic bottles and tin cans, drink only plain water in reusable containers, club soda only out of soda fountains, the only soda fountain I ever use is in a good deli in Chelsea Michigan. I can't say why I shouldn't be writing about Chelsea Michigan here ever again though I've decided I can write about work here but don't want to

Manic up, yes, though seventeens elude me so far this one. I burned down the Fox News Christmas Tree in Manhattan on George's orders but that fucker hasn't wired me my money yet. Forty-one years ago last night I was tripping my brains out with Audrey Tie Your Mother Down when DJ broke into song on WGTB to tell us John Lennon shot and killed. James Tate born 78 years ago yesterday, all the poems I've posted here here. I write this paragraph instead of reading the Big Blue Bible, it calls me, Jeff patterns,  has a sore throat




Bipartisanship!
The best metaphor for m**********g America is m**********g helmetball (and you being a fan)
Archaeology of the Capitalocene
Power, pleasure, evil
Shitlords on parade!I stopped listening to local Nationals play by play late last Spring but haven't actually *watched* a baseball game (or anything else for that matter) in at least a decade
Shitlords are not rational beings?
The pandemic that capitalism made
Counterpoint: shitlords
Counterpoint: shitlords
Humans *tinkering* w photosynthesis?
M**********g Democrats
with the complete cooperation of m**********g Democrats
The dark side of meritocracy
M**********g MLB owners
The new Federation uniforms suck
Why m**********g cops should not be in libraries
M**********g Democrats
Remembering Jackson Mac Low
Delmore Schwartz born 108 years ago yesterday
200 books that shaped the last 200 years of literature?
Gorgeous and charming twee pop song!
Auden's *dialectic*Auden poem below written in 1941 and never published until now



WE GET THE DIALECTIC FAIRLY WELL

W.H. Auden

We get the Dialectic fairly well,
How streams descending turn to trees that climb,
That what we are not we shall be in time,
Why some unlikes attract, all likes repel.
But is it up to creatures or their fate
To give the signal when to change a state?

Granted that we might possibly be great
And even be expected to get well
How can we know it is required by fate
As truths are forced on poets by a rhyme?
Ought we to rush upon our lives pell-mell?
Things have to happen at the proper time

And no two lives are keeping the same time,
As we grow old our years accelerate,
The pace of processes inside each cell
Alters profoundly when we feel unwell,
The motions of our protoplasmic slime
Can modify our whole idea of fate.

Nothing is unconditional but fate.
To grumble at it is a waste of time,
To fight it, the unpardonable crime.
Our hopes and fears must not grow out of date,
No region can include itself as well,
To judge our sentence is to live in hell.

Suppose it should turn out, though, that our bell
Has been in fact already rung by fate?
A calm demeanor is all very well
Provided we were listening at the time.
We have a shrewd suspicion we are late,
Our look of rapt attention just a mime,

That we have really come to like our grime,
And do not care, so far as one can tell,
For whom or for how long we are to wait.
Whatever we obey becomes our fate,
What snares the pretty little birds is time,
That what we are, we only are too well.

3 comments:

  1. Can't say to've followed the sport for years (not since the Big Red Machine, really, and even then I was too young to appreciate the nuance of the game) but know that last season featured a DH in both leagues and the first two-way player of note (since the fat guy who loved hot dogs and beer and could hit a homerun) and who won the AL MVP as an above average pitcher and an even better DH. I style him Oh! tani (after the Hank-named candy bar). Not that I follow the sport.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, the covid DH in NL contributed to my withdrawal-free radio abandonment late Spring last year - and there were changes in rules how to relievers could be used that I never bothered to learn.

      Delete
  2. 1/the fox 'christmas tree' that was burned down was not a tree but a conical construction, as the conflagration revealed

    2/that '200 books' link triggered, on my machine, the display of the following



    Website status:


    Suspicious


    https://benefit.centerforfiction.org/200-books-that-shaped-200-years-of-literature

    This site looks a little risky to us, so we flagged it just in case. Make sure you trust this site if you choose to proceed. Better safe than sorry!

    3/i liked the auden poem - earlier today i read something about how vaxxers and antivaxxers are the thesis and antithesis of our current moment

    4/tate's 78th birthday yesterday - and now news that michael nesmith has passed away at that age

    i have always loved his video 'cruisin'

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi0b8tcCQSE

    5/all things must pass away

    6/love lures life on

    ReplyDelete