Monday, October 25, 2004

Guest photoblogger This week's guest is Mark Boyd (of Boyd Pottery in Spruce Pine, in my ancestral state of North Carolina). Mark recently emailed me photos of the fog-cosseted mountain home, so peaceful, where he and Katherine, his wife, make their art, and the kiln in its recent round-the-clock firing of a year's work, and his powerful, sculptural work so fired. (See their web page for more, including photos of Katherine's lovely plates and bowls.) I asked whether I could share his photos (I forgot to ask the name of the family member striding down the driveway in the first picture), and with his permission I display them here. (I'd like to include his words, as well, but my avantguild.com email account just this minute went up for renewal and they won't let me in to retrieve them until I bring my membership up to date. Oh dear, it ain't in the budget, I think...): 1:00:10 PM    comment []

It's the height of fly season hereabouts. They swarm in everywhere. A week or so ago I entered the plant room--with its great, bright windows, the room most plagued with these nasty beasts--and, armed with a long snake of hose attached to a 12amp vacuum cleaner, managed to usher a thousand or two to their dusty doom. Lately, I can't even open a volume of poems without happening on something fly-related. It all started with Karl Shapiro, but I find these ubiquitous black bits have inspired many a poet. from Emily Dicksenson: I heard a Fly buzz when I died-- The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air Between the Heaves of Storm The Eyes around had wrung them dry And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset when the King Be witnessed in the Room I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away What portion of me be Assignable--and then it was There interposed a Fly With Blue uncertain stumbling Buzz Between the light and me-- And then the Windows failed--and then I could not see to see Truth, by Howard Nemerov Around, above my bed, the pitch-dark fly Buzzed in the darkness till in my mind's eye His blue sound made the image of my thought An image that his resonance had brought Out of a common midden of the sun-- A garbage pit, and pile where glittering tin Cans turned the ragged edges of their eyes In a mean blindness on mine, where the loud flies Would blur the summer afternoons out back Beyond the house. Sleepy, insomniac, black Remainder of a dream, what house? and when? Listening now, I knew never again That winged image as in amber kept Might come, summoned from darkness where it slept The common sleep of all such sunken things By the fly's loud buzzing and his dreaming wings. I listened in an angry wakefulness; The fly was bitter. Between dream and guess About a foundered world, about a wrong The mind refused, I waited long, long, And then that humming of the garbage heap I drew beneath the surface of my sleep Until I saw the helmet of the king Of Ninevah, pale gold and glittering On the king's brow, yet sleeping knew that I But thought the deepening blue thought of the fly. 11:53:19 AM    comment []