 |
Sunday, January 2, 2005 |
|
Donald Hall on poems read aloud: Poets read poems better than actors. All poets know this. Actors disagree. ... [The actor] characterizes the speaker of the poem by the voice he uses. The poets speak the voice of the poem, which is the voice of the noise, all the wild inward stuff of sounds. The noise comes from the mouth and is heard by the mouth, and from the listening mouth it travels directly to the bowels and genitals. Vowels do this mostly, and resemble the volume in sculpture. Consonants are more intellectual, travel to the eye, and resemble painting.
[from Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978).] |
|
Today is much better than yesterday. Fire lit up like that, we had a ray of sunshine for a moment this morning, and the pump finally kept its prime long enough for me to flush the toilet. Even though the storm system was faking me out--it was circling around to take another run at us (Snow, Day 4)--all is well. We are well. The well is well. The Goddess is athrob with heat. I have just made my first cup of coffee in three weeks, against my body's wishes (it has rejoiced in the absence of that drug), in the hope of staying awake long enough to commit something, anything, to writing. This will be my afternoon, God willing. I am sorry I was so puny on the day of our blogger Cow-cookie Communion. I hope participants enjoyed the body of blog and washed it down with something caffeinated (let's face it, the blood of blog) or shared a bit of it (sharing, the other blood of blog). Changes in the next new-year's cookie ingredients--salted butter that stays fresh longer in the mail, and chopped dates or dried apples to keep the cookies moist on their journeys. I'm whipping up a batch of Dow cookies this evening (date-oat-walnut). If you want one, let me know. [And I look now at my godmother Jeanne Flowers the Tarot Lady's reading from October: ...There's a possibility that, during the winter, you may be constantly confronting one small frustration, irritation, annoyance, contretemps after another. In fact, these "little" negativities may dog your every footstep for a while, or so it seems to you. For a week or month of bad weather you may feel like an outcast or exile in some heavy Russian drama. Creativity, spontaneity, and peace may fly out the window for a short time. But as the weather clears and the sun shines on the snow, so will you shine. When this period is over, perhaps in only a week/month period, you'll find that you're staying in the sunshine whatever the weather or the earth's sun is doing, for from that time on, your isolation and many of your frustrations will evaporate and you'll be firmly on the path to attainment...
Jeanne keeps me going.] |
