Now, for today: We have books. I received Ted Hughes's Winter Pollen--a collection of his essays and criticism--in hardcover a few days ago and take great delight in it, and in today's mail came Ekbert Fass's Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe. We get to the real meat of things at last. Hughes's musings on poetry's music are the best I've ever read, and his insights into the line are providing a much-needed remedial education for me; the light dawns. This is so much better than all those creepy pseudobiographies I was looking at.
A feral friend shares news of a
Canadian poet I am unfamiliar with.
Roo Borson just won the 2005
Griffin Poetry Prize from Canada.
(<---Charles Simic, long a favorite of mine,
won in the International category; this and
the photo below are from the Griffin Poetry
Prize site.) This link was included in the
email I received a few days ago--
http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/home.php;
it fascinates me that this page no
longer exists except as a Google cache,
and even the links thereon have been
pulled; also, references and links on
other Google search results have been
changed. What's up at the Griffin Poetry
Prize site, I wonder? Also, a poem:
Rivers to the Sea
by Roo Borson
From rain to underground springs, from springs
to fountains, freshets, and rivers,
from rivers to the sea, or the winter snow.
But the wind, the wind bloweth where it listeth,
like those disjunct souls drifting and alighting,
always distant - spaceships, or glowing teacups,
most often seen at dusk, on the long straight stretches.
What message? Just that no one any longer
means to do you any harm, or good,
though the dog and then the cat come in,
each able to grant a single wish in exchange for which
each would be the star of the household.
Now the seasons are merely vestigial,
though what shrivels the leaves still fattens the eels,
autumn too cluttering the playground with extra fins and tails
after everyone's gone home to tomato soup and toast.
Lost in the wood like Hindemith. Whosoever's children
are not practicing now will never learn their instruments
But gentle as the Thursday rain
or the winged sound of traffic as the bakeries are closing
toward four p.m. and there never was, nor can be,
any other form of waking life: now,
goes the ancient advice, is the time for practising
the character for courage. But what if the strokes
are hesitantly drawn, a lost direction,
yellow bedstraw or cloth of gold,
in the nether months, in the nether weeks of the year?
What then are the obligations? Torrens, Patawalonga,
Onkaparinga. Little Para, Torrens. Early or late
along the river road. The leaves are streaked with brilliantine,
the pelicans to their estuaries, the coots to their
twigs and bottle. What are the obligations?
From springs to fountains, fountains to rivers, rivers to the sea.
Button grass or couch grass in the fallen yellow light.
Black silk pool, mirror of no thoughts
Black silk mirror, river of no thoughts.
To set off, instead, on a May morning,
as convention dictates, whether south or north,
autumn or spring, the commentaries decline to tell us.
But the line bends as the river bends, the cherries of that
other time are pink and dark and sweet, an allegorical painting
standing in for the world in the level light of dawn,
morning along the river, growing warm. Who lives here?
Herons standing sentry, bees in the bee tree at noon.
To live to tell old news, without the disgust the dead must feel
toward portraiture, or music harmonics that depend,
as always, on previous conditions. Anyway,
to change pitch continuously
might be one aim.
from Short Journey Upriver Towards Oishida, by
<---- Roo Borson
I like this so much better than what's posted
at the UofToronto Web site. I think Roo
Borson is a pretty interesting poet. I'm going
to send for some of her recent work.
What else? A Hayden Carruth essay
that reconsiders Spenser's Faerie
Queene. I'd never considered it at
all, so this is fun for me. Also just in in
recent used media mail, Sun Under Wood,
by Robert Hass
(1996), who is OK.
Also just arrived is my first Rhodia notebook. I spent all weekend trying to track down writing paper in an oddball size. Thought maybe I'd find marginless narrow-ruled writing paper overseas somewhere, but it's really difficult to search for such things, and this surprised me. But I did finally discover Rhodia, which I learn has a "cult following" in the U.S., and I sent for the 16-1/2"-by-12-1/2" size (Rhodia No. 38). It arrived yesterday and I am so happy (and I hope no one intervenes to deprogram me). I've been writing in it all morning. This size comes only in graph rule, but at least there are no margins, and the rule color is pale purple, and it allows for dense writing lengthwise or widthwise. I was having an awful time even on a 14-inch legal pad; it felt so confining. Just knowing I was coming to the end of the page was enough to cut short anything I was working on. With this new notebook I can fit numerous drafts of even very long poems on a single sheet, lengthwise, front and back; widthwise I can prose on eastward for a very long time. If it came with the same heavy cardboard backing as the other notebooks, it would be a desk all by itself.
So much for the commercial portions of our program. It's getting late. Talk to you tomorrow. Talk back, please.
7:50:45 PM 
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