Sunday Poetry XXXVIII -- "YOU'VE JUST BEEN TOLD"

One of the many great things about being a teacher, or English teachers, anyway, and especially for those working in old buildings, is book inheritance.  Pretty much every time a teacher changes classrooms, especially in the case of assuming the former classroom of a now-retired English teacher, is the mass of books left behind.  Sometimes hundreds.  Really.  Literally.  Over the last ten years, I have been the move-inner to the former space of three departed English teachers and have duly reaped the literary benefits.  (Of course, I assume that these teachers left behind only the books they didn't want to take home with them, but still, I've scooped up some pretty awesome windfalls.)

As all of my favorite books are boxed up in the garage, and as I used some of my less-favorite books as buffers in the stacking and packing before the drive eastward, which books are not in boxes, it is from this latter pile (quite, again, literally, I'm sorry to say) that I draw today's material: You've Just Been Told, by one Elizabeth Macklin, whose book has just been out in the garage, unprotected, alone, and (oh, I'm embarrassed) left on the concrete floor.

I've never read any of Macklin's poetry.  I kept the book because, honestly, it looked nice and, originally, I thought it might serve as potential inspiration for coming English students.  Well, that's out, so I probably ought to determine if the book's worth holding the space it takes.  I will randomly open the book three times--yes, in just the moment between right now and final typing of this sentence--and copy out the three poems I find there.

***and as I crack open the book, it literally crackles.

I don't think it was ever read, even by the former owner[s]***

The Lazy Girl Was Never Scolded

(p58)

Then: New-painted ceilings shed light, in our place,

as if they were living, or holy/  That smell was early

spring, with the windows open.  Ambition was only

sleeping, or shortly to be awakened, and would not disappear

forever into compliant ambition.  One time, I sat down

on the steps of a ladder, holding a cup of black

coffee that nearly woke the world.  Paint was spread bright-

yellow into the corners.  Turpentine curled

from woodwork and settled.  I did not sit straighter.

A willow outside the window reeked in the sun of doing

nothing, up in its branches, its leaves whole stories,

all summer.  A long blond girl, dark in the backlight,

I seized what is nowadays made to seem

nearly nothing.

Almost

A qualifier of superlatives

(p29-30)

How much of this

was misunderstanding--

how much was almost blindness?

We did math at the table

almost forever.  Or I "helped"

around you finicking chores.

I almost certainly thought

you couldn't see me.

You almost always said

yet again "You with me?"

I was certainly

angry with you.

Dear Old Dad (your almost ironical

nickname; y our invention), explain

our delay in getting the gist

of kindness.  I didn't see you almost

might've but couldn't;

you didn't tell me stories

about your childhood.

You were maybe afraid, almost.

And so, almost maybe, was I.

But beatings, chiggers in Texas,

butter borrowed on welfare

are almost laughable

after a lifetime,

fears of a planet

or angry passion

almost a memory.

Wholly unique (though yes we

have no degrees of uniqueness)

your almost irreconcilable

lifetime:

qualifying the present

and almost the past

by strict, strong, stronger

grammars of attention--

just when you're thinking 

of dying, you marry again,

quickly, almost ecstatic,

trusting at last your almost

perfect decision, your superlative.

Yet almost just as jealous

of each wife, child/children:

how our love is apportioned.

See? I'm almost

with you again.

I'm almost angry

with you again.

At 43, She Thinks What

to Name Her Children

(p84)

Oh . . . Firstborn, Asher!--asher means "happy"--

because I am happy.  Carlyle, Joseph,

Robert and Richard, for family names:

namesakes all unspeakably loved, for all their flaws.

Jean, Margaret, Ila for girls,

to say they were loved, and will be loved.

All of them out of two originals--Margaret Jean,

Ila Margaret--not to be copied.

Or--she hopes, does she?--uncopied by me.

Because not wishing harm on a daughter?

Margaret, Jean, Ila, Margaret--all

speakable now, since now chosen.

Or else--can it be a name for a woman?--

the lastborn, Asher: no, possible Asher,

"Do what you can--I love you, Asher,"

because I'm alone but I am happy.

INVISIBLE CITIES XXXIII -- Chapter 4, ..... 2

Have we arrived at 

the process Calvino employed 

to "create" each of his cities?

*

INVISIBLE CITIES XXXII -- Cities and Names: AGLAURA

1. Aside from providing a potential pair of names for Calvino's book, what inspiration is there for the account of this particular city in the plot description, or anything else in the description, of the play Aglaura, as put up by Wikipedia?


2. As the others in chapter four, is Aglaura a double city, or a city accompanied immediately by its reflection?


3. Polo's cursory description of the city identifies it as remarkable only by its drabness--by its unremarkableness, yet he claims the periodic and spontaneous appearances of things "unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent."  In the context of any other city, would these spontaneities be less remarkable?

Droodle 14

INVISIBLE CITIES XXXI -- Cities and Eyes: ZEMRUDE

1. Another element of duality in Zemrude, this one becoming less metaphysical or fantastic, as it is something one would experience in any city or walking anywhere.


2. There is also another element of water, as it is the drainpipes rather than anything else, that rail our attention as it drops.


3. What is Calvino's commentary made through Zemrude?

from here

Sunday Poetry XXXVII -- ISAAC WATTS . Yes, THAT Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts

I am not a fan of Isaac Watts, the English hymn-writer.  If you take a few minutes and learn a bit about him, it comes as no little mystery that Lewis Carroll so enjoyed lampooning him; aside from the terribly condescending didactic nature of Watts' writing--at least that of the stuff Carroll reported that Alice was forced to memorize for lessons--he seems to have no small amount in common with Carroll: both wordsmiths, both theologians, but logicians.  Generally I don't--okay, I've never--defended the older, stuffier of the two, until just last Sunday, when in church (a meeting, nonetheless, in which I'd been invited to speak) we sang a hymn of his (I'd never realized any of his words were even in our hymnal! and how lousy of me: now that I look, it appears he penned lyrics for ten hymns in our book!) and, apart from a sharp, nearly parallel correspondence with the particulars of my subject, I really enjoyed the hymn.  The problem is that I still don't like Isaac Watts, and, if I'm being honest with myself, I must admit that if I'd encountered this hymn outside the context of church, and particularly the combination of the thoughtfulness of my spiritual "place" that day and the beauty of the music, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have liked it at all.  Funny the effect and influence the reader (and I'm leaving out the debate over the contribution of music) brings to a poem.


Come, We That Love the Lord
Isaac Watts
Come, we that love the Lord,
And let our joys be known.
Join in a song with sweet accord,
And worship at his throne.


Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God,
But servants of the heav'nly King
May speak their joys abroad.


The God who rules on high
And all the earth surveys--
Who rides upon the stormy sky
And calms the roaring seas--


This mighty God is ours,
Our Father and our Love.
He will send down his heav'nly pow'rs
To carry us above.

INVISIBLE CITIES [30] -- Trading Cities: EUTROPIA

1. So, chapter 4 motif?
2. Back to Calvino's imagination: hasn't he proved himself?  Isn't it good enough?  Is it overkill to keep going with more and more "invisible" cities?  Can you identify--or at least feel--a progression?
3. What of the absurd impracticalities (and thus indulging the impossibilities) of such a place?  Maybe the fact that no one spends more than a year or two at any one job has something to do with the overall level financial playing field.  Of course, that begs the question: if they're happy anyway, do they need the money or influence or power that comes by and/or causes class stratification?
4. Define the irony of the last two sentences: "Alone, among all the cities of the empire, Eutropia, remains always the same.  Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred, worked this ambiguous miracle."