How to write a poem that would make someone very sensitive feel like Proust did when he heard or even thought of the Vinteuil Sonata?
How to write a poem that is even as fractionally compelling as the worst song by Najwa Karam?
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Just finished Haruki Murakami’s The Windup Bird Chronicle. I read it in a little more than a day, I was so possessed by it. The first half of the book a series of losses, absurd seductions, and weird new elements, the second a gradual ravelling up again but only after a total descent into total strangeness. The ending sad — actually, the whole book is sad; one of the qualities that makes it so compelling. I said to Gary it reminded me of a cross between Kafka and Stephen King. The metaphors Kafka, the crystalline suspenseful structure King.
I’ve been also trying to read Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, but when I do I notice two things happening: 1) I realize I don’t necessarily agree with all the constructs and analogies she’s setting up, so I have a hard time getting to the end of her arguments intact, and 2) my body starts to hurt! I think it’s probably a great book, but these two things are stumbling points.
Read Drew G. on Alli W.
FYI
It’s KAH RAH OH KEH.
Karaoke. Just thought you might like to know.
How many of you saw The Corporation? I loved that CEO of the carpet company (Interface?) who had an environmental epiphany about the damage his company was doing. He is aiming to make his products more and more earth-friendly. I think his last name was Anderson. He was highly articulate, like an old-fashioned southern preacher — words chosen carefully but almost Victorian-ly, with furbelows attached.
I keep thinking… I want to tell him… that if he’s looking for the perfect renewable carpet material… what about TATAMI?
It’s the perfect renewable resource. It’s completely non-toxic (except for those with hay and dust allergies) if grown organically. It smells divine and looks soooo lovely.
It entails a few cultural changes, like not wearing shoes, but they are well worth its multitude of virtues. Tatami. It could be The New Foundation. Think about it.
Not only do I VERY STRONGLY disagree that “song is a very different discipline” from poetry, but I think such a statement disregards the fact that in some cultures and histories poetry by definition is (or was) sung. I am reluctant to refer to Pound as any kind of expert on anything, but when he wrote that “Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music,” when I first read those words as a teenager (someone gave me The ABC of Reading on my 14th birthday), I instantly, emphatically, and intuitively agreed.
Poetry needs to be grasped by its very horns and wrenched back into the arena of song.
The more I hear poetry in its current fashion of oral presentation, the more I am convinced of this.
The more carefully I listen to singers, the more I am convinced of this.
Trying to do my part…
If — no, when — Bush is ousted, we are all going to be dancing, really literally out there dancing in the streets. I keep holding this in my mind’s eye.
It won’t be like when the US media toppled the statue of Saddam. This time they won’t have to pay anybody. And there will be more than a dozen people. There will be some seriously primal Breughelesque rejoicing.
I used to be very exclusive in my eating and really should be so again.
As in no or very little meat.
No refined sugar.
No cheese.
Mostly just beautiful vegetables.
I promise, I promise, if the Democrats win, I’ll stop eating everything so attentively and capaciously! I’ll be more discerning and think beyond the next five minutes. Really truly I will!
(Do bargains like that actually work? Who or what might I actually be bargaining with — fate? They always seem to work in Bollywood movies. The character is at a shrine to Shiva or Krishna, praying for someone’s — usually the heroine’s — life: “Please, please, take me instead!” And of course, the god always takes them up on their offer.)
Last Wednesday’s lunch in Harlem at Sylvia’s famous soul food restaurant:
Barbecued ribs (with famous “sassy” sauce)
collard greens with smoked turkey
macaroni ‘n’ cheese
cornbread (real pieces of corn)
peach cobbler
I thought I might die of pleasure. I might yet.
Delightful foods:
Bangladeshi aromatic rice (like Basmati but with a tiny grain)
Turkish preserved lemons (for mixing with green olives and chilis)
Chorizo
Black raspberry juice (delicious in “juicy pops!)
Tamarind (I have learned how to use it in cooking daal — yeah baby!)
Hong Kong style pan fried noodles (my kingdom for these)
Stonyfield Farm organic ice cream (we’re trying hard to reduce our pus cell intake. Then we’ll try to move on to our waistlines)
Tarama (as in taramasalata. Try this — without the salata part — on hot vermicelli with sauteed garlic, shredded nori, and cayenne pepper. A little parmesan can’t hurt.)
Black mushrooms.
Otohime 