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Saturday, January 14th, 2012
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
—William Carlos Williams
posted morning of January 14th, 2012: 6 responses
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Thursday, January 12th, 2012
I saw this poem on a poster on the train today:
IF THERE IS A SCHEME
Charles Reznikoff
If there is a scheme,
perhaps this too is in the scheme,
as when a subway car turns on a switch,
the wheels screeching against the rails,
and the lights go out—
but are on again in a moment.(source)
Nice! I tried reading it being conscious of its meter, of where the stresses fall in the cadence, and discovered that I want to insert the word "up" between "screeching" and "against", went over the line with a couple of different stress patterns to see if there's one that works better with the existing wording.It turns out that in my first reading, I was reading "the wheels screeching" without pause, placing "whee" and "scree" on downbeats/stresses, whereas I think a pause is intended after "wheels" - this gives the rhythm a syncopated quality. If you hold a pause *(cæsura? I am not sure, just, what this term means but I think it might be applicable) here long enough you can elide from "screeching" to "against" and keep to the poem's rhythm. This in effect substitutes the pause, the absence, for the syllable that I was interpolating. Wondering now if this poem could be expanded into a lyric -- it seems to have a lot of possibilities in it. Thinking that the insight about pauses standing in for syllables might help me clean up my wordy lines a bit.
posted evening of January 12th, 2012: 1 response
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
He'd had the sense, moments earlier, that Caroline was on the verge of accusing him of being "depressed," and he was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions. He would forfeit his moral certainties; every word he spoke would become a symptom of disease; he would never win an argument.
Digging The Corrections, finding Franzen's voice fits my psyche like a glove. I'm finding all of his characters easily inhabitable, Chip's anxiety, Denise's frustration, Gary's irritable paranoia... even the parents are easy to understand, identify with.
posted evening of January 11th, 2012: 2 responses
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Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
 I was translating (just starting to translate, I was on the first page) into English a translation into Croatian of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. It seemed like it was going to be a magnum opus...
posted morning of January 10th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, January 9th, 2012
via Bifurcaria bifurcata: Argentine sculptor Amalia Pica speaks with the Dalston Literary Review about a series of sculptures inspired by Juan GarcÃa Madero's reference to catachresis in the final section of Savage Detectives.
 Catachresis #8 (head of the nail, teeth of the comb, eye of the needle, head of the screw)
posted morning of January 9th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
The Infrarrealismo FB page today features some grade-school photos of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro:
posted evening of January 8th, 2012: Respond
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The first chapter of The Corrections makes Alfred Lambert seem very much like José Arcadio BuendÃa; I wonder if there is anything to this parallel, if it will be further elaborated upon in the rest of the book. I certainly did not notice that the last time I read The Corrections; but then I would not have been looking very closely for such a parallel... When I'm reading about Alfred's metallurgy lab in the basement and about Enid's clearing away of his features from upstairs, and about the growing distance between the two of them, it seems to be shot through with echoes of GarcÃa Márquez.
The gray dust of evil spells and the cobwebs of enchantment thickly cloaked the old electric arc furnace, and the jars of exotic rhodium and sinister cadmium and stalwart bismuth, and the hand-printed labels browned by the vapors from a glass-stoppered bottle of aqua regia, and the quad-ruled notebook in which the latest entry in Alfred's hand dated from a time, fifteen years ago, before the betrayals had begun.
posted evening of January 8th, 2012: 2 responses
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So I am thinking (as 2012 rolls itself out before me like a glittering carpet...) that the READIN reading theme of 2012 might just be rereading. Somehow the Savage Detectives reread of the last few months seems to have primed me for getting new insight from books I am already familiar with... Rereading The Crying of Lot 49 last week set the course; and today it looks like I am starting to reread The Corrections (a book, it must be said, which owes a whole lot to TCoL49 if my memory of it is any guide).
 Here is me reading The Corrections. Thanks for the photo, Sylvia!
posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
 Jenny Volvoski is an artist with a very cool project: To design one or more covers for each book she reads, as she reads it. Check out her blog From Cover to Cover to see what she's come up with so far. (via Richard of Caravana de recuerdos, who reminds us that the Savage Detectives group read is coming up)
posted evening of January 4th, 2012: Respond
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I am very happy to hear, this morning, that Slavko Zupcic's new short story collection Médicos taxistas has been published. The story that got me interested in Zupcic, "Tuesday Meetings", is in there, as is the story that I translated, "Requiem". (Or at least, both stories were blurbed as being "from Zupcic's forthcoming collection Médicos taxistas".) And lots more... "Médicos, taxistas de Caracas". "Tescucho, Italia". (This one especially looked interesting and worthwhile. I'm going to take a little closer look now.) Excited to read it!
posted evening of January 4th, 2012: Respond
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