Haiku

Words going places fast
Poems through tunnels like trains
Out into the sunlight

Blog Entry 8

Before I paraphrase "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound, I should mention that some literary scholars argue that good poetry cannot be paraphrased because it's not just about words; all of the formal and aural (sound) elements also matter to meaning. Cleanth Brooks, for example, talks about "the resistance which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (1356). Paraphrasing just translates the words, so it doesn't really get at the full meaning.

Poem:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Paraphrase: Faces of the people in the metro float into view like ghosts. They are busily heading to their destinations in the ordered chaos of the station. Although the lives of each beautiful and fertile, they are also fragile and transitory on the difficult, sad road of our shared existence.

Brooks, Cleanth. "The Heresy of Paraphrase." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1353-1365.

Blog Entry 7: Freestyle

So, back to Pam Houston's Sight Hound...Part Five is called "The Fires," and I can relate to the blanketing of fives over thousands of acres of forestland. Fires occurred off and on throughout my childhood in Southern California and turned smog days into stay-inside-at-all-costs days for me (as a childhood asthmatic). Now, living, in Oregon, I dread the tail end of summer when the blazes begin. Thundershowers are so delightfully drenching and cool, but here, unlike Connecticut where they include huge but largely harmless lightning displays, they spark wildfires that can burn for weeks. Breathing ash is not the worst part. Many young people make their summer money fighting fires around here, and once in awhile, they don't come back. I wish for them to stay safe!

In this section, Rae introduces herself to Jodi, who owns a huge ranch with a natural aquifer. There's something magical about Rae's feet in the rare mud of this landscape. While the land is drying, cracking, and burning around them, Rae "was about shin-deep in sand when I first felt it, first a layer of sand that had to have been twenty-five degrees cooler than what was above it, then the bubbles of icy water bursting up through the sane against the bottoms of my feet" (225). The change in texture and temperature seems almost like a revelation, a spiritual experience. And, the mud isn't just goopy; instead, the water is "bursting up" as if to shout to the death-giving landscape around them that life continues and will prevail.

It seems like this book comments on life itself, with Dante miraculously living through cancer, befriended by a child who has survived also, the bubbling of life. I hope the book follows Dante all the way to the end of his rich life. There's also some indication that Jonathan isn't living at the time the narrative is being told. He calls the 9/11 people who jump from the Twin Towers "cowards" and says "they died of shame" (212). I almost sense that perhaps he will commit suicide and that this judgment of others in their last moments of life is a projection of his own guilt. I do think life is miraculous, which isn't to say it's not also deathly difficult for those of us who live longer than our loved ones. I am all for those precious bubbles of life, but I would hesitate to judge those who facing horrors chose another alternative, and I would hope not to be judged harshly if in other circumstances, I chose differently. Nancy

Blog Entry 6

I really like O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi." It's very ironically romantic when Jim and Della find they have sold prized possessions to buy each other Christmas presents related to those prized possessions so now the presents can't be used. This is a story about gifts symbols of love. The gifts need to show you care, but they don't actually have to be useful. At the end of the story, Henry writes, "of all who give gifts these two were the wisest" (168). This statement suggests that Jim and Della are more wise than the magi, the wise kings who brought gifts to Christ in the Christmas story. Maybe this is because the kings could afford to bring the gifts they brought. They didn't have to take upaid leave from work. They didn't have to sell their prized possessions to raise money to purchase the gifts. Probably, they just picked up a little of whatever was lying around and brought it with them. Jim and Della, on the other hand, thought long and carefully about their gifts and sacrificed possessions that represented their own identities to give perfect gifts to one another. Maybe they know better than anyone else the spirit of Christmas, that it's not about gifts; it's about giving yourself in love to those you love and/or to Christ, if you're a believer. Nancy

Blog Entry 5: Freestyle

After I finished the Robert Jordan book (and thanks, Shauna, for offering the next in the series! Yay!), I picked up something totally different. My friend Leslie let me borrow her book Sight Hound by Pam Houston. It's mainly about a woman Rae and her dog Dante who gets cancer and loses one of his legs, but it's told from the perspectives of many people and dogs involved, which is very cool! In the most recent section I read where the dog Dante is speaking, he quotes Buddha. One quote he likes is "If you know the power of a generous heart, [.. .] you will not let a single meal pass without giving to others" (161). I love the quote because I feel amazingly lucky to be capable of working for my living and of making mostly tasty, mostly healthy meals when so many other people are out of work or otherwise unable to get food for themselves. I think it's important to find ways to support folks who are struggling. I also like the way Dante reflects on the quote: "That's one of my favorite sayings, one I like to medidate upon specifically when I am lying under the dinner table, waiting to see if a little lamb or pork or chicken might fall my way" (161). So, just when I'm taking myself so seriously, the dog makes a joke. I love it! Not only does he quote Buddha, but he comes at the situation from the very dog-ish position of under the table. My big, pushy dogs don't often sit under the table at meals because they're too big, but they're only too happy to clean up the Cheerios my daughter leaves on the floor. Speaking of which, they desperately need to be walked, so I'm going to do that.

Blog Entry 4: Quote-Response

I think "Miss Brill" is a sad story. Here is this woman who lives alone on a limited income, and she gets all gussied up to go out on Sunday and sit with other people. She doesn't interact with them, but she imagines herself as part of the "play" (86). On this day, the conversation she overhears upsets her because the careless young people make her see herself as they see her instead of the "performance" she imagines herself part of (86). The quote that really conveys her disillusionment is when she puts her "dear" fur back in its box: "But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying" (87). I think the words "lid" and "something crying" are important. The lid suggests something is being closed. Perhaps a chapter in her life has now ended because she sees her own life as sad and small. The "something crying" almost seems to be the fur that is her friend. Yet, of course, part of a dead animal can't really cry. So, maybe she is projecting the way she herself feels onto the fur. She is so devastated that she can't cry, so she imagines hearing something outsider herself crying. I think that dislocation from her own feelings emphasizes the pain of her realization.

Blog Entry 3: Freestyle

I finished Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, and of course, it ended in such a way that I need to get the next book in the series immediately. I won't spoil the ending by talking about it, so I'll write about another aspect that I've been thinking about: except where the characters spend some time apart from one another, the storyline is chronological, and there are no subplots. This structure is a little simplistic, and I think I would have even more interest if the trajectory of the story were interrupted and made more complex with a more fragmented chronology and/or subplots (not that the novel needs to be longer because it's already 782 pages!). Basically, the characters start on a journey that they follow through to the end, even though they don't end up where they initially intended, and in each place, they can't stay because they're a danger to others, and the dark creatures hunting them keep them moving.

Another related aspect of this is that each of the characters on the journey has a special skill or issue. This feels very Dungeons-and-Dragonsy where you roll dice to determine the point value of the characters skills in various areas, and usually each character has skills in some category. It kind of feels like a fantasy of equal power, like kids on the playground saying, hey, I have magic powers, and hey, so do I. I'd like a little more comlexity. We aren't all the chosen ones (and they all seem to be here), but we do have productive lives. The whole chosen one thing is also really tedious and suggests that heroes are born rather than made through courage, which I totally disagree with. I really like, for example, how Tolkien makes a hobbit the main hero of his Middle Earth books, a totally unexpected, not royal, not tall and beefy, and not chosen character

Aside from these issues, I found the novel very readable and looked forward to reading it before bed each night. I liked particularly the character of Perrin as he finds he has a connection with the wolves and doesn't want to admit it. Here's a passage that depicts Perrin's discomfort with this connection: "If he could outrun their eyes [his traveling companions'}, outrun the ravens [the Dark One's spies], outrun the wolves, but above all Egwene's eyes, that knew him now for what he was" (431). The talent of communicating with wolves and seeing like wolves comes so easily to Perrin that he can't hide it, and his companions notice and begin to realize he's changed. They don't criticize him, but he feels embarrassed about the change. This conflict makes him very human and engaging. I look forward to seeing him come more into his own in the later books. Nancy