Tag Archives: books

POETS Day! Robert Bly

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Illustrated by Rene Sears

The last time I had a flat tire, I took a picture. It’s still in my phone ready to be deployed should I be disastrously running late for something I can’t be understandable tardy for.

Years ago my wife got a call from work on a morning we’d forgotten to set the alarm. She darted awake and off the cuff railed about an Alabama Power truck blocking our drive. She’d be there as soon as possible, she said, and I heard sympathetic sounds from the other end. I’m not that quick. I need a plan. You should have a plan too.

It’s a close up shot showing only the tire and the road without any seasonal flourishes like golden leaves, sleet, or sandaled feet. Next time you get a flat, take a picture. Heck, if you see a stranded motorist, pull over and take one. Everybody has a phone and will have called a friend or relative so you’re in little danger of getting roped into actually helping. For POETS Day, an excuse to be late doesn’t help much. You want out for the day and a flat tire just means you won’t be back in from lunch or whatever for a few more minutes. Also, sending a picture unprompted is suspicious. It’s better attributed to another.

Pull up the picture when the time is right and tell your boss a daughter/neice/grandmother just sent it and needs help. They’re a ways out, but sitting safe in a diner or something. You can just make it out but by the time you get back… “I’ll make it up Monday. You’re great for understanding,” and out. Matinee, ball game, bar? Up to you. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

But first, a little verse.

***

I hadn’t thought of Robert Bly since college. I took an honors English seminar led by a New Aging professor focused on his manhood reclamation manifesto, Iron John: A Book about Men. I can’t remember the professor’s name, she taught non-fiction creative writing and I suppose the thinking went that as a renowned poet, Bly would serve up examples of poetic sensibilities pressed into argumentative prose service.

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POETS Day! From Henley to Plath

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I go on for a bit below so I’ll keep this part short.

College football starts this Week! Whatever files need filing or rivets need riveting, leave them be. They’ll sit til Monday. It’s POETS Day! Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

There’s Auburn to route against Friday night and hated Tennessee against a Syracuse team I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with opinions on playing Saturday morning, both looking across the line as if in a mirror and thinking “They look like idiots in those orange uniforms.”

Then there are proper teams playing.

– Alabama @ Florida State – Saturday 2:30 CT on ABC

– LSU @ Clemson – Saturday 6:30 CT on ABC

– Tons of other less compelling but long awaited games bracketed between Boise State @ South Florida at 4:30 CT on Thursday on ESPN and Utah @ UCLA at 10:00 CT on Saturday.

If you’re reading this on Friday and were unaware, you’ve missed the Thursday slate but there’s plenty left to see if you have gumption. Get pissing off early. There are games need watching.

We made it through the desert. First, a little verse.

***

This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald is my favorite of the genre, but there’s also Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce or Pere Goriot by Balzac if you’re in a Contenental mood. There are plenty, a whole grip, to borrow an elastic phrase a chef friend is fond of, of semi-autobiographical first novels written by young writers with more desire than experience, so they run their hero though naivete-shedding travails and leave him wiser and poised to conquer. It’s been forever since I’ve read any of them so they’ve all gotten mushed together in my mind but at least one of them ends with the author stand-in character in a cemetery shouting a version of “Look out world. Here I come!” That’s the synecdochic scene for me.

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POETS Day: LSU and Robert Penn Warren

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Photo and fiddlin’ with it by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I’ve spent a lot of this last month’s non-rainy days in my backyard making noise. The constant noise comes from a small but surprisingly loud bluetooth speaker that subjects my neighbors to (lately) Elvis Costello, Blondie, Joe Jackson, and whatever the Amazon Music algorithm associates with albums by those three. Blondie does a particularly good cover of Buddy Holly’s “I’m Gonna Love You Too” so the when that comes on the neighbors get to hear it repeat at least a second time. The intermittent noise comes from my new table saw.

We redid the living room and dining room, by which I mean we turned the living room into a office for my wife and I with a big TV to watch muted baseball games on all day, turned the dining room into a living room, and realized that we always eat at the kitchen table and don’t need a dining room. To decorate the living room formerly known as the dining room, we pulled old prints and paintings out of the closet and took them to a framer.

The largest was a Willem De Kooning print from a 1994 National Gallery exhibit. I’m fond of the print. I went to that exhibit to keep a friend company and came out interested in art. It’s odd shaped; 39 ½” x 30 ½”. We picked out a green distressed painted frame with gold trim and learned there were types of glass. The woman told us it would cost $325 to do the job. That’s a very fair price, it turns out, but if you haven’t had anything framed in over a decade and come in with no frame (sorry) of reference as to price, it’s a bad number. I had five other pieces I needed framed.

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POETS Day! Percy Wyndham Lewis

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I’ve been in Italy, so I missed a few POETS Day Fridays, or “Fridays” as the Italians call them, but with an accent (everybody over there except one Salerno cab driver speaks English, and I have my suspicions about him.)

Anyway, Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Cut out of work while the sun’s still out and enjoy a heat-staving scoop or two of gelato at any one of whatever block’s you happen to be on many gelaterias. Gather a few friends and put your heads together to figure out why you’re encouraged to touch this Coliseum wall but get snipped at by security if you touch that identical one. Hold up a lemon bigger than your head. Swim in ridiculously blue seas while staying determinedly out of any body called a canal. Very refreshing.

First, a little verse.

***

Augustus John’s portraits tell stories. Frightful stories on occasion. I read somewhere some time ago, so forgive the lack of attribution, that he could be so insightful – and equally capable of conveying his insights – as to be “cruel.” His Roy Campbell adorns the cover of Peter Alexander’s biography of the poet. Campbell, pre-paunch and balding, looks impressionable in his Spanish countryman get-up. John’s painting sets the stage for Alexander’s telling of a man of immense talents swayed by passions he mostly grasped. It’s a great book, but I judge the cover better.

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POETS Day! The Admirable Oliver St. John Gogarty

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

There’s a bar near me that goes all out for the Masters. It’s a corner place with a small walkway it annexed from the development by subtle encroachment; a table here, now two, now six tables and outdoor TVs on the wall. I don’t think they own the “patio,” but it’s theirs now.

A few years ago, sections of the windowed front were replaced by glass garage doors. In good weather, weather like today, they open up the place and it’s all one big breezy space. All of it, the interior and the squatters-rights walkway, are covered in sod for the Masters. Not rolled out astroturf. They bring in real grass. I wouldn’t think it’d look good – ripped up in seconds by beer and wine guzzler feet I assumed – but it somehow does. They have drink specials, bands at night, and always one of the best hamburgers and bowls of chili in town.

My wife and I want to head out for a bit this afternoon and hang out. We hate golf. And crowds. This stinks.

Anyway, Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Duck out of work asap and get the weekend started. The Masters is on. If you’re in Birmingham, try Otey’s in Crestline, but don’t expect a seat this weekend. Damn golf.

First, a little verse.

***

“Twelve years ago Oliver Gogarty was captured by his enemies, imprisoned in a deserted house on the edge of the Liffey with every prospect of death. Pleading a natural necessity he got into the garden, plunged under a shower of revolver bullets and as he swam the ice-cold December stream promised it, should it land him in safety, two swans. I was present when he fulfilled that vow. His poetry fits the incident, a gay, stoical—no, I will not withhold the word—heroic song. Irish by tradition and many ancestors, I love, though I have nothing to offer but the philosophy they deride, swashbucklers, horsemen, swift indifferent men; yet I do not think that is the sole reason, good reason though it is, why I gave him considerable space, and think him one of the great lyric poets of our age.”
– W. B. Yeats, from the Introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935

Oliver St. John Gogarty was a dear friend of Archie Griffith and with him, a founding member of Sinn Fein. He variously carted around Irish Republican Army members as surreptitiously as allowed by the canary yellow Rolls Royce he drove, volunteered his house as a safe house, and otherwise behaved anti-Englishly. He sided with Griffith in supporting a treaty despite internal opposition to peace within the revolutionary movement, and sat as a Free State Senator, a designation considered by many in the IRA such as Liam Lynch, as traitorous capitulation to the crown. Lynch ordered the IRA to shoot the office holders and that led to Gogarty pretending diarrhea and the escape Yeats refers to above.

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POETS Day! Yeats’s Folly

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I’m off for Louisiana for a crawfish boil despite my allergy to crawfish. It’s a five hour drive so no POETS Day this week for me; more of a Piss Off Really Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Happy PORETS Day.

Crawfish boils are where I eat chicken fingers and warmed over French fries with all the kids. It’s an annual event and I’ve seen youngster chat turn with the years. Bouncy houses were all the rage once. Nerf guns next. Sports and video games discussion got animated as they grew older. My Birmingham nephew is making the trip with us. He’s fifteen and has a girlfriend. I can’t wait to tell the other kids so we can all tease him.

After we eat I’ll go hang out with the adults again. I can’t wait to tell them about my nephew’s girlfriend so we can all tease him.

For the rest of you, kick off before the boss says it’s time. Catch a ball game if the weather’s nice or pull up a barstool and watch one with something cold and delicious if it’s not. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Read a little verse first.

***

Maud Gonne was an actress and activist. That’s all the rage now.

Every starlet with a guest spot on the CW has a cause. Animal rights are a great public ingratiator, especially if you stick with pets. Saving various darters is great, but people want to strike what’s near them from a safe distance. Liking the tweet of a Hollywood pretty person who says she advocates (hate that word used that way) for the ASPCA is how an average American who thinks their jerk neighbor leaves his dog outside too long can feel involved. Cancer advocacy (counter to a strict reading with diseases but still gets used) is big. Emma Watson only wears ecominical clothes. The actors I most admire fight against injustice. Somebody has to.

There are issue advisors and advocacy directors for the indecisive. It’s not enough to be good at pretending to be other people. You have to be down with a cause if you’re going to stand out in today’s Hollywood or basement with a backdrop for your YouTube channel. Everybody’s an activist.

Maud founded Sinn Féin.

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POETS Day! Lascelles Abercrombie

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I sold my basketball fandom to my wife when we were dating. It wasn’t a big deal. This was back in 99 or 00, so Alabama was mid to bad and she’s a Duke grad. I don’t really care for the game anyway and it didn’t seem to be much of a conflict since Alabama and Duke were unlikely to cross paths in any meaningful way on the court. I got her football fandom in the trade for the same reason.

Now that Alabama is as good as they are, I should care more. I want them to do well, but it’s bouncy hoopty ball. It helps that I’m a jinx. I don’t watch Alabama games anymore. When I do they lose, and that’s bad because football recruits like to go to schools with good basketball teams too. All-around success by the whole athletic department is claimed as a draw for them. I’ve tuned into a game the Tide is winning and watched the lead slip away, turned it off, and checked my score app to see it reestablished. It’s uncanny.

I do my best to support non-college-football tournaments and such for the spectacle. They’re fun. In 2023, I foolishly hopped in a car with my brother in-law and headed to Louisville where I made Bama lose a Sweet Sixteen matchup with San Diego Sate University. Seriously. San Diego State.

Conference playoffs are afoot. I won’t be watching Alabama’s tip off at 7:15 tomorrow night against TBA, as of this writing. I may watch Duke play UNC at 6:00. I will definitely head to a restaurant for some of the day games even if I don’t pay too much attention. You don’t need a dog in the hunt or even a like of the game to enjoy the excitement of a basketball tournament like you don’t need to be a golf fan to have Augusta on your bucket list.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Take a POETS Day and watch the fast-paced game fans say they love devolve into an hour of last minute fouling, free throw, fouling, free throw. Keep a baseball game on your phone in case you get bored (Braves v Nats, 12:05 CDT).

Try a little verse first. Roll Devils.

***

It is our tariff on imported books. Unless an author is almost certain to appeal to a large audience, in which case his book will be manufactured in America, the publisher can import only a small edition in sheets and sell it at a relatively high price. That means that he cannot do any thing to push the book, and so the author who is not known, so to speak, to begin with, has very little chance with the American public…

That Mr. Abercrombie’s early work did not immediately surmount the handicap of being imported in a very small edition is due in part to its character and in part to our taste.
               – Llewellyn Jones, The North American Review, Dec., 1924

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POETS Day! William Makepeace Thackeray

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I was chatting with a guy from New Jersey yesterday. It was cold and glum in Alabama. He was making fun of me for acting as if temperatures in the thirties were Armageddon-ish and I shook my head and mumbled something like “…wouldn’t last a second around here in August… humidity.”

He showed me an amazing foul weather trick so epoch shaking I might deign to call it a life-hack. “If you are ever bothered by the weather,” he said, “take out your phone, pull up your weather app, and bring up Iowa City, Iowa.” He demonstrated. It was 9° with a blue subscript that read “feels like 7°.”

According to Wikipedia, there are 171,000 people living in the greater Iowa City Metropolitan Area. I don’t know how that’s possible. It’s POETS Day. Look outside. Now look at your phone weather app, type in Iowa City, Iowa, and look outside again. There are 341,000,000 people in this country, and in comparison, no matter what it looked like out that window, 340,829,000 of you just realized what a beautiful day you’ve been blessed with.

It’s Friday afternoon. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Have at it.

First, a little verse.

***

I usually come across one or two odd and interesting facts when looking into the lives of poets for these posts, and want as I might, I can’t shoehorn or wrestle them into sense with even the loosest narrative, and I can get pretty loose. I found two this week while reading up on the life of William Makepeace Thackeray and I like them too much to discard. I don’t know if it’s still an aside when you haven’t begun anything to momentarily distract from, but a couple of quick asides if you… whether you mind or not, I guess.

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POETS Day! John Keats at Last, Apparently

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Illustration by Rene Sears, who defensively replied “I don’t know. Ask him why he had so many wings in his poetry.”

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I’m making meatballs for the weekend, and like all the best meatball recipes, the key ingredient in mine is lies. There’s a lot of time spent between minimal exertions of effort. It really is easy, but there’s a fine tradition of pretending to pretend that you didn’t mind cooking – which you barely did – at all. You have to master saying “Oh, it was nothing,” when it really was nothing so it sounds like it you were saying it was nothing when we all know it was something, but you guys are worth it. Oh, Stop it. Really.

I wrote about the recipe and duplicitous grandmotherly types at OT almost a year ago. Feel free to give it a go, but if you’re going to pretend to take a long time putting dinner together, you’d best cover your tracks and get work complicit in the cover story by ducking out of the job mid-Friday. That way, if anybody doubts you spent all day slaving over a hot stove instead of mixing stuff up in a bowl, popping it in the oven while you do gods know what, and then briefly checking in to finish things off with a few hours of unattended simmering, you can say, “Oh yeah? Well, I wasn’t at work, though I’d prefer you not check because then they might think I wasn’t really sick.”

It’s POETS Day. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Mangia!

But first, some verse.

***

I could have sworn I’d already done a POETS Day on Keats. This week I’ve been reading about him with a mindset intent on shutting out basic biography I must have covered previously. I figured that, mistakenly but mistakenly was ascendant, having done Keats I’d done “Ode on a Grecian Urn” because that’s the one you have to do even if you’re going through the motions to have it behind you, field cleared for stuff people might not already know.

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POETS Day! A Few Poems by Kingsley Amis as Pretense to Discuss One of His Novels

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I don’t like poinsettias and take comfort in the fact that they usually do the honorable thing and die shortly after Christmas time. They’re fine in season I suppose, but so are ugly sweaters and bells on adult shoes.

They’re poisonous flowers, I think. I read that people who don’t like cats but somehow ended up with one buy poinsettias intending to plead ignorance later and get on with their lives. Ours is still in the kitchen thriving in its pot so I daydream about adopting some sort of reverse cat that’s poisonous to poinsettias.

I’m supposed to be encouraging you to take a POETS Day, but I’m distracted by this velveteen-flop looking plant with one petal beginning to wilt and a couple of dozen more that won’t follow its example. I’m distracted like you might be on a Friday afternoon, so preoccupied with weekend thoughts that you can’t get any poinsettia work done, sitting performatively, wasting your time. You should Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Read a poem first.

***

I’ve written about Kingsley Amis in this space numerous times (see here, here, here, and here). I’m an unabashed fan so an unapologetic writer though I don’t claim any “Best” titles for him. There are better novelists, better poets, better editors, and your average park bench made for a better husband. He simply seems to be the writer I like most most of the time.

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