There is a new Inspector Rebus TV adaptation out, at least if you’re in England or Australia. We can’t watch yet, but I have Brit Box, so hope springs. I misread the release date for the new novel. Midnight and Blue, the twenty-fifth book in the series, comes out on October 15th. Not August 15th, as I was anticipating. I am bereft.
I named my dog Rebus, if that gives any idea of how much I enjoy the books. He’s a good dog, considerate but determined when he wants something and not above cutting corners, much like his namesake. Sir Ian Rankin, the series author, responded on Twitter with wishes to a picture of him chewing on his birthday toy one year, and a birthday wish again the following two – prompted, but still. That may be the only interaction I’ve had with a peer.
It was in those books that I first came across the POETS Day concept. Rebus and Siobhan, who’s gone from supporting role to near co-protagonist, were calling it a day one Friday afternoon. POETS Day isn’t an invention of Rankin’s. Apparently, the idea has been around long enough for lost origins. But I first heard is called such by John Rebus. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
I can’t believe I have to wait another two months for that book. Time for some verse.
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I use a line – overuse, my children might say – from Yeats whenever the opportunity pops up; “O saddest harp in all the world.”
I just saw a clip of Dick Van Dyke skipping at age 98. It’s an awkward skip, not because he’s hampered by age, but because he’s exaggerating his high step more in imitation of something from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch than what you’d expect to see on a playground.
Van Dyke gets made fun of for his “cockney” accent in Mary Poppins. Eddie Izzard said he sounds cockney by way of Australia, but Izzard says it “Australiyur.” I don’t think that’s fair. What do we know about this Bert character he played? Did he immigrate? What’s his backstory? We’re not being fair to Van Dyke as an artist. Dick Van Dyke in his trailer, imagining himself into the role, Stanislovski in his ear. Who is Bert? Images run past. A small boy with a stuffed koala. Fast as a leopard. Sharks. Ping-pong balls. Inevitably he conjures Adelaide and Bert rises from the paper as flesh. Don’t assume everyone in London is British and don’t fault an actor for thinking outside the page.
Today we salute the unsung heroes of POETS Day. The Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday promise of freedom, relaxation, and entertainment ushered in a few hours before the official start of the weekend would go unfulfilled were it not for those willing to work while we play. To the bartenders, Uber drivers, ticket takers, and legally registered Nevada prostitutes we offer a heartfelt thanks. You are the wind beneath our wings. Let’s not let their sacrifice be in vain. Dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins (provided you tip), lay comfortably in the grass at a local park (be sure and tell the groundskeeper how much you appreciate his work), go for a swim (fake like you’re drowning so the lifeguard can add a “Local Hero” newspaper clipping to his college applications), or God forbid, go for a light jog (thank the… jogging is antisocial.) It’s your weekend. Give a nod to those whose labors let you do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.
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Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin, published in 1973, won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Lowell’s second; the first being for 1947’s Lord Weary’s Castle. He was the most confessional of the Confessional Poets, a name given by critics, often over the objections of the poets, rather than a formal association. As the name would imply, the Confessional Poets, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, and Anne Sexton among others, delved into their personal lives as all poets will, but they went further, blurring the line between person and persona and exposing aspects regarded usually as deeply private. Despite the Pulitzer, The Dolphin will likely be remembered as the book where Lowell went too far.
It’s POETS Day once more, that welcome weekly wonder when we wrap ourselves in awed gratitude, warmed by thoughts of Henry Ford, visionary businessman, architect of the modern, and inventor of the weekend. Is it ingratitude towards Henry’s memory to want just a little bit more free time? Sure, the weekend is wonderful as he made it, but we all know that nothing really gets done those last few hours before the sanctioned release. People check out mentally before they clock out officially and since you’re not getting any actual work done there’s no reason for you to be there. Who’s it going to hurt if you leave at three instead of five or six? Two? Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. It’s okay. If you didn’t do everything in your power to get out of that prison you draw a paycheck from you’d be a participant in the lie that you are going to do anything of value for the company in those Friday afternoon workish twighlight hours and lying is bad. If you think about it, being there and not working is kinda like stealing. Get out. Hit a bar and catch a mid-major basketball game at happy hour prices, stroll through the zoo and make faces at the lions, call your mom. When was the last time you called your mom? The weekend begins when you say it does, assuming your boss falls for whatever shenanigans you get up to in service of your premature but deserved escape. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.
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Today’s featured poem is “The Map” by Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop is yet another poet who rankled mid-last-century at being included among those known as The Confessional Poets. It seems like they all objected to the name to various degrees claiming that poetic personae was separate from the poet’s and further claiming, often laughably, that obviously autobiographical narratives were some sort of ill-defined coincidence, but Bishop seems to have a point in her objection. I’ve seen her referred to as loosely associated with the Confessionals and even wrongly held up as one of them. She lost her father before she could know him. He died when she was eight months old. Her mother was institutionalized due to mental illness when she was five, and as a defacto orphan, she spent some of her childhood in Nova Scotia with her maternal grandparents, moved to Massachusetts to live with her paternal grandparents, and later to another part of Massachusetts to live with her mother’s sister and her family. An inheritance from her father left her well off. She travelled widely, moved around the U.S., and spent fifteen years in Brazil. Her homosexuality was an open secret. All of that made it into her writing at least obliquely, but who doesn’t reference their life at all? I should mention that I’ve read about twenty of her poems, of which she published only one hundred and one titles, but none of her prose, which I’ve read is more biographical than her verse. I’m not claiming to be an authority on her body of work, but from what I’ve read and what I’ve read about what I haven’t, she’s no exhibitionist and no more “confessional” than most widely-read poets of her time. She doesn’t seem to air her life out there for all to see. Certainly not enough to be grouped with John Berryman or Sylvia Plath.
She does invite you into her mind, though. It’s intimate.
The Columbo Game 