96-foot Christmas tree burns down at Westin South Coast Plaza: image via The Daily Pilot @The Daily Pilot, 14 December 2015
Neoteny
the mad 96 foot christmas tree of the destiny of the species burns
the mad 96 foot christmas tree of the destiny of the species burns
and the entire school district is evacuated out of an abundance of brain gumbo
Monkey Mind by Squirrelly Logic out of Random Unfolding of Events
goes off at 8-5 spurred by Incurably Talkative Inner Tongues
tell you the cosmic giggle is not your friend
the plasticity of time language eats up
cold and so clear white boat wakes churn visible outside the Gate
goes off at 8-5 spurred by Incurably Talkative Inner Tongues
tell you the cosmic giggle is not your friend
the plasticity of time language eats up
cold and so clear white boat wakes churn visible outside the Gate
Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015
Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015
Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015
Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015
A
maintenance crew gets to work after an early morning fire destroyed the
96-foot white fir Christmas tree at the Westin South Coast Plaza on
Monday: photo by Don Leach / Daily Pilot, 14 November 2015
A
maintenance crew cleans the area around the Westin South Coast Plaza
Christmas tree which was destroyed in an early morning fire Monday
morning. The 96-foot white fir tree is an annual holiday tradition in
Town Center Park.: photo by Don Leach / Daily Pilot, 14 November 2015
South Coast Plaza's Christmas tree as seen from the eighth floor of Westin South Coast Plaza during the 34th annual tree lighting on Thursday, November 19: photo by Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot, 15 December 2015
It's Beginning To Feel a Lot Like... Day 336 of 2015. Christmas lights are now officially acceptable.: photo by Eugene Kim, 2 December 2015
Palm frond, San Pablo Avenue, Oakland: photo by Mike Linksvayer, 15 November 2015
Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015 Los Angeles, CA
Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015 Los Angeles, CA
Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015 Los Angeles, CA
Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015 Los Angeles, CA
All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015
All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015
All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015
All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015
LAPD School Police check on the officials at the LAUSD bus yard in Gardena after complete closure of the district: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 15 December 2015
Its locked down tighter than Darth Vader's strangle grip at #StarWarsPremiere @jlclendenin: image via Hal Wells @lahalw, 15 December 2015 West Covina, CA
Carrie Fisher, who reprises the iconic Leia, plays with the photographers at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Hollywood.: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015
George
Lucas, left, creator of the "Star Wars franchise, and director J.J.
Abrams chat at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"
in Hollywood: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015
PK's PICKS #GoldenGate, #GGFRacing, with our #SpeedRatingsProjections JUST SIGN UP (FREE): image via peter karam @Peterkaram729, 12 December 2015
Actor Harrison Ford and his wife, actress Calista Flockhart, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Hollywood: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015
#arson suspected in fire at Coachella mosque, Islamic Society of Palm Springs, #Molotov cocktail #BreakingNews: image via Gina Ferazzi @Gina Ferazzi 14 December 2015
Watch: What's your first #StarWars memory? @latimesent: image via LA Times Video @latimesvideo, 16 December 2015
Parents dropping off their
children at Gardner Street Elementary School in Hollywood, a day after a
threat prompted officials to shut down all public schools in Los
Angeles: photo by
Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 16 December 2015
Schools were back in session in Los Angeles on Wednesday, but many parents are still on edge: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 16 December 2015
Prayer candles glow where a 17-year-old student was killed in LA while on his way to a closed school yesterday.: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 16 December 2015
Emotions run high at the Highland Park memorial site where a 17-year-old student was killed in a traffic accident: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 16 December 2015
Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College, wore a hijab at a church service in Chicago. Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian institution in Illinois, has disciplined Hawkins, putting her on administrative leave after she wore a head scarf in solidarity with Muslims and said they worship the “same God” as Christians.: photo by Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune, via Associated Press, 16 December 2015
Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, in Birmingham, England, on Monday. Ms. Yousafzai, 18, denounced Donald J. Trump’s contentious policies toward Muslims in an interview with Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. “Well, that’s really tragic that you hear these comments which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others,” Ms. Yousafzai said: photo by Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse, 16 December 2015
Helicopters. Unnecessary. #FreddieGray: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
"This is what the justice system looks like for Black people" #FreddieGray #WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
"Do you know what this police lineup is? It's an act of power" #FreddieGray #WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
"You are no different than the gang members you lock up. And you know this." #FreddieGray #WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
Don't trust her. #FreddieGray #WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
"A lot of concerns about all the 'rioting' in the past" She asks. Fox took as long as 2nd Q to ask. #FreddieGray: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
Hitting streets now. #FreddieGray #WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015
ICYMI: The highlights from last night's #GOPDebate: image via Reuters Politics @ReutersPolitics, 16 December 2015
Will Donald Trump make America great again? Have your say #BVpredictions 2016: image via ReutersBreakingViews @BreakingViews, 16 December 2015
Members of German federal police Bundespolizei demonstrate their
skills during a presentation of the new unit for arrests and securing
evidence (BFE) in Ahrensfelde near Berlin, Germany on Wednesday: photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters, 16 December 2015
A man consults a mobile phone
outside a clothes store in Salamanca an upscale neighbourhood of Madrid: photo by Gerard Julien/AFP, 16 December 2015
A Filipino villager burns debris in the typhoon-hit town of Donsol, Sorsogon province, southern Manila, Philippines on Wednesday: photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA, 16 December 2015
An armed Kurdish militant walks in the Okmeydani district of Istanbul
during a demonstration against recent curfews imposed on Kurdish towns: photo by Cagdas Erdogan 16 December 2015
Privilege: Elizabeth Daryush: Children of wealth in your warm nursery
German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a toy wolf she got as a present
during a party convention of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in
Karlsruhe, Germany: photo by Michael Probst/AP, 14 December 2015
Children of wealth in your warm nursery,
Set in the cushioned window-seat to watch
The volleying snow, guarded invisibly
By the clear double pane through which no touch
Untimely penetrates, you cannot tell
What winter means; its cruel truths to you
Are only sound and sight; your citadel
Is safe from feeling, and from knowledge too.
Set in the cushioned window-seat to watch
The volleying snow, guarded invisibly
By the clear double pane through which no touch
Untimely penetrates, you cannot tell
What winter means; its cruel truths to you
Are only sound and sight; your citadel
Is safe from feeling, and from knowledge too.
Go down, go out to elemental wrong,
Waste your too round limbs, tan your skin too white;
The glass of comfort, ignorance, seems strong
To-day, and yet perhaps this very night
Waste your too round limbs, tan your skin too white;
The glass of comfort, ignorance, seems strong
To-day, and yet perhaps this very night
You'll wake to horror's wrecking fire -- your home
Is wired within for this, in every room.
Is wired within for this, in every room.
Elizabeth Daryush (1887-1977): Children of wealth in your warm nursery, from Collected Poems (1976)
A boy carries a basket of laundry as another child follows him inside
Eleonas refugee camp near central Athens Monday. Financially stricken
Greece is the main entry point for asylum-seekers trying to enter the
28-nation European Union: photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP, 14 December 2015
Labourers unload sacks of rice from a handcart at a wholesale market in Kolkata, India, on Monday: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 14 December 2015
Children playing front of a brick factory on the outskirts of the Myanmar city of Mandalay: photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw / AFP, 14 December 2015
A Syrian man escorts his injured wife following reported air strikes
by regime forces on the town of al-Nashabiyah in the eastern Ghouta
region, a rebel stronghold east of the capital Damascus, on Monday: photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP, 11 December 2015
A Palestinian woman supporting Hamas attends a rally in Gaza City on
Monday, to mark the ruling Islamist movement’s 28th birthday: photo by Mahmud Hamsa/AFP, 11 December 2015
Palestinian protesters carry an injured comrade during clashes with
Israeli soldiers that followed a protest against the Israeli settlements
in Qadomem, in the Kofr Qadom village near the West Bank city of
Nablus, on Friday: photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA, 11 December 2015
Young Moroccans pray for rain, Marrakesh, Morocco, on Friday. The
King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, called on the faithful to pray for rain in
the Kingdom, which is suffering from a severe drought as a result of
the depletion of the water table, severely affecting agriculture in
the country: photo by Abdelhak Senna/EPA, 11 December 2015
Residents walk by damage at a site hit by one of three explosive
trucks, in the YPG-controlled town of Tel Tamer, Syria on Friday: photo by Rodi Said/Reuters, 11 December 2015
The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-19M space ship carrying a
new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the
Russian leased Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The Russian rocket carries
British astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S.
astronaut Tim Kopra: photo by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP, 15 December 2015
Vladimir Mayakovsky: Anent the Deeference o Tastes
A cuddy,
goavin at a camel,
......................laughit:
'Whit
kinna cuddy's yon,
...............aa bim-bam-bauchlt?'
The camel shrieked:
...............'Ye caa yirsel a cuddy?
Ye're naethin
but a scrunty
...............shilpit camel!''
-- Ach ,
lat auld Frosty-Pow abune unscrammle
the twa puir craturs;
..he
.....kens the brose frae the gundy.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930): Anent the Deeference o Tastes, from Wi the haill voice: 25 poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated into the Scots by Edwin Morgan, 1972
Droid BB-8 arrives at the world premiere of the film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood, California last night: photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters, 15 December 2015
Filipinos evacuate the typhoon-hit town of Juban, Sorsogon province, southern Philippines, on Tuesday: photo by Francis R Malasig/EPA 15 December 2015
A mural is seen with a slum in the background on the bank of the Rio Negro (Black River), in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil: photo by Christophe Simon/AFP, 15 December 2015
Mack Weldon, shown here, offers well-constructed though low-ke
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
The designers of Valentino were honored Monday night at the Lincoln Center Corporate Fund’s gala at Alice Tully Hall. Guests included Debbie Harry, who performed later in the night, and Giancarlo Giammetti: photo by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times, 7 December 2015
She closed her set with one of her solo songs, “In Love With Love.”: photo by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times, 7 December 2015
An Indian roadside traditional ear cleaner cleans the ear of a customer in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday: photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA, 15 December 2015
“Oui” (Yes) is seen written on the walls of a polling station in Bangui, where a soldier of the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA contingent is on guard on Monday: photo by Marco Longari/AFP, 14 December 2015
An Indian roadside traditional ear cleaner cleans the ear of a customer as another customer waits for his turn in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday: photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA, 15 December 2015
German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a toy wolf she got as a present
during a party convention of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in
Karlsruhe, Germany: photo by Michael Probst/AP, 14 December 2015
A man consults a mobile phone beside a woman begging on the pavement
outside a clothes store in Salamanca an upscale neighbourhood of Madrid: photo by Gerard Julien/AFP, 16 December 2015
Children playing front of a brick factory on the outskirts of the Myanmar city of Mandalay: photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw / AFP, 14 December 2015
Mt. Diablo is silhouetted as the sun rises above the Sacramento River delta: photo by Melinda Welsh/Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2015
14 comments:
Human neoteny has its loathsome side as well as its cute side... What appeals to me about that Christmas tree is how directly it tells you it's dead. Another epic post Tom...
Your poem and Elizabeth Daryush's are terrific. But Mayakovsky translated into Scots dialect? That's a real find. Once again: the real news of the world, in poetry & pictures. Thanks, Tom.
Michael and Terry, much as Rilke once cried out to the angelic orders, we go on knocking, but when only a special effect answers, how do we go on bearing it, the awful omni propagating hyper amplified cuteness of the crashing silence of the end of the world?
The quest for sense within a rapidly disintegrating state of chaos drives the exasperated seeker ever deeper into absurd explanations of the inexplicable.
Can it be that environmentally induced neoteny has reduced homo sapiens capitalismus to such a frenzied aspiration to adorable cuteness that there is now no turning back, so that no affluent human parent shall ever cease to relentlessly juvenilize its own offspring until the overprotectiveness can no longer see the ground for the galactic stormtrooper boots to be sent in upon, and we have left only a race of wannabe axolotls (if not azolotlization, what CAN have gotten into the iconic Carrie Fisher?), no school child shall ever again know what it is to make its way to school through use of its own tiny, endearing little weight-bearing limbs.
"The cartoon of Betty Boop illustrates some human features which are sometimes labeled as neotenous, such as a large head, short arms and legs relative to total height, and clumsy, child–like movements."
On the other hand, an actual adult human, Larycia Hawkins, walked that nasty mile in somebody else's shoes, and at a time like this, deserves all credit. If she hadn't been tenured, you can bet she'd not even have got the paid leave.
Deray is sufficiently an optimist to believe a hung jury in the first trial of the cop killers of Freddie Gray is to be seen as good news, in that, at least, it was not an acquittal, but I don't know, I have a hard time with finding the good part of a broken neck.
Elizabeth Daryush was the daughter of the English poet laureate Robert Bridges, carried on her father's interest in syllabics and care over diction, but became a better poet in her own right, particularly after marrying the Persian government official Ali Akbar Daryush and thus expanding her awareness beyond the environment of extreme privilege, at Boars Hill near Oxford, where she spent much of her life.
Golden Gate Fields is a racetrack, just down the road a bit. Seeing Russell Baze is having a strong meet (28% wins) suggested time doesn't exist.
If only.
Auld FrostyPow abune having unscrammled the finutnrod, the past weeks hereabouts have been saturated in such a glitter-fall of potrezebie it's been barely possible to form the merest thought without a thousand ton trumpet behemoth bim-bam bauchlt horning in on its way to the premiere.
Another far-reaching poem/post, Tom--and while we're at it--dad burn, that Christmas tree never knew what hit it—must’ve been some hotheaded infantile grownups acting up like Trump again.
your home/ is wired within for this
Who can wade through the brain gumbo to get to this true picture?
Tom,
A grand/grim excursion through the world as it turns today toward tonight's winter solstice (8:48 pm) -- good to hear that Elizabeth Daryush moved "beyond the environment of extreme privilege, " as one sees here in these concluding lines from "Still-Life," which, Yvor Winters (from the comfort of his study down on The Farm) once held up as one of the great poems of the 20th c --
She comes over the lawn, the young heiress,
from her early walk in her garden-wood
feeling that life's a table set to bless
her delicate desires with all that's good,
that even the unopened future lies
like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.
Many thanks from the typhoon fever sump to generous thinkers.
Steve, it has struck me as curious that the rise in Elizabeth Daryush's critical reputation owes so much to an American Stanford critic who pretty much singlehandedly boosted her from nobody to somebody, in the grand landscape of English poetry. I think indeed it was largely Winters' influence on Donald Davie did it. Davie's resuscitation of Daryush was founded on an essay in which, as a matter of fact, he spent most of his time talking about Winters. The idea of cutting a poet capable of writing "Still Life" or "Children of wealth in your warm nursery" down to the size, and into the somewhat stiff shape, of a latterday Jones Very -- well, I suppose critical weight-lifting always tends to make heavy of light, light of heavy, unless of course it's tother way round, when convenient for the "holder" of a "position" with an "argument" to be proven and a "point" to be made (scored?).
Thanks Tom for this, you are a veritable fount of knowledge (sometimes arcane as here, speaking of Davie and Jones Very, always timely and welcome). I "grew up" on Winters back in the Berkeley days, steered in that direction by Elroy Bundy who taught small Comp Lit classes to a few of us who met in his house down on Parker Street, reading his own poems + Winters, Edgar Bowers, J.V. Cunningham (piles of books on the floor beside his chair, OED, Partridge, we spent weeks on Bowers' "The Astronomers of Mont Blanc") . . . and later met Donald Davie when I was commuting down from Bolinas to The Farm one year (courtesy of Stegner), remember talking with him in his office once, always smoking that pipe, tweed jacket perhaps . . .
Thanks, Steve. I guess we all "grew up on" something, for better or worse... I've always thought/hoped that learning something before one sails off into permanent nescience -- i.e. during that brief window when the brain is still operating at full capacity, even while the mind is still awaiting birth -- might not be a bad idea. As in, at least better than settling for the proverbial American Nothing dressed up as Something. But who can say, or forget?
DD had that odd love/hate thing with America that often affects those who come to these endarkened shores for the money. At least he knew where the money could be found. Palo Alto, Nashville. It wasn't easy for him to put the Winters program, (which obviously attracted him and from which, at the same time, he wanted to keep his distance) together with his admiration of Pound, so that the particulars of approval and disapproval ultimately had to be parsed out unto the kind of pretzeled micro-categories oft used by academics to account for contradictions...
It should be remembered that DD's Wesleyan background (the strain, that is, not the school) dictated much of his critical "stance" -- right up to the point where the logic of the distinctions broke down, and, as with everybody, the personal broke through.
By the by, it was Davie who brought me to Cambridge to study Pound with him, and Davie who later convinced me to abandon several subsequent academic "opportunities" in order to follow him over to Essex... and Davie who still later at Essex finally summoned me to his chambers once day, distressed over being told by the security watchmen that I was moonlighting in the building all night, running off nutty sub rosa mimeo mags... and Davie who at that point impatiently enquired whether, after all, I intended to be be a scholar or a bohemian?
I answered that he knew very well I was a scholar, that I had no idea what a bohemian was or even looked like as I had never visited bohemia, and that I'd think it over. My wonderful academic career ended in that moment, nipped in the bud, as 'twere.
Thanks Tom, "DD" was a breath of fresh, pipe-tobacco-tinged air down there at Stanford, strangely out of place in the Winters world that still was in evidence (Ken Fields taught one of the poetry classes I took that year, Helen (Pinkerton) Trimpi the other, Davie the third (was it the middle one?) -- the English mannerisms, the connection to Pound (don't remember how it appeared but now that you recall to me that legacy it begins to come back, as through a glass darkly (maybe I still have a book on EP by DD over there at Mills? -- is there such a book?). It seems that he was a real presence in your own life 'back in the day, lots to think about on a grey morning like this, grey rain clouds above the ridge, rain shower slowly passing, getting colder it seems.
Hey Steve, grey and cold and getting colder over here too, rain and hail in the mix, this must be the winter that everybody else is not getting. About Donald Davie and his world, the English mannerisms were not so noticeable perhaps in England, and in fact his Yorkshire Methodist derivations were in many ways at odds with, and perhaps to some extent disguised by, the extremely "donnish" demeanour -- which, again, did not seem so odd at Cambridge, there among the dons. But the apparent contradictions in the critical armature -- the positive valuations of Pound, Pushkin, and the "purity of diction" in English poetry of the 18th century, for instance -- did seem more intelligible when one was able put them together with the principle of the private man ("in context" like they say). A rare venture into the tattered remains of the wormy old shelves unearthed a brief AP obit that went out on the wire at the time of his death (9/22/85), which, in its capsule brevity, sums up much that's to the point.
"London. Donald Davie, the poet, literary critic and translator known for his technical refinement and his elucidations of modernist verse, died Monday. He was 73,
"Mr. Davie taught at Stanford and Vanderbilt universities. A burly pipe-smoker with a strong Yorkshire accent, he believed in a direct relationship between poetic usage of language and personal morality."
It's that latter concentration on the moral that helps one to see something like a common logic in his critical judgments, which otherwise might seem mostly a matter of idiosyncratic and disparate opinions marshalled together under the heading of "taste".
It's also that same concentration which made him so tentative in his embrace of what the Associated Press meant by "modernism".
It's always so easy to rate and rank the many available "-isms" from the security of the licensed academic position, of course -- much talking of the talk, virtually no walking of the walk.
When DD charged me with incipient bohemianism, it was the moral sense of the term he meant.
His ability to appreciate Pound was therefore restricted to the engagement with a Pound largely of his own willful invention -- "at bottom an Edwardian man of letters like Edmund Gosse or George Saintsbury," as he puts it in the small book in which he left his most considered view of Pound.
That would be: Ezra Pound, U of Chicago Press, 1975.
In 1963 I had published a 100 page essay on the formal structure of The Cantos in The East-West Review; it was that which had inclined him to sponsor me at Cambridge.
But once I got there, and was his advisee, it turned out that the most interesting work we did together had nothing to do with Pound or modernism. We did one term on a reading of Wordsworth, and while Pound hung suspended in permanent limbo of postponement (the Ph.D. I was meant to be doing evaporated quickly when I learned that by the gentleman's rules of Cambridge, it was possible to do no work whatsoever and survive well enough -- for which simple reason there had been only and exactly six Ph.Ds in English awarded there since World War II), we had some interesting sessions on sorting out the syntax of Wordsworth, a subject DD made seem much more relevant that one might have suspected, and which, in any ways, offered strong hints as to how poetry in English might well have continued to be worth the bother, had not all those isms, modernisms and bohemianisms got in the way.
But... on another note entirely... and a bit closer to home... and just in time...
Holy Joe and Saint Stephen Arrive to Rescue Christmas
Also, in case anybody cares (besides us, that is), Davie's thoughts on syntax in poetry, the subject addressed in our tutelary sessions on WW, may be found in another of his critical works, also worth looking into: Articulate Energy.
Thanks for all this Tom, been busy as can be over here, what with house filled with so many people these last weeks it seems -- three siblings after my mother died, then my daughter Oona arriving with her now 3 girls (ages 6, 3 and 3 months) from NYC (she's staying at Ashley's house down on Brighton but coming up here with the girls) then coincident visits from my mother's husband (Lewis) and his two daughters and my stepmother (Joanne) and her dog and my brother (back again from Oakland) plus Johnny and Oona and her 3 girls . . . finally a day to catch one's breath (such as it is) and bring in more wood for the woodstove (going through that wood these days and nights, cold as they continue to be). . .
So much about Donald Davie one didn't know -- I spent as little time down there (on the farm) as possible, driving down twice each week for the writing class (can't remember much of any of it now it seems -- sitting across from him in his office talking with him, or probably more like listening to him talk in that way of his I can almost hear now, watching him smoking his pipe, then driving back up to Bolinas at the end of the day, Oona just a newborn baby early that spring . . . But I had read Articulate Energy (maybe before I met him?) and knew something of his relation to Pound, yes -- will see if I can find those books when I get back over there to Mills in a few weeks . . . Good to get a break from all that, especially all that driving . . .
Meanwhile will be thinking of this thought : "how poetry in English might well have continued to be worth the bother, had not all those isms, modernisms and bohemianisms got in the way."
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