I'm done in from working today (an anthropology book about tubers—it's exactly as fascinating as it sounds), so I hereby treat you to some number 6's I have known. Starting with one I took just today (which may actually be XLS upside down, but I'm sticking with 6):
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I did not actually read this book, save for the final twenty or so pages. Rather, I listened to it, in an audio version that features the narration of Dominic Hoffman. I'm glad I did, though it is hard for me to focus as well by listening as by reading print. But in this case, the spoken version is perfect for really appreciating the code-switching Jim is required to do, running his highly literate speech through a "slave filter" whenever he has to interact with white folk. Even with Huck Finn himself. Here's a passage, from early on, where their owner, Miss Watson, has baked some cornbread and given it to Jim and his wife and daughters, Sadie and Lizzie.
Sadie had the corn bread on the block—a stump, really—that served as our table. She sliced into it. She handed portions to Lizzie and me. I took a bite and so did Lizzie. We looked at each other.
"But it smells so good," the child said.
Sadie shaved off a sliver and put it in her mouth. "I swear that woman has a talent for not cooking"
"Do I have to eat it?" Lizzie asked.
"No, you don't," Sadie said.
"But what are you going to say when she asks you about it?" I asked.
Lizzie cleared her throat. "Miss Watson, dat sum conebread lak I neva before et."
"Try 'dat be,'" I said. "That would be the correct incorrect grammar."
Throughout the book, Jim finds himself in many dangerous and demeaning, or simply lonely and desparate, situations. Always, he is self-confident, solidly in his body and mind, full of integrity. He occasionally has conversations (in his dreams) with the likes of Voltaire and John Locke, about slavery, hypocrisy, logical fallacy, and suchlike. Mostly, he knows what he wants—freedom for himself and his family—and he will stop at nothing to achieve that.
I began this book on my drive from Ashland, Oregon, home, at the end of March. And then, I stopped. I did have the print version, but I wanted to finish with Jim's voice (via Hoffman). After Everett's win of the Pulitzer yesterday, I figured now was as good a time as any, so I took myself for a long walk—and, listening, got to within the last two dozen pages. So I finished by reading, the print book. I might just have to listen to the one-page final chapter again, though—for closure. To hear Jim (via Hoffman) say, in answer to the question "And who are you?":
"I am James."
"James what?"
"Just James."
I may also have to reread Huckleberry Finn. It's been fifty-plus years. And if I do, I will look on Jim with a whole new appreciation.
Here is a conversation between Miwa Messer and Percival Everett about this book and others of his:
The Pulitzers were announced today, and I thought I'd feature just a few of the winners. (There will be a poem. Deservedly!)
First, for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary, someone who floats into my email box every so often—including just today: Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post, "for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity—and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years." Here's today's cartoon:
For Commentary, Mosab Abu Toha, "for essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel." Toha is a poet from Gaza, author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear and Forest of Noise. Here is one of those New Yorker stories, from last October.
For Fiction, Percival Everett's James (which also won the National Book Award), "an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom." Here is a New York Times Book Review podcast about it (with a couple of spoilers). I am currently "reading" James—or rather, listening (via Audible) . . . and yes, I need to finish it. Maybe this prize can be my incentive.
Specifically, flowers on my deck—and lovely surprises they've been, too. The first one, a Cymbidium orchid (the name meaning "boat-shape"), is a plant I brought home after my mother died in 2008. As far as I can recall, this is the first time it's ever bloomed. I may be wrong—but if it did bloom in the past, I've forgotten. What a pleasure it's been, watching the flowers pop open, which they started to do just the other day after several weeks of thinking about it. There are 52 species in this genus. I can't identify which one this is, but that's okay. I'm happy just to gaze at it and to know my mother also gazed at it—and who knows, maybe even my father as well, since he was the Cymbidium grower to begin with. If that's the case, this plant (or some version of it) has been around for decades. Is that even possible?
The second one is a Pachypodium (meaning "thick foot"), a genus I encountered—and fell in love with—in Madagascar. Pachypodia are succulents, further defined by being "pachycaul," or having enlarged trunks designed to store water during times of drought or when their roots become exposed, and by having spines. There are 25 species, 20 of which are found in Madagascar. I have tried to grow Pachypodia, but they're tricky: my climate is on the edge for them, or maybe my soil mix isn't right, and although I've managed to coax leaves out of the three species I've experimented with, two ultimately declined to thrive. But one of them—I believe it's a P. baronii—has hung in there, and a few weeks ago it rewarded me with little red flowers! I was so delighted! Yesterday, I ordered two more plants (different species), and I'm going to try, try again. I hope they will be encouraged by their happy neighbor.
Here are a few other pachypodia. Perhaps you can see why I'm enamored with them. They're so unique.
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| P. horombense |
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| P. densiflorum |
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| P. lamerii |
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| P. rosulatum gracilius, in situ in Madagascar |
What binds these three poems together is that they were all read, and discussed, in the Poetry Space podcast I wrote about yesterday, about what makes a poem interesting. I couldn't resist the coincidences. (And in terms of accessibility? I might go with #2, #3, then #1. But I'm not going to rearrange them. You can do the work.)
I will try to stay away from poetry next week. But forgive me if I fail. I am finding poetry awfully comforting and/or invigorating just now.
by Li-Young Lee
When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother’s hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father’s body kept filling up with time.
I can’t see the year on the station’s calendar.
We slept under the stopped hands of the clock
until morning, when a man entered carrying a ladder.
He climbed up to the clock’s face and opened it with a key.
No one but he knew what he saw.
Below him, the mortal faces went on passing
toward all compass points.
People went on crossing borders,
buying tickets in one time zone and setting foot in another.
Crossing thresholds: sleep to waking and back,
waiting room to moving train and back,
war zone to safe zone and back.
Crossing between gain and loss:
learning new words for the world and the things in it.
Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it.
And collecting words in a different language
for those three primary colors:
staying, leaving, and returning.
And only the man at the top of the ladder
understood what he saw behind the face
which was neither smiling nor frowning.
And my father’s body went on filling up with death
until it reached the highest etched mark
of his eyes and spilled into mine.
And my mother’s hair goes on
never reaching the earth.
by George Bilgere
We’re bicycling through the Tiergarten
on a summer morning in Berlin,
my wife and I, our son in his bike seat,
and it really is a lovely day, except
someone has spray painted in red,
dripping cursive on the marble pedestals
of the statues of the great poets
and composers scattered around the park,
Juden Raus, Jews Out, and my first thought
is, hey, my German is getting better,
I figured that out right away,
even though the handwriting is poor,
but of course the author was working
in the dark, and under a certain pressure,
so really, you can’t blame him, and besides,
the quality of the handwriting isn’t
the point here, nor is my progress
in German, which in most respects
has been disappointing. The point
is that we have a bottle of wine
and some ham and cheese sandwiches
and we’re going to make the best of it,
we’re going to spread the blanket
and have a picnic here in the not entirely
new Germany, that bad last century
still bleeding into this one, blood
still soaking the feet of the poets,
while our little boy, new to history,
runs laughing under a blazing sun
through the green illiterate meadows.
by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
The episode I listened to today was part 1 of "How to Write an Interesting Poem." Three of the participants shared their lists of ten (or in Dick's case, eleven) qualities that will cause a poetry editor to sit up and take notice, and I would present them here, only I didn't take notes, and I was only three-quarters listening because I was trying to follow a recipe and keep kale and beets from burning. They included such things as a distinctive voice, music, narrative authority, surprise—but they said it better than I can. I might have to go back and take those notes, and if I do, I'll update this post accordingly. (Or write a new one.)
Okay, I was going to share a poem, but I think that's plenty of poetic inspiration for now. Go find some poetry! It's all around!
Busy day today, so I will just offer a poem—one of the prompt poems from this afternoon's generative session. The prompt being grass. Along with a photo I made eleven years ago at Gettysburg.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
