So, have you read Moby Dick?
I haven’t, and it’s not been on my mental TBR pile either.
Now I don’t have to read it, because over at MadHaiku’s place, he’s done the reading for us, with an illustrated haiku summary to inspire you to read it, or at least see the movie!
I wonder what he’ll come up with next!
Enjoy!
Stolen from casa az, who plundered it from alejna
Four childhood books
Four authors I will read again and again
Four authors I will never read again
I blank out the unpleasant in my life. I’ve not much interest in ever reading Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett (sorry az for putting those two in the same sentence), or Stephen King. Authors I don’t like, I just don’t remember. 
The first four books on my to-be-read list
The four books I would take to a desert island
The last lines of one of my favourite books
Anyway — tag yourselves on this one!
I’ve ranted on in the past about the quality of the reader making, or breaking, an audio book. If you’ve ever listened to a tedious reader, you know what I’m talking about. (And no, just because a reader is a famous actor, doesn’t mean that they’re any damn good!)
And I’ve blogged occasionally about poetry. Meant to be read aloud, it is an ideal match to audio, and I think we need to acknowledge a lovely podcast blog today: Classic Poetry Aloud.
Oh, I would admire anyone with the guy’s dedication to posting regular podcasts of themselves reading classic poetry…but I wouldn’t listen to it, if the reading were mediocre.
Mr. Only the Poetry Matters, you read very well. I’m now a fan.
I realized this morning that the world had lost yet another artist — spoken word artist Sekou Sundiata. (The Chicago Tribune) [Weird, the editors of Wikipedia waste not time in updating their entries.]
I first heard his work in the Bill Moyers’ book The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (Here’s a discussion group page.) That book has a companion audio format — I’m not sure which came first, the audio or the book. I, luckily, have both. 
Listen to him on Salon Audio, or on the NPR Fresh Air podcast, a compilation of interviews held with him over the years.
Art lives on.
I found this link ages ago, put it in my blogworthy list, and there it has sat, to wait for a day, like today, when I should be outside, enjoying the sun.
[Living life to the fullest. Thinking new thoughts, maybe even writing some poetry, instead of rehashing other people's ideas. It's Easter Sunday...if nothing else, for this atheist, a day to signal the true beginning of Spring. So, a quick blog post, and then I'm outta here!]
Ginsberg’s Celestial Homework — Your site of the day…essentially a:
Specialized Reading List for “Literary History of the Beat Generation,”
a course taught by Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute during the summer of 1977.This “celestial homework” is the reading list that Ginsberg handed out on the first day of his course as “suggestions for a quick check-out & taste of antient scriveners whose works were reflected in Beat literary style as well as specific beat pages to dig into.”
This is a very great list…with some rather nepotistic choices — many of his contemporaries, like Neal Cassady’s autobiography The First Third. (Cassady had died almost 10 years before, tragically young, so I’m not really surprised by Ginsberg’s choice.)
I think I’m going to grab some poetry and a beer, and sit on the grass to read aloud.
TTFN
Seamus Heaney recently won the TS Eliot Poetry prize.
Haven’t I written about Heaney before now? I know I’ve mentioned him, but I’ve yet to devote a whole post to the man.
So, you haven’t read any Seamus Heaney? Have you heard the man speak? He’s got the most beautiful, rich, rolling voice. I covet his audio recording of his recent re-working of Beowulf (have I mentioned it enough? Will I get it one day?)
Here’s a sample of his image-rich poetry, from the Internet Poetry Archive:
From Clearances
In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Now go back, and read it aloud. Trust me.
Now, go and hear him read it. And rejoice.
This bit of Anglo-Saxon pleasure from Earle Birney needs to be read aloud. Some background on Old English Poetry:
Old English poetry was very formulaic, with the same patterns being re-used with variations time and again. Additionally, alliteration and stress were used in the place of rhyme, which can sound strange but powerful to the modern ear. Another striking feature of Old English poetry was the use of many metaphors or kennings for common subjects: The sea could be referred to as the ‘whale’s way’, ‘gannet’s bath’, ’swan’s riding’ and so on.
Or, as the great Seamus Heaney points out when he writes about his task of translating Beowulf:
I had noticed, for example, that without any conscious intent on my part certain lines in the first poem in my first book conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics. These lines were made up of two balancing halves, each half containing two stressed syllables – ‘The spade sinks into gravelly ground: / My father digging. I look down…’ – and in the case of the second line there was alliteration linking ‘digging’ and ‘down’ across the caesura. Part of me, in other words, had been writing Anglo-Saxon from the start.
Wow…a lot of ‘ado’ before I get to the poem for today.
Canadian poet, Earle Birney (1904-1995), probably best known for his long poem, David (I wish there was a link!) — read in many a classroom! One of my favourites is Anglosaxon Street…
A memorable poem, with the rhythms of Old English, some brilliant images, and, yes, some rather strong (ooo, controversy!) language. Here it is:
Anglosaxon Street
by Earle BirneyDawndrizzle ended dampness steams from
blotching brick and blank plasterwaste
Faded housepatterns hoary and finicky
unfold stuttering stick like a phonographHere is a ghetto gotten for goyim
O with care denuded of nigger and kike
No coonsmell rankles reeks only cellarrot
attar of carexhaust catcorpse and cookinggrease
Imperial hearts heave in this haven
Cracks across windows are welded with slogans
There’ll Always Be An England enhances geraniums
and V’s for Victory vanquish the houseflyHo! with climbing sun march the bleached beldames
festooned with shopping bags farded flatarched
bigthewed Saxonwives stepping over buttrivers
waddling back wienerladen to suckle smallfryHoy! with sunslope shrieking over hydrants
flood from learninghall the lean fingerlings
Nordic nobblecheeked not all clean of nose
leaping Commandowise into leprous lanesWhat! after whistleblow spewed from wheelboat
after daylong doughtiness dire handplay
in sewertrench or sandpit come Saxonthegns
Junebrown Jutekings jawslack for meatSit after supper on smeared doorsteps
not humbly swearing hatedeeds on Huns
profiteers politicians pacifists JewsThen by twobit magic to muse in movie
unlock picturehoard or lope to alehall
soaking bleakly in beer skittlelessHome again to hotbox and humid husbandhood
in slumbertrough adding sleepily to Anglekin
Alongside in lanenooks carling and leman
caterwaul and clip careless of Saxonry
with moonglow and haste and a higher heartbeatSlumbers now slumtrack unstinks cooling
waiting brief for milkmaid mornstar and worldrise
Toronto 1942
I thought I’d share some Al Purdy with you. A powerful Canadian poet, books still available.
Without further ado…
Piling Blood
by Al PurdyIt was powdered blood
in heavy brown paper bags
supposed to be strong enough
to prevent the stuff from escaping
but didn’tWe piled it ten feet high
right to the shed roof
working at Arrow Transfer
on Granville Island
The bags weighed 75 pounds
and you had to stand on two
of the bags to pile the top rows
I was six feet three inches
and needed all of itI forgot to say
the blood was cattle blood
horses sheep and cows
to be used for fertilizer
the foreman said
It was a matter of some delicacy
to plop the bags down softly
as if you were piling dynamite
if you weren’t gentle
the stuff would belly out
from bags in brown clouds
settle on your sweating face
cover hands and arms
enter ears and nose
seep inside your pants and shirt
reverting back to liquid bood
and you looked like
you’d been scalped
by a tribe of
particularly unfriendly
Indians and forgot to dieWe piled glass as well
it came in wooden crates
two of us hoicking them
off trucks into warehouses
every crate
weighing 200 pounds
By late afternoon
my muscles would twitch and throb
in a death-like rhythm
from hundreds of bags of blood
and hundreds of crates of glassThen at Burns’ slaughterhouse
on East Hastings Street
I got a job part time
shouldering sides of frozen beef
hoisint it from steel hooks
staggering to and from
the refrigerated trucks
and eerie freezing rooms
with breath a white vapour
among the dangling corpses
and the sound of bawling animals
screeched down from an upper floor
with their throats cut
and blood gurgling into special drains
for later retrievalAnd the blood smell clung to me
clung to clothes and body
sickly and sweet
and I heard the screams
of dying cattle
and I wrote no poems
there were no poems
to exclude the screams
which boarded the streetcar
and travelled with me
till I reached home
turned on the record player
and faintly
in the last century
heard Beethoven weeping
I want to stay at the Library Hotel.
Organized according to the Dewey Decimal System so each floor of the hotel has a different category, and each room a theme on that category. Stay in the Poetry room on the Literature floor (Room number 800.003, with one full-sized bed). Or try Room 1100.002, the Ethics room on the Philosophy floor, which has a queen-sized bed.
Cool.
From Wikipedia:
The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, was a fifty one volume anthology of works selected by Charles W. Eliot. It was originally published in 1909. Dr. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf.
Today, my local library was having another ‘Dirty Book Sale’, and on a table was a box of 17 Harvard Classics for $20. How could I resist? Even my husband was positive about it — for the Darwin. And the Cervantes. All of Dante (will I ever read it?). Plato, Homer…
17 of 51…a full third of the titles.
Do I have 20 inches to spare on a shelf?
At any given moment, I could have 10 books on the go — science fiction, poetry, a cultural history, a childhood favourite…I love the unknown of a new book, the comfort of an old friend. Who knows what’s next?
