Owl, egg, and Raine

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

Alexander

I was so flooded with energy yesterday that I stayed up until precisely 3:19 writing an essay about masks and William Alexander's Goblin Secrets for the National Book Awards blog... I haven't done that in a while, though I did write one book that way when I was younger. Although I am naturally a night owl, my natural owlishness has been hampered by the need to get children out of bed very early in the morning. And now I have no doubt the essay is too long and will have to be cut. But I am feeling mild and pleasantly tired as a result.

Raine

I've promised a little essay on Kathleen Raine to Mezzo Cammin, so maybe I ought to go reread some Raine. Here she is at the Poetry Archive.

And another of his for The Foliate Head

Beginning again

Oddly or perhaps not so oddly, I've had a large number of conversations relating to the idea mentioned earlier that artists always begin from nothing--or from nothing but the created world--each time they begin a work. Writers and painters seem to find this compelling. We begin ab ovo, and sometimes we get a spoiled yolk, and sometimes we get Helen and fall into beauty pageants and the Trojan War.

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Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. (Thaliad is on sale during Poetry Month.) See page tabs above for review clips and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.

Morning after foolishness

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

It's the day after April Fool's Day, and I am just the same size of fool as I was yesterday! I may even be a little bigger, given all those Easter basket chocolates. I find these things slightly disappointing but no surprise... Quite impossible to pack all one's foolishness into a single day, after all.

The foolishness of April 1st is compounded by the thought that the date marks the beginning of the absurd, hopeful thing, Poetry Month. I have been writing a lot of poems lately, but I almost feeling like not writing any at all in April because of this terrible bone of charity, the once-yearly reminder of an art most people think already dead. Never mind. Art is the phoenix that returns burning from the grave, whether anybody notices or not.

In fact, art is that strange creature that is always re-inventing itself, starting from nothingness. Every book of energy, every painting of life has to be started by somebody who does not know how to make what needs to be made.

In the realm of absurdity, the sky snowed on the snowdrops yesterday, and it is snowing on them today, though the sparrows and juncos and mourning doves are hunched on the ground under the feeder or combing the air from rose canes to hemlocks. One dove chases another on foot under the roses, heads bobbing, but it's far too bitter for springing love on one's mate.

I must hie me to taxes once again (alas!), so I just shrug and wave and go on.

Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See page tabs above for review clips and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.