Aphoristic morning

Makoto Fujimura's Dark Shalom, 2012

This morning I feel like bundling all my thoughts into tiny packages--perhaps I shall place them under a metaphysical tree, and hope they are not simply waste of breath! Aphorism too often becomes Polonial, and adds nothing to the accumulated thoughts of the world. Perhaps it is now impossible to add an aphorism that has not been conveyed already in other words.

I don't try in words to be better than some other writer; I try to be better than I am, to increase what is me. 

Surely it is just as sad to achieve only the expected and conventional--that thing we too often like because it is comfortable--as to do nothing with a gift in the realms of art. 

Poems without joy in sound are dead leaves that will never dance in the wind. 

The problem with much criticism of the novel and poetry in the past century is that it attempted to replace art, not realizing that art is an experience that cannot be replaced. 

Each of us is a secret that cannot be revealed; the portrayal of character in its ideal gives a sense of person and mystery. 

An artist of any sort needs the understanding of what he or she can do, joined with a yearning desire to topple over that boundary--and the next, and the next. 

After hearing many words in various orders read by many poets, I found myself longing for mystery.  

The element most often missing in our arts is the sense of abundant life. 

Even a ruined shack is a chamber of mystery if people have lived and died there.

Well, that was an interesting exercise. Evidently I find mystery to be more important than any other element this morning...

Thanksgiving & the Great Big Little Aphorism Birthday Contest

4 salt tears for Thanksgiving, that very American holiday

* a little salt tear for Governor Bradford's wife, Dorothy, leaping from the Mayflower to her death in the icy waters of the bay--her only child 3,000 miles off, and she caught between the endless bitter brine and a rime-clad shore.

* another for The Starving Time that Dorothy Bradford escaped by death

* one for the man Governor Bradford called the instrument of God, Squanto--by a succession of surprising events becoming the right man in the very right place at the very right time--having learned English and become a Christian after being captured and sold in the Old World, and having returned to the very shore where the Puritans would land, far from their intended destination point

* and one last tear for the astonishing fact of a Pilgrim people who appeared, to our knowing modern eyes, to have so little and yet to thank so very much.

*******

Just arrived back home from Thanksgiving dinner in Esperance--a lovely frolic--and found a note from the judge, Philip Lee Williams, in my mailbox. And yes, he has chosen a winner, who needs to send me a mailing address.

Here's what he says about his pick:"I've read through all the new aphorisms with a lot of pleasure and even glee. They warn of fame and failure in equal amounts, and since we all fall somewhere between the two, most of us are fine targets. But I'll have to say my pick for winner goes to Clare D. for: 'Sadness is best confined to small boxes so it may be consigned to the dustiest attic of memory.' That has the kind of visual strength that makes an aphorism memorable. My attic is full of such boxes, but they usually stay shut and insignificant. Brava to Clare for the winning entry!"

Thank you to Phil! His e-home is: http://www.philipleewilliams.com/. Although he is primarily a writer and poet, he also composes music and--though I don't see it on the website--has been known to sculpt in alabaster.

Here are the aphorisms that brought him "pleasure and even glee," in the order that they were submitted:

*a man with teenage children never again trusts to his own abilities. anonymous

*a happy life requires two underlying passions; one for an idea and one for another person. one passion will only leave you bitter. anonymous

*The sculptor is a Materialist with a soul. Joy In Life

*Fatness is the only personal failing that can be objectively measured. No one can say quantitatively how greedy or proud or lazy you are. But any scale can say within a pound how little regard society holds for you. anonymous

*Nothing is so dangerous as a well wrought aphorism. anonymous

*Don't knock what's not hollow. Archbold

*Deceit's redemption resides in truth. Jeffrey in Cullowhee

*Nothing exceeds like excess. Lori Witzel

*A bird in the hand is worth a bandage on the thumb. Lori Witzel

*Every man secretly wishes for a troublesome wife upon which to blame his failings. anonymous

*The desire of every anonymous person is fame. The desire of every famous person is wealth. The desire of every wealthy person is anonymity. anonymous

*Sadness is best confined in small boxes so it may be consigned to the dustiest attic of memory. Clare D.

& a final one submitted today, after the Thanksgiving feast--

*Gluttony is no reflection of gratitude. anonymous

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I'm very glad that I handed off the judging, because I am free to enjoy and be glad for all these aphorisms and writers of aphorisms--and so, on Thankgiving, I will simply say that I am giving you each a little bit of thanks.

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The photograph of fall leaves is courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ and photographer Claudia Meyer of St. Germain en Laye, France.

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Free books & birthdays, trala!

I’m racking up yet another dratted birthday on the 22nd—sometimes I am a Turkey Day Woman (you knew, you knew) but not this year, not quite—and feel like giving somebody a present. I’ll mail you or a person you like copies of my two barely-out paperback Firebird books, signed and wrapped by me in either birthday paper or Christmas paper, if you take home the laurel on a teensy, bitty, wee morsel of a contest. I’ll ask a novelist friend to judge; since they’re involved in the long, surely my pennish pals will be positively slavering to snap up the short.

Because I’m going to make it an aphorism contest.

THE GREAT BIG LITTLE APHORISM BIRTHDAY CONTEST Feel free to take a look at my aphorisms (go chutes and ladders down the page till you find some, all numbered so you can find a way through the labyrinth) and better them. So far I have done fat people (seemed a topic of the moment, but it made readers very skittish), tourists (obvious subject in Cooperstown), and poetry (the great and passionate form.) Right now I can’t decide what I feel like doing next. God is daunting. Chickens are frivolous but loom large. Poetry aphorisms are still popping into my head.

You may seize hold of some bizarre, delicate, wild, or orderly topic of your own. Reveal your inner maenad or show nothing but proper reticence. Do what you like, frolic and gambol as you may. Write one or a flood. End of the contest is midnight the 22nd. Please post any aphorism entries in the Comments (and thanks to Susanna for asking where.)

Update: The judge is Philip Lee Williams, author of 11 novels and 2 books of nonfiction and innumerable poems. Don’t let that scare you; we've been pen pals for a while, and I can certify that he’s a very sweet man, capable of silliness! I do hope we get some silliness along the way. And you can see his brand new nonfiction book right here. Dawning idea: I bet that would make the perfect illuminated present for somebody you know…

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Palace Aphorisms nos. 66-88: in which I hog out on poetry

Palace Aphorism no. 88

It is better to clip bad poetry into pieces than to clip prose into pieces called poems.

Aphorism no. 87, or Why Shakespeare was Shakespeare

Whatever you are as a poet, that is the norm and the daily bread you eat—even for Shakespeare, even for Milton and Dante and Homer.

Aphorism no. 86, or the Classical Caddy Aphorism

Poetry is a muddy girl with leaves in her hair, shouting her betrayal from the dark side of the moon, and it is the scribble of blood taken by sand, next to the fallen hoplite: both these, neither, and more.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Fountain detail, Place de la Concorde, by permission of Laura Murphy Frankstone and Laurelines. This is the final image from Laura's month of sketching in Paris.

Aphorism no. 85

The forgotten word that is nagging you—the one that you can’t quite remember and catch—one day a poem will restore it.

Aphorism no. 84

Time is crueler and more ruthless to bad poetry than to badness in any other form of art.

Aphorism no. 83

The source of power in poetry lies in the unsaid; the unsaid never lies.

Aphorism no. 82: the Academic Male Poet aphorism

No more little men’s little poems about the paper over morning coffee, depression, and a dog!

Aphorism no. 81: the Lee & After aphorism

The seeds of poems lie in the pockets of dead soldiers, watered by tears, and when spring finally comes the kernels swell and sprout and make the fields green.

Aphorism no. 80: the Corset

It is impossible for a poet to be free who has never worn the elegant, erotic, restrictive straitjacket of form.

Aphorism no. 79: the Great Vacillation

The early poems of Yeats are lithe young girls, standing among roses, half obscured by leaf and petal—who will shelter them from the brutal, disastrous glory of the late poems?

Aphorism no. 78: the Emperor

Poets who never submit to formal verse are born naked like us but never wear clothes.

Aphorism no. 77

In the Golden Age of nanobot and microchip, one danger is that a poem may shrink but contain no worlds.

Aphorism no. 76: the Shrug

Is the poem too grand? Then go your way; the poet will bother you no more.

Aphorism no. 75, the Effortless

A seeming carelessness pleases in a poem, as of something tossed-off with grace.

Aphorism no. 74

The problem with many contemporaries called poets is that they practice a strict separation between body, soul, and mind.

Aphorism no. 73

A writer must emulate the growth of the universe, pushing forward into the void.

Aphorism no. 72

To read, rejoice in, and meet the soul of a writer—one meeting the other like a long-lost twin—is the gift of the reader.

Aphorism no. 71

If Shakespeare can die, then how can we help following his lead?

Aphorism no. 70

One of the three most important sensations in a writer’s life is the feeling of going to the pouring fount and fetching a pail brimming with water.

Aphorism no. 69

All these critical arguments over realism versus irrealism in poetry and prose simply ignore the fact that a writer can do anything, given sufficient fire.

Aphorism no. 68

As a poet, be a Jack or Jill who fetches the pail from the fount, even at the cost of crown and fallings-down.

Aphorism no. 67

Natural speech in poetry is highly overrated.

Aphorism no. 66

Even the greatest poetry ends in silence.

Palace aphorisms (poetry) nos. 61-65, etc.

aphorism no. 65
The aim of poetry and story is to cast a spell that has no purpose.

aphorism no. 64
When the poem is a mirror, the face reflected is fully known but made strange.

aphorism no. 63
In a poem, the tension between the irregular and the straight is strength.

aphorism no. 62
A poet is one who must un-know.

aphorism no. 61
Let the sea into your poems—the pulse like blood beating in your ears and the far pull of the moon.

*******
Yesterday I wrote a pantoum, revised some fiction, and then read stories and novellas and saw a movie. (I also cleaned up my run-amuck house, did laundry, did ferrying, herded children, etc.)

Thoughts along the way, or
What I do not like:

1. an air of tedious fascination
2. any novella approaching the experience of watching a Jack Smith movie for 5 hours, something that I did at 19 but wouldn’t do again
3. any story that has for its prime interest one’s ability to apply some other issue to it: as, this story about a cave man is really about the 21st century collision between bureaucracy and human loyalty or about war in a place where tribal loyalties collide with bureaucracy, etc.
4. stories lacking in feeling
5. stories where the sappiness and soap opera nature of events is controlled by deadpan, flat, and chilly narration
6. misuse of adverbs
7. an utter lack of beauty.

Just felt like getting that off my little pea brain.

I also read some wonderful stories.

Trala.

Credit: The photograph of a moonrise over Mt. Diablo is courtesy of Natalie Morris of Orangevale, CA and www.sxc.hu/.

Reading in paradise, etc. & Poetry aphorisms

All is forgiven; or,
"acquired," like a virus

I dropped the Grumpy Old Bookman from my Links because he annoyed me so very mightily one sunny morning in spring. Now I am adding him back again, on this nasty fall day with yellow leaves stuck to all the windows. "Something of an acquired taste," he says. Taste acquired, particularly in the region of truth-telling about the inner tickings of publishers.

Love books, want job?

"The Defense Department needs you to work in 'one of today's most challenging, interesting and rewarding environments,' according to a recent advertisement for chief librarian at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba."

"Researching the penal code"

What book-loving librarians look like these days, and how the boy lawyers react. Book links via TigerHawk--and both those were sent to me by Mike, energetic blog reader.

Poetry Aphorisms, continued

aphorism no. 60, or the "Fret not, poet" aphorism
The size of the poetic gift is of no moment: only the harmonious shaping of it in air.

aphorism no. 59, the Genesis aphorism
The origin of poetry is in the death of one’s twin—something that near and intimate.

aphorism no. 58, the Bad Frolic aphorism
There is a perverse delight in reading the very worst poetry.

aphorism no. 57, or the Meaning of Life aphorism
Existence is a dry bone unless it is fleshed in the sublime uselessness of poetry.

aphorism no. 56, the Tweaking Critics aphorism
There is no such thing as realism in poetry or, indeed, in anything that is not reality.

Photograph, "balance prime," courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ and Anatoli Styf of Tallinn, Estonia.

Poetry aphorisms; Skewered by Poe

The Palace Poetry Aphorisms,
continued

no. 55 Let your poems be as a piece of news heard on a distant planet, lit by a green star.

no. 54 Like a fairy mound, the poem wants to be a place where you and time get lost.

no. 53 Gusto is in the marrow of poetry.

no. 52 Only fearlessness in poetry will ever win the laurel. Fearlessness is not the same as “risk.” No American poet has ever committed “risk” in a poem. Revised after reading the comments!

no. 51, or the pollen-tube poetry aphorism: In the little green room of poetry, an egg waits for the magical unfurling of a hallway and a door to let the pollen in.

The photograph of a holographic eye was found on the sxc.hu website and is used by permission of Georgios M. Wollbrecht. Many thanks!

For more aphorisms, take a slide down the page.

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Quote of note

. . . the qualities I'd suggest are essential if something is going to be called a poem, among which I' d say were a definite inner and outer design, an unassailable sense of itself as something made and not to be broken or tampered with, and a complete resistance to paraphrase. --from Martin Stannard, “The Question That Has to Be Asked,” in Stride Magazine (U. K.)

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Reprint of a note on William Wilberforce Lord

In the last century, many a poet found himself bleeding on the thorns of life planted so assiduously by Edgar Allan Poe in his guise as critic. Here's a little something written for readers of poetry in Cooperstown, but perhaps interesting elsewhere as well. William Wilberforce Lord was a poet of considerable fame until he fell into the clutches of Poe. Lord also has the distinction of having been rector of the Anglican church at Vicksburg during the Civil War's great Siege of Vicksburg. After poking around the web, I conclude that he must have hopped from Christ Church Cooperstown to Christ Church Vicksburg. A dangerous leap! Later on, he returned to the Village of Cooperstown. He is buried in a plot overlooking the lake, not in the Christ Church graveyard.

LORD OF POETRY; OR, POE’S CONTEMPTIBLE IMPUDENT?

Curious about the former rector of Christ Church, William Wilberforce Lord, the poet pilloried by Edgar Allen Poe? It’s said that Father Lord dared to parody Poe’s “The Raven.” Poe proclaimed the following in print: “The fact is, the only remarkable things about Mr, Lord’s compositions, are their remarkable conceit, ignorance, impudence, platitude, stupidity, and bombast. We do not know, in America, a versifier so utterly wretched and contemptible.” If you would like to see for yourself, hie yourself to the web and visit http://www.bartleby.com/248/index14.html, where you may find a number of Lord's poems. (The headings on individual poems confuse him with the famous abolitionist, William Wilberforce.)

If you like poetry, you may find something familiar here, because the poems are workmanlike pieces with a sensibility that evokes the English Romantics and our own William Cullen Bryant. The little wandering blind girl at “The Brook” harks back to Wordsworth’s rural figures and the love of the English Romantics for the rural and common man. “Worship,” with its mingling of faith and wild, romantic nature, could be a page out of Bryant: “For them, O God, who only worship Thee / In fanes whose fretted roofs shut out the heavens, Let organs breathe, and chorded psalteries sound: But let my voice rise with the mingled noise / Of winds and waters;--winds that in the sedge, / And grass, and ripening grain, while nature sleeps / Practise, in whispered music, soft and low / Their sweet inventions, and then sing them loud / In caves, and on the hills, and in the woods.” Like the Romantics, he is a devotee of all the arts; his narrator listens in rapture to a great singer as “a cloud of sound, / Rising in wreaths, upon the air around / Lingered like incense from a censer thrown.”

Clearly he sought to place himself on the highest ground as a poet, and his “Ode to England” praises a pantheon of contemporary poets—among whom he no doubt wished to place himself. Here is the close of his passage on the death of Keats: “Into that gulf of dark and nameless dread, / Star-like he fell, but a wide splendor shed / Through its deep night, that kindled as he fell.” Though he invokes Keats as Endymion, beloved of the Moon, in a reference to one of Keats’ own poems, Lord’s blank verse conjures up the blank verse of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Satan falling like a star from heaven—a “twist” on the former image, and an expression of lost heavenly power.

Drop by www.bartleby.com and take a look. You’ll see what appears to have been Lord’s most famous poem, “On the Defeat of a Great Man,” and some creditable verse, by no means deserving of Poe’s gleeful roast. Unfortunately, Lord the poet did not manage to be the defeated “Great Man” whose enemies “fall who give him not / The honor here that suits his future name” and “towers aloft.” Achievement in poetry has never been doled out on the basis of personal goodness and contentment, and the anxious, fevered Poe sits in that pantheon where Lord wished to sit. Yet Lord was as much or more what Hawthorne called “the artist of the beautiful,” the maker who has snatched at and seized high goals, and who may look on the destruction of his art with equanimity.

The palace aphorisms: poetry series, nos. 46-50

aphorism no. 50

Let a star lead you willy-nilly until the poem is born.

for October 14

aphorism no. 49

The poem is a pomegranate of jewels and blood.

for October 13

aphorism no. 48

The poem is a question from the Sphinx and a mortal reply.

for October 12

aphorism no. 47

Poems have dwindled like the fairies, who were once fair and tall and swift, the shakers and ravishers of mortals.

for October 11, birthday of R, who has seen fairies and left them gifts

aphorism no. 46

The poet is born like Minerva from Zeus’s head—from the puckered, scarred tissue that marks the site of a grievous childhood wound.

for October 10, 2006

The picture above is by and of Michael Fäs of Aesch, Switzerland with "a fireball in [his] hand." Courtesy of the photographer and www.sxc.hu/.

Palace Aphorisms: poetry, continued

New news posted below.

aphorism no. 45

When the poem is a star, a stone will burn.

9 October

aphorism no. 44

The poem is lock, key, door, and vista.

8 October

aphorism no. 43

On a table in the hall of tears, the poem says Eat Me, Drink Me, Be Whole.

7 October

aphorism no. 42

The key has slipped into the lock and turned, and now the long-desired door is about to open: that is the poem.

6 October

aphorism no. 41

The poet who writes in the rose room is waist deep in pollen.

6 October

Poetry aphorisms extend to the post below.

NEWS:

Received my two Firebird paperbacks of The Curse of the Raven Mocker and Ingledove yesterday, and Renato's covers look lovely. That's my first "little" paperback, and they are quite tidy and cute. From a new Locus review: "The newest original anthology from Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Salon Fantastique, could well be their best so far. This may in part emanate from the absence of a central theme: the book is intended simply as a gathering of fine fantasists, a meeting of the minds like the literary salons of 17th and 18th century France, where intellectuals of all classes could confer freely, exchanging ideas and establishing standards. Liberated from any imposed agenda, the contributors have excelled themselves; but given the huge innate strength of the line-up, they might well have done so in any case. / "Three stories stand out especially. Marly Youmans’s 'Concealment Shoes' is a beautifully written evocation of adventurous childhood, in which a small boy and his elder sister find moving into a big new house a marvelous experience, tempered by the discovery that hostile spirits are trying to infiltrate the abode. The parents carelessly remove the mansion’s wards; nasty apparitions issue from the chimneys; the battle against them is startlingly vivid."

Since there will be 14 people running amuck in my earthly castle this weekend, I'm doing a little time travel and posting "ahead." Yes, you may feel sorry for me, pushing my little broom and mop.

The sketch of "Manju reading" is courtesy of Laura Murphy Frankstone and Laurelines, http://laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/.

The Palace Aphorisms: poetry series

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Poetry
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aphorism no. 40

Never discourage a young person from poetry; it is utterly impossible to say how the disasters and fires of youth may transform and temper the metal between the ages of 15 and 30.

5 October

aphorism no. 39

A brain exceptional in all ways is a hindrance to a poet. Likewise, a poet may be a hindrance and a stumbling block to a brain exceptional in all ways.

5 October

aphorism no. 38

Lyric poetry is the most hopeful of arts because it aims at making syllables of air and a lost moment last.

October 4

aphorism no. 37

Poetry is the lover who is followed and never caught, despite repeted satiation.

October 4

aphorism no. 36

When the poem is a labyrinth, the poet must be lost and spin her own thread.

3 October

aphorism no. 35,
or an uncomfortable fact

Poets in the academy convert poems from their natural, wild state of sublime uselessness into something bourgeois and useful—that is, into a mere publication credential in a list that will contribute to promotion, merit pay, tenure, and desirable middle-class commodities.

3 October

aphorism no. 34

Don't be afraid of saying in a poem what you do not yet understand.

3 October

aphorism no. 33

To shred passable prose into bad poetry is a hobby of many contemporaries who are called poets, yet were not called to be poets.

3 October 2006

aphorism no. 32

Poetry never matches the burning dream in the head. No match will light that dream, but a dream may light the match.

2 October 2006

aphorism no. 31

The best poetry casts the shadow of a further secret.

1 October 2006

Note: The week's aphorisms will be gathered into a 'collection,' as is appropriate to the subject--an aphorism per day, all under the heading above. And this one is going up early, since October 1st falls on the weekend--and time is strange at the palace.

Slide down the page for the remainder of the Cooperstown aphorisms ('fat people & tourists' series).

* * * * * * *
The glass bowl of pencil shavings is courtesy of Laura Murphy Frankstone of http://laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/. Currently she is sketching, painting, and eating well in Paris.

The photograph of streaming light and rosy leaves is by Francis Valadj of Jacareí, Brazil. Courtesy of the photographer and www.sxc.hu/.

The Palace Aphorisms: more Cooperstown maxims

Eminently Tasteless Illustration: A little boy, age 3, at a baseball game. Somehow I thought it suited today's Cooperstown aphorisms. Courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ and photographer Jessie Boudiette of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Ah, Cooperstown!

There are many things about Cooperstown that are quite magical, and there are many worth laughing about--better to laugh than to steam! These aphorisms are a mix of the silly and the satiric, and they mark the end of the "fat people & tourists" series. You'll find mostly tourists.

Next up: poetry.

no. 19

Maxim for my house:
No matter how old a house grows, it will never metamorphose into a museum without sprouting signage, parking, and other appurtenances.

no. 20

Another maxim for my house:
A certain percentage of tourists appears wholly incapable of differentiating a house from a museum, and is dumbfounded by the wondrous entrances and exits of human beings.

no. 21

Another maxim for my house:
At the hour of 2:00 a.m., female tourists are irresistibly drawn to my lawn and streetlamp, where they scour the black depths of purses and rid themselves of assorted trash.

Detour:

Proposed 'pick'-related signage:
Do not picnic on my lawn.
Do not pick my dadgum flowers.
Do not pick on your fellow family members or settle your family troubles under the shelter of my porch.
Do not pick my streetlamp for the illumination it may shed on the private examination of the contents of your possessions after midnight.
Do not pick my drive for your turn-around. If you do breath this rule, make sure that you miss hitting any children my considerally more than a hair's breadth (or even a hair's breath or a hare's breath. Please; just miss, okay?)
Do not open my front door and come inside.

What a lot of signs!

My children wax wrathful when certain things happen--flower-picking, particularly, and are always suggesting that I "put up a sign." All of the above have been suggested, in some version or other.

no. 22

Cooperstown maxim, apologies to Wallace Stevens:
A herd of panicked buffalo and a thundering gang of boys set loose from a baseball camp are one.

no. 23

Aphorism for the BHF:
A tourist, upon receiving the blue hand-brand of The Baseball Hall of Fame, immediately is seized by primal desire to claim territory and looks around for something to mark with fresh ink.

(At the moment, the favorite thing to destroy appears to be Ms. Jane Clark’s on-loan cow sculpture, insufficiently defended by the gentle restraints of stanchions and velvet ropes.)

no. 24

Maxim for Lakefront Park:
A fat man is an almighty enemy to the folding chair.

no. 25

Maxim learned over the years of gardening:
Black irises simply cannot survive the predations of tourist children.

no. 26

Aphorism for the Baseball Hall of Fame:
A small boy tourist with a miniature souvenir baseball bat from The Baseball Hall of Fame will always look for an exhibit worth pounding on.

no. 27

Aphorism for Dale Petroskey, who keeps his sense of humor:
It is surprising to us all how much damage a miniature baseball bat can do.

no. 28

Aphorism for Main Street:
The addition of a Brooklyn or Jersey accent to a run-of-the-mill shout fest from a tourist family lends a curious piquancy to the local scene.

no. 29

Writers all:
The Baseball Hall of Fame tourists tend to be the kind of storytellers who mediate their own reality by narrating it, play by play, into a cell phone. Whether this is Borg-ian or Borges-ian, nobody knows.

no. 30

Jailbird frolics:
Cooperstown is the only small town in America where a man can feel comfortable, easy, and accepted by general sidewalk society while wearing head-to-toe black and white stripes with a number on his back.

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October's aphorisms

October's
aphorisms
will be
on the subject
of "poets
& poetry."

I imagine that they will be a bit more ruthless than the "fat people & tourists" aphorisms of September--fewer soap bubbles and hunters with popguns. I am quite willing to be tough about my own major concerns.

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Skip down to the 19th for the previous batch of aphorisms.

Next week I'll finish up this series with Cooperstown tourist maxims that feature small boys with baseball bats, howler monkey parents, and general mayhem... We are not quite as civilized as we used to be in these parts, despite the ameliorating effects of Opera, the Fenimore Museum, and other local culture spots.

Lately I've had an increase in visitors but a decrease in comments, and it has been suggested via a number of amusing emails that nobody wants to be a Fat People! Or person. Or anything like that. As a Southerner, I am riddled with guilt any time I am tactless, or any time that I might possibly be tactless or may have been seen as tactless, etc. etc. and so interminably on. It's my genetic burden. I am usually quite tactful, but was driven on to the topic by the Imp of the Perverse, and I had a dratted good time, too.

In the interests of a peaceable Palace, perhaps we should resolve to lose 10 lbs. and go on to poetry. We can safely laugh at poets, because there are so few of them out there, right?

Or perhaps not. Maybe we are all poets.

We shall see.

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Here is more Jeffery Beam,
from http://www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam/.


Shedding the Old Self

In silence's adored and silkened embrace
I shed my body its skin a fragrant
papershell a narcissus
I shed it again and again
under the old motherly moon
I shed it in dreaming's womb
and always it remains the same
wrinkled and smooth

Soft body of sunflowers
body of iris blue and yellow body
you taste and smell of olives
and geraniums
With the strength of stones
you settle on the earth

And I shed you
like light on a mountain
under the sea
or a robe fresh woven
falling gracefully to the ground

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The charming Boutique de Poésie, photograph taken in the town of in the town of St. Pierre d'Oléron, France, is courtesy of: www.sxc.hu/ and Ulrik De Wachter of Landskouter, Flanders, Belgium (website: www.ulrik.be).

3.) The Palace Aphorisms, 16-18

Fat People & Tourists Series

no. 16

During tourist season, local hunters show a remarkable restraint.

no. 17

The fat man dreams that he is a soap bubble.

The fat woman dreams that she is a tiny seed feathered in milkweed silks, floating up toward heaven.

no. 18

A very fat tourist with a tiny toy camera around his neck comes to see sights and is one.

The milkweed photo is courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ and Loretta Humble, who lives in Malakoff, Texas and describes herself as "owner/publisher of a small weekly newspaper and Living Well, a free health/senior tabloid."

The Palace Aphorisms, 13-15

Fat People & Tourists series

no. 13

Tourists are people in shorts who can smile in unison.

Fat tourists are people in shorts who smile in unison with their knees turned together.

no. 14

Delicacy is a fat man holding a porcelain tea cup.

no. 15

A person never plumbs his genius and capacity for annoying the natives until he is made a tourist.

The picture above was taken by my husband in Istanbul this summer, when Mike and B were tourists there (yes, we are sometimes tourists, and if we eat too much, are liable to get fat--except N, who considered it a feat to break 50 lbs.); it is the underground Constantinople cistern, lost for a millenia and a half. The pillaged columns were mostly Greek, but the builders would have called themselves Roman. The cistern was 'found' when someone investigated a rumor that people living in a certain area of the city could pull up water and fish from holes in their cellars. When discovered in the late Middle Ages, it became a dumping ground for trash and bodies, but has once again been cleaned up.

The Palace Aphorisms, 11-12

Being a subset of the
Fat People & Tourists series,
having to do with the polar opposition
between Baseball Tourists
& Opera Tourists:
a peculiarly Cooperstonian subject.

no. 11

The baseball tourist is invariably fatter, louder, crueler to children, more indignant with the locals, more bursting with uncontrollable passion, more apt to bellow his family troubles to the street—altogether more operatic than the opera tourist.

no. 12

The baseball tourist has a tenuous relationship to reality; he often mistakes houses for museums, lawns for garbage cans, and gardens for his own picking-ground.

The opera tourist shudders delicately at the baseball tourist, purchases a catered picnic basket, and tidies up the opera grounds afterward.

Or, to put it on a more personal level--

The baseball tourist has a tenuous relationship to reality; he mistakes my house for a museum, my lawn for a garbage can, and my cottage garden for his own picking-ground. Etc.

Photo of Glimmerglass Opera courtesy of www.sxc.hu and Adriana Martins of Guaratinguetá, Brazil--no, my mistake. That's actually the Vienna Opera House. But Glimmerglass is quite nice in its own lake-and-rural-barn way...

The Palace Aphorisms, no. 6

series 1: Fat people & tourists

The Palace Aphorisms
no. 6:

The tourist comes to see what he has been told to see and traps a tiny portion of its soul in his little digital camera.

Rules & such for The Palace Aphorisms are here.

* * *

Photograph of a tourist by Cecilia Alvarez of Barcelona, courtesy of www.sxc.hu.

The Palace Aphorisms, series 1, nos. 3-5

Series 1: Fat people & tourists

For more about the Palace Aphorisms, see the post of August 12th.

* * *

With apologies to the Wallace Stevens of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird and The Emperor of Ice-Cream:

no. 3

The fat woman of Haddam never sees how the blackbird walks around her feet.

no. 4

A man and a woman and a blackbird are one, but a fat man is splendidly two or three.

no. 5

The ruler of the fat men is the only Emperor of Ice Cream.

The photograph "Abode of Crow" appears courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ andSteve Ford Elliott of County Clare, Ireland.

The Palace Aphorisms, series 1, no. 2

Bored?

Idle?

Too dratted lazy to read a good book?

If so, my frivolous, time-frittering friend, take a look at http://www.balloonhat.com/ for The Varieties of the Balloonhat Experience, something that may sound like William James but is not. See people from 34 countries around the world in balloon hats, the weird enterprise of Addi Somekh and Charlie Eckert, who must be wacky, wonderfully wacky.

Okay, now that that's out the way, here's the 2nd aphorism from the Tourists & Fat People series:

Inside a very fat tourist is a slim young man who longs to be a vagabond and a wastrel.

Hop one post down for the first aphorism, etc.; skip three down for more information about the Palace Aphorisms.

The Palace at 2:00 a.m. Aphorism no. 1

Aphorism 1, series 1: Tourists & fat people

A tourist is a person who does not fit in.
A fat tourist is a person who does not fit in chairs.

* * *

In comments, you may: tinker with my aphorism; offer your own aphorism; natter on about this or unrelated topics. Slide two posts down to look at the rules of the game.

Disclaimer: The Palace at 2:00 a.m. is open to people of all shapes, sizes, stripes, polkadots, patterns, colors, and so forth. The inhabitants are occasionally tourists.

Credit: The photograph, "Butt print on the beach," is by Irum Shahid of Islamabad, Pakistan, courtesy of www.sxc.hu.