Rereading

Lately I’ve been rereading Yeats, and once again thinking that there is no reading like rereading. I ought to do even more rereading, particularly of current books, because it is in rereading that a story or poem reveals itself—and tells us the extent of its merit. Most reviewers know only the first cursory passage through a work when they pen a review; a reader can know more. Though life is short and art long, we ought to reread often, because it is there that we “dive,” as Melville would say.

I’m finding that Yeats stands up. He manages to speak to me differently at every age. Right now I am touched by some of the youthful poems—they speak so eloquently of dreamy youth and aspiration—but it is the power of the old man Yeats that shakes me, and his determination to live to the end, to make first-rate art until the end of making. His creation of an alternate universe for himself seems far more sensible as a poet’s tool than it did when I was younger.

While I tend to read a lot of older writers again and again and again—a thing that began with my first-grade obsession with Lewis Carroll—there are few contemporaries that I’ve treated that way. If I try to pick out what books and stories and poems by living authors that I’ve read for a second or third time in the course of 2006, I can’t recall very many: poems in Catching Light by Kathryn Stripling Byer and Philokalia by Scott Cairns; Christopher Logue’s War Music; various essays in Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers; the story, “Creation,” by Jeffrey Ford; the delicious fairy tale, Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, as well as a Chrestomanci story or two; a translation of Leena Krohn’s Tainaron: Mail from Another City; various poems and stories by writers who are penpals. No doubt there are others that don’t immediately jump to mind, but what I remember is more first-time reads. Reading to children makes me reread living authors, I see, and it seems that I may reread poetry by them more often than prose.

Perhaps next year I should reread more books by living authors. And it would be interesting to collect a list of what other people find satisfying as rereads by contemporaries . . .

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The photograph is courtesy of www.sxc.hu and Nils Thingvall of Orlando, Florida. “Readers Under Diamonds” is a picture of "readers in the Seattle Public Library under an expanse of diamond-shaped windows."

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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.

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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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Sticks

Sticks.
Favorite silly quote of the week
My children are 1/16th Akwesasne Mohawk, and so they have a special interest when Iroquois pop up in schoolwork.
The Daddy, asking study sheet questions: How did joining the Iroquois League help the Mohawks?
N, age 9: Better technology.
D: How’s that?
N: Sharper sticks.
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The Akwesasne Mohawks did not join. They were fire-spirited Iroquois, once upon a time, and did not care for nation-building. But they liked sharp sticks.

More sticks.
One of my favorite North Carolina artists is the withie-man, Patrick Dougherty. Evidently he was inspired by the forests around Southern Pines, where he grew up. They strike me as very "sticky" places. I've seen some of his creations in Raleigh and Carrboro. I just had a pleasant little fantasy that he came to visit and made us a little castle and village in the backyard. Then there would be four castles in Cooperstown. If you don’t know his magic cities and withie gyres and leaning towers, go indulge your wanderlust. The picture is borrowed from his sticky site, www.stickwork.net/.

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Sticks to come.
Next week the gigantic ash tree comes down. Sad for the ash, sad for the dratted old pocketbook. I’ll have to write a poem for the extravagant creature. Three times it dropped an enormous branch on the lawn, one filling up the entire back yard. A fourth time it speared a large branch through the driver’s side of the windshield, about thirty seconds after I paused at the back door, thinking the day a bit windy. Life is so full of near misses: I'm very glad not to have been an ash-tree's shish kabob. I’d like to make a Dougherty house out of its no-doubt astonishing remains, but I’m only 5’3” and have nary a stick of scaffolding.

By stick, by stone, I am surprised!
I have been elevated! Poet and web-dreamer Michael Burch (another Southerner, by the by) wrote me that I am now not only a “Spotlight” poet for the month but also one of the permanently “featured” poets on The HyperTexts. Thanks, Mike!

Last stick
N’s silly 4th-grade joke, acquired at summer camp: What’s brown and sticky? A stick.