Sunday, February 11, 2007
The Best Thing About Blogging...
... is meeting people like Frank Wilson, literary editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and, of course, vice-president of the Failed Intellectuals Society. A few weeks ago I posted about John Ashbery, a great poet. Noticing this, Frank asked me to review his latest collection, A Worldly Country for the Inquirer. The review is published today. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I find this particular fruit of the blog immensely satisfying. Thanks, Frank.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
You're quite welcome, Bryan. Getting to know you has also been for me one of the joys born of blogging.
ReplyDeleteAshbery is all well and good, but what about my beard analogy? Now that was poetic genius. And useful in the struggle which is more important.
ReplyDelete"Remember me to the zithers
ReplyDeleteand their friends, the ondes martenot."
Sorry to intrude with more Karl, but did you know that Marx did actually write quite a bit of poetry, and some of it not perhaos what one would expect? The following from Nidler:
ReplyDelete"Hellish evaporations rise and fill my brains,
Until I will go mad and my heart will not change dramatically.
See this sword?
The King of darkness
sold it to me."
"I have lost heaven,
And know that for sure.
My soul, once faithful to God,
Now is destined for hell."
Another odd line
"I long to take vengeance on the One Who rules from above."
And from "Conjuration of falling into despair."
"I'll set up my throne above,
Cold and terrible will be the peak of it.
Superstitious trembling is at its base,
Master - most black agony.
The one who will look with healthy looks,
Will turn away, turn pale and deadly mute.
Possessed by blind and cold deathness,
will prepare a tomb with his happiness."
Hopefully the posting of this not too intrusive, but not quite consistent with what one would expect from the materialistic atheist we all know and love.
I have been trying to relax with Ashbery, but he's not easy company. I'm tempted to just read some poems without thinking - to enjoy the language. Whenever I have read poetry in the past (and I have not read very much) I have been tempted in this way. I have experienced this occasionally with novels too. One of my favourite authors is John Banville. I'm tempted to do the same with him sometimes, because he writes so damn well. I will persevere with Ashbery.
ReplyDeleteIn discovering Frank, you have encountered the Sir Galahad of the Blogosphere. I've so much enjoyed getting to know him in my year of blogging.
ReplyDeleteFor me the joys of blogging are reading and learning everything. Challenging the prejudices within others and ourselves is so easily done on a blog. Learning to develop a thicker skin when criticism is bourne out of ignorance has been a skill I have recently aquired. Blogging - invaluable in many ways.
ReplyDelete