Fantastic Flying Books!

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.   Now available.  It's just AWESOME!

And it won the Academy Award for best animated short!

It's all about how books and stories can heal and be curative.   My life philosophy!

Enjoy this.  You are in for a treat.

British Library Assembles Famous Love Letters

I just love the British Library (though I prefer the old one with the museum, with the old reading room).

Now they have collected famous love letters in this book Love Letters 2000 Years of Romance.

And The Daily Beast excerpts a good variety in this essay, 'Love Letters' Anthologizes 2,000 Years of Passion Put to Paper.   Love letters may be becoming extinct, but I still write them.  I love them.  

These excerpts are fascinating to read as a reminder that love, longing, pain, jealousy remains the same whether now or 2,000 years ago.  The human condition remains.

3 Year Old Recite Billy Collins Poetry

I learn about this on NPR - with this story, Love of Words Brings Child, Poet Together, which concludes with -

For the poet to affect a reader — well, that's the point. But for a reader to affect the poet, it took a small exceptional boy.

Indeed.

Here is the video of the astonishing child reciting our former US Poet Laureate.   It made me teary!  I love poetry and I love children!

You can follow along with the text of the poem from Poets.org here.

Books Come Alive at Night!

This reminds me of the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which is the best iPad app ever as well as a short film.  

Enjoy!  It's just a delight.

BBC Adapting Birdsong for Television!

Birdsong was one of my favorite books and one of my mom's favorites too.  Not sure about the casting, but regardless I am excited.   Here is the full notice from the BBC:

Eddie Redmayne (My Week With Marilyn, Richard II) and Clemence Poesy (28 Days Later, Harry Potter) star as the passionate young lovers Stephen and Isabelle, brought together by love and torn apart by the First World War, in BBC One's adaptation of Sebastian Faulks's modern classic, Birdsong.
Adapted by Bafta award-winning Abi Morgan (The Hour, Iron Lady), the two parter spans the decade of the First World War, telling the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who, in 1910, arrives in Amiens, Northern France, to stay with the Azaire family and falls desperately in love with Isabelle Azaire.
They begin an illicit and all-consuming affair, with huge consequences for them both. Years later in 1916, Stephen finds himself serving on the Western Front in the very area where he experienced his great love. As he battles amidst the horror of the trenches he meets Jack Firebrace, a tunneller who unexpectedly helps him endure the ravages of war and enables him to make peace with his feelings for Isabelle, who he is destined to meet again.
Eddie Redmayne stars as Stephen Wraysford, Clemence Poesy is Isabelle Azaire, Joseph Mawle is Jack Firebrace, Richard Madden is Weir, Laurent Lafitte is Rene Azaire, Matthew Goode is Captain Gray, Anthony Andrews is Colonel Barclay and Marie Josee Croze is Jeanne Fourmentier.

HBO to Make Wolf Hall Mini-Series!

My mom LOVED Hilary Mantel.  She was one of her favorite authors and especially loved A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel about the French Revolution.

Well, now the news that HBO is going to be filming the Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall: A Novel .  I was so excited I scream aloud!  Gee, I wish mom had lived to read that book and to enjoy what HBO will do with it.

I learned of this from the culture blog Alyssa at Think Progress, which is worth checking out on a regular basis.

Here is what Alyssa wrote:

It’s a marvelous novel of friendship, whether it’s Cromwell and Wolsey or Cromwell and Imperial diplomat Eustace Chapuys. I don’t really know how a miniseries will capture the Cabinet of Wonders-like effect of the novel, which is one of the most effective evocations of a historic worldview I’ve ever read. But I’m glad it’s not getting reduced to a movie, and that some serious writerly fire-power will be behind it. HBO’s movie team has been wildly on their game lately, so I can’t wait to see what they do with this.

Me neither!

Poetry about Michael

These words, by Maya Angelou, a poem entitled "We Had Him" were relayed by Queen Latifah. Very moving.

We Had Him by Maya Angelou

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace. Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon. In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time. No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.

And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.

In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

Brooke Shield quoted The Little Prince -

"What moves me so deeply about this sleeping little prince is his loyalty to a flower--the image of a rose shining within him like a flame within a lamp, even when he's asleep... And I realized he was even more fragile than I thought. Lamps must be protected. A gust of wind can blow them out."

And -

Eyes are blind, you have to look with the heart, what is most important is invisible.

Brooke did the best at humanizing Michael Jackson.

He (and Brooke) were came of age when I did - in the 80s. Not just his music, yes, that. But his dance moves. His magic moves greatly influenced the choreography I danced and performed as a teenager ; I see it now in the videos. And later too, just for fun, on the Mug floor. He was of my age.

Now he belongs to the ages.

Obama the Writer Celebrates Artists

I am loving the concert - all music I know - which is a rarity.  Forrest Whitaker just read these very lines from Faulkner's banquet speech when he accepted the Noble Prize.  

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I read elsewhere that Faulkner was drunk, had to be lied to in order to get him on the plane to Norway, he just didn't want to go.

Thank goodness he did.

Can read the full text here.

Thank goodness Obama is an artist and a writer himself.  A new day.

New Year Poems

Mild is the Parting Year
BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have soothed it all.

Burning the Old Year
BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Those British Men, hmmmmm......

I've always had an affinity for British men, but this was not among the reasons why.  I love British history and the BBC.   Not much of a jump then to appreciate the wit and intelligence and strength of British men.  And they come up with all these interesting euphemisms for sex and hooking up - snogging, rogering, bagging off, making the beast with two backs (that later is from Othello).   

Why do I think this headline funny?   It seems somehow counter-intuitive to learn that Britain is the most promiscuous of industrialized nations.  They can talk and write about it fine (sorry Updike) but to in fact be described as such beggars belief.   (Brits awarded that prize to Updike, figures)

BRITISH men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big western industrial nation, researchers have found. In an international index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes to casual sex, Britain comes out ahead of Australia, the US, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. 

The researches chalk it up mostly to British women loosening up.  Hmmmm.   

On November 29th

Poetry expresses the inexpressible. So, In honor of the anniversary of my mother's death, two years ago today -

Ash Wednesday
T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.



III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the
springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking,
wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but
spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.



O my people, what have I done unto thee.


Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose
thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who
wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose


O my people, what have I done unto thee.


Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.



O my people.



VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the
garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Poetry in Honor of Veteran's Day

In honor of Veteran's Day today - November 11th - the anniversary of the end of World War I (1918), I post two of my favorite poets from that era - Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sasson, whom I came to know through Pat Barker's terrific triology - Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drowing-down of blinds.

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and pictures shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train. 

Lines from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence really resonate:

It opens:

TO see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

And concludes:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,	120
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie	125
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;	130
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Spots of Time

"One of my fascinations about my own life is that every now and then I see a thing that unravels as if an artist had made it. It has a beautiful design and shape and rhythm. I don't go as far as some of my friends, who think that their whole life has been one great design. When I look back on my life I don't see it as a design to an end. What I do see is that in my life there have been a fair number of moments which appear almost as if an artist had made them. Wordsworth, who affected me a great deal, had this theory about what he calls 'spots of time' that seem almost divinely shaped,"

- Norman MacLean.

Erotic Poetry From Movie, Silk

My beloved
Do not be afraid
Do not move.
Do not speak.

No one will see us.
Stay as you are.
I want to look at you.
We have tonight to ourselves and I want to look at you.

Your body for me
Your skin
Your lips
Close your eyes.
No one can see us.
And I am here at your side.

Do you feel me?

When I touch you for the first time, it will be with my lips.

You will feel the warmth
But you will not know where.

Perhaps it will be on your eyes.
I will press my mouth to your eyes and you will feel the warmth.

Open your eyes now, my beloved.
Look at me.
Your eyes on my breast.
Your arms lifting me.
Letting me slide on to you.
My faint cry
Your body quivering.

There is no end to it.
Don't you see?

You will forever be throwing your head back.
I will forever be shaking off my tears.

This moment had to be.
This moment is.
And this moment will continue from now until forever.

We shall not see one another again.
What were meant to do we have done.
Believe me, my love, we have done it forever.

Preserve your life out of my reach.

And if it serves your happiness do not hesitate for a moment to forget this woman, who now says, without a trace of regret, farewell.

Kerouac's Writing Tips

Great list I'd never seen before from Jack Kerouac - Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.

Some of my favorite tips -

1. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
   
2. Believe in the holy contour of life
   
3. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
   
4. Bookmovie is the movie in words,the visual American form
5. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
   
6. Accept loss forever
   
7. Submissive to everything, open, listening
   
8. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
   
9. Be in love with yr life
   
10. Something that you feel will find its own form
    
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

Poem For the Day: One Hundred Love Sonnets

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

by Pablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

For an NPR interview on Neruda, click here.

On Brideshead Revisited Revisited

A nice piece from Slate on the old series, in the wake of the new film. It recommends the old series and I'm taking it with me to FL.

I watched it when I was 15 and the experience was one that permeated my pours. Like many, I then began an anglophile, fell in perpetual love with Anthony Andrews (and became easy prey to anyone with the same eyes), and even bought a teddy bear at Vassar whom I named Aloysius too.

In 1988, I made a pilgrimage to Oxford and to Castle Howard. What I remember about the former was mowing down a pedestration when I was on my bike (that wrong side of the street thing) and of the latter, the expansive lawn with expansive peacocks.

When I worked at PBS for 4 years (also probably can chalked up to Brideshead), I learned that no one still knows how much that series cost.

But thank goodness it was made. It's part of who I am.

And, yeah, I'll probably still see the new film, if only for the sights and sounds of England and Venice in that period between the wars.

British Writers' Writing Rooms - Fascinating!

I ADORED this piece from the British paper, The Guardian. It's a survey and collection of writers' writing rooms. My Mom would have loved this. There's a picture and then a paragraph or two of commentary about the space and/or writing habits. It's really fascinating.

Here are the writers I knew of and whose rooms I checked out:
Charles Darwin, Virginia Wolfe, Rudyard Kipling (espeically interesting having just watched the Masterpiece drama, My Boy Jack), George Bernard Shaw, Roald Dahl, Simon Gray, Martin Amis (very amusing, of course), Seamus Heany, Alain de Botton (I actually had an email correspondence with him, long ago - I love his books), Margaret Drabble, Ian Rankin, Antonia Fraser, David Lodge, AS Byatt (sister of Drabble), Hillary Mantel, Sarah Waters, David Hare.

A Change of Climate by Hillary Mantel was one of two of my mother's favorite novels (The other is The Red and the Black by Stendahl). She liked a lot of Mantel's books. Mantel excerpts her new novel on Cromwell in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.

What I noticed were two things:

1. how ordinary the rooms are
2. how many of their desks face out a window

It struck me I situated and designed my own writing space well, by comparision. (One of the above has a bed for naps. I do too). I looked at these and thought I'd rather write in my own space. I suppose all writers feel that way - that their space is lovely. To me, mine seemed luxurious by comparision, so I suppose I have no excuse. I did yesterday rearrange the furniture so that my desk also faced out the window which has a lovely southern exposure. We'll see if the morning sun with enliven creativity.

My favorite is hard to calibrate - some are favorite because the commentary is funny (Lodge, Amis, and Botton). Others are intrigue and are favored because they contrast so with what I conjure the mind of the writing I know. How does that mind function in that room? (Byatt, Drabble, Fraser). Waters' was positively depraved. There wasn't one where I responded, ahh of course - such a place of course inspires such writing.

So interesting what the imagination creates about the object of admiration....

The assembly and interviews were clearly a lot of work. Thank you Guardian! (Imagine a US paper thinking such an exercise would be of interest to their readers).

Another Poem - Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

thought to be written by Mary Elizabeth Frye