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Hardy’s Proud Songsters

May 5, 2008 – 7:52 am

Proud Songster by Thomas Hardy

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

You may know Thomas Hardy as an English novelist (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d’Ubervilles) yet he saw himself as a poet. His themes were often about disappointment in life and love though thankfully many of his poems, such as this one, are about his love of nature. We had a glorious sunny weekend outside, the pine air rich with the sounds of robins, wrens, and white-crowned sparrows. My husband has counted 80 different species of birds on our property and thinks this is the best time of year to see and hear them. Their sounds are proud, as Hardy says, as though they have no cares in the world.

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Weekend Words: The Sunday Newspaper

May 4, 2008 – 9:48 am

Although 59 million newspapers are sold in this country each Sunday, overall circulation has declined. People are spending less time with newspapers, and fewer people are developing the newspaper habit in the first place. A recent article from the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported that editors are evolving by making papers more niche oriented and enhancing their online offerings. I read The New York Times online everyday – but on Sundays, the screen simply can’t compete with a good mug of coffee and the Sunday newspaper. It is a lazy luxury we even kept up when our sweetpeas were infants, laying them on the sofa between us. I don’t have much downtime in my week but this is one habit I won’t let decline in our house.

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Sister Wendy’s writings on Matisse

May 2, 2008 – 8:29 am

I have long loved the color and passion found in the art of Henri Matisse. In Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting, she writes that Matisse “produced some of the most powerful beauty ever painted.” Sister Wendy explains that this 20th century master found serenity in his art.

“He spoke of his art as being like ‘a good armchair’ – a ludicrously inept comparison for such a brilliant man – but his art was a respite, a reprieve, a comfort to him.”

Sister Wendy became an unlikely celebrity in the 1990’s when she produced a series of art histories for public television. If you didn’t catch her, she is quite knowledgeable and funny. Enthusiasm for art shines through in this Carmelite nun’s writing. I’m happy to sit in my armchair looking at the brilliance of Matisse.

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Paul Newman’s "vision"

May 1, 2008 – 9:15 am

Let’s start off May with a laugh.

“I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals. “

Do you ever feel this way? Extra points to those who know who said this — Butch Cassidy. Paul Newman utters these words and other witty sentences in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The screen play about these Western icons was written by William Goldman and sold for a mere $400,000. Some books are “read-agains” and I think this classic 1969 movie is a “see again.”

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Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us

April 30, 2008 – 8:12 am

Here I am living in the middle of a pine forest reading The New York Times Sunday Book Review and I realize the author is coming to speak at “my” local book store. Sheila Weller is speaking about Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation at Paulina Springs Books in May. Weller’s book explores how these three musicians set aside expectations of what women should do and blazed new paths. She writes that when King was a young mother she wrote the hit Will You Love Me Tomorrow with her husband which was about a shocking subject.

“In 1956 girls weren’t agents of their sexuality, much less gamblers with it.”

How lucky to be in a small town which attracts well-known authors!

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Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style

April 29, 2008 – 7:53 am

It is hard to ignore the many political columnists striving to make their points about the current presidential race. What makes a powerful essay? I go to my favorite handbook for writers, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

“If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete.”

Clearly, this separates logical arguments from rants. Elements goes on to say, “In exposition and in argument, the writer must likewise never lose hold upon the concrete; and even when he is dealing with general principles, he must furnish particular instances of their application.”

We can probably all agree, this race is never dull. But in the excitement, I see emotion carrying even mainstream columnists to overreach logical arguments to the personal. A re-reading of this classic should get writers back to the vivid from the vague.

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P. G. Wodehouse & the Impeccable Jeeves

April 28, 2008 – 8:19 am

One morning, an agency sends over a potential new valet to the dim English gentleman Bertie Wooster after a late night with the lads. Ever resourceful, Jeeves whips up a conncoction to help his head.

“For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.”

Wooster hires Jeeves on the spot and thus begins P.G. Wodehouse’s many stories on the antics of Bertie and how Jeeves saves the day. I’ve enjoyed these appealing stories, full of British humor and wit, for years. I even named my tabby cat Jeeves because I thought it was the closest I’d ever come to having a butler. Wodehouse’s top-notch writing quality shines through in these amusing stories, though as Wodehouse suggests himself not everyone thinks so.

“I go in for what is known in the trade as ‘light writing’ and those who do that – humorists they are sometimes called – are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.”

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Weekend Words: PEN/Faulkner Award

April 26, 2008 – 8:34 am

When searching for a new book to read, I’m often swayed by it being given a Booker, a Pulitzer or other award. But what do literary awards really mean? In the case of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, it is the largest peer-juried award in the United States. This year more than 300 works were submitted and the winner is Kate Christensen’s The Great Man. Christensen will be honored with $15,000 at a ceremony next month. Past Faulkner winners which I’ve also blogged about are David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.

The PEN/Faulkner was founded by writers in 1980, and named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to create an award for young writers, and PEN, the international writers’ organization. In addition to the annual award, the foundation also promotes a love of literature through a reading series and school programs.

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Hailstones and Halibut Bones

April 25, 2008 – 7:34 am

What is Yellow?

Yellow is the color of the sun
The feeling of fun
The yolk of an egg
A duck’s bill
A canary bird
And a daffodil.

I remember this book of poetry from my childhood. Written by Mary O’Neill and titled Hailstones and Halibut Bones, it features poems about twelve colors. O’Neill captures the things, smells, sounds and feelings associated with colors. For the red poem she writes, “Red is a hotness you get inside when you’re embarrassed and want to hide.” In her gray poem O’Neill writes, “It’s fog and smog, fine print and lint, it’s the hush and the bubbling of oatmeal mush.” As a child, I would close my eyes and wonder if I would know the color if I had never seen it before. The classic from 1961 was re-published and now can be found more easily. My kids love this book.

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Nikita Lalwani’s Gifted

April 24, 2008 – 9:40 am

“He had taken her out of the rich bustle of her world: interrupted the round stretchings of chapattis, the powdery rainbow of her spices, and punctured her pride at exactly seven thirty each evening, forcing her to sit down at their hobbling plastic table, and run through the events of the day.”

I have high hopes for this book I just began. It’s the first novel by writer Nikita Lalwani who received her MA in creative writing at Bath Spa University (which sounds like a luxurious place to study!). Lalwani’s story in Gifted is about a young girl named Rumi whose Indian parents emigrated to England after an arranged marriage. The parents push for Rumi, who is a genius at math, to be the youngest student accepted at Oxford University.

In this sentence, the bride attempts to fit in to life in her new country. Lalwani contrasts the colorful spices with the cheap plastic table to show us how much this woman has lost when her roots from home were severed. Like any parents, they want the best for their daughter but that deep desire is made more intense by trying to “make it” in a new country. Reviews of this debut novel have called it “witty” and a “charming rite-of-passage.” Can’t wait to read more…

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