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Thursday, December 31, 2015

For the coming new year






 For the coming new year

In the turn of leaf, in the play of light,
the Segre tangles shoreline growth.
Burdock, fennel, birdsfoot and vetch.
All the wintered vegetation I don’t know.
In the unrinsed water, in the reeds,
the stolen word requires some gift—
briefly prepositional, best wishes
for the coming new year.




Sunday, December 27, 2015

Season's Greetings



Happy holidays! May the coming New Year bring happiness and prosperity to all.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

"Blogging Woolf"



And now Paula Maggio has reminded us of the publication of a new book by Barbara Lounsberry on Virginia Woolf’s early diaries. Paula’s “Blogging Woolf” (link below) is very up to date and informative about Woolf’s work and ongoing writing about that extensive opus. Lounsberry’s book, Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries and the Diaries She Read, speaks of the mid-1918 to mid-1929 period. So Woolf would already have published a considerable amount, including Jacob’s Room, Mrs.Dalloway, and To the Lighthouse. As is well known (and pretty logical, for all that), Woolf used her diaries at times to try out ideas for her fiction writing. In the end she produced documents full of thought-provoking reflections on the writing process, providing great insight into the ongoing process of reading/writing. One of my favorite passages from the early diaries was written on or about Christmas Day 1904. It can be found in Mitchell A. Leaska’s A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909 (p. 215). For reasons of space (and maybe copyright), I’ll cite just part of the entry:
“Each blade of grass with a white line of frost on it.
            “The sunset makes all the air as though of melted amethyst; yellow flakes dissolve from the solid body of amethyst which is the west. Against this, standing as though in an ocean of fine air, the bare trees are deep black lines, as though drawn in Indian ink which has dried dull & indelible. The small branches & twigs make a fringe of delicate lines, each one distinctly cut against the sky. The highest tips of the branches are russet, & so is the top of the trunk, in the red light. The trees stand round in a circle, & in their midst is a kind of little stage of grass & heather-bog where it is greenest in which a pastoral play might be acted. Then the trees close together again, with pathways radiating at intervals to the open space— …”.
This of course was written prior to the period dealt with in Barbara Lounsberry’s new book. But it’s always interesting to compare, and often incredible surprises come out, looking at ways in which writers deal with similar ideas at different times in their careers. Intervals to the open space. Link >>>