October’s poem
Previewing Autobiography of Red by this year’s Nobel laureate, Anne Carson.
Spare, ironical, mostly beyond me.
Reprints Emily Dickinson’s no. 1748:
Carson – a Canadian – moved to Iceland, obtained citizenship there, and has been painting volcanoes.
She is the second Icelandic laureate. Halldór Laxness was first.
I like to think the Nobel judges viewed (or couldn’t avoid hearing about) Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, read Emily Wilson’s grousing about that movie, and decided, Let’s reward a more elliptical classicist.
The writer I know best who writes like Carson is Maggie Nelson.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
R.I.P. Mike Ditka.
Spare, ironical, mostly beyond me.
Reprints Emily Dickinson’s no. 1748:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan –
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Carson – a Canadian – moved to Iceland, obtained citizenship there, and has been painting volcanoes.
She is the second Icelandic laureate. Halldór Laxness was first.
I like to think the Nobel judges viewed (or couldn’t avoid hearing about) Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, read Emily Wilson’s grousing about that movie, and decided, Let’s reward a more elliptical classicist.
The writer I know best who writes like Carson is Maggie Nelson.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
R.I.P. Mike Ditka.