“to paper my wall with rejection slips”: W.S. Merwin’s “Berryman”

November 12, 2015November 12, 2015 / Carolyn O / 12 Comments

Photo by Viktor Jakovlev via Unsplash

I don’t write much about my non-blog, non-job-related writing for a variety of reasons. One is that there’s precious little time for that writing, so writing about it seems like a waste of that time. Another is that I get a great many rejections. Six in a week? Been there.Three in one day? Yep. Two rejections (from different magazines) in two minutes? Yes, it’s possible.

This is, as you might suspect, discouraging.

Plenty of articles, lists, and even whole magazines are dedicated to encouraging and advising writers, both new and seasoned, in the face of almost certain rejection. I sample these prescriptions for perseverance occasionally, but the best I have ever found is a poem (surprise? probably not).

In “Berryman,” poet W. S. Merwin (he’s prolific, but most likely you’ve encountered his translations of Neruda) describes the advice John Berryman (most famous for The Dream Songs) gave him as a young writer. I love the whole poem, but especially these lines:

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips

and the closing two stanzas:

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don’t write

And there you have it.

“Come, then, domestic Muse”: Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s “Washing Day”

November 5, 2015November 7, 2015 / Carolyn O / 7 Comments

Image courtesy of winnond at freedigitalphotos.net

Recently, a certain small acquaintance of mine left a tissue in a pair of pants that went into the wash, with predictable results. As I was grumpily separating flecks of tissue from every other item of clothing, it occurred to me that I should really be feeling gratitude for doing this in the comfort of our apartment kitchen, rather than in a laundromat I walked to, child in tow, and then sent a mental thank-you note to the parents and grandparents who have done and still do laundry in much less convenient situations.

I imagine that a laundromat would have looked pretty great to Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825). I just came across her often-hilarious poem “Washing Day,” about the household disruption occasioned by the day when all the washing was done (and heavens forbid that it rained). For this domestic subject Barbauld uses the blank verse of Milton’s Paradise Lost (no, I’m never going to stop talking about Paradise Lost), and even gives readers a parodic invocation of the Muse.

Washing Day

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost

The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase,

Language of gods. Come, then, domestic Muse,

In slip-shod measure loosely prattling on,

Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream,

Or droning flies, or shoes lost in the mire

By little whimpering boy, with rueful face —

Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded washing day.

Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend,

With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day

Which week, smooth sliding after week, brings on

Too soon; for to that day nor peace belongs,

Nor comfort; ere the first grey streak of dawn,

The red-armed washers come and chase repose.

Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth,

Ere visited that day; the very cat,

From the wet kitchen scared, and reeking hearth,

Visits the parlour, an unwonted guest.

The silent breakfast meal is soon despatched,

Uninterrupted, save by anxious looks

Cast at the louring, if sky should lour.

From that last evil, oh preserve us, heavens!

For should the skies pour down, adieu to all

Remains of quiet; then expect to hear

Of sad disasters — dirt and gravel stains

Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once

Snapped short, and linen-horse by dog thrown down,

And all the petty miseries of life.

Saints have been calm while stretched upon the rack,

And Montezuma smiled on burning coals;

But never yet did housewife notable

Greet with a smile a rainy washing day.

But grant the welkin fair, require not thou

Who callest thyself, perchance, the master there,

Or study swept, or nicely dusted coat,

Or usual ’tendence; ask not, indiscreet,

Thy stockings mended, though the yawning rents

Gape wide as Erebus; nor hope to find

Some snug recess impervious. Shouldst thou try

The ’customed garden walks, thine eye shall rue

The budding fragrance of thy tender shrubs,

Myrtle or rose, all crushed beneath the weight

Of coarse-checked apron, with impatient hand

Twitched off when showers impend; or crossing lines

Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet

Flaps in thy face abrupt. Woe to the friend

Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim

On such a dav the hospitable rites;

Looks blank at best, and stinted courtesy

Shall he receive; vainly he feeds his hopes

With dinner of roast chicken, savoury pie,

Or tart or pudding; pudding he nor tart

That day shall eat; nor, though the husband try —

Mending what can’t be helped — to kindle mirth

From cheer deficient, shall his consort’s brow

Clear up propitious; the unlucky guest

In silence dines, and early slinks away.

I well remember, when a child, the awe

This day struck into me; for then the maids,

I scarce knew why, looked cross, and drove me from them;

Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope

Usual indulgencies; jelly or creams,

Relic of costly suppers, and set by

For me their petted one; or buttered toast,

When butter was forbid; or thrilling tale

Of ghost, or witch, or murder. So I went

And sheltered me beside the parlour fire;

There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms,

Tended the little ones, and watched from harm;

Anxiously fond, though oft her spectacles

With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins

Drawn from her ravelled stocking, might have soured

One less indulgent.

At intervals my mother’s voice was heard,

Urging dispatch; briskly the work went on,

All hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring,

Or fold, and starch, and clap, and iron, and plait.

Then would I sit me down, and ponder much

Why washings were; sometimes through hollow hole

Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft

The floating bubbles; little dreaming then

To see, Montgolfier, thy silken ball

Ride buoyant through the clouds, so near approach

The sports of children and the toils of men.

Earth, air, and sky, and ocean hath its bubbles,

And verse is one of them — this most of all.

As you can see, there’s a very clever mind at work in these lines, and it turns out that Anna Barbauld was extremely influential in her day, as a poet, abolitionist, editor, essayist, and children’s book writer, but like too many women has been rather under-appreciated. I’m glad I’ve heard of her now, and will keep an eye out for more of her writing in the future.

Which domestic task would you like to read a poem about?

Recommended Reading: The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth and The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie

November 3, 2015November 2, 2015 / Carolyn O / 6 Comments

be waery of the storm.

be most waery when there is no storm in sight

Friends, it’s time to talk about The Wake*.

I’ve had my eye on this book for months, ever since I read Kay’s review, and when it arrived and I started reading, it was incredibly hard to pry myself away from it for food, sleep, parenting, and other adult-type endeavors.

Let’s chat history for a second. What do you know about the Norman conquest? Here’s my list as of ten days ago:

It involved the Normans.
There was a conquest.
It happened in 1066.
It involved the Battle of Hastings.
William the Conqueror was the big winner.
Normans are the bad guys in Robin Hood.

And there you have it. I’m willing to bet that for most of us, that’s pretty much the extent of our knowledge. After all, when’s the last time you saw a movie or read a novel about the Norman conquest? Truth may be stranger than fiction, but art brings history to life, and keeps it living in the minds of readers (and viewers) for hundreds of years, or thousands. And when there isn’t much, or any, art about a culture or a period or a people, it or they will tend to fade in our collective memory. (Cue Galadriel’s Lord of the Rings preamble here.)

Read Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake and the Norman conquest will be seared in your mind. You won’t forget it. This is an amazing book, terrifying and beautiful all at once. Its pacing is exquisite, its language revelatory, its protagonist a marvel of extended characterization.

When 1066 begins, The Wake‘s narrator, Buccmaster, is a socman of Angland, a landowner who owes allegiance to no thegn (if that word sounds familiar, think Macbeth), only the king. He has a wife and two teenage sons, as well as three servants (two laborers and one servingwoman for his wife). Proud and stubborn, he comes to feel that signs in the natural world are speaking to him of something momentous that is coming.

That something is the Norman army. Soon Buccmaster has lost everything of value in his world—his wife, children, land, servants—with the exception of his grandfather’s sword, which his grandfather claimed was given him by a mythical figure named Weland the Smith.

Taking his sword, Buccmaster retreats into the forest and over the next two years recruits a small band of green men to conduct what is essentially guerrilla warfare against the French invaders, with increasingly disastrous results.

“now Angland is but a tale from a time what is gan,” says Buccmaster early in the novel. His account, flawed and madness-filled, is the tale of a lost England, but it is of course his tale too, one that he controls with varying degrees of dexterity. He includes tales of the old gods, like the set pieces in the Iliad or the Odyssey, tales of his own history, tales of the recent past (his own and others’) that he reframes without shame to suit his present audience. But in the end, it is a tale told by a woman—and women in this book are almost always marginalized, oppressed, almost always objects of violence (Buccmaster is an unapologetic wife-beater)—that undoes the story he’s told about himself.

It becomes increasingly apparent that he’s becoming unhinged, like a slow-burning Lear; for him, the invasion is not the first unwelcome advance of a foreign power. Though he is economically privileged, Buccmaster is also an outsider because like his grandfather, he despises “the crist” (Christ), viewing Angland’s weakened state as a result of its people turning away from the old gods (Norse, as we would think of them). Thus his quest to rout “the frenc” and return Angland to what he thinks are its roots is doubly doomed.

There’s so much in the novel to think about: madness, pride, grief, colonization, memory, religion, storytelling, vengeance. Buccmaster’s unreliability is mirrored in the reader’s realization that what we know, what we’ve been taught, is inevitably incomplete. We are accustomed to recognizing that the English, the French, the Dutch colonized parts of the world that have yet to recover from imperialism’s yoke (and hopefully we realize that the descendants of those colonized peoples are often still treated terribly unjustly; for a literary example, see The Round House). It’s harder to grasp that England itself was colonized, violently and more than once, in this case by an enemy with superior technology (steel, horses, chainmail), an enemy that re-shaped the land itself (through the building of castles, which Buccmaster and his men regard as devilish).

How far back does this chain of suffering extend? What does it mean to be English, French, any one people?

There is no single answer to that question, but one possible answer has to do with language, the stuff from which we build our stories. Buccmaster wonders how his language will survive and the answer is before us, since so much of it did; The Wake is almost an experiment in how language itself—sounds, really—can re-create a lost world.

Citing his dissatisfaction with historical novels written in modern language**, Mr. Kingsnorth wrote the book in what he calls a “shadow tongue,” Old English updated with enough modern grammar and sentence structure to be readable by people (like me) who’ve never studied it. Mr. Kingsnorth writes almost exclusively with Anglo-Saxon, not Latinate words, and provides a brief glossary to catch those that might not be understandable phonetically and in context. It takes a few pages of getting used to, but after about ten pages I was hooked, just awash in this not-English English. (Sci-fi readers: the experience is a bit like reading Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden.)

The difference of the language, the requirement of focusing on each and every word, and the unusual orthography (there are no commas, colons, semicolons, or question marks that I noticed; proper names are rarely capitalized; paragraphs end without periods) ensure that the reader is locked into the world of the novel. For the first fifty pages or so, I felt almost overwhelmed by dread. By the end of the book, my hair was quite literally standing on end***. It’s just harrowing, completely harrowing. Read the first two pages and you’ll see****.

a storm saes the gleoman cums from heofen it cannot be feoht only lifd through

[a storm says the storyteller comes from heaven it cannot be fought only lived through]

A week or two ago, I pointed readers toward “The Whales,” a poem by Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie. I’ve had the chance to read the rest of the collection in which it appears, called The Overhaul*, which is stellar. I highly recommend it.

In some ways, Ms. Jamie’s voice reminds me of a sparer Mary Oliver; the two poets share a keen sense of the detail in nature and spin that detail into larger observations, but Ms. Jamie’s poems are less conversational. I loved her striking images, like the stags who “hold” the speaker and her companion in “civil regard” as their antlers rise “like masts in a harbour, or city spires.”

In an odd way, The Overhaul resembles The Wake in its evocation of the landscape and in its occasional dip into Scots (as in the poem “Tae the Fates,” in which the speaker begs the powers that be for just “ane summer mair” to make “ane perfect poem”) to conjure up a sense of a different time. While these poems develop a sense of sadness for the things of this world that are passing away, like the young eagle in “The Halfling” leaving its youth behind or the seasons that fade, there is also a sense of hope in them, which I found refreshing and necessary after the marathon of The Wake; I’ve gone back to these poems more than once after reading them.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration, which did not affect the content of my review.

**One wonders, though, if he’s read Hilary Mantel.

***(I took a picture to prove it, but the whole disembodied-arm thing didn’t really seem like the best choice here).

****Or get in touch with me (e-mail, Twitter, instagram) and I’ll send you an audio file of me reading them. This book is built to be read aloud.

“It was many and many a year ago”: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”

October 29, 2015October 28, 2015 / Carolyn O / 9 Comments

Edgar Allan Poe, circa 1849. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps you, like me, associate Edgar Allan Poe with the city of Baltimore (maybe it’s their professional football team, which I believe I’m contractually obligated to loathe since I grew up in Cleveland even though I am a lifelong Bills fan and no longer watch football).

However, Dear Readers, EAP was a native of fair Boston, much as he hated the city (and now there’s a statue to commemorate him), and thus your Boston-based book blogger is amused to bring you his creepy “Annabel Lee,” just in time for Halloween.

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Books, Boston, October

October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 / Carolyn O / 19 Comments

Well, Dear Readers, I’ve had quite the literary month, getting out and about much more than I usually do in my quiet life. Perhaps you’d like the rundown? If so:

Hamlet: Yes, that one. I thought, London travel not exactly in my budget, that Benedict Cumberbatch as the brooding Dane was not a performance I’d be able to see. And then by chance I heard it was going to show in movie theaters, after which I promptly bought the last two tickets for that showing.

Verdict: Very good. Mr. Cumberbatch was intense, thrilling, athletic, funny, outshining most of the cast with the exception of the fabulous Ciarán Hinds (aka Frederick Wentworth in the only film adaptation of Persuasion you need to see) as Claudius. I wasn’t sold on this production’s take on Ophelia (played a bit unhinged before Polonius’s death), but her final exit was remarkably well done. I agree with the review my husband told me about later that suggested the play was overproduced after intermission. Still, nice set design, and I liked the costuming, which seemed like a bit of an homage to various earlier interpretations of the play. Funniest Rosencrantz (or was it Guildenstern?) I’ve ever seen.

I hear it’s coming back to theaters; if so, do go.

Nick Offerman: Okay, technically he was doing his humorist act (sans spouse Megan Mullally, sigh), but I’m calling this literary since he’s written two books (one of which is waiting on my nightstand/bookshelf to be read) and he’s in rehearsals for a Boston theatrical adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces.

Verdict: Very Good. Funny (of course), with ridiculous songs, anecdotes, life advice, talk of woodworking, etc. Basically, it was like watching an alternate-universe version of Ron Swanson who actually enjoys the company of others. Best moment: He didn’t mention Parks & Rec until the very end (and you know how much I love that show, right?), but then had the entire audience singing along to “Bye, Bye Lil’ Sebastian.” Yeah, it was amazing.

Boston Book Festival

This is the first year I’ve been able to spend more than ten minutes at the BBF, and I’m very glad I did, though I din’t see much of the vendors (magazines, small presses, etc.) since they tore down pretty early on Saturday evening (just after 5). However . . .

Margaret Atwood in conversation with Kelly Link: So happy I got tickets this summer, because the crowd was huge (and appreciative).

Verdict: Excellent. Margaret Atwood is hilarious–just truly, wickedly funny, and Kelly Link was understatedly comic as she asked really interesting questions. I was expecting the conversation to focus mostly on The Heart Goes Last, Ms. Atwood’s most recent book, but instead it ranged over her childhood reading habits, how she approaches writing (like going into a dark wood, and with a character or scene in mind, not a message), reading the Victorians, and more. Wonderful. And bonus: both writers did a signing afterward, and Ms. Atwood signed my 1970 copy of an early book of poems (yes, I did tell her that I liked her Milton references in the new book, and she said “I’m glad.” Swoon).

James Wood: Mr. Wood is a professor at Harvard and a literary critic for the New Yorker; some would argue (and have) that he’s the foremost literary critic writing in English. His approach is aesthetic rather than, say, historical or psychological.

Verdict: Very good. I haven’t heard an academic talk in quite some time, and this one was geared toward a wide audience, but one that would understand references to Flaubert and Nabokov, for instance. Mr. Wood talked about detail in fiction—why details stick with us after we read, how they function, why they function. Fascinating (and just when I was starting to worry that he wasn’t going to mention any woman writers, he referred to nearly half a dozen). He also did a signing at the end of the event, which was delightful since I’d just picked up his new book (The Nearest Thing to Life).

Colum McCann in conversation with Claire Messud: Amazingly, given how popular these two authors are, this event wasn’t ticketed, but there was once more a lively and interested crowd (great job by the BBF organizers in making sure the audio was top-notch). Colum McCann’s most lauded book to date is probably Let the Great World Spin (I haven’t read it, but loved Everything in This Country Must). Claire Messud is an acclaimed novelist, most recently of The Woman Upstairs (she also happens to be married to James Wood, who spoke just before this event).

Verdict: Good. The writers are friends and former colleaugues, which made for a relaxed rapport. Mr. McCann read from his new book (Thirteen Ways of Looking), and while his reading was very well done and affecting, I though it slowed down the pace of the conversation. I was interested to learn about the charity called Narrative 4 that he works co-founded, and saddened to hear of a terrible incident in which he was brutally beaten for trying to stop a man from beating his wife.

Amanda Palmer interviewed by Neil Gaiman: I’ll be honest with you, Dear Readers: I came for Neil Gaiman, one of the most reliably readable authors working today. And charming and philanthropic and all that good stuff. To be honest, I had, before hearing this talk, almost no opinion on Amanda Palmer (Mr. Gaiman is her husband), though I know she provokes Feelings of all sorts in various people (generally love or hate, from what I can tell).

Verdict: Very good. Ms. Palmer talked about the process of writing her memoir, The Art of Asking, and seemed no more self-indulgent than anyone else who’s interested in writing a memoir. She was genuine, honest (as far as this listener could tell), amusing, and shared a charming rapport with Mr. Gaiman. At the end of the talk, I decided I’d rather like to read her book, so well done there. Bonus: An appearance by Maria Popova (of Brain Pickings, which I commend to you; Ms. Popova has every metaphysician/Jeopardy nerd’s dream job), tempered slightly by I think a too-rosy view of Thoreau. Bonus 2: Ms. Palmer sang, and I loved her voice, which I was hearing for the first time (yes, your friendly neighborhood blogger was not cool enough to be listening to the Dresden Dolls in high school).

[Boston book blogging friends: Meet up next year at the 2016 Boston Book Festival?]

Whew. And that’s all she wrote. For now.

“answering through the vastnesses”: Kathleen Jamie’s “The Whales”

October 22, 2015November 2, 2015 / Carolyn O / 5 Comments

Photo by Christopher Campbell via Unsplash

Lately I’ve been reading Kathleen Jamie’s superb book The Overhaul, which landed on my radar months ago thanks to Graywolf Press‘s delightful habit of posting a poem of the week on its website.

I read “The Whales” and just couldn’t get it out of my head for weeks. It’s a bit funny, very beautiful, and then unsettling (with that Dickinson dash in the last line), all in just sixteen short lines. It’s one of my new favorite sea poems.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it and tell me what you think!