Jon Frankel's Blog, page 20
December 13, 2014
The Face of Lear
VISITING HOURS
One by one they climb the stair
They’ve come to see the face of Lear.
A man in the hall says, ‘Stand here,’
Points to a room where there is a book
And another man who says to look
At names written by hands that shook.
One by one they climb the stair
They’ve come to see the face of Lear.
At the top of the stairs a different man
Gently takes them by the hand
Shows them a room where they must stand.
One by one they climb the stair
They’ve come to see the face of Lear.
A woman asks them who they are
Where are they from? Have they come far?
Her whispers open up the door.
One by one they climb the stair
They’ve come to see the face of Lear,
Who held Cordelia in his arms.
Faces frozen shorn of charms
On and on they come in swarms.
One by one they climb the stair
They’ve come to see the face of Lear.
Somehow everyone lands here.
Broken child broken King
Broken Queen broken Ring
Broken world I broken sing.
December 10, 2014
A PERFECT NOVEL
A PERFECT NOVEL
I was recently asked in an interview if I had read a perfect novel recently and I had, Middlemarch. Middlemarch is often considered one of the greatest novels in the language, and I have to agree. It is bursting with incident and the pleasures of narrative. She spans multitudes of characters and situation, giving us village gossip, the stuffy machinations of the landed gentry, local politics and even inadvertent murder, as well as loveless marriages, gambling and blackmail. Eliot is a remarkable woman for many reasons, particularly her refusal to obey the rules for women of her age, and it can’t be said she suffered greatly for it. Somehow she got away with defying her society and producing works of literature that were popular, erudite and have survived intact for over a hundred years. Her writing is credited with inspiring Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina, another perfect novel, when he saw that the domestic novel was capable of serious philosophical and moral reflection. And this at heart IS a traditional romance about marriage. What makes it so much more than that is Eliot’s emotional vocabulary and extraordinary psychological insight. Dorothea Casaubon is a living, breathing woman who explores her psyche and the world around her with restless intelligence and moral conviction. She is morally upright but not a prig. I know this woman, and I knew her from page one. Reading Middlemarch is to abandon oneself to a master of narrative fiction; it is a luxurious experience but also has the astringent commentary of a mind that bristles at stupidity even as it loves the weakness of human beings. The complexity of sentence and thought sometimes suspends one in the air, as if swinging from dependent clause to dependent clause on ropes over a ravine. And, in 1870, she quotes Blake! Twice!
All of this opens the question of perfection in the novel. The form is inherently complex and imperfect. That is one of its beauties. But there are perfect examples of the monstrous, like The Brother’s Karamazov, or Invisible Man. These novels are written on the edge of sanity compared to works that have the perfection of concision and brevity, like The Leopard or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I don’t need to read perfect novels, though I look for them, and could never define a set of criteria that pick them out. Perfection in the novels lies in the subjectivity of the reader. There are perfect novels for here and now and for me. I would like to think that Portrait of a Lady will be as perfect when (and if) I reread it as it was when I read it each morning after getting off the graveyard shift at Nightbirds, one of the most nightmarish jobs I’ve ever had. Being a waiter at Nightbirds was like working on B. Traven’s Death Ship, another perfect novel.
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December 9, 2014
Interview with Cara Hoffman
Cara Hoffman, author of Be Safe I Love You and So Much Pretty, has posted an interview with me on her website.
Also, Eric Maroney, author of The Other Zions and Religious Syncretism as well as numerous wonderful short stories, posted this review on his website.
December 8, 2014
The Two Houses
The Two Houses
There is a house of pain
And a house of pleasure.
In the house of pain there is always measure.
In the house of pleasure there is always rain.
I’ve never been in a house so dark
As the one where measure doesn’t end
And there is no friend
And no work.
November 28, 2014
GAHA: BABES OF THE ABYSS AVAILABLE
GAHA: Babes of the Abyss is now published, by Whiskey Tit Press. It’s available as an ebook or trade paperback from Amazon. PLEASE BUY IT!
November 25, 2014
LATE NOVEMBER LIGHT
Late November Light
The late November light is strong
It transfuses the empty arms of trees
And radiates the wooded land along
The shelves of shale crumbling free
Falling in a rush of silver drops
To the gorge below where everything stops.
Darkened by the shade, a frozen spring
In a caul of ice enfolds the rock, ice manacles
The fallen limbs with a shining ring.
Then the smoky violet panicles
Of grass shift in the sparrowed weeds
And all the land is tiger striped with sad deeds.
November 17, 2014
NOVEMBER SNOW
November Snow
The canary leaves of ginkgo peel to the ground
Like frozen petals of lemon roses they patter
When they hit the pavement piling up a mound
Of yellow fans weaving waves of light that scatter
Over snow on barren branches and the rungs of a ladder
The morning’s still forgotten silence drowned
In the pity of that mortal sound.
