R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 40

Castlerigg Stone Circle (Keswick)

 

Bowness - on - Windermere

 

New Poem up @ Bookends Review: I'm Full

My new poem -- "I'm Full" -- is up at The Bookends Review. Give it a whirl and many thanks to the editor, Jordan Blum.

Re "Postscript" & Glassworks

Very rarely does a poetry publication ask me to write about how I came to write a certain poem. Even rarer: I respond.

Anyway, stumbled on this tonight, from an early edition of Glassworks. It's not the poem, it's a brief explanation of how I came to write the poem.

Wordsworth's Guidebook

Finished Coetzee's The Pole in two days. An easy read. Titillating but hardly "real" and, like all good reads I suppose, leaving you wanting.:)

Back to Wordsworth's Guide to the Lake District. I hope I can find a spot to build. Perhaps in the area of the old Roman fort? Or on that cloud-with-a-view WW suggested earlier in the book?

WW:

Our fancies could not resist the temptation; and we fixed upon a spot for a cottage, which we began to build:* and finished as easily as castles are raised in the air.—

Coetzee's The Pole

You probably already know: I'm a fan. Got it today and started (but don't think I've given up on Wordsworth: to some extent: he'll guide me through the Lake District).

Anyway, a snip from The Pole:

‘Listen to me, Witold,’ she says. ‘You barely know me, so let me tell you who I am. First and last, I am a married woman. Not a free spirit but a woman with a husband and children and a home and friends and commitments of all kinds, emotional commitments, social commitments, practical commitments. There is no room in my life for—what shall I call it?—an affair of the heart. You tell me you carry around with you an image of me. Good. But I don’t carry around an image of you. I don’t carry around an image of anyone. I am not that kind of person. You visited Barcelona, you gave a piano recital, which we all enjoyed; we had dinner together; and that was that. You passed into my life, you passed out of my life. Terminado. We have no future together, you and I. I am sorry to say so, but it is the truth. Now I think we should turn back. It is getting late.’

Ring-necked Pheasant @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

 

Posted yesterday on my Instagram feed (rlswihart13):

Ring-necked Pheasant @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. Beautiful birds. Didn't know till now that they were originally introduced from Asia. Happy Monday!!!♥️🎈

#rlswihart13 #wkkelloggbirdsanctuary #kalamazoo #pheasant #ringneckedpheasant #nature #beauty #poetry  #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦🎈

Redtailed Hawk @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary

Redtailed Hawks @ WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary near Kalamazoo MI. Probably about six individuals, from young to old, several with obvious wing problems. These two shared a "cage" and were perhaps the most lively. Hard to be a redtail if you can't fly. TGIF.

#rlswihart13 #michigan #tgif #kalamazoo #kelloggbirdsanctuary #redtailsofinstagram #redtailedhawk hawks #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦 🎈

From Wordsworth's Guide to the Lake District (1835)

Going to the Lake District soon (God willing). Haven't been since 1987. Thought it would be fun to read Wordsworth's Guide.:)

Excerpt on climate:

It may now be proper to say a few words respecting climate, and ‘skiey influences,’* in which this region, as far as the character of its landscapes is affected by them, may, upon the whole, be considered fortunate. The country is, indeed, subject to much bad weather, and it has been ascertained that twice as much rain falls here as in many parts of the island; but the number of black drizzling days, that blot out the face of things, is by no means proportionally great. Nor is a continuance of thick, flagging, damp air, so common as in the West of England and Ireland. The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear, bright weather,* when every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and torrents, which are never muddy, even in the heaviest floods, except, after a drought, they happen to be defiled for a short time by waters that have swept along dusty roads, or have broken out into ploughed fields. Days of unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent; but the showers, darkening, or brightening, as they fly from hill to hill, are not less grateful to the eye than finely interwoven passages of gay and sad music are touching to the ear.

Another excerpt on climate:

Such clouds, cleaving to their stations, or lifting up suddenly their glittering heads from behind rocky barriers, or hurrying out of sight with speed of the sharpest edge—will often tempt an inhabitant to congratulate himself on belonging to a country of mists and clouds and storms, and make him think of the blank sky of Egypt, and of the cerulean vacancy of Italy, as an unanimated and even a sad spectacle.*

War & Peace: The Ant Heap

It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and indestructible. The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to apply their activities there.