Patrick Kanouse's Blog, page 56

40th, Part 3

Sunday was the big finale of the three days of birthday celebration. After several years, I decided to get a tattoo. So Gina scheduled a session with Laura Black at Voluta Tattoo.

Let me say that if you want a fantastic artist, Laura is it.

I decided to go with the endless knot as my tattoo. Years ago, my good friend Chuck gave me a couple of bone china tea cups that featured a Celtic endless knot. And in my recent readings of Buddhist texts, the endless knot has appeared there as well. Many interpretations of the endless know exist, but my preliminary choice of it was that it represents both everything and nothing. You can think of it this way:

If you say, I know nothing, then you know everything.

If you say, I know everything, then you know nothing.

I find this paradox intriguing and truthful. Laura took a very bland bitmapped version of the know and transformed it into the image here. I'm thrilled with the result.

But none of this would have been possible without Gina. Any one of these days would have been a birthday to remember. She gave me three in a row, and I cannot possibly thank her enough.

40th, Part 2

Gumballhead from Three Floyd's
On Day 2 of my 40th weekend bash, Gina took me, my brother and his girlfriend to Three Floyd's Brewery and Crown Brewing. So not only am I a foodie, but I am also a beer snob. I have heard from several that Three Floyd's Gumballhead on tap is a thing to be loved. I agree. Wow, just a fantastic beer.

I also had their Topless Wych, which is a Baltic porter. Quite exceptional. If you have not had a Three Floyd's beer, I recommend it.

Crown Brewing was more "traditional" in the style of Rock Bottom, etc., but the beers were either very good (Celtic Oatmeal Stout or Special Forces IPA) or good.

As we were departing from that morning, I picked up the mail (from the previous day). In it, my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew Jack had sent me a book: Lost at Guadalcanal: The Final Battles of the Astoria and Chicago as Described by Survivors and in Official Reports by John J. Domagalski. My sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to have it signed by the author himself. I look forward to reading it (after having watched HBO's series The Pacific, I have been wanting to read up more about the Pacific war. Seems like I have a good book!

Also, it should be noted that my nephew Jack recorded a video of himself singing happy birthday to me!

At Crown Brewing, my brother and girlfriend gave me their gifts. A couple of bottles of Rogue's Shakespeare Stout (my favorite brew) and a signed copy of Pattiann Rogers' poem "Opus from Space."

Rogers is one of my favorite poets, and this gift was a complete surprise. In addition, my brother managed to secure a copy of The Blackbird's Nest: An Anthology of Poetry from Queen's University of Belfast signed by a contributor to that volume, Ciaran Carson.

40th, Part 1

I originally had not planned on writing anything about my birthday, the 40th. Not because I was feeling the pain of 40; rather, because I was quite nonchalant and unconcerned about it. Aging is not an issue with me.

Gina, however, decided to use the opportunity to throw me a lavish and amazing 40th birthday weekend. She decided to celebrate this milestone, and the result was such an amazing weekend that I feel compelled to share with what readers I may have.

I knew when I married her that I did not deserve her or her thoughtfulness. She continues to prove that every day.

So my birthday was Friday. My team at work, my boss, and a couple of my peers pitched in extravagantly for a suitable gift, notably a couple of bottles of Balvenie 12-year Doublewood Scotch. One of my favorites.

My wife then took me to Oakley's Bistro. We were treated to the best meal we've ever had. Shrimp corndogs, lobster waffles, butternut squash soup, asparagus toad-in-the-hole salad, pork duo, duck duo, creme brulee, and upside-down lemon crepes. Let's say, I ate way too much, and thoroughly enjoyed every single bite.

The chef, Steven Oakley, is a James Beard 2011 semifinalist. As far as I can tell, a well-deserved honor.

Oh, and I did have a couple of dirty martinis featuring a Wisconsin small-batch gin: Death's Door. Yes, I'm a foodie, despite Livy's concern that it was the ending of a culture.

St. Patrick's Day Poem: Patrick Kavanagh

In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

Come Dance with Kitty Stobling

No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved
Through the colourful country, I was but a single
Item in the picture, the name, not the beloved.
O tedious man with whom no gods commingle.
Beauty, who has described beauty? Once upon a time
I had a myth that was a lie but it served:
Trees walking across the crest of hills and my rhyme
Cavorting on mile-high stilts and the unnerved
Crowds looking up with terror in their rational faces.
O dance with Kitty Stobling I outrageously
Cried out-of-sense to them, while their timorous paces
Stumbled behind Jove's page boy paging me.
I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely
For giving me my madness back, or nearly.

Towards or From

I stumbled across this comment from Dylan Thomas, who wrote about a Stephen Spender review: "...the difference between of writing poetry towards words and the writing of poetry from words." This is only a part of the letter, but it captures an interesting idea, though it is probably so difficult to define that writing of it is pointless.

I'm frankly not even sure what it means or what Thomas valued. Spender wrote that the difference was one of the feel versus the intellectual content of words. In my youthful days, I wrote a poetic manifesto (what poet in his or her early twenties lacks such an ideology) that focused on "expansive" versus "compressive"--these were my own terms and bear no relation to any other ideology. Basically, I made some arguments about compression leading to obscurity but relying on a multitude of connotations and denotations to convey the meaning, while expansion relied less on packing meaning into words and more about their essential nature (by which is meant the current denotation and dialectical use).

Alas, I ramble yet again. The point is that one can write poems from which the sound of words is their driving element or write poems from which the meaning of words is the driving element. Neither is write nor wrong. In fact, I think most poets have written poems of both kinds. But lurking in there, I think, is some fundamental notion of words and how we use them. I think it may be my listening to opera in another language. The sound of the words is music. But we even need not go that far. Robert Plant's vocals in Led Zeppelin are often incomprehensible...they become in essence sounds as much as the Jimmy Page's guitar strumming. I wouldn't change a thing about how Plant sang.

Dylan Thomas ended that comment with "that's, of course, oversimplification."

Inspiration and Creativity

I usually write fairly late at night, after reading, putting work in the past for a few hours at least, etc. The other night, I was abnormally tired and did my pre-sleep prep. I was about to turn in, but I decided to fight the tiredness and sit at the desk and write, no matter how briefly. So I picked up a couple of poems that I have been working on and began my writing. Afterwards, I was giving some thought to the idea of creativity, probably sparked by my recently finished reading of Richard Holmes's magnificent biography Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 .

At times writing, I seek only what I can describe as an incantatory attitude. By this, I only use "incantatory" as an approximation. I think of certain poets as incantatory: Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas among others. The Greek poets George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis probably also fall into that same category. I could also associate it with certain types of music: Clint Mansell's soundtrack for The Fountain, Hans Zimmer's composition Time for Inception, Philip Glass's Metamorphosis compositions for solo piano, or Bach's suites for solo cello. It's a mood more than anything else, and it is focused on sound and not, at least initially, on meaning. The idea also veers towards Surrealism, though less of the Dali kind and more of the Magritte kind (frankly, Magritte's Surrealism is about the only painting Surrealism I care for).

What's all this about? Some poems I write as an act of will. I have the subject. I know I want to write it, so I tackle it. Others are inspirational from a scene or image or something. They have a direct causation. Others, however, come from the sounds of words and are secondarily about meaning. These also tend to be more "automatic" in the sense that they are written by letting the mind unlock, reveal, and write unedited...and then I edit and rewrite to hone.

Many other forms of inspiration abound, I'm sure, but these are the three that tend to be with me...and they produce quite different poems.

Coleridge: Clarity and Obscurity

Here's a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (I lifted this from Richard Holmes's superb biography Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804).

The elder Languages fitter for Poetry because they expressed only prominent ideas with clearness, others but darkly...i.e., Feelings created by obscure ideas associate themselves with the one

Holmes mentions that this some of Coleridge's first thoughts on the role of clarity and obscurity as central to the success of poetry. More to come on this....

Win a B&N Gift Certificate!

Enter a drawing to win a gift certificate! How? Well, just go to BN.com and review my books. To be eligible, you must enter a review between March 5th and March 31st (of 2011). Additionally, you must actually have a review of at least two sentences (sorry, no just marking the number of stars or a one-word comment). If you've already posted a star rating, that's OK, just go and add some review commentary.
You are under no obligation to write a positive review. Whether you love it or hate it (though I hope for the former), you can say what you want.
Three separate drawings, so you can enter up to three times:$20.00 for  The NOOK Book $10.00 for Using the NOOKcolor and NOOK, Second Edition$5.00 for  Portrait of a Woman Brushing Her Hair and Other Poems Please email me your contact info with a copy of your review to be entered in the drawing. Look on this blog on April 1st for the winning reviews.
*Note: All reviews must be posted to the BN.com website and not Amazon, etc.

Hard Reset of NOOKcolor

I recently had an email from a NOOKcolor user. He had an issue with the passcode lock. Basically, he could not get past it though he did not know the lock. What to do? Well, the only option that I am aware of is to hard reset/reboot the NOOKcolor device. Here are the instructions (adapted from the B&N Book Clubs Forum):

Following these steps performs a factory reset of the NOOKcolor, which de-registers your device as well as erases all local content such as contacts, sideloaded documents, personal information, 4 digit passcodes, etc.
Power off your NOOKcolor.Hold the Home button while simultaneously pressing and holding the Power button for 25 seconds.Do not let go of the Home or Power buttons as the start up process begins. When a confirmation windows appears asking if you would like to, "Factory Reset Your Device?"Press the Home button to continue with the hard reset.Press the Home button again to confirm.Your device will now begin the clearing process. Upon completion, it will be as if you have a brand new NOOKcolor.

New NOOK Book Tab

I've added a page specifically for updates to the NOOK books, including updated rooting information, apps I've installed, and errata.