Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

John wrote: "Here is another favorite Merwin poem of mine. It is so short but works so well. You can almost savor each word. The telling in it is such a truth.

TALE

After many winters the moss
finds the sawdu..."

I read it over and over ... thanks, John.

Carol wrote: "HAPPY XMAS."

Carol, a most Happy Christmas to you and your loved ones!

Deeply thoughtful.

I knew of Merwin, but I had not read much of his poetry until the two collected Library of America volumes came. I bought so many of those and just shelved them after barely cracking them open. But a read a number of his poems before I shleved them ... and still have many more to read.

https://www.loa.org/writers/294-w-s-m...

Carol wrote: "I have never heard of Merwin so it was lovely to read a poem completely new to me. Time passes seems to be its theme, linked to love. Bound up as we all are with the ghastly Covid I like the idea o..."

Carol, it has been one of my delights how the three of us (you, John, and I ) keep surprising each other with poets who are familiar to one or two of us but not to the other. I do believe that you and John know much more about poetry and poets than I do, but that has been of great benefit to me this past year in learning from what you have shared here.

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

John, one of my Facebook friends, Scott Bradfield, just shared today that the LARB reposted his recent article on Joan Didion. It's really a personal article about how Scott grew into the reading culture and what he found so special about Joan Didion, particularly as a California writer.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/l...

John,

Two things to read. The first is an article from Slate from 2009 that explains --convincingly, I believe--why Kind of Blue is so great. And it does a good job of explaining modality and why that was so important in the transformation of jazz away from the dominance of bebop.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/mu...

The second is just a passage from the most recent monthly posting by Robert Christgau on Substack. This is that passage:

"You once opted for Miles Davis as your desert island discography pick. I’m curious as to which of his records you spin the most? I’ve loved reading everything you’ve put out about Miles, and it’s lead me to some deeper cuts like Dark Magus and Agharta, I’m wondering, what do you think of his output pre-Bitches Brew? — Nigel, Queensland, Australia

Miles Davis desert island? Didn’t remember that until my editor Joe Levy unearthed a 2019 Xgau Sez where I begrudgingly named Davis my desert island artist without specifying a desert-island disc. Miles Davis at the hospital I do remember, however—kind of the same thing. That said, the first Miles album I ever owned was 1958’s Milestones, though I almost certainly bought it later than that—probably sometime after Kind of Blue came out in 1959. I played it recently and it sounded dandy. But without question it’s Kind of Blue that’s Davis’s greatest album just like everybody says, and it’s Kind of Blue that I play the most, with Jack Johnson and In a Silent Way numbers two and three and odd ‘70s funk-tinged rackets after that. Its lead cut “So What” in particular is such a classic and astute piece of music that it’s what I request when undergoing minor surgery or one of the fancy injections us oldies sometimes undergo—it’s simultaneously super-intelligent and calming, and not only that, everyone in the room is gonna like it. "

And one other comment. If you look at lists of the greatest albums, even ones that are essentially devoted to rock, you will find a few jazz albums ... and one of those is always Kind of Blue.

So let's discuss the original album beginning on January 1!

The Solstice

They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love

but we know how the minutes
fly out into
the dark trees
and vanish

like the great ‘ohias and the honey creepers
and we know how the weeks
walk into the
shadows at midday

at the thought of the months I reach for your hand
it is not something
one is supposed
to say

we watch the red birds in the morning
we hope for the quiet
daytime together
the year turns into air

but we are together in the whole night
with the sun still going away
and the year
coming back

---W. S. Merwin

Beginning in 2022, Larry & John will select an album to discuss in a weekly conversation. Others are invited to join in the discussion. (All albums are ones that are available on Spotify, but most are probably available on other music streaming services also.)

THE ALBUMS (discussion begins on the date shown)

1/1/22 - MILES DAVIS - KIND OF BLUE (Larry’s choice)

1/8/22 - ROLLING STONES - EXILE ON MAIN STREET (John’s choice)

1/15/22 - OLIVER NELSON - THE BLUES AND THE ABSTRACT TRUTH (Larry’s choice)

1/22/22 - LIZ PHAIR - EXILE IN GUYVILLE (John’s choice)

1/29/22 - DUSTY SPRINGFIELD - DUSTY IN MEMPHIS (Larry’s choice)

ALEXA, WHAT IS THERE TO KNOW ABOUT LOVE?
Brian Bilston

Alexa, what is there to know about love?
What is there to know about love?
A glove is a garment that covers the hand
for protection from the cold or dirt and –

Alexa, how does a human heart work?
How does a human heart work?
Blood is first received in the right atrium via
two veins, the vena cava superior and inferior –

Alexa, where do we go to when we die?
Where do we go to when we die?
Activating Google Maps. Completed activation.
Would you like to start from your current location?

Alexa, what does it mean to be alone?
What does it mean to be alone?
It is the silence left by words unsaid,
the cold expanse of half a bed.
It is the endless stretching of the hours,
the needless tending of plastic flowers.
It is an echo unanswered in a cave,
the fateful ping of the microwave.
It is the fraying of a worn shirt cuff,
and the howl – Stop, Alexa. That’s enough.

Carol wrote: "It made me smile to think of the poet imagining someone reading his poem and managing to construct a whole poem around this thought. It slightly reminded me of Hughes' poem 'The Thought Fox' but wi..."

It also reminded me of what I once read about the difficulty, maybe even the impossibility, of separating the dancer from the dance.

Bookmarks on the LitHub site now has the best 10 non fiction books of the year. Again, what makes this so valuable is that it is an aggregation of the reviews from a number of sites:

https://bookmarks.reviews/the-best-re...

I think it's worth listing all of these, but do visit the site for their great short reviews:

Michelle Zauner - Crying in H Mart

Tove Ditlevsen - The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency

Hermione Lee Tom Stoppard: A Life

George Saunders A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

Deborah Levy Real Estate

Mark Harris - Mike Nichols: A Life

Ann Patchett - These Precious Days: Essays

Joan Didion - Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Rebecca Solnit - Orwell's Roses

Doireann Ní Ghríofa - A Ghost in the Throat

Away from war for a day at least ...

IMAGINARY READER
by Louis Jenkins

If poetry is your life, then your life must be the
poem, a life that exists only for the reader. And
who is the reader for whom you write? The
imaginary reader? Perhaps it’s a beautiful
woman who is so taken with the words that
she reads late into the night, propped on one
elbow, only a sheet covers the curve of her hip,
slips away from her bare shoulder. The summer
breeze from the window teases her dark hair.
Her lips move, from time to time, ever so slightly
as she repeats a phrase that seems especially
moving…. But probably, the imaginary reader
is even more vaguely described, like God.
The reader reads. Nothing happens. Nothing
changes. The night goes on. He is still reading.
He yawns, rubs his eyes. Any moment now
the book will slip from his hands, so you write
faster.

Louis Jenkins, “Imaginary Reader” from Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005.

Carol wrote: "That might suggest a warmer relationship between China and the US than might be thought, or there again, he and his wife might be indulgent parents and unable to say no. If the daughter suddenly goes back to China, then perhaps Taiwan needs to be apprehensive..."

There's probably several reasons why her parents are willing to let her return to Harvard. They probably regard her as mature in her thinking and not likely to be "contaminated" by Western thinking. I also think that your last comment is probably right.

Carol, After adding BBC Select to my Amazon account, I discovered that the Scots in China show is not there yet ... but there are so many other good shows. We've been working our way through episodes of Remarkable Places to Eat, a series in which Fred Sirieix visits a city and together with a local chef visits three restaurants. Just a great look at the food and cultures of other countries.

That one shot/real time aspect of the movie, 1917, is almost overwhelming. I felt like I was holding my breath through almost the whole movie.

Carol wrote: "Thanks for sending me the opened article, Larry. I had to laugh when I read that it was said Xi Jinping rarely read a book, often didn't brush his teeth and bathed infrequently. It reminded me of m..."

Carol,

I do recommend Roger Garside's book, China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom, which is a strange mix of fiction and nonfiction about a potential coup against Xi, led by some other members (who are actually named) of the Standing Committee.

It is strange indeed that Xi's daughter went to Harvard, returned to China and and is apparently back at Harvard for graduate work now.

John wrote: "Here is Isaac Rosenberg, a World War 1 poet who did not survive the war. Many literary critics consider this poem the best of that time. It is Modern in tone and language. It does away with rhyming..."

Just a great poem. I don't know how people survived the war in the trenches without losing their sanity.

Another recommendation: the movie 1917 ... it takes place not just in the trenches but also on the battlefield in No Man's Land ... but it does capture the horror of both.

Carol wrote: "I know the above poem well but had no idea why the British Light Infantry was fighting in the Crimea and charging Russian guns.
I looked it up: It happened at Balaklava in the Crimea and was evide..."
And Carol, thanks for this very good summary about the background of the poem.

Carol wrote: "Re: the Crimea which we mentioned in another thread. Here is The Charge of the light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death..."

Carol,

The poem is so important. Have you read The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Woodham-Smith. I do recommend the book (I bought it as part of a Time-Life series of monthly books ... they were all sort of odd classics, most of which had dropped out of notice but which were worthy in some way.) And I recommend it even as I acknowledge its limitations ... as revealed in this excpert form the author's Wiki: "Her next book was equally well received. The Reason Why (1953) was a study of the Charge of the Light Brigade, a military disaster during the Crimean War and one of the defining events of the Victorian age. It became her most popular book, and afterwards she explained to a television audience how she wrote the Charge itself: working at a gallop through thirty-six hours non-stop without food or other break until the last gun was fired, when she poured a stiff drink and slept for two days.[1] Though the work was critically acclaimed, it came to the conclusion that the allies had lost the Crimean War, which most historians conclude is not true."

From the Five Books site .. the best books of 2021 on China.

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/best...