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

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

John wrote: "Larry wrote: "Larry, it has been a long and elusive goal of mine to understand and to recognize meter. I can see the beauty, for instance, of the iambic pentameter that Marlowe employed. Yet recognizing it on its own and being able to discern it from something else has eluded me. ..."


It has been a long time since I scanned poetry for meter. But being older, my education was perhaps a bit more classical ... even though it was a public school education. We scanned the Aeneid a good bit in Latin IV and various poems in my high school English classes.

John wrote: "Larry, someone took the first paperback edition and uploaded it to Scribd as a PDF. I don’t think the book ever changed or was updated from the original publication date, so what you have is probably the same book as I am reading on Scribd. ..."

John, that's what I found and it does look very good. Thanks.

John wrote: "I have had John Hollander’s Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse in paperback for many years, but never read it.

Scribd had it available as a document where you could read the en..."


John, I just looked for it and found it. At least, I found the first edition. Does Scribd have a more recent edition?

Sher wrote: "Thanks Larry I guess posting from Poesie won’t work dang! I had hopes…" It often gets down to just trying each operation like that ...it's hard to tell what will work and what won't.

Sher wrote: "I wonder was it really a "Woman?" considering when this was written...?"

That's funny ... I thought exactly the same thing!

Sher, if you had to recommend one or more books on poetry as a form to people getting into poetry, is the Hass book one you would start with?

Looking at it, I do think it is very good. I might start with Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook ... and then move on to this Hass book or Gregory Orr's A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry ... or Oscar Mandel's Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry or Strand and Boland's collection The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. The last one is a collection of poems organized by poetic forms. The discussion of forms is actually pretty minimal ... a few pages to introduce each form and then many good poems to illustrate the form.

Sher wrote: "A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into the Formal Imagination of Poetry
I seldom give a book a 5 star plus rating, but if you are interested in poetic forms (sonnets, elegy, med..."


Sher,

Luckily Perlego has this one ... and another 10,287 books on poetry. :-)

Larry

Once I Pass’d through a Populous City
by Walt Whitman

Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future
use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there
who detain’d me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long
been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

John wrote: "A History of the World in 100 Objects

I had set this series of BBC podcasts aside a while ago, but started it up again today - fascinating to dip in and out of during free time!"


John, I have the book from the BBC podcast series (or maybe the BBC podcast series came from the book) ... it's very well done, with excellent photos for each object. Some of the objects have several photos.

Sher, It came through, but the poem is in such a small font that it can't be read.

Among other things, he teaches us that you can tie yourself to a articular piece of land, make it yours and let it make you its. It's a spiritual kind of agrarianism that is powerful.

I've read a lot of Wendell Berry ... essays, fiction, and poetry. I often start off thinking that I'm not really going to like what I read (maybe that's because he just overwhelms me with his virtuosity) and then by the end, I'm won over again. He's wise ... and that's a commodity in short supply these days.

Sher wrote: "Larry-- it sounds almost like this Perlego is a reference library... interesting ....

I still struggle with wanting to read online. I doubt I'll ever make that leap. I carry my books everywhere wi..."

Sher, that's the best way to think of it ... a reference library ... a great reference library. I've struggled with finding really good books about autism and really up-to-date books about cancer treatments. It took me about five minutes on Perlego to find the best book on the kind of treatment my wife is undergoing with her daily oral medication. That book is this: A Beginner's Guide to Targeted Cancer Treatments.

Having found it, I see that I could get a Kindle copy from Amazon for $44.00 or a paperback copy for $55.00 but the ability to just read it for free (after subscribing for an annual price of $144.00) tells me how valuable Perlego will be to me. The problem with technical books really is their price ... regardless of their format. I think that Perlego begins to address that ... I hope that even more publishers sign on to the platform.

I am copying a comment that I just made elsewhere ... a quick explanation is that this new app/platform, Perlego has more than 1,000 books de voted to poetry and poetry criticism. Here are my comments:

Yet another App/platform that allows you to read all the books you can read. This is Perlego .. and it bills itself as a service that offers "600,000 Textbooks ... One Simple Subscription"

My own comments: "A major step forward into making books more and more like music in terms of being digital media that are rented and not bought. I've looked at Perlego's offerings and it really is not 600,000 "textbooks." That's not a problem ... because it does seem to be a lot of good recent textbooks and more than 600,000 textbooks and other serious works from major publishers.

I actually went ahead and subscribed to Perlego and have been exploring it this morning. It's absolutely great if you want to learn about a specific topic, e.g. cancer, autism, macroeconomics, environmental issues, China, Old Testament theology, poetry, etc. But don't get it for works of fiction. A lot of reference works on authors and literature, but not the source works themselves, e.g. the novels of William Faulkner. We live in an age where digital media is taking over ... streaming music probably has more than 40 different apps/platforms (so much more than just Spotify) ... the same with movies and videos ... and now books. I really do recommend Scribd (and if you subscribe to Scribd, do look at the Scribd Perks, like free access to MUBI and Curiosity Stream) and Perlego sure looks like a keeper also."

LINK TO SCRIBD HERE: https://www.scribd.com/home

LINK TO PERLEGO HERE: https://www.perlego.com/home

Yet another App/platform that allows you to read all the books you can read. This is Perlego .. and it bills itself as a service that offers "600,00 Textbooks ... One Simple Subscription"

My own comments: "A major step forward into making books more and more like music in terms of being digital media that are rented and not bought. I've looked at Perlego's offerings and it really is not 600,000 "textbooks." That's not a problem ... because it does seem to be a lot of good recent textbooks and more than 600,000 textbooks and other serious works from major publishers.

I actually went ahead and subscribed to Perlego and have been exploring it this morning. It's absolutely great if you want to learn about a specific topic, e.g. cancer, autism, macroeconomics, environmental issues, China, Old Testament theology, poetry, etc. But don't get it for works of fiction. A lot of reference works on authors and literature, but not the source works themselves, e.g. the novels of William Faulkner. We live in an age where digital media is taking over ... streaming music probably has more than 40 different apps/platforms (so much more than just Spotify) ... the same with movies and videos ... and now books. I really do recommend Scribd (and if you subscribe to Scribd, do look at the Scribd Perks, like free access to MUBI and Curiosity Stream) and Perlego sure looks like a keeper also."

LINK TO SCRIBD HERE: https://www.scribd.com/home

LINK TO PERLEGO HERE: https://www.perlego.com/home

Jerome wrote: "I am reading The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart on Kindle.

From Goodreads:

Katherine Stewart reveals a d..."


Jerome, thanks for pointing me toward this. I recently read Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and found her analysis of how Christianity has been corrupted by a strident and aggressive masculinity to be very insightful. I'll definitely read Katherine Stewart's book.

I always enjoy reading Emily Dickinson. This may be the poem of hers that I know best. And it touches me with a weight more than that of a feather.

Carol wrote: "I hope the blood transfusion has made your wife feel a little better, Larry. My husband, Andy, has been ill for nearly 20 years with polycythemia rubra vera- an illness of the blood which is someti..."

Carol,

My wife's oral medication (a PARP inhibitor) to prevent her cancer from returning has many side effects, but some of the more serious ones have to do with bone marrow, including reducing the production of red blood cells. Her blood work was better this week, and she'll be put on a lower dose of that oral medication soon.

Living with diseases as new drugs are developed and released is truly pretty amazing. I won't detail all of our friends experiences with cancer, except to say that it's not really what most people think it is. Most immediately think of chemotherapy and nausea, and that can be part of it, but sometimes it's just very different ... often much better than that and in a few cases worse.

Recognition that life needs to go on while dealing with cancer resulted in the following: while my wife was in the infusion ward getting the blood transfusion last week, one of the artists in residence, Anthony, showed up and started playing the violin for the three patients (one of whom was my wife) at the end of the ward ... and for the nurses, too. Eventually he would go on to play five different songs, but the second song was one that he played like Stéphane Grappelli. When he finished with the song, I told him that I like Grappelli's music a lot. Anthony said that when he was 16, he had gotten a ticket to see Grappelli play at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, an event for Grapelli's 80th birthday, but so few tickets had been sold that the concert was move to Psyche Delly, a bar and venue in Bethesda, Maryland. He tracked down a telephone number for Grappelli and talked with his manager, explaining that he had called the bar and they told him he couldn't get in unless he was 18 years old. The manager said to just show up at the front door, and ask for him. And the manager was as good as his word. When Anthony was allowed to enter, he asked for Grappelli's manager by name who came in and escorted him to a table in the front. That would have been in 1988 ... music is powerful stuff and can be part of healing and just living.

I hope that Andy goes on living and enjoying many parts of life ... Skype and Zoom have helped us a lot this past year.

It's been a hard few months for us. My wife has come through her treatment for cancer quite well ... although last week she had to go off her daily medicine (a PARP inhibitor) and have a blood transfusion.

Mentally, it's been tougher as five different friends deal with cancer ... all very different and at very different stages. And all are living with this terrible disease ... they are living fully and not just existing. I knew as we got older that this was what happened as many of your friends got older also. Knowing it and experiencing it are two very different things.

Poetry helps a lot.

We retired ones seem to divide our time between homes in Virginia and short trips to North Carolina.

I do love the poem.