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Filing today's report
Apr. 26th, 2014 10:51 pmFirst my left shoulder went awry, and now my right shoulder has gone. There's this blue-white star of pain at the base of my right shoulder blade, and it's worst when I type or sit at a computer. Painkillers don't seem to touch it. Only heat shrinks the star to a gleaming pearl, rotating slowly in place, sending out flashes of pain.
My current journal is enormous, and it's actually sort of too heavy to carry around, so today I was reduced to toting index cards held together by the pen lid. Then, even though the beer clerk (or whatever you call the person who fills your growler) told me she'd put the cap on extra tight, the nut brown ale leaked into my bag (a feather-light but tough reusable originally designed to hold four bottles of Okanagan wine) -- all over my book and index cards.**
The book was not Prochain Episode, to which I still have not returned. It was The Black-Eyed Blonde, by Benjamin Black / John Banville, which is supposed to be a new Philip Marlowe novel in the voice of Raymond Chandler. For my money*, it isn't much like Chandler -- it lacks the clipped, glib, effortless hard-boiled tone. (I am consulting my ale-stained index cards now.) Black-Banville has a fine prose style, but he uses more qualifiers and equivocations -- he expresses more ambivalence. Chandler's profoundly ambivalent, but his language isn't, and that tension is part of the pleasure. I heard Banville interviewed, and he agreed with me about who Marlowe's one true love really is, so I thought it was worth looking into.***
I'm researching for an interview on Monday by listening to poets read their work on YouTube. There are many genera of poet, both living and fossil. The singsong, the theatrical, the conversational. Those who sound like they're reading a book to a child and those who sound like they're trying to bully you. Those who read all line breaks like questions and those who enjamb with ferocious glee. There's that infinitely wistful address pioneered by Michael Dickman that I rather envy.
When I do read, when I can be convinced to attempt it, I tend to be a conversational-theatrical hybrid, I think. I hope. I aspire, anyway. Perhaps I am orchidaceous and recondite. Perhaps it is time for bed.
{rf}
*In this case, "my money" would consist of library fines.
**I know I could use my Mobile Device to take notes, but it isn't notably faster, and I don't enjoy the kinetic experience of poking at it as much as I like using a pen. Since no one is watching me, I might as well choose my own pleasure over some abstract concept of convenience or modernity. He said grumpily. Also: get off my lawn.
***Marlowe is, in my opinion, a gothic heroine. I keep meaning to write a paper about that.
My current journal is enormous, and it's actually sort of too heavy to carry around, so today I was reduced to toting index cards held together by the pen lid. Then, even though the beer clerk (or whatever you call the person who fills your growler) told me she'd put the cap on extra tight, the nut brown ale leaked into my bag (a feather-light but tough reusable originally designed to hold four bottles of Okanagan wine) -- all over my book and index cards.**
The book was not Prochain Episode, to which I still have not returned. It was The Black-Eyed Blonde, by Benjamin Black / John Banville, which is supposed to be a new Philip Marlowe novel in the voice of Raymond Chandler. For my money*, it isn't much like Chandler -- it lacks the clipped, glib, effortless hard-boiled tone. (I am consulting my ale-stained index cards now.) Black-Banville has a fine prose style, but he uses more qualifiers and equivocations -- he expresses more ambivalence. Chandler's profoundly ambivalent, but his language isn't, and that tension is part of the pleasure. I heard Banville interviewed, and he agreed with me about who Marlowe's one true love really is, so I thought it was worth looking into.***
I'm researching for an interview on Monday by listening to poets read their work on YouTube. There are many genera of poet, both living and fossil. The singsong, the theatrical, the conversational. Those who sound like they're reading a book to a child and those who sound like they're trying to bully you. Those who read all line breaks like questions and those who enjamb with ferocious glee. There's that infinitely wistful address pioneered by Michael Dickman that I rather envy.
When I do read, when I can be convinced to attempt it, I tend to be a conversational-theatrical hybrid, I think. I hope. I aspire, anyway. Perhaps I am orchidaceous and recondite. Perhaps it is time for bed.
{rf}
*In this case, "my money" would consist of library fines.
**I know I could use my Mobile Device to take notes, but it isn't notably faster, and I don't enjoy the kinetic experience of poking at it as much as I like using a pen. Since no one is watching me, I might as well choose my own pleasure over some abstract concept of convenience or modernity. He said grumpily. Also: get off my lawn.
***Marlowe is, in my opinion, a gothic heroine. I keep meaning to write a paper about that.
