
Faith Shearin: “Music at My Mother’s Funeral”

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
**************
This one-sentence poem never entirely yields up its wealth. Aside from its spectacular imagery, I puzzle pleasingly over the use of infinitives, prepositions, and the staggering quadruple negative in the final two lines. I turn more and more to Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin as the bards of my old age: Stevens because he stands aloof from the despair of it and transform it into art and Larkin because he embraces and wallows in it. You need both an exterior and an interior view of having a mind-of-winter.
Right now my “mind-of-winter” is on trial: I am in a bit of a febrile frenzy reading too much and not doing adequate service by any of it.
For book clubs and challenges I am juggling “The Claverings” by Trollope, “Pendennis” by Thackeray, “Affinity” by Sarah Waters, and “Far from the Madding Crowd” by Hardy. I also try to spend time every day with Proust.
As I read Proust for the third time I am even more impressed. The first time I read through Proust I was dashing a bit—trying to pack in the pages. The second time I read Proust was more like a first time. Now–I think I am coming at Proust the right way. The Verdurans and their jolly little gang are amusing. This time I regard the characters as great characters—not as people who must be looked up to because they were created by Proust. The insipid fatuity of most “love” or most quests for social position and prestige finally strike me for what they are: the jostling quest for self-importance as reflected by the “voices” of society or the beautiful people.
But I am now at the Aunt Leonie stage of life–Aunt Leonie with cats to boot! The only redemption I find in my advanced case of Aunt Leonie-ness is that I have no nephews who are willing to listen to me. My own Aunt Leonie led me into crazed dutiful expenditures and was one of the final exhibits in the Case Against Trying to Save People. I try on Aunt Leonie style fads to see how they work: how much money would I save if I only wore nightgowns. I find myself always in an “uncertain state of grief, physical debility, illness, obsession”.
In spite of my love for the other books I am reading, I cling more to Proust because he is the most potentially acidulous–for me, at my moment in life. Art teaches me how NOT to behave more often than it teaches me how to behave at this late stage of my life.
There’s some brightness here: I listened to Mozart’s Flute Concerto Number one earlier and it’s lovely (K 313) with all kinds of bright and silvery phrases.
This is yet another part of my week-long tribute to the birthday of Wallace Stevens. This short poem by British poet, Martin Bell (1918-1978) picks up on the gourmet/gourmand interests of Stevens. It also reflects the variety of Stevens’s diction from the “Doggone” to the “rococo” and the dissonance between the praise and the bray. “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” is certainly invoked. It’s a nifty six-line tribute to two men who toiled to illuminate the unconscious, the active imagination, and the many links between art and the human mind.
Martin Bell:
Wallace Stevens Welcomes Doctor Jung into Heaven
‘Doggone, they’ve let you in at last, Doc! Gee,
Notes on the day: I’m currently listening to Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 76, number 5. What harmonic playfulness! He mixes his notes to achieve the “cantabile e mesto” attribution he gave it: “singing and sad”. I think 2016 can fairly be called the year of the string quartet for me. I have had operatic years, symphonic years, years of concerti and ballet. Years of all cello all the time and years of Maria Callas and Edward Elgar.
Reading: I am currently reading White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by historian Nancy Isenberg. I am only one generation away from “white trash” so I find the book particularly intriguing. I am also reveling in the opposition: The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss, the saga of the headmaster of a prestigious New England boarding school. |
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"Tennille is a master of the subtle bump, the tap on the shoulder—the hey, look again."–Al Ortolani
the journey itself is my home
A new day a new haiku
A New England Poet writes Poetry, Haiku, Fables & Criticism
A jigsaw puzzle blog for passionate puzzlers written by a proud puzzle geek. 🤓
A Puzzle Blog for and by Puzzle Fans
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photography and other things
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A blog about books and reading - and occasionally life in general!