n i g h t i n g a l e s h i r a z / blog
Afternoon Gelato Stupor

june 2023
january 2023
december 2022
september 2022
august 2022
july 2022
january 2022
november 2021
october 2021
september 2021
august 2021
july 2021
june 2021
may 2021
april 2021
march 2021
february 2021
january 2021
september 2020
august 2020
july 2020
may 2020
april 2020
march 2020
february 2020
december 2019
october 2019
july 2019
june 2019
may 2019
april 2019
march 2019
february 2019
january 2019
december 2018
november 2018
october 2018
september 2018
august 2018
july 2018
june 2018
may 2018
april 2018
march 2018
february 2018
january 2018
december 2017
november 2017
october 2017
september 2017
august 2017
july 2017
june 2017
march 2017
february 2017
january 2017
november 2016
october 2016
september 2016
august 2016
july 2016
june 2016
may 2016
april 2016
march 2016
february 2016
december 2015
november 2015
october 2015
september 2015
may 2015
march 2015
february 2015
january 2015
december 2014
november 2014
october 2014
september 2014
august 2014
may 2014
april 2014
march 2014
february 2014
*april 2013
*march 2013
*february 2013
*january 2013
*december 2012
*november 2012
*october 2012
*september 2012
*july 2012
*october 2011
*september 2011
*august 2011
*july 2011
*june 2011
*may 2011
april 2011
march 2011
april 2010
march 2010
february 2010
january 2010
december 2009
november 2009
september 2009
june 2009
may 2009
february 2009
january 2009
december 2008
october 2008
september 2008
august 2008
july 2008
june 2008
may 2008
april 2008
january 2008
december 2007
november 2007
october 2007
september 2007
august 2007
july 2007
june 2007
may 2007
april 2007
march 2007
february 2007
january 2007
december 2006
november 2006
october 2006
september 2006
august 2006
july 2006
june 2006
may 2006
april 2006
march 2006
february 2006
january 2006
december 2005
november 2005
october 2005
september 2005
august 2005
july 2005
june 2005
may 2005
april 2005
march 2005
february 2005
january 2005
december 2004
november 2004
october 2004
september 2004
august 2004
july 2004
june 2004
may 2004
april 2004
march 2004
february 2004
january 2004
december 2003
june 2003
april 2003
march 2003
 
How to write a poem

Believe it or not, I googled that today.  Just to see what I would get.  Not surprisingly, I got plenty of stuff.  (If you have a question for Google, you can bet that enough other people had it before you, and that they’ve boosted the rankings for a bunch of answers to it.) But surprisingly, some of this stuff was good -- in that serendipitous, not-exactly-what-i-need-right-now (because what I need right now is to disconnect myself from the Internet and Just Plain Write), lovely and precious way.

The number one search result for the words "How to write a poem" is of course, a wikiHow article titled "How to write a poem" (11 steps, with pictures -- whoa!).  The article itself is as lame as you’d expect (do they have "How to dance like no one is watching" and "How to enjoy a quiet afternoon" too? I am both tempted and afraid to look...) -- you start out by finding "a spark" and then you "Read and listen to poetry." (And yes, that counts as, err, *one* step...) At one point, you’re advised to use a "computer spreadsheet such as OpenOffice.org Calc, [which] is very efficient for rearranging words and checking rhythm through columns’ alignment.  Put one syllable in each cell.  You can transfer the text to a word processor for fancier printing when you’re done." Argh.

So where is that lovely and precious bit? Right at the end, someone with half a clue has embedded a video of Billy Collins (alright so maybe it was someone with way more than half a clue), called "The Use of Language in Poetry."



I love when he says, "that person loves soap."

By the way.  If you weren’t at the Roman Forum this past June to hear him read it (thank goodness for you, Carlos), then this, is "Questions About Angels."


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[mercoledì 26 settembre 2012 ore 10:15:08] []

The uses of fiction

For the first week of class, we had to read Alice Munro’s "Fiction" (from Too Much Happiness: Stories, and/or from the August 2007 issue of Harper’s).  I hadn’t noticed it much back when I’d first read it -- and everything else in Too Much Happiness -- a couple of years ago.  On a second reading (for class), I could see how it was pretty interesting, the way she makes the story work.  Then, during a class discussion, Tessa talked about how it felt like a set of Russian dolls to her -- the way the stories seem to be nested inside each other, unlocking one by one through time and place.  So I read it again, and again.  And then I read some other stuff about Alice Munro and what she thinks of stories.  I liked these bits:

From the a review in the New York Times:

In the introduction to her 1996 volume of "Selected Stories," Munro reveals an endearing idiosyncrasy: "I don’t always, or even usually, read stories from beginning to end.  I start anywhere and proceed in either direction." She goes on to explain that she doesn’t read in order to find out what happens so much as to experience the world of the story, to inhabit it for a while, "wandering back and forth" in it, discovering the ways it alters her perspective.  This Alice-in-Wonderland propensity, this inclination to regard fiction as a dynamic creation and the reader as a mutable participant, may provide a key to reading Munro.  More than that, it suggests something provocative about the uses of fiction, about its moral purpose as well as its potential to have an impact on our lives.

From a review at Powell’s:

"A story is not like a road to follow," Munro originally wrote in an essay for a friend, then subsumed into the introduction to her Selected Stories, published in 1996, "...it’s more like a house.  You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows."

And, on a not-quite-related note, a review by John T Marohn:

Except for the last story, there isn’t a narrative in this collection that doesn’t open up so many of the wounds of just being alive.

So, not-quite-related to the thing she has of treating a story like a house you walk into, and explore, not-necessarily-sequentially and not-necessarily-all-of-it.

But rather to that other thing, about what good fiction can do.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[giovedì 20 settembre 2012 ore 09:38:08] []

on trying

the trouble is there are too many tools.  there are too many ways in which you can write, too many templates, too many content management systems, too many open sources and too many gnu public licenses.

there are too many books -- on writing, on reading, on everything you know and on everything -- more than everything even -- you don’t.

too many moments when the cat looks perfect on the window sill, in her green collar by the green basil, with the green hillside behind her.  too many moments when the day stretches out so luxuriously you cannot stop splashing around in the feeling, and too many other moments when you realize it has passed that point, that if you haven’t started something amazing by now, then this is not the day from which something amazing will come.

too many moments when you notice a piece of lint on your shirt, a blotch on your soul, a person you have still not said sorry to.

i wish i could just write.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[giovedì 13 settembre 2012 ore 09:55:08] []

Again

Last year I quoted Colum McCann.  But I didn’t quote this.

The sky would always be this shade of blue.  The towers had come down the day before.  Third Avenue on the Upper East Side was a flutter of missing faces, the posters taped to the mailboxes, plastered on windows, flapping against the light poles: "Looking for Derek Sword"; "Have You Seen This Person?"; "Matt Heard: Worked for Morgan Stanley." The streets were quieter than usual.  The ash fell, as ash will.

Everything felt honed down to the necessary, except for one woman who sat alone at an outdoor table in a restaurant on Seventy-fourth Street.  She had just ordered a piece of chocolate cake.  It arrived in front of her, and the waiter spun away.  A slice of two-layer cake.  Dark chocolate.  A nipple of cream dolloped on top.  A sprinkling of dark powder.  The woman was elegant, fiftyish, beautiful.  She touched the edge of the plate, brought it toward her.

At any other time, it would have been just a piece of cake, a collision of cocoa and flour and eggs.  But so much of what the city was about had just been levelled--not just the towers but a sense of the city itself, the desire, the greed, the appetite, the unrelenting pursuit of the present.  The woman unrolled a fork from a paper napkin, held it at her mouth, tapping the tines against her teeth.  She ran the fork, then, through the powder, addressing the cake, scribbling her intent.

Our job is to be epic and tiny, both.  Three thousand lives in New York had just disintegrated into the air.  Nobody could have known it for certain then, but hundreds of thousand of lives would hang in the balance—in Baghdad, Kabul, London, Madrid, Basra.  The ordinary shoves up against the monumental.


Go read it.  Get to the line about enmity and loss.  Get to the line about not needing anniversaries.

Go read it.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[martedì 11 settembre 2012 ore 10:18:08] []

Channeling Marcus

A question: When someone says something to you out of a lack of understanding of your life, or simply out of a lack of grace and social intelligence on their part, why must you let it get to you?

A (potential) answer: Because you just cooked them a f*cking fantastic lunch, that’s why.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[sabato 08 settembre 2012 ore 12:25:08] []

A very stubborn kind of flexibility

When YOU email ME, to say you’d like to meet up and when would be good, and I email you back with a (very limited, very fussy) set of days and times, and I SPECIFICALLY SAY that any of those very specific days and times would work for me, DON’T muthaf*cking email me back to say all of those are fine for you and that I should pick what works for me.  Because you know what?

I feel like that’s exactly what I JUST DID.


[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Belvedere, Orte]
[martedì 04 settembre 2012 ore 18:29:08] []