Posted tagged ‘manicddaily’

« ManicDDaily home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Regeneration – Pat Barker

September 27, 2009

I had wanted to post something more cheerful after the pantoum posted this morning, but just finished an impossibly sad book, Regeneration, by Pat Barker, about Craiglockhart War Hospital, a World War I hospital for officers suffering from “shell-shock.”  The book, an intertwining of fact and fiction, focuses on the wonderful Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, a neurologist and anthropologist, and patients of Craiglockhart in 1917, among others, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two great British war poets (and British poets of the Great War.)

What is perhaps initially most disturbing is the general contempt British society, and the soldier patients themselves, have for soldiers suffering from breakdown.  (Correction.  What is most disturbing is the horror endured by the soldiers that leads to the breakdowns.)   The only thing deemed more discreditable than a soldier unable to continue fighting due to mental breakdown is a soldier, unable to continue fighting, who is not suffering from mental breakdown.  This is the case of Siegfried Sassoon, a war hero, who at the beginning of the novel (as in fact) has written a declaration addressed to Parliament against the continuation of the war.  As a result of this public letter, Sassoon  is in danger, if not found to be suffering from combat fatigue, of being court martialed.

The job of the kind and insightful Dr. Rivers is basically to get Sassoon and his other patients in shape to return to the front:  “[n]ormally, a cure implies that the patient will no longer engage in behaviour that is clearly self-destructive.  But in the present circumstances, recovery meant the resumption of activities that were not merely self-destructive but positively suicidal.”

Rivers, adopting a Freudian approach, is basically a “talk therapist”.  His sessions with the patients are incredibly civil—clipped, restrained, quietly manly (even when talking about homosexuality.)  (These are Brits, right?  And officers.)

The most chilling parts of the book, even worse than the descriptions of combat conditions, detail the alternative methods of treatment adopted by a Dr. Lewis Yealland at a London war hospital.  Yealland (a true doctor who wrote about his “therapeutic” methods in a post-war book) believed in achieving speedy results through the electric shocking of injured (or what he views as recalcitrant) patients;  those struck dumb by combat trauma, for example, have electrodes attached to their throats and are repeatedly shocked.   (These are still the British I am writing about, doing it to their own.)

Not a cheerful book, but powerful and informative, and quite amazing to read in the modern context.   I  recommend.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Pantoum – Hard hard hard: “Overheard on the Esplanade”

September 27, 2009

I’m tackling a different poetic form today – the pantoum.

Pantoums are sometimes compared to villanelles because they too involve repeating lines.  But pantoums are, to my mind, much harder to write.

As explained previously (see e.g. post comparing villanelles to banana pudding), writing a villanelle is largely a matter of assembly.   It takes preparation time, but once you get two reasonably resonant, flexible, lines (the ones that will be repeated), you can just kind of layer them.   (Like your pudding, your wafers, your bananas, your whipped cream.)

Writing a pantoum is more like setting up a house of cards–a house in which the same cards are used to build both the lower and higher levels.  (My attempts sometimes remind me of a clown stacking boxes to reach some high place; because of a shortage, the clown keeps putting the bottom boxes on top, until, slowly, she realizes she’s just not getting anywhere, at least anywhere transcendent.)

Pantoums also make me think of some Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin schtick in which the same coin or flower is recirculated (tied to his pocket etc.)   My brain here keeps picturing Roberto Benigni as waiter in Life is Beautiful, re-serving a light fish dish (abandoned by another customer) to the Nazi commandant with an ulcer by emphasizing the “fritti fritti fritti” quality of the mushroom omelette previously ordered by the commandant.   (Comparing a pantoum to recycled fish is probably not fair.)

The problem and also the magic of a pantoum is that all the lines are repeated.  The form is made up of quatrains.  Traditionally, it involves a rhyme sequence, though some writers dispense with rhyme.   Frankly, it is a type of poem in which “slant rhyme” or near rhyme works well to avoid a sing-songy quality.

It sounds more complicated than it is.   I’ve included a line-by-line breakdown, after my sample, below.

A note:  in reading, pay close attention to punctuation, which trumps line breaks.  (Meaning that pauses are only to be taken at commas, periods, dashes, etc. and not at line breaks unless punctuated.)  Sorry to sound churlish, but punctuation is particularly important in pantoums as it is one of the few tools for sculpting the repetitions.

(Sorry also for grim subject matter of poem.)

Heard on the Esplanade, a Pantoum

The woman cries
that she doesn’t believe it.
“Don’t tell me lies.”
She pulls away from him.

“That she doesn’t believe it—
Is that what you’re telling me?”
She pulls away from him
in the sun of the walkway.

“Is that what you’re telling me?”
Sky overbright on sleeves
in the sun of the walkway
twists the fall of fall leaves.

Sky overbright on sleeves
he holds onto.  Her, she tries to tear,
twists, the fall of fall leaves.
All pretend not to hear.

He holds onto her.  She tries to tear.
“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
All pretend not to hear.
“How can she, how can she not—”

“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
“Don’t tell me lies.
How can she, how can she not?”
The woman cries.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Now for the truly curious, here’s the breakdown:

For notation purposes, “A” and “B” refer to the end rhyme of the line.   “A1” refers to a specific whole line (which is repeated) and which uses the A rhyme;  “A2” refers to another specific whole line which also uses the A rhyme. “B1” is a specific B rhyming line; “B2” another specific B rhyming line.

A1
B1
A2
B2

B1
A3
B2
A4

A3
B3
A4
B4

B3
A5
B4
A6

A5
B5
A6
B6

B5
A2
B6
A1

A pantoum can have any number of quatrains as long as the patterns are maintained.

If you’d rather count octopi than repeating lines–check out 1 Mississippi at link above or on Amazon.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 18 Comments

Funeral Homes v. Bob the Bagelman

September 26, 2009

Recently I’ve had some rather stressful involvement with  funeral and memorial arrangements.  In the process, I’ve worked with (a) a funeral home and (b) Bob the Bagelman (who was suggested by the church where one funeral service was to be held as a source of food for an informal reception.)

Bob’s establishment is small, hot, crowded, dark, and does not have a telephone.  Bob is rarely there, and his very nice wife, despite the fact that she stands behind the cash register, doesn’t seem to know the prices of anything.  (Presumably, this statement does not apply to a single cinnamon raisin with cream cheese.)

The funeral home is spacious, breezily airconditioned, heavily upholstered, and ornately lamped.  When people answering the telephone put you on hold, the recording talks about trust.  The funeral home staff makes a point of being extremely clear about everything that will be done and not done, what’s needed, and what’s included.  While there are several oddly named categories on the final bill, they are nonetheless separately itemized.

Bob’s business is a bit hectic.   I had to call him several times on his cell phone before we could actually talk about the order.  Each initial call I made was at a bad time—once he was chasing an ambulance with a relative in it (admittedly not his fault!), once he was delivering an order, once he didn’t have a pen.  Even after we did talk, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  And, frankly, what he ultimately delivered seemed to me to be overpriced even for New York City.

Even so, I somehow preferred the process of making arrangements with Bob.   Seven reasons why:

1.  Isn’t it obvious?

2.  The funeral home insisted on payment in full in advance.  Bob the Bagelman, who never even asked for my full name, told me to just drop a check by whenever it might be convenient.

3.  Bob the Bagelman prepares food.  You can put butter on it.

4.  Bob the Bagelman, unlike the funeral home, does not try to sell a dress, with completely new underwear, for $465.

5.  Bob the Bagelman told me that when it’s hot, people really go for fruit.  I really don’t like to write about what the funeral home director said about heat.

6.  Yes, Bob the Bagelman overcharged.  Even so, he had a whole lot fewer zeros at the end of his bill.

7.  Bob the Bagelman laughed at my feeble, but frequent, attempts to make jokes, while the funeral home director….well, isn’t it obvious?

Categories: New York City
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 6 Comments

Long Distance 911 Call

September 25, 2009

A long distance 911 call morning.  The plight of the adult child whose parents live  elsewhere.  How to interpret the steady phrases of EMTs who are several hours away, and who, five minutes earlier, couldn’t talk to you because (as you heard in the midst of tense rustling), they were “kind of busy here.”

Fly immediately?  Or, stay within cell range?

Don’t cry.

Medication can be complicated for the elderly and/or infirm.  I don’t want to put the blame on doctors (or do I?), but prescription instructions and verbal explanations are frequently cursory, sometimes actually wrong.    People think that medications are calibrated, and I’m sure doctors do try to calibrate them.  But there is a one-size-fits-all aspect even to fairly careful dosages of extremely powerful drugs.

The uninitiated (that is, those unused to the effects of overly high dosages)  think of medications as little thermostats, capable of adjusting the body’s specific internal climate in the manner of a really good air-conditioning unit;  unfortunately, many medications seem more like a battery-powered fan simply stoking this or that bodily function until its juice runs out.

(Which reminds me that I left my iron on this morning.  Can’t turn back now.)

Blood sugar meds seem especially tricky.  The most common one (at least the one my Dad takes) doesn’t adjust sugar but simply lowers it, bang, bang, bang, like a hammer hitting a peg.

The effects can be very dramatic.  We’re not talking about a nail shooting through a wall here, but a person sliding to the floor, unable to talk or move.

Seeing the slide, and then the recovery (even just hearing about them long distance), fills one with amazement for the body’s many delicate balances; its incredibly speedy resilience.

A few packets of sugar later, the body that had become an alarmingly dead weight is once again a smiling, laughing, person, reciting the name of the President and the day of the week. Only those standing to the side, or at the end of the phone line, now have trouble speaking.

Categories: daughtering
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

No Rest For The Weary – Metered Feet

September 24, 2009

Went to bed at one a.m.  and woke up at five.  (The way in which ten cups of strong tea remain in your system never ceases to surprise me.)

I am not someone who particularly touts the benefits of sleep.  It’s great stuff, but the fact remains that there are only 24 hours in the day, and, when you have a day job, only so many (other) hours can be spent unconscious.  (That’s a joke, boss.)

Nonetheless, I do think that, over time, sleep deprivation can put a serious dent in creativity.  Great swathes of the sleep-deprived brain are spent on questions such as what is your husband’s cell phone number again, and where did you just put your purse, socks, apple, keys, and, most importantly, that fresh cup of tea?   Under those circumstances, it’s hard to make space for new combinations of brain waves.

As a result, I decided today to write about something kind of technical, which is meter in formal poetry.  Ta Da!

Or rather:  taDa taDa taDa TaDa TaDa.

The above, by the way, is my version of iambic pentameter, probably the most common form of meter in traditional English verse.  (I base this statement on the fact that iambic pentameter is the form of virtually all the lines of Shakespeare’s  plays, other than the prose dialogue of his commoner characters such as the Rude Mechanicals in a Midsummer’s Night Dream. )

There are variations.  But before going into these, I want to take a break to thank another blogger, Patrick Gillespie, who writes Poemshape at wordpress  and who kindly wrote about my poetry and blog: http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/another-poet-childrens-writer/.  Gillespie knows a great deal about poetic meter.  And although he inspired me to continue with this subject, I had oddly already started writing about this morning on the subway.

So:

If rhyme gives a kind of music to poetry, meter is what makes it dance.   Ironically, meter is measured in “feet” (sort of like toe-tappings.  Also, like the English system of distance measurement.)  A line which is written in “pentameter” has five feet.

A “foot” of poetry generally varies in length between one and three syllables.   (Two is probably the most common.)

There are various terms for the specific rhythm of a “foot” of a poem. An iambic rhythm is a ta-Da, with the emphasis on the second syllable.  A trochaic rhythm is the opposite of an iamb: Ta-da.  (A better example may be “Dada” as in Marcel Duchamps.)   A spondee is a foot with two syllables of equal stress as in “graveside”.  (Sorry for that one.)   Two types of feet which use one long syllable and two short unstressed ones are dactyls and anapests. (What comes to my mind is “Heidigger”, a dactyl, although a perhaps better, example is “Pattinson”.)

It’s all kind of complicated.  Which is why I tend to write poems using a syllabic count rather than using meter based on “feet.”  (Perhaps I should have told you this before the long explanation.)

Yes, it’s cheating.  And lazy.  But using a syllabic count is quite helpful to a striving poet, particularly when sleep deprived.

When writing formal poetry, I also aim for pentameter, because that length of line seems very natural.  To reach an approximation of pentameter, I try to keep the lines between 9 and ll syllables (though 12 can also sometimes work).

Keep in mind, if you try this technique, that a syllabic count really is not same as a count of feet.  You need to be careful that you are not reading the line in an odd or contrived way in order to get it to sound “right.”

I include below another example of a villanelle.  I chose this one because it describes the aging, sleep-deprived brain, although the meter is not that great and may not qualify as as “pentameter.”  The second repeating line: “as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day” is a bit long but just about works because,  arguably, it ends with two “anapests.”

Villanelle to Wandering Brain

Sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way
and must make do with words that are in reach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day,

when what it craves is crimson, noon in May,
the unscathed verb or complex forms of speech.
But sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way

and calls the egg a lightbulb, plan a tray,
and no matter how it search or how beseech
is pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

I try to make a joke of my decay
or say that busy-ness acts as the leech
that makes my mind feel like it’s lost its way,

but whole years seem as spent as last month’s pay,
lost in unmet dares to eat a peach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

There is so much I think I still should say,
so press poor words like linens to heart’s breach,
but find my mind has somehow lost its way
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Do check out1 Mississippi, my children’s counting book, Going on Somewhere, my book of poetry, and Nose Dive,  comic novel.

Also, I am linking this to The Purple Treehouse today, where C.C. Champagne is talking about syllables in poetry.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 9 Comments

Subway Sonnet – Train Chemistry – Light That Cannot Be Broken Down For Parts

September 23, 2009

Molecules (poem by Karin Gustafson, drawing by Diana Barco)

I updated this post for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt for poems about trains and am also linking to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day relating to poems about light.     This poem is not a new one, but it was written on and prompted by the subway on a Monday, thinking about a beautifully sunny Sunday before.

This is a sonnet, a variation of the regular form 14 1/2 lines rather than the requisite 14.   I added the extra couple of words at the end to combat that “patness” that sometimes results from a sonnet’s final couplet.

Molecules

Yesterday in the dim fluorescence
of subway car, I thought of molecules.
They seemed, in that greyed light, the essence
of life.  I saw them stretched in pools,
sometimes seemingly limpid, other times
volcanic, fervidly swooping me
abubble, then mucking me into slimes
of laval woe, a test tube of to be
or not to be.  Today, I’m by the sea,
and water, vaster than pools, sparkles
under light so immense it cannot be
broken down for parts, yet its particles
raise up the non-molecular part
of me, what refuses to lose heart,
no matter–

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(The drawing above is by my dear friend Diana Barco, who illustrated my book of poetry called “Going on Somewhere,” available on Amazon.)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above also.

Categories: New York City, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 31 Comments

Morning Subway Blog

September 23, 2009

Man opposite me on the train this morning wears denim overalls which half-cover a chartreuse t-shirt.  He is a powerful looking man, despite the fact that his bull-like chest is now both chartreuse and bibbed. Thick arms, both right and left, both inner and outer, are covered with tattoos.  One features a large, grinning, skull that wears a Valkyrie-type helmet.

As I look at these arms, I understand, for the first time, the value of tattoos:  anyone with so many of them can wear bib overalls in New York City with complete impunity.

He is not a crazy man, meaning that his eyes don’t catch mine, not even once.  (See e.g. my post re Mondays and the strange attraction that mentally disturbed subwayriders seem to feel for my gaze.)

Drummers now set up a performance space between the subway poles.  They do block out the screeches of a child down the way, but only at the expense of a throbbing ache in the ear on their side.    Even so,  I contemplate putting change in the hat that’s passed—that child can reach an extraordinarily high pitch—only they move the hat too fast, quick to realize that no one in this car is much interested in paying for loud morning drumming.

As the train moves on, I catch my face in the opposite window of the car, and remember the comment of a friend yesterday who’d not seen me for some time.  I’d put on a little weight, she said, that showed especially in my face.

Oh yes, she also said it looked good.

Oh yes…

Cringing, I look quickly for anything other than the mirror-like blackness of that window.  Surely there’s someone nutty whose eyes I can work on avoiding.  This is the IRT.

Categories: Blogging
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Robert Pattinson’s Hair – This Blog

September 22, 2009

This blog was found by some unknown person today through the search term “how to do my hair like Robert Pattinson.”

I view this as a significant achievement.  (Not doing one’s hair like Robert Pattinson—that’s not just significant; that’s amazing.)  No, what I’m talking about is the fact that my blog would show up as the possible provider of an answer to a question of this kind.

My own hair-manipulating experience is pretty much limited to braids.  (So far, not Pattinson’s style.)

I’ve hardly even had my own hair “done”.  The only times I can remember are as a pre-teen (a member of the other age group so fascinated by RPatz.)  Hair was “done” back then for Junior High School dances.

The Junior High School “dos” were the coiffure equivalents of the corsages our pre-teen dates bought us for these events.  These were typically carnations (baby roses, if the guy was willing to shell out), which were wired together into a bunched but spacious array, gaps filled in with tangles of baby’s breath and leaf.  Green paper wrapped the stems in back; very sharp pins (with pearl tips) were used to keep the whole thing affixed to budding chests.

Even so my long blonde hair was curled, teased, smoothed, and sprayed, shaped and volumized, until it ended up a combination of beehive and Marie Antoinette’s wig.  (Now that I think about it, it also looked something like Pattinson’s hair in the Prom scene at the end of Twilight. Only mine also had ringlets.)

Those days are long long gone.  (And there were only a couple of them to begin with  – the Valentine’s Day Dance, and later the Spring Dance.  Eighth Grade.)

Which makes it hard for me to believe that I could be allowed some small measure of authority on this subject:  the way to Robert Pattinson’s hair.

The magic of the Internet never ceases to amaze….

Check out  1 Mississippi on Amazon or at link above.

Categories: Blogging, Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Monday – Ten Signs That Yours Has Been Stressful

September 21, 2009

Monday – Ten Signs that Yours Has Been Stressful

1.         You have gone through four sticks of gum;  three that you just put in your mouth on the subway platform, one that you actually chewed earlier in your office.  Your office!

2.         Your eyes keep catching the eyes of the crazy muttering man sitting opposite you on the train–swollen, hooded, troubled eyes.  Even when you finally just shut your eyes, pretending to sleep, you can’t help peeking to see if he buys your little charade.  He doesn’t.   (Maybe it’s all the gum-chewing.)

3.         You begin to deconstruct Twilight in your head.   (“Deconstruct as in Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida.)   You focus, for example, on the fact that “Bella Swan” must be named for (a) Belle, as in La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast), and (b) the Ugly Duckling.   And Edward Cullen is a combination of….. (a) Edward Scissorhands (you guess, not having actually seen the movie), and (b) cull as in the culling a herd, as in Edward in his vigilante days.   Then you actually begin to wonder about the symbolism of Jacob being a wolf.  But wasn’t Esau, Jacob’s brother, the “hairy man”…?

4.         The train stops for a long time in the tunnel.  Your jaw is getting seriously overextended. 

5.         When the conductor announces that the delay is due to a sick customer, you are genuinely relieved that the sick customer is not you.

6.         You really do not chew gum, you never chew gum.

7.         You step off the train onto a platform where a man sings the Flight of the Bumblebee in falsetto.  You are very glad that you will not be sitting opposite this man.

8.         All thoughts of blogging about political, social, artistic or poetic issues fly from your head and you wonder whether you couldn’t just post a picture of your cute little dog instead.  (You realize sadly that you don’t have a picture scanned.)

9.         Before taking that same cute little dog out for a walk, you hurriedly eat several slices of a kind of cheese you don’t much care for.  In an effort to assuage displaced guilt, you tear off some of every slice to give to the dog.

10.       When you finally take the dog out, you stop for a moment on the patio of a restaurant behind your building.  The restaurant has recently started playing elevator music, and before you realize what you are doing, your hips begin to twitch in time with the beat.

Agh!  You hate elevator music.  Worse than chewing gum!

Agh!

Feeling that all is surely lost—what’s happening to you?–you look out over the horizon.  The sky above the river is blue and pink and orange, the river below the sky is blue and blue and blue, a crescent of moon barely gleams through the spectrum like the most beautiful distinction possible, your dog’s eyes (you are carrying your dog through the restaurant patio) stare up at you in gratitude.   (Possibly for all the cheese.)

In less than a second, your hips let go of even the memory of those untoward twitches, and you walk straight and true out of range of the muzak, your forehead unwinding, your chest sighing, your tense jaw beginning, at last, to find peace.

Check out 1 Mississippi above for more about the peace of rivers.

Categories: Stress
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

Speaking of Fireflies

September 20, 2009

I posted an earlier poem re fireflies, but here’s actually a nicer one:

Porch

The porch pulled them to its side,
invited nestling upon shaded planks,
recalled cool soft times, clover in fields,
the day she cut his hair, and then they picked
out smooth flat stones,
and lined them along its surface, thick with
years of knobby deck paint.  Against it,
the stones shone like perfect moons to plant upon
winter table tops, reminders
that nights sown by fireflies
were going on some where, some time.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above or on Amazon.  Review it if you have one!  If not, get one!

Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »