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Midwives have burned the prisons to the ground
My poem "Narcissus in London" has been accepted by Not One of Us. Despite the title, it is not a Dorian Gray poem; it is a Jekyll and Hyde poem with an appropriately dissociated history in that I wrote it in 2006, shortly after rewatching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), and then forgot all about it until its rediscovery in 2020. Prosaically, I suspect I lost track of it in the chaos and trauma of the move from New Haven, but the net effect was the unprecedented emergence of a poem by a different me. (Right around this time of year, fifteen years ago, my academic career was over and I didn't know it yet. I still thought I would recover over the summer from the complications of a four-month sinus infection, not that it had left me with permanent damage including neuropathy in the front of my face to this day. I had just gone on medical leave. I was trying to work out how to handle my qualifying exams in the fall. I never returned.) The title comes from the film's gimmick of reflections, how Jason Flemyng's Jekyll always sees Hyde instead of himself and vice versa. I regretfully deleted the original epigraph from Elizabeth Goudge's The Valley of Song (1951): "It was not the face itself that attracted her, but the way she had suddenly become two people."
Through slightly piratical means, I finally watched Count Three and Pray (1955) in its proper aspect ratio and there's nothing to be done about the score or the pasted-on conventions, but it was very good to see Van Heflin and Joanne Woodward not pan-and-scanned. Otherwise this week has been, frankly, enervating beyond belief. Have a couple of links.
1. Of all the people I might have expected to turn up in the original 1971 London cast of Godspell, Jeremy Irons was not one. He does terrific Judas-patter on "All for the Best."
2. I want to make a marmalade cake. It looks like a spiritual cousin of my family's lemon cake, which began life as Maida Heatter's East 62nd Street Lemon Cake. Also it looks delicious.
3. Courtesy of a friend who is not on DW: a classicist and a cat.
My own cat has been spending much of his time between the front window and my lap. Earlier today he was chattering at birds; his lime-green eyes were huge with sun and his little pink-tongued mouth emitted the characteristic ack-ack of a cat on the wrong side of the screen from something pounceable. Since we are in favor of him not launching himself into space, however, I fed him his afternoon meal with medications instead. He is very dear.
Through slightly piratical means, I finally watched Count Three and Pray (1955) in its proper aspect ratio and there's nothing to be done about the score or the pasted-on conventions, but it was very good to see Van Heflin and Joanne Woodward not pan-and-scanned. Otherwise this week has been, frankly, enervating beyond belief. Have a couple of links.
1. Of all the people I might have expected to turn up in the original 1971 London cast of Godspell, Jeremy Irons was not one. He does terrific Judas-patter on "All for the Best."
2. I want to make a marmalade cake. It looks like a spiritual cousin of my family's lemon cake, which began life as Maida Heatter's East 62nd Street Lemon Cake. Also it looks delicious.
3. Courtesy of a friend who is not on DW: a classicist and a cat.
My own cat has been spending much of his time between the front window and my lap. Earlier today he was chattering at birds; his lime-green eyes were huge with sun and his little pink-tongued mouth emitted the characteristic ack-ack of a cat on the wrong side of the screen from something pounceable. Since we are in favor of him not launching himself into space, however, I fed him his afternoon meal with medications instead. He is very dear.
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Also, I sent the bit about Autolycus to my friend Alyc, noting that you basically just have to change the eye color and you're describing their cat Thrace.
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Nice! I didn't realize the cooking section of the New York Times was paywalled right off the bat—I've replaced the link for the lemon cake with something that should be more open-access. Essentially it is a pound cake with lemon extract and lemon zest and a lemon-juice glaze and the bit about letting it cool completely before cutting it is bogus, it is amazing freshly glazed and hot.
But we have a Meyer lemon tree on our property, which he uses for the juice and zest, and wow does that add something; the cake becomes so much more fragrant.
Meyer lemons are great.
Also, I sent the bit about Autolycus to my friend Alyc, noting that you basically just have to change the eye color and you're describing their cat Thrace.
Aw. Good cat!
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Yay!
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Thank you!
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For some reason I think "All for the Best" works a lot better with English accents.
A marmalade cake sounds delicious.
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Thank you!
For some reason I think "All for the Best" works a lot better with English accents.
It really brings out the music-hall.
A marmalade cake sounds delicious.
I'll need to get some marmalade first, but I am now actively planning.
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Yay, poem!
Nine
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Who paywalls a cake when obituaries you can read for free? I'll send you the recipe.
Yay, poem!
Thank you!
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Nine
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https://youtu.be/n0sXNmKhGKo
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I can see how you got there. I haven't heard that song since vinyl.
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For quite some time my daughter was obsessed with Jeremy Irons singing Be Prepared in the Lion King and I still have difficulty imagining him in any other role...
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Thank you! We like him flourishing.
For quite some time my daughter was obsessed with Jeremy Irons singing Be Prepared in the Lion King and I still have difficulty imagining him in any other role...
That film was almost certainly my first experience of him, so I understand how that happened!
(Speaking of Disney and big cats, every now and then I remember that my first experience of George Sanders was almost certainly Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (1967)—unless it was the foreign minister who romances Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam (1953)—and that's just how things are.)