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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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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!