I don't think I'm actually running a fever, but I feel like it: skin-ache, bone-ache, overall sensation of recent collision with a cement truck. It is very distracting. I couldn't fall back asleep, so I made notes on the internet.
1. I wish Free State of Jones (2016) were getting better reviews; the real history of Newt Knight and Jones County is fascinating. To my knowledge, the only other movie to draw on the story of the Free State of Jones is the very loosely inspired Tap Roots (1948), which is where I first heard of it. I can't speak to the 1942 source novel by James H. Street, but I bailed on the film despite its glancing brush with history and the novelty of Van Heflin and Boris Karloff in the same movie (and Arthur Shields in a bit part, speaking of character actors). Heflin has a mustache, proving that Universal learned no lessons from MGM's Green Dolphin Street (1947), and Karloff is playing a Choctaw character, albeit one who gets to show off his beautifully modulated British accent, and there was too much antebellum melodrama and then when we got to the bellum the melodrama didn't let up and I had better things to do with my time, like brushing the cat. Possibly I am just setting myself up for more of the same if I try out Free State of Jones for the sake of Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but I'm still considering it.
2. Three poems I'd been meaning to link for some time: Eloise Klein Healy's "The Lyric in a Time of War," Chris Emslie's "Prayer for Anything but Prayer," and Harry Giles' "Piercings." I found this one yesterday, but I was right that I'd want the collection it came from: Owen Sheers' "Mametz Wood." It's very strange to read someone whose way of thinking about the war dead of the Western Front is so close in language to mine, even if we did different things with the imagery; I want to look for the common ancestor. I wonder if I can blame David Jones. He's not mentioned in the notes for "Last Letters," but he is the nameless poet with the terrible arcana: "praise for the action proper to chemicals . . . candle-light, fire-light, Cups, Wands and Swords, to choose at random."
3. Internet, I wasn't looking for a photo of Elisha Cook, Jr. at the time of his military service, but I'll take it. The weird thing is, from that angle he looks like someone I knew in college. The obituary photo of Harry Rabinowitz really looks like someone I knew in college, give or take fifteen years and a pinstriped suit. It is extremely jarring to see that sort of thing in a sidebar.
Back to bed.
1. I wish Free State of Jones (2016) were getting better reviews; the real history of Newt Knight and Jones County is fascinating. To my knowledge, the only other movie to draw on the story of the Free State of Jones is the very loosely inspired Tap Roots (1948), which is where I first heard of it. I can't speak to the 1942 source novel by James H. Street, but I bailed on the film despite its glancing brush with history and the novelty of Van Heflin and Boris Karloff in the same movie (and Arthur Shields in a bit part, speaking of character actors). Heflin has a mustache, proving that Universal learned no lessons from MGM's Green Dolphin Street (1947), and Karloff is playing a Choctaw character, albeit one who gets to show off his beautifully modulated British accent, and there was too much antebellum melodrama and then when we got to the bellum the melodrama didn't let up and I had better things to do with my time, like brushing the cat. Possibly I am just setting myself up for more of the same if I try out Free State of Jones for the sake of Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but I'm still considering it.
2. Three poems I'd been meaning to link for some time: Eloise Klein Healy's "The Lyric in a Time of War," Chris Emslie's "Prayer for Anything but Prayer," and Harry Giles' "Piercings." I found this one yesterday, but I was right that I'd want the collection it came from: Owen Sheers' "Mametz Wood." It's very strange to read someone whose way of thinking about the war dead of the Western Front is so close in language to mine, even if we did different things with the imagery; I want to look for the common ancestor. I wonder if I can blame David Jones. He's not mentioned in the notes for "Last Letters," but he is the nameless poet with the terrible arcana: "praise for the action proper to chemicals . . . candle-light, fire-light, Cups, Wands and Swords, to choose at random."
3. Internet, I wasn't looking for a photo of Elisha Cook, Jr. at the time of his military service, but I'll take it. The weird thing is, from that angle he looks like someone I knew in college. The obituary photo of Harry Rabinowitz really looks like someone I knew in college, give or take fifteen years and a pinstriped suit. It is extremely jarring to see that sort of thing in a sidebar.
Back to bed.
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