I see her image at every turn, between the grinding-stones

[sovay]

1. Yesterday I went out in the pouring rain to visit the Boston Olive Oil Company with sairaali and ratatosk. It turns out that I don't like flavored olive oils very much, but flavored vinegars are the best thing. Especially balsamic vinegars made with figs, or honey, or lavender, or pomegranates and quinces. I sent a text message to derspatchel: "I have drunk about a cup of different vinegars. Astringent but fun." I did not take any home for myself, but I got presents for both of my parents and made mental notes about salads. After we got back, Ratatosk fished for Hestia and Autolycus with a cat toy he had made himself from a lath, string, and paper. He had great success. Some beautiful cresting leaps were observed, especially from Autolycus. Saira provided moral support (and extra hands) while I assembled a Medusa-branched lamp with differently colored plastic shades because our previous pole lamp had pretty much burnt out. Our living room is now much brighter than it has been, with occasional confusing shadows. The cat toy rests beside the television and both cats periodically investigate it, batting at the paper in a hinting sort of way. It's just so much more fun with a person at the other end.

2. Three striking poems I just read in the same issue of Poetry:

Solmaz Sharif, "Persian Letters"
Dunya Mikhail, "My Grandmother's Grave"
Danez Smith, "Dinosaurs in the Hood"

I really do not dislike mainstream poetry at all. It just needs to be the right mainstream.

3. Speaking of poets, I hope very much that this ghost in the frame really is Isaac Rosenberg. nineweaving pointed out that the story sounds like the start of a novel: the retired detective, a lifelong reader of poetry, catches a glimpse of a familiar face in a flicker of century-old film and begins to unravel a mystery . . . Probably this is why I have borrowed my mother's older, broken-backed copy of Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time (1951), with a 1969 postcard of Richard III still stuck between pages 74 and 75. (Grey-eyed Richard, with the genes for fair hair. If the portrait is accurate, it darkened as he grew out of childhood—so now I imagine him a tow-headed kid, like my husband in thirty-year-old photographs.) But mostly I hope it is true for the poet's sake: to see him alive, even so long after the fact. Rosenberg died on April Fool's Day in 1918. He was twenty-seven. He wrote a never-produced play with Lilith in it. It is not true that film is a better immortality than paintings or poems, but it's not a bad cenotaph.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I *love* "Dinosaurs in the Hood"--thank you for that.

Did you see "Kef 12" from the other day? I LOVED it.

I'm with you on mainstream poetry, absolutely.

Our living room is now much brighter than it has been, with occasional confusing shadows.

How excellent.

Some beautiful cresting leaps were observed, especially from Autolycus.

Also excellent.

I still haven't given up on the idea of drawing your cathedral haunted by foxes.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I myself had yellow hair (and yellow eyes) as a kid; there are photographs to prove it.

The hair darkened to black (before it turned to grey-and-gone); the eyes shifted to hazel, like m'wife's. I am not Hamlet, nor Richard neither; am an attendant lord, etc.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Joining the chorus for "Dinosaurs in the Hood". I am conducting an open mic poetry reading as our worship on Dec 28th--I wonder if I could read this. Of course, everything just now makes me think that, but this one is so perfect.

Have you read Tey's other mysteries? I was enchanted with the BBC version of Brat Farrar as a teenager--that was my introduction.

There's a brand called Olave that makes a lemon/olive oil that's really amazing--I use it as a salad dressing, just that and salt and somehow it is enough.

[gwynnega]

Those are terrific poems in Poetry. I keep seeing great poems by Danez Smith.

I hope it is Rosenberg in the footage! What a wonderful story.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

It is not true that film is a better immortality than paintings or poems, but it's not a bad cenotaph.

The frame shown in the news story reminds me very much of a painting, with Rosenberg the artist who has slipped a self-portrait into the lower right-hand corner, looking out at the viewers.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

We picked up a pear balsamic vinegar at the craft show last week. I am wide-eyed at the thought of lavender.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

I really do not dislike mainstream poetry at all. It just needs to be the right mainstream.

Echoing this sentiment tenfold. However, I will note that such publications as Poetry almost never publish our ilk, i.e. the spec-po crowd (so many to whom I've spoken have just stopped trying to submit to mainstream literary venues altogether, and that's largely been true of me for the past few years, too) and that is the thing about mainstream poetry culture that makes me cross.