rodney1946's reviews
23 reviews

James was born in a late phase and grew phasier all his life, like a jungle vine. . . .
his style, the supple, witty, sensual, sensitive circumloquasi style--and The Bowl is
it's final and most refulgent state.. James was a nuancer and believed in the art
of qualifications, an art of making finer and finer distinctions . . . "try o be someone"
he said, "on whom nothing is lost."

William Gass from "A Temple of Texts."

Down there among the people, irregular as hell, boonies and black socks. delirious
Some substitute for beautiful 
or
'You hop into car, race off into no particular direction, and blam, hit a power pole."

Top of the mountain

Words jumping up, flying off into the Blue, sentences expanding, contracting. 
I don't know if I think this is satirizing, let's see. It is a bit of a romp, no, a waltz
through New York and Boston. You just don't know with James where he is.
This one is thinking about that one, thinking about the other one. 
Maybe it is a romp

perplexing but lively, alternately irritating and ingenious. She is certainly knowledgable.

E. E. Cummings reputation always precedes him. He was a gadabout, a busybody, a fly by night, an operator, an early and more sentimental Charles Bukowski, a lover and a madman too. Sometimes he was said to be a pornographer. However, Cummings books from the Twenties display the thought and feelings of a serious writer and a serious man. He was later to be photographed with pink plush toy elephants, but in the Twenties, he worked hard. Everything he wrote was experimental, different, new, visual. He combined words, cut them in half, was cavalierly and faithfully innovative with line breaks and disrupted every line and thought if he could. He was also often funny. Cummings was first recognized for the candor and clarity of his “war memoir” The Enormous Room, published by Boni & Liveright in 1922 and reprinted with corrections in 1927 (after Cummings had become more famous). It is a book of disillusion and disenchantment, a book of the individual against the state, an anti-war book. In 1933 after a trip to the Soviet Union, which similarly disillusioned him as it had many before and after, Cummings produced an equally cogent account, Eimi (Covici Friede, 1933). During the Twenties Cummings published three books of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys (T. Selzer, 1922), XLI Poems (Dial Press, 1925) and Is 5 (Boni & Liveright, 1926). During the first two years of the Thirties, he produced three more, By E. E. Cummings (Covici-Friede, 1930), CIOPW (Covici-Friede0 and VV: Viva (Liveright) both published in 1931. It is largely upon this amazing outpouring that his reputation should rest.

E. E. Cummings reputation always precedes him. He was a gadabout, a busybody, a fly by night, an operator, an early and more sentimental Charles Bukowski, a lover and a madman too. Sometimes he was said to be a pornographer. However, Cummings books from the Twenties display the thought and feelings of a serious writer and a serious man. He was later to be photographed with pink plush toy elephants, but in the Twenties, he worked hard. Everything he wrote was experimental, different, new, visual. He combined words, cut them in half, was cavalierly and faithfully innovative with line breaks and disrupted every line and thought if he could. He was also often funny. Cummings was first recognized for the candor and clarity of his “war memoir” The Enormous Room, published by Boni & Liveright in 1922 and reprinted with corrections in 1927 (after Cummings had become more famous). It is a book of disillusion and disenchantment, a book of the individual against the state, an anti-war book. In 1933 after a trip to the Soviet Union, which similarly disillusioned him as it had many before and after, Cummings produced an equally cogent account, Eimi (Covici Friede, 1933). During the Twenties Cummings published three books of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys (T. Selzer, 1922), XLI Poems (Dial Press, 1925) and Is 5 (Boni & Liveright, 1926). During the first two years of the Thirties, he produced three more, By E. E. Cummings (Covici-Friede, 1930), CIOPW (Covici-Friede0 and VV: Viva (Liveright) both published in 1931. It is largely upon this amazing outpouring that his reputation should rest.

My addiction to mysteries continues, with two books by Donna Leon, set in Venice (which of course is half the charm). The first of her series concerns a poisioned conductor at the opera and is called Murder at La Fenice. The detective, Guido Brunetti is attractive and certainly smart, but a little mysterious himself (this despite the wife at home and other homely details). The writing is gracious and interesting and the political convictions are honorable. Uniform Justice, a later book in the same series is actually much better (better paced and more complicated a crime). Interestingly enough, so far, no one ever comes to justice! 

posted by RodneyPhillips @ 7:23 AM 

 0 comments

The poetry of Louise Bogan exhibits a disciplined, intense & concentrated simplicity of style, both graphically and verbally “classical.” The use of short lines, stanzas of three to five lines and poems a page in length was typical of the time, perhaps in reaction to the over lush poetry of the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. Although a life long New Yorker, Bogan also used the natural world as well as classical myths to provide objective correlatives, if you will, for her emotional states. Masks, it is said. In fact, many of her poems, notoriously difficult to pin down in subject matter, seem to be “about” emotional states, usually involved in love, problematic and troubled love---the difficulty of love, especially for women. And of course, many are about art, the other great subject. 

Her first book of poems, published when she was only 26 is entitled Body of This Death (1923), said title from Paul's Epistle to the Romans: “Oh who will deliver me from the body of this death.” The poems in the book, of which there are only 29 [she said: “I have a strong feeling that there should never be too many poems in a book of poetry. Thirty-five is, I think, the greatest number I should wish to published at one time.”]. From her first book, the poems usually mentioned by critics and reviewers are “Medusa,” “Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom,” “Women,” “Stanza,” and “Fifteenth Farewell.” “Women” is a fascinating and curious poem; seemingly critical of the (her own?) emotional life lived by most? some? all? women: “Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts/to eat dusty bread” and “Their love is an eager meaninglessness/Too tense, or too lax.” The poem's last two lines are startling advice, and seem to me to put the whole poem into the light of a plea for women to develop independent lives: “As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills/They should let it go by.” though she was married twice and had a brief relationship with the poet Theodore Roethke, she was really no wife, this one. 

yes to this one !

Little bits (bites) From early pages of Darkness Visible

the struggle with the disorder in my mind
never recapture my lucidity
floundering helplessly in my efforts to deal 
dank joylessness
depression is a disorder of mood
the luxury of concentration