Neoprene Dreams

Or, A Sense of Menace?  Doesn't that first shot seem like a certain type of paperback crime novel cover?

Or, really, the other shots, the accidental photographs . . . .

Hurly-Burly: Poetry in Motion

This was a last-day hurly-burly of What-Poetry-Can-Be-And-Do and How-You-Can-Enjoy-The-Ride. Some of the following works were treated fully, but the others received glancing treatment, mere introductions or excerpts or highlighted singular effects: sacrifices on the altars of poetic efficacy and exuberant aesthetic trail-guiding.  Voice and story, voice and story.  What and how, what and how.

Hughes' "Suicide's Note"
        (body of the poem first, then the title revealed);
Auden's "The Shield of Achilles"
        (for we've read The Iliad this term);
Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" paraphrased to set up
Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness"
       (trauma and serious poetic conversations);
two quotations matched and set
       from Auden's "September 1, 1939"
       and Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo"
             (mere bits in parallel and contradiction);
a foray into Jackie Leven's lyrics
       from "Classic Northern Diversions"
(to read mood even if you don't know what the song is about, to find signs);
close-reading exercises
       with Frost's "Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening"
       and Wyatt's "They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Me Seek"
       and Keats' "When I have fears that I may cease to be";
then, Frost's apocalyptic "Fire and Ice";
Spenser's logical/romantic playing with "My Love is Like to Ice, and I to Fire";
Donne's twisty-fun "Woman's Inconstancy";
a quick look at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's artwork to set up
       Christina Rossetti's beautiful and incisive "In An Artist's Studio";
and finally Herrick's playful "Cherry-ripe" -----------

(I had some Elvis Costello one-liners for flavor and effect in my back pocket, but I ended up not having time to use them appropriately and so held back.)

a very full 75-minute class.

Oh, I also quoted with context that venerable bumper sticker "Question Authority" and that mug I saw at Pegasus On Solano with "Birds have wings / Humans have books".

Burton Raffel's How To Read A Poem -- along with a slew of handouts -- was the textbook at hand.

A Lump of Clay

Vercingetorix.

Minotaur, Yearning

Minotaur:

sculpture mix; blue and green glazing.
Model-exercise: 40 minutes?

(Previous entry here.)

Moody Blue

"Gray Is My Favorite Color"

Looking At You

Odysseus: sculpture mix; unglazed.

The first full-sized head I made: years ago.

I just felt the mood to look at it again, and he looked back.

Moody Waters

Mendocino County kayaking.

Yeats: "The Moods" and "The Mask"

THE MOODS

Time drops in decay,

Like a candle burnt out

And the mountains and woods

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

THE MASK

'Put off that mask of burning gold

With emerald eyes.'

'O no, my dear, you make so bold

To find if hearts be wild and wise,

And yet not cold.'

'I would but find what's there to find,

Love or deceit.'

'It was the mask engaged your mind,

And after set your heart to beat,

Not what's behind.'

'But lest you are my enemy,

I must enquire.'

'O no, my dear, let all that be;

What matter, so there is but fire

In you, in me.'

--William Butler Yeats

P.S. The sense of loss that pervades "The Moods" is absolute, though I'm never quite sure how to answer that question at the end of that poem. (I look around me to see who is missing now, to see whom to name. I wonder about the "fire-born" and yearn to join that "rout," even as the loss is presented to me.) The repetition of "Have their day, have their day" has always worked its magic on me, resonating down the years.

I love how these poems make me think, dramatically and thematically, and yet the emotions emanating from and evoked by these poems are the roots, the sources, the impulses for such thinking. When I was younger, I always thought that more thought was needed to "get" Yeats' work, but older now, I see that more feeling is the real key. Imagination demands both sides of the coin, after all.