Bookish

Comfort for a Sore Throat

A hot toddy and a good book:
The Fall of the Kings
by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman.

I think this is my third reading.

Comfort Before Revising

Drowning Atlantis

I need to swim.

Right now, the water-of-life goes down like water.

When I am swimming regularly, putting in the laps, day after day, I'm not so thirsty.

Right now, I'm trying to drown Atlantis.
And I am.
Drop by drop,
dram by dram,
deluge by deluge.

The King of Atlantis
Fall 2009: Sculpture mix
(glazed with Transparent Brown, Stormy Blue, & Celadon),
copper wire, and hemp.

Stirrup Cup

Glen-What-The-Hell.
Sure tastes good tonight.

No Irish in Castle Lumley

I tried to order Irish in the Library Bar of Lumley Castle, Chester-le-Street, Durham, but they only had whisky. No Bushmills. Glenfiddach (with a terminal /k/, I learned) became the drink of choice. Medicinal, by the way. That sore throat from York.

I Lost 10 Pounds While On Vacation

The sore throat I picked up in York cut short the ale-and whisky-swilling.

Whiskey Friday

Or, The Devil Is In The Details

Body English:
sculpture mix; transparent brown and shino glazing.
20-minute exercise.

Whiskey With Ice; Leaping From Zeus

RANDOM THOUGHTS OF THE DAY
____________________________

"No, I still drink whiskey with ice."

My response when the dental hygienist asked if my teeth were sensitive to cold.

____________________________

Influence can be tricky to trace.  Was I headed in that direction already or did so-&-so turn my steps that way?

I tend to mythologize myself as having leapt full-bodied from the head of Zeus, but that's hardly likely.

Irish on the Rocks with a Splash

Identikit II?

Old School

"Someone . . . reading a book . . . ."

--the voice almost disbelieving, wistful--

Pt. Richmond passerby's observation as I sat at a sidewalk table drinking coffee and reading an old, worn, thick paperback this morning.

This is that book, but I wasn't drinking whiskey then.
Old Friends.

Prepping For Class

Kem Nunn's first novel, Tapping the Source; Bushmills; and the Eelfish.

In between chapters, I'm contemplating Point Molate and a quick kayak-run in the Bay this weekend.

Comfort Comes In Many Guises

Lighting By Bushmills -- And Brendan Kennelly

Self-Portrait #52.

"We are all occasionally turned to stone by what we witness, think and feel.  Out of that same selfstone, the imagination moulds and coaxes a persona who, entering poems and animating them by his presence, is seen and felt to be a creature of flesh and blood.  The cold of stone is imaginatively caressed into human warmth, surely one of the transfiguring graces of poetry.  (It can happen the other way round too, and be no less a transfiguring grace.)"

--Brendan Kennelly, from his Islandman,
quoted in his Breathing Spaces: Early Poems, 
which I'm excerpted, respectfully, here, among other places in this blog.

I've felt like an Islandman, an enisled "selfstone", and I have wanted others to feel like islandmen or personae too, though I certainly didn't quite have the words for it until this passage from Kennelly.

Printer's Devil

One of my poems in print.  

Just Shy Of Fifty-Two

I've outlived Keats, Shelley, and Byron by a considerable margin with not all that much to show for it.

The heat is on, then, to make the second half-century count.  I embrace the challenge.

Lines: evidence of time passing, though not of any mere passive passage of time.  Maps to the country of character, of mishap and what-have-you.  A lack of sunscreen, certainly; plenty of squinting into the sun, commuting, driving across bridges, kayaking and diving out in the glare.  Pool-time and sea-time too: dried skin from the chlorine and salt.  And all that reading, of course, the concentration above all those pages . . . .  And yet, and this is something I wear with pride: more smiles than anything, frankly.  There's an aspiration, don't you think?  Crease your face with good will and cheer, if you dare.  (I'm smiling as I type that.)

There's a poem by Robert Graves that comes to mind, though he was older when he wrote it.  I'll post it in a day or so.

This year I've written at least one poem worth keeping, and that's a fine judgment, a fine declaration.  More would be better, but then that's homework to be dealt with in the next few months.

Just now, right now, I am toasting all of us with a bit of Bushmills.  Carry on, and live as large as you can.

May the devil . . . oh, you know.  And, here's to King Brian in the interim.  I'm drinking Irish, after all.

"Hooked, Slimed, and Gutted"

SONG: "CABIN'D, CRIBB'D, CONFIN'D"

There's a hammer in the head
And a pounding at the door.
You'll never sleep soft
Till you even out the score.
There's a question on the table
And a cupboard full of woes,
But your sole occupation's
Shooting blanks of Old Crow.

The innkeeper said,
It never fails, never fails.
Just make yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

Our ghosts just doze at dawn
In a soul-bin "Lost and Found."
Though hooked, slimed, and gutted,
Sorrows rarely ever drown.
(At every bottle's bottom,
Every sinner floats.
On this fishing trip to hell
You're still bailing out the boat.)

Opportunity's not knocking,
But Misery's banging pails;
You've made yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

--MD

Shall I Pour For You Too?

Identikit

Water, salt;
paper, bound;
clay, wet;
forest, kelp;
beach, jade;
whiskey, Irish;
friends, true.
--April 9, 2008


I just rediscovered this note on a bulletin board in my office. Old notes can pull you into the labyrinth of the past, much like anything -- perhaps everything -- else. (Amongst a myriad of landmarks and turnings, Keith was still alive, for example.) I do have "Identikit" posted in the column to the right, but I realized that this doggerel of self-description lacked a specific place in the body of the blog.

As Keats said in a fragmentary identikit of his own, "See here it is -- I hold it towards you."