How the book is a metabook

Like MLA(Modern Language Association)'s guidelines for bibliography, the author too has one.

David Shields, How Literature saved my Life. In later chapters, when it comes to his `Fifty-five works Iswear by', take for example:

Borges, Other Inquisitions. An investigation of otherness pretending to be mere miscellany.

In a strange way this note resonates with the book too with its web like miscellany and the `otherness' apparent in the quest of unifying the search in the many books.

If you look at life through the lens of death (lens of the book), everything would seem trivial. But still the trivial is not left unexamined. In between this apathy and scrutiny falls the authors study not limited to books but also to failed public heroes, Brown university, fictional superheroes.

A book about many books and writers. How other writers deal with death.The author is a self proclaimed ambivalent. Literature is his saviour and then its not. With his vast reading, the author is able to quote from a variety of sources. Sometimes the quotes steal the show. Sometimes they are out of place.

Many books mentioned in the book like ` This is not a novel', a book according to the author almost entirely out of other writers' lines. Atleast that book has the pleasure of recognition of the passages included. If we rdid `Wait don't tell me `for everything in the book it wouldn't be too fun. So even though there is the humility of not knowing much of the work alluded to in the book, the author has trapped himself into a construct like a never ending story where the magic is supposed to be in the million mirroring of a mostly empty diorama box.

One strength of the book is that even though no lines will stick with you. If you flip the pages, because of the miscellany, the aptness will hit your radar sometime.

The writer does achieve the `dubiety of the first person pronoun' that he wants to achieve by making the reader wonder if he/she is in between quotations.

Things I didn't know
Scout belt can be bought
How Tree of Codes book was made
Collage books

3/5

Write

Last book I loved

Essay contest: Mystery and memory

Poetry. Loving it while hating it.

Let the train move on

One Train May Hide another

This is the kind that would make me happy as a school going child taking a bus. If the bus in front just left and somehow there's another bus in the same direction.

From a simple observation, poet Kenneth Koch has moved to one of the most important situation in life. If you cant move on, never mind, let the train move on.

Appian Way

I missed reading the first line in parenthesis.

Being a poet, it is a given that this sign should first make him see how it translates to poetry.
You always have to wait for the train. Yield it says.
Wait for the line. One line may hide another thinks the optimist writer.

A jump to a personality shadowing another. Jumps back to his turf of words.
The path of things.

Valley of the var. Turns too hide things. Blind spot.
We only look for what we are waiting for. Think of a giant Lazy Susan or Baggage carousel. The bag has to be picked. All celestial things are on a carousel. To be is to be everywhere. Moving all the time.

PS: Today a group email was sent about a lost hairpin. This hairpin would be easy to find.

From Light to Dark and Back

A poetry exercise

Day 5

Poem: Homage to Yalta

Words in the order they appear in the poem:

Yalta
Chigorin Defense

washout. Have you felt the discomfort of being between knowing a word and guessing it from context? I have seen people use this word shortened to wash and never quite understood what they meant.

Livadia.  Cities inside us. The poem by Alberto Rios makes me wonder why he didnt choose a specific place as it would leave a better sense of belonging to a place and holding it in you too, when you move away. All cities might remain in you. But they would differ in how. Even without the specifics, the poet does not lose the reader. For one, he binds with them as the citizens of the city inside. The title is the foreshadow of the direction. When you say city, the mind wanders out. What is true of the places is true of the people.

Day 4 Joseph Brodsky

Today while watering the pothos which grows on only one side, the leaves that have been there for a long time, I realise that they wont long. An acceptance opposed to the eternal why should leaves fall and flowers die.

The unrelenting law
that happiness cant last

- For E.R, Joseph Brodsky

Pontus which 'remains unfrozen'.
frozen is such a cold, solid word that you first think of the shit down white and then clear it to imagine unfrozen.

exploded soundlessly, nymphs leap, 
The aural scape is charged

But no wind blows, ..slowly rising breakers

In an obvious state of calm, there is an upsurge welling.

I tend to write in terms of A caused B. The last para is a succession of things overthrowing a succession of other things. With the multitude/complex happenings, there is a benefit of texture.

Stereotypes

Title: Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths

I was interested in this book after an incident at a Scandinavian restaurant where we went to celebrate my friends Bday. We were overcharged. Seemed like the owner/mother was going to give it good to the son/cashier after we left. it also reminded me of an ad for a credit card where a son loses his customer and the mom is ready with her culinary weapons.

An Iceland person with a pile of books in a hand makes sense with a recent survey calling them the most reading.

Title: Counterpart (New Series)

Author: Elizabeth Robinson

Day 3 - Joseph Brodsky

Poem: Autumn in Norenskaia

I thought I hadnt read Joseph Brodsky until I got the 'Collected poems in English' by mail. A search led me to The Poets Laureate Anthology where I have read the same poems. But I cant recall having read them. Poets take heed to Carl Sandberg's words on advertising (why? Cause he is bday boy today and his wishes have to be fulfilled) and 'irritate them' readers so they can remember the poem.

The lines are from winds point of view in a rustic setting

Rhythm of exile and Anti Regressive Dissimilation rhythm?
When in exile at Norenskaia, Brodsky learnt English by translating works into Russian.

On Anno Domini  poem - Also on his travel. Place plays a major role in his poems. as an exile, his very slippery affiliation with it, makes him collect it in memory.

Some libraries have his papers boxed. Is that enough to know him. Or as he says, is the way through his vowels and words. Or with a  Who's who entry. Or in the poem Walcott reads to Brodsky's God mother by a reader-poet.

Surely you didnt hear this

Title: The universal sense

Listeners of the low end chapter on tadpoles that switch from opercular hearing to the ear. A human foetus switches from umbilical cord to lungs for breathing

Tuning fork on the book cover might/might not work as an attention monger depending on your experience in science class. If you think, the ear with its so many inner/outer/middle like levels of hell is too much on one thing, feel free to skip the jarg on it and still theres the 'How hearing shapes the mind' to be appreciated in the book.
All that pregnancy reading helped in seeing parallels of how foetus shifts from systems during birth. A human foetus shifts from umbilical cord to pulmonary route for breathing. And such a shift is found in bull frog tadpoles when they move from the opercular way of hearing under water to the ear.
There are so many things about hearing that we come across daily but havent put it into:

Do you know why you have preference for one ear when you talk on the phone
 Why you have to take care of alarms while it doesnt seem to bother others
How you can hear over the din in a restaurant/party - Cocktail effect

This is science amped All you wanted to know about hearing from a contemporary scientist who does his homework of popular/necessary reading.

Valued Ex

Title: Stag's Leap
Author: Sharon Olds

For the reader, recognising the perfect love involves an ex makes him/her confront the loss to the author as many times as her encounters in her mind.
Some poems show her split half for art and family.
Like they say 'is there ever a good time for something like break up/ divorce?'. is there ever a goo time to spend on art vs family?

on PBS
Guardian review
NPR review
Huffington post review
Something new in each interview

Play time in BC

A toy

A head falling out of a neck
connected by a string of holes
Mouth to the top of the head
Push and pull the string
to see the head bob up and down

The holes on the side of the neck
Can it be moved sideways?

A year with Brodskys poetry

Title: Joseph Brodsky Collected poems in English

My friend told me that she sent me a gift. I guessed it to be a book. I hoped it wasnt one I had read. I asked for a clue. Poetry book she said. I didnt know how to feel as a receiver of poetry book. I would have liked to pass around some poetry books but never thought what if someone gave me a poetry book. Here is the moment. Joseph Brodsky, I dont think I have heard of him.

The Gift

Paris review interview

From specific to general to specifics

10 snack foods originally sold as medicines
When you find a tidbit interesting, see if there are other examples.
Compact powder expanded to vanity case.

It is true

what they say about
sugar high for kids
I thought that sugar high
from cookies was for American kids

As kids we climbed the sack of rice
to reach the ledge which has Horlicks powder

When daddy hid the Nutrine chocolates in the attic
we asked our grown up cousin to lift us so we could
reach them

And the white glucose powder
we had to have gulps of it
solid to liquid in 3.5
Why did we have to

I cannot imagine eating sugar like that now
by spoonfuls or even pinches

--------------------------------------------------

Glucose is the starting point for the above.
Chase it. Read to find your trigger word.

Sudden Dog

Title: Sudden Dog

Author: Matthew Pennock

Short lease

Two poems
Two more poems
Forgive the Hyena its crimes. A title that reminds me of Please do not yell at the sea cucumber.