BERNEVAL

Dr. Selia Karsten marries the world of art and pedagogy. She has a keen design interest in stars. See http://www.astralsite.com/.

With her in mind I collect mentions of stars in the poems I read. For example Amy Lowell’s epithet “comrades of the stars” to describe primroses. Here are two others that sit nicely side-by-side. The first is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is fitted with stars, invisible by day

And something more recent is the conclusion to “Quails” by Meg Kearney

the sailor who sees farthest
bows before the bevy of quails

rising reluctant but steady
toward their memories of stars.

And with that phrase “memories of stars” I am reminded of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” and its lines about being stardust.

And so for day 330
09.11.2007

The context is an examination of the resources of lyric poetry. We are proposed to consider the genesis of the erotic zones and not simply the acquisition of language but the situatedness of the linguistically-inflected subject and the development of phenomenological intention. It is worth pondering the pedagogical dynamic that works both ways between teacher and learner:

The teaching and learning of desire in the erotogenization of the body is not simply analogous to but is inseparable from the concurrent teaching and learning of intention in the acquisition of language.

Mutlu Konuk Blasing. Lyric Poetry: The Pain and the Pleasure of Words.

I like how the reader is brought along from analogy to inseparability through to concurrence.

And so for day 329
08.11.2007

In and Out: A Confessional Poem by Daryl Hine opens its second section with a description of the less than pristine melting of accumulated snow and debris.

Instantaneous Spring had attacked
Montreal overnight like a laxative,
loosening snow from the slopes
of the mountain, from rooftops and side walks
and streets, where it piled up in barricades
during our annual siege,
till the city began to resemble
a dissolute snowball dissolving,
while under the mud and the mess
deliquescent and delicate music,
a faint, subterranean gurgle
of muttering rivulets sang
a disturbing, subversive refrain.

I like how the “mud and mess” — appealing to a visual mode of disgust cedes to an aural enticements — “deliquescent and delicious music.”

And so for day 326
05.11.2007

Honor Moore included this short poignant piece in the American Poets Project selected poems by Amy Lowell.

A Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

Acquaintance with bread and wine. Hints of transubstantiation.

And so for day 324
03.11.2007