Tuesday jazz: more KEWU.
1. A while back, Debbie started a subscription to audible.com. Until today, I hadn't done anything with this subscription, but decided that I might enjoy listening to John Lee read The Pillars of the Earth while I read along. I was right. Twice today, once in the afternoon and again before I went to sleep tonight, I read and listened. It slows me down a bit. That's good. It's also fun and interesting to hear the different voices John Lee created for the different characters in the book.
2. I enjoyed a couple of poetry experiences today. I tuned into the Billy Collins broadcast at 2:30 (it's available on his Billy Collins Facebook page). He began by reading a slightly revised version of a new poem he read on Monday, "Beauty". After that, Billy Collins talked about how sometimes he writes a poem that has traces of another poet's work inside his own. He calls these "shadow poems". He read a terrific dancing naked carpe diem poem by William Carlos William, "Danse Russe" and followed it with his poem, "Center" and explained how the shadow of "Danse Russe" is present in "Center". No doubt about it: the Williams poem was present. He closed his broadcast with two more of his poems, "Medium" and "Driving Myself to a Poetry Reading".
Around 11:30 or so tonight, I was having trouble falling asleep. I had fixed a yellow curry with chickpeas, diced tomatoes, and white onions served over white rice, but it was almost 8:30 before I dined and I think a mild protest (a peaceful protest; no riots) was taking place inside me.
Using my Podbean app, I accessed the list of available poetry podcast from The New Yorker. A while back, a poet I'm unfamiliar with, Peter Balakian, was Kevin Young's guest and he read Theodore Roethke's "In a Dark Time", discussed it with Kevin Young, and then read and discussed his poem, "Eggplant". The podcast relaxed me. I fell into a state of simultaneous waking and dreaming, awake enough to relish Peter Balakian's reading of "In a Dark Time", but I drifted in and out of the discussion of the poem.
I'm going to digress for a second. I have loved Theodore Roethke's poetry for just shy of fifty years, but most of my reading of his poetry has been on my own. A few of his poems were a part of the syllabus of two or three courses I took at NIC and Whitworth, but I've never studied his poetry in any detail under expert instruction.
I've mentioned before that listening to these podcasts from The New Yorker is a welcome intensely cerebral undertaking and, before I drifted to sleep, my body rippled with excitement as Peter Balakian and Kevin Young discussed Roethke's overall contributions to poetry of the USA and as they dove deeper than I had ever been into "In a Dark Time". I didn't fall asleep out of boredom, but because of contentment. I will go back and listen to this discussion again during the day, while awake, and, then, I will listen to Peter Balakian read his own poem, "Eggplant" (how I have I missed this poem?) and to the ensuing discussion. Peter Balakian is Armenian and my sense from what little I heard as he read the poem and talked about it is that the poem's subject is a means by which Balakian explores a fragment of his heritage. If I'm wrong, I'll correct myself in a future blog post.
3. Bill Davie was heroic tonight as he pushed himself through fatigue and pain to perform an hour of masterful songs and as he, once again, read from his own poetry. Bill has MS and suggested from the beginning that because the summer months are the most painful for him, he wasn't sure he'd be able to perform and read for an hour. But he did and he did so brilliantly. It was a great night to be in the company of longtime Whitworth friends. Bridgit, Colette, Val, and Jeff Steve all were in attendance and, during certain songs, I let myself believe that we were back at the HUB on campus or downtown at Henny's, Phil Eaton's former restaurant across from the Opera House, listening to Bill play in the heydays of all of our younger days.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
If you think you know what’s to come.
You’ve planned it all out and then some.
But like baking a pie,
Things can just go awry.
What you pull out may not be a plum!
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