I returned to some morning jazz on this Friday morning: Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, Two of a Mind.
1. I missed Thursday's Billy Collins Poetry Broadcast while enjoying the garden lunch party with Kenton and Gerri over at Carol and Paul's.
So, late this morning, I watched the replay. First, I completed my homework assignment and read John Keats' ode, "To Autumn" and I listened to Ben Whishaw read the poem on YouTube.
Aside from having read quite a bit of William Wordsworth, I haven't spent much time with the Romantic poets of the late 18th and early 19th century. Billy Collins is a scholar of the Romantic period and I was fired up to submit myself to his explication of this poem.
Billy Collins started his broadcast by reading his poem, "Vinyl". He wrote it as a contribution to an anthology honoring Gordon Lightfoot, entitled 50+ Poems to Gordon Lightfoot.
Then our Keats seminar got underway. Billy Collins explained what makes the ode a unique genre of poetry and dipped into some parts of other odes by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Kenneth Koch. Once he had constructed this framework, he read "To Autumn" and gave a short and illuminating lecture on the poem. The poem is divided into three stanzas. The first praises autumn's specific marvels: apples, hazelnuts, flowers, a bee's hive and other specific things. The second stanza personifies autumn as a woman. The third stanza turns to the music of autumn, responding to the stanza's opening question, "Where are the songs of Autumn?".
Whenever I experience some connection between how Billy Collins teaches a poem and my long ago attempts to do the same in the courses I once taught, it thrills me, makes me very happy. In today's lesson, Billy Collins gave much emphasis to the music in "To Autumn", the music created by the poem's vowels. As the pattern of vowel sounds change, so does the tone and temper of the ode. I used to love reading poems or lines of Shakespeare to my students and eliminate the consonants. To me, much of the emotional content of a poem is in the vowel sounds -- whether it's the tripping and merry sounds of short vowels or the grievous moans of long vowel sounds, especially long o's, to name a couple examples.
It's a happy coincidence that in the last couple of weeks, Billy Collins has given us short lessons on two poets whom I need the most help with: Emily Dickinson and John Keats.
The world of poetry, my enjoyment of it and my understanding, keeps expanding thanks to this broadcast.
By the way, during Friday's broadcast, Billy Collins took us for a short trip into the work of Seamus Heaney because Joe Biden had concluded his speech at the convention Thursday night with a quotation from Heaney's play, Cure at Troy: "Make hope and history rhyme."
2. Debbie asked me to fix dinner tonight, a great pleasure for me. She described what she would like and so I complied. I minced a couple of cloves of garlic, chopped up white onion, and chopped up a stalk of celery. While these ingredients were sauteing, I thawed out some ground beef, added it to the onions, celery, and garlic, cooked it all until the ground beef was browned, and then added a can of diced tomatoes and a can of pinto beans along with oregano, pepper, cumin, and red pepper flakes. While this mess simmered away, I made a pot of brown rice. We put rice in a bowl and covered the rice with the beans, tomatoes, and ground beef mixture. It turned out to be exactly what Debbie was hungry for. I loved this dinner. It was a success.
3. Debbie and I went over to Christy and Everett's after dinner to review what had been an eventful day. A family friend I've known for as long as I've had memory, Corrine Turnbow, died earlier this week and her daughter Kellie and son Bob hosted a drop in get together at Kellie's home in Wallace.
There's a common phrase being used during this pandemic: "with an abundance of caution".
If you've been reading this blog over the last few months, you've probably picked up that I am part of the "with an abundance of caution" crowd. It was out of my sense of caution that I decided to stay home today and not join the get together at Kellie's. Christy and Carol went and Christy reviewed what happened at the get together when Debbie and I came over.
The conversation moved in many other directions, and, at a certain point, for no good reason, I returned to our house.
I sat down. I'd had the Cat Stevens' songs from Harold and Maude going through my head all day long. I decided it was a message.
I watched Harold and Maude (yet) again! Debbie returned from Christy's. The movie was about 15 minutes from the end and she joined me to watch it conclude. I loved seeing it again as much (or more) than ever.
It was getting late -- close to midnight. I watched the trailer for Being There, directed by Hal Ashby, the director of Harold and Maude. I can hardly wait to watch it again.
I guess we weren't quite ready to call it a night.
Debbie said, "Let's watch All the President's Men."
Great idea! It's been about a month since we last watched it for the 900th time!
We didn't make it through the entire movie, but watching what we did was like having a good friend return for a visit after a short period of separation.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
What might be your favorite color?
Do you prefer it be bright or choose duller?
Do you wear it with pride,
Both in and outside?
Or keep it locked up in your skuller?
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