More Fitting

Today is Dr. Suess' posthumous 108th birthday. It is also the opening of the major hollywood production of "The Lorax", a film based on Seuss' environmentally conscious tale.

Even ignoring the less than stellar reviews (many written in an homage of rhyme), this movie has kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was when a tactless car company hijacked the title character to sell their wares, in spite of the crux of the story be a caution about consumerism (Is a Mazda a-fine-something-that-all-people-need?).Or maybe I just never really saw Danny Devito as the one who would speak for the trees. I don't know. I just feel like this story in particular, that focuses so much on condemning greed, doesn't really make sense as a million dollar hollywood blockbuster.

To celebrate the anniversary of our local poets birth, I think this is a much more appropriate tribute:



It captures people of all ages, celebrating life in a colorful, imaginative way. Also, take getting the pants scared off you literally!

Jittery Zeitgeist

I posted not too long ago about one of my favorite street artistes - Jeremy Fish.

I can't believe I overlooked the fact that he's collaborated heavily with rapper Aesop Rock, creating art for not 1, but 2 music videos!



Also, did you know that Aesop Rock is brilliant?



I've been into to rap lately. But it has to be good rap! I like Aesop Rock because his lyrics are really imagery heavy and kind of abstract. I guess I like verse encroaching on the ambiguous borders of poetry.

Happy Robert Burns Day!

Today is the day that Scottish folks and poetry lovers celebrate the life and times of Scotland's celebrated native son, Robert Burns (duh).

Born in 1759, Burns is the man responsible for that lovely "Auld Lang Syne" we sing on New Years. He was also a Freemason, and named "Poet Laureate" of the Mason's Lodge in 1787. This probably explains why Masonic lodges are pretty much the only place you go for a "Burn's Supper" here in America.

Yes, a "Burn's Supper" is the traditional way to celebrate Robert Burn's day. These dinners are built around wearing kilts, reading poems, lots of toasts with Scotch Whisky, and to eat:

Haggis! (duh.)

Would you try this infamous mixture of sheep's heart, liver and lungs? I think I'll just stick to celebrating with the Whisky.

To a Mouse... By Robert Burns

Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast,
O, what a panic is in your little breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With argumentative chatter!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering plough-staff.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
And fellow mortal!

I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;
What then? Poor little beast, you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing with what is left,
And never miss it.

Your small house, too, in ruin!
Its feeble walls the winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build a new one,
Of coarse grass green!
And bleak December's winds coming,
Both bitter and keen!

You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel plough passed
Out through your cell.

That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania

Patrick Stewart as Oberon in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1977 production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Check out that head of hair on him!

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,   
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in"- Oberon, Act 2, Scene 1

One of my favorite Shakespeare plays, as I got to be in it in High School. I still know bits of it by heart.

It's always ourselves we find in the sea

Yesterday was one of those nebulous days where the sky seemed constantly on the brink of a rain storm. The coolness of it actually made it a great day for working in the yard, though it left me soaking wet from the knees down, with sneakers that squished when I walked. I'm planning on writing more about that later.

When the downpour did eventually come, I retreated to the kitchen to bake. I made this delicious banana bread from this wonderfully simple recipe. I love how banana bread makes fruit on the brink of not being edible into something somehow tastier. It's a very economical food!

We had the bread for breakfast today, topped with jam Paul got for his birthday. Paul's mom gifted it, farm-made from Gardner. Yay!

While I baked, I listened to this:



It's like the perfect soundtrack for being in the kitchen on a rainy day.

Poetry Stylings

One of my most treasured books is Seamus Heaney's "Opened Ground - Selected Poems 1966-1996". I got it when I took Irish Literature at Oxford, so it's befitting for St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Seamus Heaney is incredibly brilliant with the English language, and he combines words in very satisfying ways. His scansion is awesome! I'm jealous now of all the Butterfield kids who took Peggy O'Brien's class 1st semester freshmen year, and got to go see him read from his translation of "Beowulf".

Well, it's not quite meeting him, BUT

When I was in Ireland, I saw a bog mummy at the National Museum, just like the one from his poem:

"Bog Queen"

I lay waiting
Between turf-face and demesne wall,
Between Heathery levels
And glass-toothed stone.

My body was Braille
For the creeping influences:
Dawn suns groped over my head
And cooled at my feet,

Through my fabrics and skins
The seeps of winter
Digested me,
The illiterate roots

Pondered and died
In the cavings
Of stomach and socket.
I lay waiting

On the gravel bottom,
My brain darkening,
A jar of spawn
Fermenting underground

Dreams of Baltic amber.
Bruised berries under my nails,
The vital hoard reducing
In the crock of the pelvis.

My diadem grew carious,
Gemstones dropped
In the peat floe
Like the bearings of history.

My sash was a black glacier
Wrinkling, dyed weaves
And phoenician stichwork
Retted on my breasts'

Soft moraines.
I knew winter cold
Like the nuzzle of fjords
At my thighs -

The soaked fledge, the heavy
Swaddle of hides.
my skull hibernated
in the wet nest of my hair.

Which they robbed.
I was barbered
And stripped
By a turfcutter's spade

Who veiled me again
And packed coomb softly
Between the stone jambs
At my head and my feet.

Till a peer's wife bribed him.
The plait of my hair,
A slimy birth-cord
Of bog had been cut

And I rose from the dark,
Hacked bone, skull-ware,
Frayed stitches, tufts,
Small gleams on the bank

Yeah.. the mummy was pretty gross. They kept it at the center of a spiraled corridor, so there was no way you could see it accidentally. Nothing says Happy St. Patrick's day like a mummy, huh? And what's up with that lady who wanted to own the 2000 year old bog-mummy hair? Gross!