Fidelity (Sonnet #6)

Should thou deprive of sunlight and of sleep

The photic room that thou hast made of me--

Should windows sigh and floors begin to creak

And murmur at the sudden weight of thee--

Should I hurl all my insults at the moon

And master the divine and aching art

Of cursing the sad star at which I swoon--

Find all my arrows broken in the dark--

The song would be the same. The broken hymn

Of which he says, "See, how she sings with weight!"

Would rip from hand and nose and tongue and hip.

The song the faithful bleat knows not of fate.

It lauds (peering around the final breath)

Two white stains on the arid face of death.

27 June

One does not have to feel worthy of much to ask for a pencil or a slice of bread. However, to reprimand anyone with "I need you to love me more and better" requires that one thinks himself worthy of love, which is quite a lot to be worthy of. It allows one to be told "but you are not worth that", which I would imagine to be the most horrible thing in the world.

I once wrote a rather bad poem of which the gist was the last couplet, I dare not ask affection of you/ Only give me leave to love you. That's a rather stupid concept, however. Of course it is not enough to love. I am no longer that classical nor that stupid.

This is a very good poem:

The Ache of Marriage

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,

are heavy with it,

it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,

each and each

It is leviathan and we

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy

not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

21 June

I can't think and I can't write. I can, however, sing. Foer says that music is the "anti-word". It is rather a refuge from language, which in turn abolishes organized thought, which in turn abolishes organized emotion.

When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended.

-Henry James, The American

Swimming Pools (Thao)

Can't Get It Right Today (Joe Purdy)

Little Lion Man (Mumford & Sons)

Vagabond (Wolfmother)

Rise Up (Diane Birch)

Quelqu'un M'a Dit (Carla Bruni)

Dance Anthem of the 80s (Regina Spektor)

World Spins Madly On (The Weepies)

12 June

Sartre depresses me greatly. I don't think that I like his writing style... or perhaps I do not like the translation. I would be much more interested in Le Nausee than in finishing Nausea. I shall finish it, however, because I lack about eight pages.

Next is The American by Henry James... I need to get these James books back to my attractively-literate boyfriend. I plan to start this one on the car ride to Samford tomorrow for freshman Orientation. (Woop!) I took a James break to read East of Eden (Steinbeck), Identity (Milan Kundera) and Nausea. Milan Kundera makes me more nauseous than Sartre, and for very different reasons: Sartre is philosophically depressing, but Milan Kundera makes one want to think very strongly and then take on the vestments of a nun.

I think that the fundamental and irreconcilable difference between my father and me is that he thinks that he is living out a Steinbeck novel, and I think I am living a Fitzgerald one.

I can't seem to write any poetry. Reading really erudite authors always stunts me. I have a plethora of Post-It notes with maxims to integrate into future poems pasted on my desk, but my writing life is getting flaccid. (What an awful word that is! Flaccid! I hate it! But how perfectly it fits its meaning!)

My poetry grows flabby, but I am growing very good at making cakes. This is a stellar way for the rest of one to grow flabby as well.

07 June

Once you wanted revolution;

Now you're the institution.

How's it feel to be the man?

-Ben Folds, The Ascent of Stan

There are certain institutions which demand desecration. Henry the Eighth, Marriage. None of these, however, are inherently bad; it's we who have made them into something worthy of desecration who are bad. Henry the Eighth was once an agreeable little boy and there are many husbands who love their families.

I've always wanted to sing this at somebody, perhaps at myself. I haven't particularly wanted to be the Man-- although, according to Nicholas and several other anti-establishment Newspaper vagabonds, I have been-- and I haven't particularly wanted revolution against any particular institutions. Institutions are too vague to revolt against; if one is small, as I am, and one wishes to succeed, one mustn't revolt against an institution, but against one or two individuals who symbolize it. One must realize one's scale; rather than throwing one's body at an institution in hopes of having become a Brontosaurus, one must realize that one is a kitten, and use one's pointed teeth.

Eventually, however, one will realize that apart from teeth, one also has fur. One has vital organs. At this point one will long for the institution in its finer form-- one will grope blindly along its moss and grime hoping to find a clean and well-lit place to rest. And one will rest. One will give up the search one way or another-- it is inevitable. One will lie in the moss or the sun. This is, Steinbeck-style, simply another facet of the struggle between good and evil which has peopled our skies and our shoes and our poetry. We will lie somewhere, and where we lie will define us. We will become an itinerant monument to joy or to Wall Street or to despair or to meekness or to lesbianism. Humanity always wishes to symbolize, to the fullest extent, an entity other than itself. We all become an itinerant monument to something.

It is Hope, trite, incorrigible Hope, which keeps my fingers mossy, searching for the bright patch. This is why I will marry, and why I will Iron, and why I will allow some bright patch to father my children. I will not become an itinerant monument to Feminism. I will not desecrate Fatherhood, for a Brontosaurus is not needed to survive a mouse.

04 June

Viola! We have graduated! (Blog, meet Blakelee. She's the curly-headed one.)

I feel that I ought to make some vague comparison between writing poetry and singing Jazz music, since I like them both very much, but I cannot think of any at the moment. They are not really terribly similar.

If I could make more than 50$ a night being Billie Holiday, I would certainly choose that over being a lawyer. At the moment, however, I am making 50$ a pop being Billie Holiday, and that will not work out so hot when I have an electric bill and a Volvo. For now, however... it is absolutely stellar! =)

All this is to say: the Jazz concert went very well, and will happen again in the near future! Check Facebook for a quick video.

The Harlot Sings of Wisdom

I sing, who have known men and men:

Who have known them to walk a little while

And then be seated,

Eating, Rowing,

Filling the Earth with their dead,

Emptying the cannister that Love built; men.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver

In deep water.

I whose eyeful is no angel's eyeful.

My mouth is lined with pearl, my heart with bronze;

The graver parts tin out their sharpening song.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver.

A rose on the skin is a coin in the mouth of another.

I sing not of love but of silver.

My fear is the fear of the moth on the

Windowpane: frightened that

Air could be solid, be walked upon.

I sing not of love.

I sing that the warm woolen mist is a

King to the thunderclout, to

Shaking out a sheet against the sky.

I sing.

I with my eyeful of sin and my

Rapid tin beat.

I sing to a room I could die in.

I will enter as a light would enter.

I will sleep with the shamelessness of

Animals who have known no Man but

God.

01 June

I have graduated from high school!

Among my summer projects (along with nannying and giving voice lessons to several darling little girls) is to read rather voraciously. Dr. Foreman gave me some Hawthorne and James books (I'm currently entrenched in The Portrait of a Lady), and I just spend 120 graduation dollars at Books a Million. Here's my summer reading list:

The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)

The American (Henry James)

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Toujours Provence (Peter Mayle)

500 Days of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Candide (Voltaire... Dual-Language, to practice ze French)

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Nausa (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Amsterdam (Ian McEwan)

Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Rather ambitious... yes? It is rather probable that I shan't finish this list until well into the winter, but I have at least some literature to keep me occupied on college. =) For a pre-Law English major will have lots of spare time, correct?