Saying more about what is gone

Up on time this morning, still dark, exercises, Zen, breakfast with the news (Japan's misery, Libya's misery), load washing machine, remove and fold dry washing from line, tidy up kitchen, Skype phone call with a sister whose birthday it is today. Answer varied emails.

Finally, at last, to the dining room, taken over for the purpose of planning the novel.

The stickies I used on Friday to work on a plan for the novel have curled away from the large sheets of thick paper which are supposed to provide a panoramic view. These stickies had previously curled away from the back of the door in my study, I thought it was the door, but it is the stickies which are the problem. They  are small and white. I wrote on them in four colours, one per main character.

Went to the local supermarket, some auxiliary shopping - milk, bread, fruit etc. - but in the end they don't stock Stickies, they're not sure what they are. Finished shopping, checked out the local Post Office which doubles up as a stationery store, yes they have some - not the usual ones, these may be more expensive. Bought 300, larger, light yellow.

Drive home, two full bags heaved onto the kitchen bench, everything put away, make cups of tea for two, enter the dining room again with my new stickies. The coaster from Amsterdam is waiting for my cup of tea. It is now 11:20 am.

An annoying stimulus has disappeared - something like a sound, an inner manifestation. I am in a quiet place and all is well, at last. I want to write. I can write.

Latest books: Chaim Potok, The Book of Lights (Heinemann, 1981) - not my favourite of his, that remains The Chosen,  this one is partly autobiographical. As always a terrific tale-spinner, creates a world I find hard to emerge from, I am very susceptible- my preference is to read books such as these in one go, get them over with. Umberto Eco refers to such writing as 'para-literature'.

Most other people seem to enjoy them without becoming trapped. Missed the time slot for an important phone call. Upsetting, maybe for both of us.

Jose Saramago The Elephant's Journey  (Harvill Secker, 2010) translated by the wonderful Margaret Jull Costa: enjoyable and whimsical, though at times a little formulaic. Maybe not so for someone who hasn't read his other books. One feels that Saramago is very old and a little child-like in his optimism. Is that what is wrong with this book - that there is no true evil in it? Saramago has written well about evil elsewhere - read his book Blindness, a masterpiece.

Yesterday raced through a slim volume entitled A Murder in Lemberg: Politics , religion, and violence in modern Jewish history, by historian Professor Michael Stanislawski of Columbia University. First of all, it is well written, a good pace, an enjoyable read. The murder takes place in 19th century Poland, the
brilliant Reform Rabbi is assassinated by an Orthodox Jew. (Documentation of evil in various forms). The brilliance of the Rabbi is not sufficiently substantiated for my liking, but the positive outcome of reading the book - from the point of view of the one I am writing myself - was learning about the ways in which certain practices changed between the Orthodox and the newer forms of Judaism. Also: with his description of contemporary Lemberg, Professor Stanislawski bears witness in a powerful way to the destruction and disappearance of Eastern European Jewry, a topic of which much more might be said.

Finally, I am about to finish a short book on the theory of translation: Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation, (Phoenix, 2003) from his lectures at the University of Toronto in 1988. I also started Lawrence Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility, a History of Translation (2nd edn.,Routledge, 1995, 2002). I have to prepare a translator's statement of principle for the translation I have just finished, and this reading is supposed to give me the required insight and jargon.

Eco's book is engrossing: it would be satisfying for anyone who has lived in several languages. I started Venuti's book because I couldn't get hold of an article of his which encapsulates his theory. Maybe I'll try harder: the book is too much work for my purpose. There is a reference by Eco to another Venuti article which I'll follow up.

For my edification, am continuing to read No Time to Lose, by Pema Chodron (Shambhala, 2005). Slow work, like building a brick wall, or putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Every now and then, a sense of having achieved/understood something new. But mostly one has to carry on, a little doggedly.

Ramble

Outside events unsettling, upsetting. Spent today in a struggle to get back into routine. Writing a sestina is a significant challenge, not achievable within the time left to me, I think.

Read Essays by Coetzee, thought I was very lucky to find one on Walter Benjamin, contemporary of my grandfather's - very different thinking - no better than the book I attempted to read about him. One feels only impatience with WB, things started, not finished, yet he is deemed to be such a great thinker. Too hard for me, at this point. Nevertheless, some good ideas for The Book, reflections on, criticisms of German society of the time, I'll find a young someone to say them. Shall photocopy the chapter.

I must get back to poetry. Reading about WWII and Jews is not good reading at bedtime.

Jane returned Saramago to me unread, (she stopped at page 29) she has no patience with his long sentences. I have yet to meet a single person who likes him besides me, yet his books at the Central Library are worn from being handled and the latest one has a waiting list. Unity says that it is marching out the door. So far the only satisfactory explanation I can find is that the humour is Latin/Mediterranean, to me it is laugh-out-loud. I can hear his phrases in my mind. Maybe this does not happen to Anglo Saxons.

The rest of my week looks routine, so hopefully no more upsets and back to work.

New words

I read Allen Curnow last night, re-read in fact, and that was good. Did not finish the book yet (The Bells of St. Babel). I don't know if St. Babel exists. The book title is taken from a poem of that name. No St. Babel in my on-line encyclopedia search.

Re-reading an old (February this year) review of Saramago in The Guardian, there are two words I am not comfortable with ; "Death at Intervals begins with a striking conceit..." conceit in the sense of an idea, a notion, always sounds like something out of Jane Austen to me, and the writer using the word considered "up himself, or herself". The other word is trope "...the simplicity of the central trope..." My online dictionary says:

1. A figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor.
2. A word or phrase interpolated as an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies.

I am not sure the author (Ben Bollig) uses it correctly. It did get past the editor...Never mind.

I checked the requirements of the course - number of poems for the final work, but there were no specifications regarding the number of poems in the first draft. Went back to my own project description: I had specified twenty. It would be good to write more, but it does remove the pressure a bit.

Of barking dogs and The Price of Petrol in NZ

Finished Saramago, the last sentence is also the first - "The next day nobody died." A surprise ending. The first 2/3 of the book keeps going smoothly, one's attention stays focussed, but he has trouble finishing the thing off. All his writing is familiar from his previous books, and the faltering ending is familiar too, though it falters less than many of his other books, and surprises more. It is still a wonderful read.
I have yet to meet in the flesh anyone else who enjoys him. I have lent my copy of Death at intervals to a friend, full of hope.

I've read more Simenon, and admired how he leaves space for the reader to imagine things. It is a relief : I struggled to get a character into a room, portraying him knocking on the door, waiting for an answer, opening the door, going in, when in fact all that was needed was, He knocked and went in, or even less, just start describing the other person in the room whose voice he had just heard, A young man was sitting at one of the desks...However, too much Simenon is depressing.

I still have a book of poems by Allen Curnow. I never did finish Bashevis Singer, read 3/4 of the book, then found it too long, enough already.

Went to the meeting of the online poets yesterday at Whitireia. I am glad I went and met some of the other people on the course, as well as the teachers.

I need to write poems for the face-to-face course - about two a week if I want to have forty by the end of the year. I realise as I write this that I am not sure whether that is the the correct number required, it may be less. I have another 4-5 weeks of the online course, and then life should be easier, though I shall miss the stimulation.

Lynn D said, I find it helpful [for the writing] to read poetry. I was comforted that she needs to do this too.

Today I was supposed to write poetry, but have not been able to, various reasons. Tomorrow.


I want to buy that Billy Collins book and learn the barking dog poem by heart

I could hear the dog barking, barking,barking.
and something like -
he could imagine...
the dog sitting in the wind section ...the rest of the orchestra turned to look in admiration at the dog performing the famous solo for dog, for which Beethoven's genius is justly recognised, - better words than this, but wonderful humour, in verse.

Here is a joke I heard yesterday, a sign of the times:

A woman said to her husband, Take me out - to somewhere expensive, for a change.

So he took her to a petrol station.

Memo to myself

A quick signing in early this morning, off to Whitireia today, and I still have to complete the Ondaatje review. Am seeing the bigger picture in his writing, the emphasis on scarring, suddenly realised that was what The English Patient was about too, of course, a person unrecognisable under his scars, they call him the English patient though he is Hungarian. Ondaatje's own wounds caused by his father's madness?

Am absorbed by Saramago's latest, Death at Intervals, (Harvill Secker, 2008,translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) which is like one long prose poem, no intervals to that, funny and as always kind, about humanity's foibles and preoccupation with self.

His best to date, I think. I shall finish it today and that should free up my head, ready for more poetry.

In case I forget: let me review David Whyte next. (Just read a piece of his in a magazine.)