More Bodil

I went back to the writing bits in The Price of Water - the main protagonist, a Bodil clone, argues with her French friend Madame C about writing and happiness:

Madame C says: "Please taisez-vous [shut up, but more politely] and write. Write your happiness, shut up and write."
They then have a huge argument where the Bodil character says that it is impossible to write happiness:
"Writing your happiness turns into platitudes. Happiness writes white."
"Write it," she says. Curt and hard as a diamond.
[...]
"Simile, Madame C., simile is the death of everything, a rose fresh as the dew is a rose fresh as the dew. Everything written is fabricated, wrecked. Only what is, is."

That last sentence is Zen-like and therefore irrefutable-seeming.

Madame C was right: she did write her happiness into the book.

Back to Bodil

A bit of a gap since last writing -Passover is a demanding time. Much cooking and eating.

Have dived back into Bodil Malmsten's The Price of Water in Finistere, (2001, translated from Swedish) to rescue myself. It's like talking to a friend. This is my second reading of it, in only about three months, a pleasure.

I pay attention to what she writes about writing, full of hope.

Am working on a sonnet. In praise of Whitireia. Seriously, it has changed my life.

Have read a New Zealand poet, a Bulgarian woman. She arrived here as a young refugee, after passing through many countries, including France. Her name is Kapka Kassabova, it is called Someone else's life (2003, Auckland University Press). (See www.auckland.ac.nz) I had read a poem of hers in The Listener and been impressed.

I miss the luminous clarity of Waslawa Szymborska's poems. I thought I missed them because I understood them, but I realise that I often do not fully understand them either - there are hints in various directions which raise further questions. Also she writes with tenderness and humour.

I had better get to bed and start afresh early tomorrow.

Reviewing Larkin

Have produced 400 words on Larkin's poem This Be The Verse, talked about it with Peter, who said about the title, subjunctive, slightly archaic, and that fits nicely with other things, like the missing Chapter of Chapter and Verse, the bit in the third stanza - Man hands on misery to man, and all the way through the poem, he leavens some of the ghastliness with winks and nudges, absolving some of the blame, and at the end returning to the almost conversational tone of the beginning , with double entendre - Get out as early as you can, / And don't have any kids yourself.

The poem is in Andrew Thwaite's 1988 Philip Larkin; Collected poems, The Marvell Press and faber and faber, p. 180.

Not much extra reading, apart from beginning to re-read The Price of Water in Finistere, by Bodil Malmsten. My recent education helps me look at it differently, I appreciate her writing all the more, I can see the poetry in it.