Ambitions and Actualities (and Aluminum)

[radiantfracture]

I was nearly welded today.

Our main building, containing cafeteria, store, offices, classrooms, is under construction. An enormous scaffold surrounds the front doors. Today, exiting with a sustaining bannana in one hand, I heard the burr of welding and then felt a sudden hot-cold shower on the left side of my head, just about the region of the parietal lobe. I put up my hand and plucked a speck of grit from my hair.

As I crossed the quad and mounted the stairs to my building, I began to work out that I'd been sprayed with tiny bits of metal -- little curled chips of aluminum were in my hair and speckled my sweater-vest like glittering lint.

It was not a great cascade of sparks or anything -- just a smattering and a peculiar sensation -- but Jesus. That could have gone into my eye. I spent the whole of my lesson on proper quotation partially convinced that a speckling of tiny holes might newly pepper my skull, like a thought-colander.

The Thought-Colander

After Ted Hughes

I imagine this midday moment's sensation-salad:
Something hot but lifeless
burrows into the occipital
makes a blank page of this field where
newly kindled hallucinations move

(etc.)

Sorry, Here's "The Thought-Fox" to Make Up for That

Actually by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.


* * * * *

I feel like "midnight moment's forest" must have kinship with Hopkins' "morning morning's minion" from "The Windhover." Discuss.

[Edited to remove my gratuitious and confusing extra 's]

Fine, Here's "The Windhover" As Well

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

* * * * *

Nobody alliterates like our Gerry.


Downdates (What an Update Isn't)

I skipped the monthly reading post for August because, well, there was so little to discuss. I have trouble directing sustained attention under conditions of anxiety (such as term prep). Combining with September will give the list a more respectable heft.

At least I'm transparent in my machinations.

Likewise I think if I'm writing a report on how the term is going -- which is an idea I like a lot as a way to chronicle the development of this course I love -- it'll have to be a biweekly report at best.

A propos of some (very positive) recent events -- I wish I didn't feel so terrible when happy things breathe themselves across the membrane.¹

Something wonderful takes place and afterwards it feels like a crisis -- I can't be happy because I'm so convinced that it was secretly a disaster or I am about to make it one.

Too much jouissance. Not enough swimming laps and meditation.

{rf}

1. Isn't transpire a great word? All those spire words are a gift basket from Latin: conspire (to breathe together); inspire (to breathe in); aspire (to breathe on); expire (to breathe out) -- my library card is about to breathe its last -- what else? What others? I love them.

2. Actually, if I weren't so tired I might write though the whole of "The Thought-Fox" just for the exercise.

Comments

[sovay]

As I crossed the quad and mounted the stairs to my building, I began to work out that I'd been sprayed with tiny bits of metal -- little curled chips of aluminum were in my hair and speckled my sweater-vest like glittering lint.

You must have looked amazing and I am glad there were no holes burnt in you.

I feel like "midnight moment's forest" must have kinship with Hopkins' "morning's morning's minion" from "The Windhover." Discuss.

I think in terms of sound, but not grammatically, although of course the latter is not necessary for the former to make one spark the other to mind.

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion.

I am listening as we speak to Johnny Flynn's 2017 album Sillion, which I picked up in the spring. I assumed at once he learned the word from Hopkins; I did.

-- what else? What others? I love them.

Respire. Perspire. Suspire. And their various forms: respiration is a word that rises and falls like the rhythm of breath.

[radiantfracture]

It's true -- Hughes doesn't have Hopkins' orthographic and syntactic daring -- to set down an impossible yet perfect redoubled morning, or put a dash after a damn comma.

But I can't help thinking -- maybe it's the stress? Like if I put the lines against each other:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
I caught this morning morning's minion,

And I hear that same final triple trochee -- then I feel like Hughes must be writing against or inverting Hopkins or Hopkins' echo.

Okay, the lyric "I" isn't exactly a wild coincidence.

But against caught we have imagine, the opposite of Hopkins' witnessing, not being struck suddenly by a vision of beauty and power but deliberately conjuring a sneaky, stinky muse. (That Ted Hughes, he doesn't surrender: he summons.)

There's "this midnight" set against "this morning" --

And instead of that amazing upthrust of "morning morning's minion", which is three wing-beats against the air -- we drop downward and inward to "midnight moment's forest".

Hi-ho. Well, it's my theory, so I would believe it. It's fun, anyway.

{rf}

(As I look up all the prefixes)

[radiantfracture]

Respire. Perspire. Suspire.

I can't believe I forgot perspire. Nice to think of sweating as the skin breathing, or being breathed through.

And poor neglected beautiful suspire -- I'm glad you rescued it. To breathe from below. A sigh from the depths.

And their various forms: respiration is a word that rises and falls like the rhythm of breath.

That's perfect, yes, the in and the out breath, the cycle. Thank you.

[moon_custafer]

Nobody alliterates like our Gerry.

He should've been a scop.

[radiantfracture]

Oh, he should have, you're right. Would he have been happier?

[mdlbear]

Yay! I haven't read "Windhover" since that poetry class in college. Thank you.

[radiantfracture]

Me neither, for ages -- generally I wander around trying to put the pieces of "God's Grandeur" back together in my head and never quite getting it right.

[larryhammer]

Actually, "midnight moment's forest" made me think of a different Hopkins, "Spring and Fall" -- even though the wanwood leafmeal is an entirely different construction.