This entry’s subject line is from Mary Oliver’s “Owl Poem,” which I read at my honorary mama’s memorial service in June. I selected the poem for two reasons: Nancy had collected owl figurines through most of her life (many of them are now at Owl’s Hill Nature Sanctuary; I have one next to my bayonet), and it was a poem I read aloud to her when I visited her in February. The story of that visit is at my personal journal. and I will be forever grateful to Mary Oliver — and Kate and Kathy, for buying Blue Horses — for helping us through that day.
in memoriam
“a few old socks and love letters”
Today’s subject line comes from the last paragraph of George Whitman’s obituary in the New York Times:
Mr. Whitman had variously called himself a communist, a utopian and a humanist. But he may have also been a romantic himself, at least concerning his life’s work. “I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions — just a few old socks and love letters,” he wrote in his last years. Paraphrasing a line from Yeats, he added, “and my little Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.”
That’s a Whitman manifesto at the top of this entry. This is my partner in front of Shakespeare & Company, browsing through a book on the Japanese economy:
This is what the rest of the front patio looks like on a chilly November night:
Lori-Lyn asks (in her “Loving 2011” series), What books made an impression on you this year? One of them was Mademoiselle London Hearts Paris (Sometimes), which I picked up on impulse inside S&Co. I especially like the poem that starts out with her throwing rocks at Hemingway’s geraniums.
I deliberately searched for was Yves Bonnefoy’s translations of Yeats’s poems (which I eventually picked up at the Gallimard shop, along with Fuzier and Denis’s translations of Donne into French). The thing is, I knew about their existence because I’d come across part of Bonnefoy’s rendition of The Circus Animals’ Desertion back in college:
J’ai cherché un thème et ce fut en vain,
Je l’ai cherché cinq à six semaines.
Peut-être qu’à la fin, vieux comme je suis,
Je dois me contenter de mon coeur. Et pourtant,
L’hiver comme l’été jusqu’à ce grand âge,
Ce qu’elle a paradé, ma ménagerie …Les images sont souveraines de par leur forme achevée
Et celles-ci grandirent dans la pureté de l’esprit.
Mais de quoi naissaient-elles? Du dépotoir
Où va ce que l’on jette et le balayage des rues.
Vielles marmites, vielles bouteilles, boîte cassée,
Vieux fer, view os et nippes, et à la cassée
Cette souillon qui délire. Mon échelle est tombée,
Et je dois mourir là, au pied des échelles,
Dans le bazar de défroques du coeur.
But the last words for tonight should be Monsieur Whitman’s, non? [click the images to enlarge]
RIP Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)
My favorite poem of hers: Wishes for Sons