Review of Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds
Eds. Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce
Bloodaxe, 2007. 978-1-85224-766-9
Bloodaxe do a good job of presenting lesser known poets packaged in attractive covers, and there are just over 100 poets represented in this small book, with some of them having more than one poem, notably Mary Oliver, Rumi, Jane Kenyon, Rilke, Galway Kinnell, William Blake and Wendell Berry. While these names are well anthologized, I came across several lesser known poets, such as Imtiaz Dharker, Lal Ded, Antonio Machado, Shinkichi Takahashi and Fiona Farrell. The editors take a global approach to nourishing the soul and it works well.
Poetry needs to give the reader new ways of saying what he or she only grasps at—those airy thoughts that float across the brain like clouds. Lines of great poetry give us tools for articulating our thoughts, and I found several in this collection.
Many of the poems start in the void that is the starved mind. Jaan Kaplinski, in “Summers and Springs” tells us:
God has left us: I felt this clearly
Loosening the earth around a rhubarb plant.
All the poems transcend the void and show us how to find nourishment for the soul, sometimes through nature or through people. William Stafford, in “How to regain Your Soul,” shows us the way of nature:
…Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you again.
On the other hand, Robert Bly finds soul in the quotidian, the ordinary lives of people. In “The Third Body,” he describes contentment:
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
At this moment to be older, or younger, or born
In any other nation, or any other time, or any other place.
The poets reminds us to sit down and take time to contemplate life and death and thus achieve the stillness of the soul that we all need. The poems are indeed a feast for the starved minds who come to them, and because they’re short, one can graze as at a buffet.
Elaine Oswald, June 2011
Monday 4 July 2011
Thursday 23 June 2011
Books About Love
The Hebden Bridge Times is running a summer campaign promoting the Hebden Bridge Summer of Love. As part of this
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Mary Poppins
It's a shame the original character Mary Poppins is almost lost to view amidst the schmaltz of the musical film. P L Travers was barking mad and her literary creation was far more interesting than the Julie Andrews version: unattractive ("thin, with large hands and feet, and small, rather peering blue eyes"), snappy, bossy, illogical, scary. And snores. The children try and placate her, but usually fail. The adventures are great and imaginative and sometimes touch on mysticism. The reason I'm mentioning the books is that the stunning conclusion of "Mary Poppins Opens the Door" just came back to me - she leaves the children by walking through the reflection of Nursery door in the window: but beyond the door "there was nothing but field on field of sky, and the dark spreading night."
By the way, Mary Shepard, who did the memorable illustrations, was E H Shepard's daughter, and Penelope Fitzgerald's stepmother.
By the way, Mary Shepard, who did the memorable illustrations, was E H Shepard's daughter, and Penelope Fitzgerald's stepmother.
Saturday 19 February 2011
North German Novels
I started discovering these a year or so ago (in translation). The New York Review of Books praised Theodor Storm’s “Rider on a White Horse”, a novella concluding a book of his shorter stories - it’s set on the North German coast and is about a dykemaster whose job it is to prevent the seawalls breaking down and allowing the sea in to flood the low-lying villages.
Theodor Storm is very good at landscape, and nature, and weather, and how history is experienced in lives, and I found all the stories satisfying and involving and can re-read them to have the North German countryside and old towns come alive around me.
Then I tried Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” set in Lubeck. I’d not got on well with his “Magic Mountain” but this one drew me in immediately; I felt rather as if I was watching a particularly well done TV family saga, so good is he at rooms and clothes and furniture and people’s expressions and mannerisms. The characters are flawed and believable, there’s lots of humour and above all, you end up knowing exactly what it was like to live in North Germany then in a well-off merchant family. I was surprised at the main female character’s divorces - Germany must have been a lot more liberal than England as regards women. Unfortunately Vintage have saddled the paperback with an inappropriate and offputting cover.
I'd read Theodor Fontane’s “Effi Briest” a long while back, and the only thing that I remembered was a journey through pinewoods by the sea, which appealed to me. I’m now reading his “No Way Back”, set in Schleswig Holstein, again with lots of gorgeous North German and Danish scenery, and tension between the more or less proper and principled Germans and the pleasure-seeking Danes.
At least two non-fiction books have come out recently - “German Genius” a big book by Peter Watson, and Simon Winder’s enjoyable paperback “Germania” - drawing attention to German history and achievements prior to the terrible events of the twentieth century. Maybe the British obsession with WWII and the compulsive stereotyping of Germans is finally on the way out.
I’m enjoying finding out about the people and landscape from which some of our ancestors came after the Romans left - it’s sometimes said that north Germans have more in common with the English than with south Germans. With some foreign novels, I have to squint a bit to try and understand where they're coming from: I was surprised to find how at home I feel in these novels - I recognise the wildlife and landscape, which remind me of where I used to live in Hampshire and Dorset - and even some of the preoccupations.
Theodor Storm is very good at landscape, and nature, and weather, and how history is experienced in lives, and I found all the stories satisfying and involving and can re-read them to have the North German countryside and old towns come alive around me.
Then I tried Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” set in Lubeck. I’d not got on well with his “Magic Mountain” but this one drew me in immediately; I felt rather as if I was watching a particularly well done TV family saga, so good is he at rooms and clothes and furniture and people’s expressions and mannerisms. The characters are flawed and believable, there’s lots of humour and above all, you end up knowing exactly what it was like to live in North Germany then in a well-off merchant family. I was surprised at the main female character’s divorces - Germany must have been a lot more liberal than England as regards women. Unfortunately Vintage have saddled the paperback with an inappropriate and offputting cover.
I'd read Theodor Fontane’s “Effi Briest” a long while back, and the only thing that I remembered was a journey through pinewoods by the sea, which appealed to me. I’m now reading his “No Way Back”, set in Schleswig Holstein, again with lots of gorgeous North German and Danish scenery, and tension between the more or less proper and principled Germans and the pleasure-seeking Danes.
At least two non-fiction books have come out recently - “German Genius” a big book by Peter Watson, and Simon Winder’s enjoyable paperback “Germania” - drawing attention to German history and achievements prior to the terrible events of the twentieth century. Maybe the British obsession with WWII and the compulsive stereotyping of Germans is finally on the way out.
I’m enjoying finding out about the people and landscape from which some of our ancestors came after the Romans left - it’s sometimes said that north Germans have more in common with the English than with south Germans. With some foreign novels, I have to squint a bit to try and understand where they're coming from: I was surprised to find how at home I feel in these novels - I recognise the wildlife and landscape, which remind me of where I used to live in Hampshire and Dorset - and even some of the preoccupations.
Friday 11 February 2011
Book covers - the Penguin John Wyndhams
It's hard to sell a good book with a bad cover. You might sell a bad book with a good cover. But what were Penguin thinking of when they reissued John Wyndham's wonderful books with covers which, in effect, boast that the artist has no idea what's inside them? Brian Cronin has drawn pictures of rather unappealing people, not of the right era, with random add-ons to show that someone at Penguin (who probably hadn't read the books either) gave him a brief hint. Hence the man on the front of the Day of the Triffids has little burrs stuck on him (plants, see) and the poncey youth with gelled backbrushed hair on The Kraken Wakes is amusingly sitting in a deckchair under water, negating the power and terror inside the book. On The Trouble with Lichen, another irritating youth has green mould round his eyes and The Midwich Cuckoos has a person lying down with a bird (not a cuckoo) sitting on their heads. The picture on The Chrysalids is quite pretty and could I suppose represent someone hiding in the woods, so hurrah, that one will pass muster. Come clean, Penguin and Brian Cronin: is this some in-joke at the expense of the people who actually stock, buy and read the books - or were the covers done in such a rush that any old "ones you did earlier" were slapped on with a few quick additions? Wouldn't the old plain banded covers have been better (and probably cheaper)?
Felicity (Nov. 2009)
Felicity (Nov. 2009)
Monday 7 February 2011
Faulks on Fiction
Reactions to Faulks on Fiction (BBC1)? He presented Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Becky Sharp, Sherlock Holmes and Winston Smith as different types of heroes in the context of their times. I enjoyed it up to Orwell but having very little interest in the Amises, I then bailed out. He's doing literary lovers next time. F
Friday 4 February 2011
folk music
Having just become a member of the Sealed Knot I am still finding my way within the regiment. There were many reasons for joining; love of 17th C English history, visiting old buildings and important sites which are often in beautiful rural areas, plus meeting new people - and the idea of singing folk songs around the campfire of an evening.
The latter may seem an unlikely reason for joining a 17thC army but I have always loved traditional folk music. The promotional music of this regiment on youtube is probably modern http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGs4VMloprE ,and I have yet to hear anyone singing at musters, but I gather there is a repertoire of songs with which to entertain the public.
There seems to be a dearth of books on the subject of English folk songs available here. The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams did much to try to preserve our folk music heritage before it was too late. I know from my own experience that, having heard guests from America whilst visiting the local folk group Ryburn 3 Step, that many songs lost from our own heritage are preserved in the American folk culture of the Appalachians. It seems strange that interest is greater there rather than here and one wonders why this is so, is it nostalgia at work?
As regards the doings of the local regiments during the Civil War the book written by David Shires (who was well known locally for riding around on his horse dressed as Captain Helliwell until his untimely death) “Halifax Cavaliers and the Roundhead Regiments” is hard to get though we do have a copy or two, and fortunately Steve Murty in his book “Summat a’Nowt” has a piece based on the original.
Carol
Nursery rhymes and folk songs
In the 1940s and 1950s we were taught nursery rhymes and traditional songs as a matter of course. In our family, we had some of the Uncle Mac Nursery Rhyme 78rpm records, on which adults with astoundingly posh accents sang their way through all the standard rhymes to a piano accompaniment ("Humpty Dumpty", "Jack and Jill", "Three Blind Mice" ...). Uncle Mac (Derek McCulloch), famous for hosting the popular "Children’s Favourites" radio programme on a Saturday morning, concluded the final record by urging children to keep singing the rhymes - "They belong to you and no one can take them away from you!" (Small British Children Unite against Hitler?)
When we were older, we learnt traditional songs at school, sometimes along with a radio programme - "Westering Home", "Dashing Away with a Smoothing Iron", "The Oak and the Ash". I still have at home an old copy of Novello’s "New Fellowship Song Book" and even a copy of the big "News Chronicle Song Book" which I bought locally secondhand (awarded as first prize to Bessie House in Keighley for Punctuality and Good Attendance).
Books of nursery rhymes are still available, and people buy them for their young children or grandchildren but decent audio versions are thin on the ground, and I wonder how many people know the tunes these days?
Folk songs are much harder to find. The only book I can find is the little Penguin "English Folk Songs" (Vaughan Williams and A L Lloyd) - a great collection, and even including some ballads, but mostly without the ones we learnt, and the print and music are rather too small to be of practical use. Sheet music for Irish and Scottish folk songs abounds - but what’s happened to the English ones? (I suppose the Welsh ones may be available in Welsh - we learnt the ones we knew in English). And what’s happened to the collections of traditional ballads there used to be? I can only see a few big academic collections.
Maybe collections of regional folksongs is the way forward but I haven't spotted any of those either.
Can anyone recommend anything? Shouldn't our children be taught our traditional songs in school? The makers of popular TV programmes, both fiction and non-fiction, are clearly aware that people enjoy finding out about our workaday history.
Sea shanties, thank goodness, have survived much better, both in book and audio form - thanks to the likes of locally-based Kimber’s Men. - Felicity
PS It's a real pain you can't say stuff like this without sounding as though you support David Cameron or worse. Can we not reclaim English culture and history for the left and liberals?
UPDATE: Since writing the above I've found and ordered for the shop a big book by A L Lloyd - Folk Song in England -
"A seminal work by one of the most influential figures of the English folk revival of the 1950s, "Folk Song in England" (1967) is an expansive account of the development of English traditional song, from the very oldest, ritual verse, through epic balladry, to the development of lyrical song in the industrial era. In a unique and ambitious approach, Lloyd marries the tradition of folk-song scholarship, largely derived from Cecil Sharp, with the radical historiography of E. P. Thompson, and in so doing produces a work of exceptional insight. In particular, his defining of 'industrial folk song' reveals traditional verse as an ebullient, living expression of the working people, perfectly adaptable to reflect their ways and conditions of life."
Sounds good!
When we were older, we learnt traditional songs at school, sometimes along with a radio programme - "Westering Home", "Dashing Away with a Smoothing Iron", "The Oak and the Ash". I still have at home an old copy of Novello’s "New Fellowship Song Book" and even a copy of the big "News Chronicle Song Book" which I bought locally secondhand (awarded as first prize to Bessie House in Keighley for Punctuality and Good Attendance).
Books of nursery rhymes are still available, and people buy them for their young children or grandchildren but decent audio versions are thin on the ground, and I wonder how many people know the tunes these days?
Folk songs are much harder to find. The only book I can find is the little Penguin "English Folk Songs" (Vaughan Williams and A L Lloyd) - a great collection, and even including some ballads, but mostly without the ones we learnt, and the print and music are rather too small to be of practical use. Sheet music for Irish and Scottish folk songs abounds - but what’s happened to the English ones? (I suppose the Welsh ones may be available in Welsh - we learnt the ones we knew in English). And what’s happened to the collections of traditional ballads there used to be? I can only see a few big academic collections.
Maybe collections of regional folksongs is the way forward but I haven't spotted any of those either.
Can anyone recommend anything? Shouldn't our children be taught our traditional songs in school? The makers of popular TV programmes, both fiction and non-fiction, are clearly aware that people enjoy finding out about our workaday history.
Sea shanties, thank goodness, have survived much better, both in book and audio form - thanks to the likes of locally-based Kimber’s Men. - Felicity
PS It's a real pain you can't say stuff like this without sounding as though you support David Cameron or worse. Can we not reclaim English culture and history for the left and liberals?
UPDATE: Since writing the above I've found and ordered for the shop a big book by A L Lloyd - Folk Song in England -
"A seminal work by one of the most influential figures of the English folk revival of the 1950s, "Folk Song in England" (1967) is an expansive account of the development of English traditional song, from the very oldest, ritual verse, through epic balladry, to the development of lyrical song in the industrial era. In a unique and ambitious approach, Lloyd marries the tradition of folk-song scholarship, largely derived from Cecil Sharp, with the radical historiography of E. P. Thompson, and in so doing produces a work of exceptional insight. In particular, his defining of 'industrial folk song' reveals traditional verse as an ebullient, living expression of the working people, perfectly adaptable to reflect their ways and conditions of life."
Sounds good!
Tuesday 1 February 2011
E-readers
(I wrote this back in September but I haven't changed my opinion - F)
I don’t have an e-reader; I usually carry a paperback for journeys. If I’m proof-reading, reading onscreen has its uses (Find and Replace) but it’s hard on the eyes if done for long. I also spot many more errors when I’m reading the paper printout and my brain processes the information better so I spot duplication and inconsistencies I missed in my shallower reading on screen.
BUT I’ve got a Blackberry, which came free with a Virgin package and yes, you can read books on it. Scrolling past all the romance and teen vampire stuff, I headed for Classics. “A Tale of Two Cities” was my first choice, found it quite impossible; too much thinking and understanding involved, and I like to know where Dickens is heading before embarking on one of his long paragraphs. I next tried Jack London’s “White Fang” which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't read before. I’m finding it perfectly readable even on a small screen - simple phrasing, short sentences, clear narrative. Whether I could keep it up for long, I don't know. But I was recently away for the weekend and had forgotten my book. The only even slightly readable (by me) books available were a Catherine Cookson and a 1957 Mills and Boon, and in those circumstances I would have resorted to my on-screen Jack London. (As it was I watched TV, which I rarely do otherwise.)
So is the answer that simple language works OK on an e-reader but complex stuff doesn’t? I don’t plan to read Blair’s oeuvre but I doubt he’s especially profound; full of cliches seems to be the usual view. There’s been a lot of research showing that the more complex and engaging the book you are reading, the more parts of your brain light up. Possibly e-readers are only suitable for books that are only meant to light up a small bit of your brain?
I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences of reading on e-readers.
Two more things: I’m used to flipping back to check earlier passages, first appearance of a character, etc, and I generally know it was two-thirds of the way down a left-hand page or whatever. I don’t think I could do that on an e-book, and “find” isn’t going to work unless a name is given on all occasions.
The other thing is that on considering what I’d read in “White Fang” (two men travelling with a dead man in a coffin in a frozen landscape, short days & long nights when the wolves close in, another dog vanishing every night), I realised I’d understood it and been interested but I hadn’t reacted emotionally. Wouldn’t I have reacted more if I’d read it on paper? I plan to do that and find out!
*************************
Yes, I found it a totally different experience reading the same words in a book - I'd lost the rhythm and repetition and atmosphere of it on the small screen. When I'm reading a book, I hear the words aloud in my head and visualise what I'm reading. I hadn't even noticed the repetition of "long and narrow oblong box" and I hadn't visualised the scene. In fact I suspected I had been reading a severely abridged version and went back to check! (But it wasn't). So, for me, reading on a Blackberry is better than nothing, but it's pallid in comparison with reading a book.
I'm not going to buy an e-reader just to find out if I can range ahead on them, the way I can on a book, and take in a lot of words in general while processing the ones I'm reading, but I'd like to know what other people have found. - Felicity
E-readers
Popular historian Lisa Jardine announced on Radio 4 that she was a convert to e-books, despite her previous admiration for nicely packaged conventional books (hardbacks presumably). The book that converted her was Blair’s memoirs.I don’t have an e-reader; I usually carry a paperback for journeys. If I’m proof-reading, reading onscreen has its uses (Find and Replace) but it’s hard on the eyes if done for long. I also spot many more errors when I’m reading the paper printout and my brain processes the information better so I spot duplication and inconsistencies I missed in my shallower reading on screen.
BUT I’ve got a Blackberry, which came free with a Virgin package and yes, you can read books on it. Scrolling past all the romance and teen vampire stuff, I headed for Classics. “A Tale of Two Cities” was my first choice, found it quite impossible; too much thinking and understanding involved, and I like to know where Dickens is heading before embarking on one of his long paragraphs. I next tried Jack London’s “White Fang” which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't read before. I’m finding it perfectly readable even on a small screen - simple phrasing, short sentences, clear narrative. Whether I could keep it up for long, I don't know. But I was recently away for the weekend and had forgotten my book. The only even slightly readable (by me) books available were a Catherine Cookson and a 1957 Mills and Boon, and in those circumstances I would have resorted to my on-screen Jack London. (As it was I watched TV, which I rarely do otherwise.)
So is the answer that simple language works OK on an e-reader but complex stuff doesn’t? I don’t plan to read Blair’s oeuvre but I doubt he’s especially profound; full of cliches seems to be the usual view. There’s been a lot of research showing that the more complex and engaging the book you are reading, the more parts of your brain light up. Possibly e-readers are only suitable for books that are only meant to light up a small bit of your brain?
I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences of reading on e-readers.
Two more things: I’m used to flipping back to check earlier passages, first appearance of a character, etc, and I generally know it was two-thirds of the way down a left-hand page or whatever. I don’t think I could do that on an e-book, and “find” isn’t going to work unless a name is given on all occasions.
The other thing is that on considering what I’d read in “White Fang” (two men travelling with a dead man in a coffin in a frozen landscape, short days & long nights when the wolves close in, another dog vanishing every night), I realised I’d understood it and been interested but I hadn’t reacted emotionally. Wouldn’t I have reacted more if I’d read it on paper? I plan to do that and find out!
*************************
Yes, I found it a totally different experience reading the same words in a book - I'd lost the rhythm and repetition and atmosphere of it on the small screen. When I'm reading a book, I hear the words aloud in my head and visualise what I'm reading. I hadn't even noticed the repetition of "long and narrow oblong box" and I hadn't visualised the scene. In fact I suspected I had been reading a severely abridged version and went back to check! (But it wasn't). So, for me, reading on a Blackberry is better than nothing, but it's pallid in comparison with reading a book.
I'm not going to buy an e-reader just to find out if I can range ahead on them, the way I can on a book, and take in a lot of words in general while processing the ones I'm reading, but I'd like to know what other people have found. - Felicity
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