Worcester 2009 or London 1845?

Worcester 2009 or London 1845?, originally uploaded by fishplotvengeance.

Back in the USA

Back in the USA, originally uploaded by fishplotvengeance.

The art of losing

After reading a NY Times essay on the benefits of memorizing poetry, I decided to try it for myself, starting with Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” which has been a favorite of mine since college and which I just happened to be teaching that week. My experience corroborates the essayist’s—it was much easier to memorize the poem than I had anticipated. I think I chose a particularly appropriate poem to begin with, since the prominent rhyme, rhythm, and repetitive structure of “One Art” facilitate memorization. And once I felt fairly secure about the lines, sing-songy declamation did indeed transform into a performance that allowed me to appreciate nuances that I had never noticed before, despite having read that poem, often aloud, but always guided by the printed lines, probably 100 times in 10 years or so. So, yes, I am now in favor of memorizing poetry, and—for my next trick—I’m thinking Emily Dickinson.

All of this to say that during the memorization process, I recited the poem to Daniel several times so he could check my accuracy. I figured he had probably learned the poem accidentally by hearing me and reading it, so I asked him to try reciting it. He didn’t quite have Bishop’s poem memorized, but he came up with a poem that I enjoyed almost as much.

Here’s Bishop’s “One Art”:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their lost is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

And here’s Daniel’s version:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost some scissors once.
That was not a disaster.

I lost some houses; the first of three.
The art of losing is a plaster-caster.

I lost a realm, continents.
The art of losing is a broken toaster.

Even losing you, your joking voice, a gentle gesture:
the art of losing (write it) is a tisket-a tasker.

From boats to fishes

More cookies for my students:

I was trying to use up some icing tubes, so some of them are a bit wonky, but I like the red stars. I wish I had done that on all of them instead of the waves.

In other news, why does it always come as a a surprise that In Utero is totally brilliant? Bleach is my Nirvana go-to, but Alistair Taylor the 3rd (a.k.a my iphone) reminded me during my daily shuffle yesterday of the unstoppable force that is “Tourette’s,” so today I listened to the whole album. I think I conflate In Utero and Unplugged, and I rarely feel like listening to Unplugged—even though it is a stunning album—because it makes me so sad. But I really need to disentangle those two albums in my mind, because In Utero blends the heaviness of Bleach with the melody of Nevermind in a highly satisfying mix, plus it sounds fantastic. The drums are phenomenal. “Frances Farmer,” “Very Ape,” “Radio Friendly,” “Milk It”—basically all the non-singles: yes.

Flowers are pretty before they get shitty

Flowers are pretty before they get shitty, originally uploaded by fishplotvengeance.

Neutral Milk Hotel

Good lord. Even though it’s insane, it’s actually a good kind of insane until he turns into Bruce Springsteen around 1:41. And is he wearing a Muncipal Waste shirt?

Logan Airport

Logan Airport, originally uploaded by fishplotvengeance.

So I’m still in Boston, which sucks, but at least there are rocking
chairs. And at least only one of the engines on my plane yesterday
failed and we just had a horribly scary emergency landing instead of
both engines failing and us crashing directly into the ground. And at
least I got a free chocolate sprinkle donut this morning. Bright side.

I’m eating a boat

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while:

I made boat cookies for my class to celebrate our finishing the first unit, on sea narratives. They were a big hit.

Also, some highly relevant and current thoughts on Foo Fighters.

I love Dave Grohl, but it has always bothered me that he and Krist (mainly Krist, I think) decided to pin all the blame for any profiteering off of Nirvana on Courtney Love, whereas they were concerned only with preserving Kurt’s legacy and giving the fans what they wanted. I imagine it’s becoming tougher and tougher for Dave Grohl to maintain that image of purity and artistic integrity when he’s writing songs solely with the intention of licensing them to Gillette.

Moreover, if he thinks “Learn to Fly” would be out of place on Celebrity Skin he is delusional. If anything, it might be slightly too sappy for Hole, and that is saying a lot. Maybe Dave Grohl has Billy Corgan helping him write songs, too.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos

I was awake at 10am on a Sunday for the first time in months, so I got to watch This Week. Pelosi’s long interview was interesting. I like watching her. I’m not really sure why, since her conversational style is not exactly pleasant. She’s always slightly scattered, or jittery, with an acerbic edge. Her mien is the opposite of all those smooth-talkers like Joe Biden (seriously, yuck) and it is somehow very female even though she’s certainly not feminine or ladylike. She comes across like a powerful woman who’s neither trying to do a male impersonation nor hiding behind a girly-girl veneer (a la Sarah Palin).

The roundtable was the most fun, though. Paul Krugman was not standing for Sam Donaldson’s gibberish. Normally Donaldson yaps incoherently, generally making offensive comments at a rate of about 1 per minute, and AT MOST Donna Brazile or Cokie Roberts will raise their eyebrows and say, “I don’t really know about that,” or George Will will come up with some pithy idiom that gently and almost undetectably contradicts what Donaldson is rambling on about. But today, on more than one occasion, Donaldson was spouting nonsense and Krugman said, “That’s actually not true” and then explained, very clearly, with no euphemism, why it was wrong. And cited sources! And relevant data! I am not one for the notion of transcendent Truth; I am aware that knowledge is contextual. But I also know that sometimes people are wrong. And those people need to shut up and not be allowed to assault my ears every Sunday morning. The point here is I hate Sam Donaldson. And also Paul Krugman is adorable.

Two observations

1) I love Paul so much. Only he would think this is dancing. I especially like when he says “feel the thunder” and points at you. It’s like a motivational Powerpoint presentation set to music.

2) I’m pretty sure Tracey Jordan and Kool Keith are the same person. Really “The Girls Don’t Like the Job” is his best song, but there’s not a video for that on YouTube.