Tag Archives: Library Spotlight

April 4, 2021: Spotlight on PRINCETON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POETRY AND POETICS and Context for the Poem “Zither”

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This two-inch thick tome has been with me since I first had a real job and could afford to buy books. (When you see that the stick price is $7.95, you can compute just how long I have treasured this rather battered paperback.) It is a classic reference, and continues to be updated. Arranged alphabetically, with entries from “Abecedarius” to “Zeugma,” it is my first reference of choice for all things poetic, and it is usually the most complete. Yes, the prose is a little bit dry, and the font size (arrayed in two columns per page) can be politely described as miniscule, but if it were in a reader-friendly 12. font then I wouldn’t be able to lift it. (As it is, the paperback I own weighs three pounds on my kitchen scale.)

This doughty workhorse has no page-turning narrative arc but were I packing a sea chest for a sojourn on a desert island, I would make room for it, right next to my dictionary, blank note books, pens, energy bars, and sunscreen.

Regarding today’s Poem, “Zither”:

For those of you who asked to receive the daily poems, I hope this short video will help give some background resonance to the poem for today. I can’t play a guitar or even a piano myself, much as I have longed to coax music out of both, yet I can see how the three are related. Folk music, and making music at home–can we think about these trends in the past two hundred years without the instruments that made them possible? I would add to that the flute and penny whistle, the recorder (and, of course, the concertina!)

This comes performance of the Beatles “Let it Be” comes from musician Etienne de Lavaulx. I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I do. (Please know that de Lavaulx, a native of France now based in Western Australia, has many YouTube performances of familiar songs and also offers CDs and sheet music. You might want to look for his rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” online. If you have a little more leisure–just twelve minutes!–look at this autobiography in which he demonstrates his life as a musician specializing in guitar and zither.)

(Note: there is no entry in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for “zither” but there is one for “dithyramb.”)

Until tomorrow,

LESLIE

April 1, 2021: Welcome to National Poetry Month! Spotlight on DON’T READ POETRY by Stephanie Burt; & An Overview of My Plan for Sharing Poems This April

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Welcome to National Poetry Month, when discriminating readers everywhere celebrate our most ancient and ever-new literary art form! As many of you know, I am modifying the way that I share a new poem written each day this month, a challenge I have enjoyed taking on each April since 2016. (Details can be found HERE.)

In addition to writing and sharing new poems, I am planning here to spotlight one book each day from my personal library, something that has deepened my knowledge of and pleasure in this most ancient of literary art forms. I am inspired this year by a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero, first brought to my attention by former neighbor and passionate reader and writer, Barbara Bonner in 1985–a pithy bit of wisdom that I think of almost every day:

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

(For those who prefer the original, ” Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil”)

And for an interesting commentary on clarifying that clarifies the translation and provides a sense of historical context for the quote, please take a look at this lovely blog post at Lost and Found Books.

In that spirit, I am today sharing a few photographs of our inner and outer gardens, and will post updates on April 30, 2021. It is always such a transformation in Minnesota, those weeks from the end of March until the beginning of May. Here is what it looks like at the moment, inside our house and out.

We have had blooms inside recently from the plants we have wintered over in our east and south windows. A good thing, as now that the snows have receded, it still looks quite bare outside.

Yet, upon closer inspection, there is some greening of the grass this week, and even a few hardy blooms.

We are currently watching the emerging spears of our stalwart daffodils, daylilies, and newly planted spring bulbs, including an assortment of tulips and Asiatic lilies, along with white scilla. Yesterday, we saw our first returned robin of the year. Soon we will be raking away last year’s mulch of leaves, watching the new leaf buds open into green canopies, hanging the wren houses, repatriating the indoor plants to their preferred outdoor locales, planting seeds, purchasing starter tomato and pepper plants, and cutting a few pussy willow wands to bring inside. Stay tuned!

LIBRARY SPOTLIGHT for April 1, 2021

Tim found this intriguing book at Dragonfly Books in Decorah, Iowa two summers ago, and we are reading it together slowly. The chapters open with an introduction and then tackle the overlapping categories of poems: “Feelings,” “Characters,” “Forms,” “Difficulty,” “Wisdom,” and “Community.”

The prose is lucid, instructive, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and we are enjoying Burt’s excerpts and selections from a wide range of poems–old favorites to the new-to-us examples–to illustrate her arguments. (For example, she compares and contrasts Wordsworth’s much anthologized “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” often called “Daffodils,” with Jennifer Chang’s snarky, modern-day take-off, “Dorothy Wordsworth.”)

REGARDING TODAY’S POEM:

I am mixing it up this year. Instead of (as in 2019 & 2020) choosing titles to inspire each day’s poems in alphabetical order, followed by four free-choice poems for April 27-30, I am beginning with three free-choice poems, proceeding to poems with titles in reverse alpha order, and concluding with a final free-choice titled poem on April 30. Wish me luck 🙂

Today’s poem, “April 1: Raspberry Fools,” revisits Bayfield, Wisconsin, the place where Tim and I first attempted gardening. (Incidentally, it was Barbara and Bob Bonner’s kind and timely advice that prevented the plumbing disaster alluded to in the poem!) We hope to revisit Bayfield again before too long, perhaps catch site of a rainbow there in 2022. Meanwhile, I plan to try a new dessert recipe over Easter weekend with these raspberries.

The raspberries were a gift from Julia, and I am inspired also by her introducing me to the concept of “cottage core.” This recipe is from “The Pioneer Woman” website.

That’s it for today!

Happy April 1, 2021! LESLIE