Another piece by Jack Gilbert. What we don’t or can’t have—and what we don’t or can’t understand when we do—can nonetheless overflow us.

WORK

“Trouble”

That is what the Odyssey means.
Love can leave you nowhere in New Mexico
raising peacocks for the rest of your life.
The seriously happy heart is a problem.
Not the easy excitement, but summer
in the Mediterranean mixed with
the rain and bitter cold of February
on the Riviera, everything on fire
in the violent winds. The pregnant heart
is driven to hopes that are the wrong
size for this world. Love is always
disturbing in the heavenly kingdom.
Eden cannot manage so much ambition.
The kids ran from all over the piazza
yelling and pointing and jeering
at the young Saint Chrysostom
standing dazed in the church doorway
with the shining around his mouth
where the Madonna had kissed him.

—Jack Gilbert
—from Refusing Heaven

WORD(S)

celadon /SELL-a-don/. noun. A pale shade of green similar to willow; Chinese pottery/porcelain of that color. Also, a river in classical mythology, crossed by Heracles in pursuit of the Hind of Ceryneia and said, in the Iliad, to be under the walls of Pheia.

“Or tender azure of a sky
Just washed by gentle April rains,
And beautiful with celadon.” (Longfellow)

“When I came in, Bob Johnson swung his feet off the desk and stood. I could feel his stare. I was glad I hadn’t worn a skirt. I glanced at my reflection in the one-way viewing glass. Yellow blazer, celadon tee. I looked good.” (Robert B. Parker)

‘I loved her, I loved the very sight of her: she was wearing a cashmere sweater, soft gray-green, and her gray eyes had a luminous celadon tint. “You think you have to take sides,” she said. “But you don’t.”’ (Donna Tartt)

“I led my Troops to Phea’s trembling Wall
And with th’ Arcadian Spears my Prowess try’d,
Where Celadon rolls down his rapid Tide.” (from the Iliad, trans. by Pope)

WEB

1. Naughty Nuns, Flatulent Monks, and Other Surprises of Sacred Medieval Manuscripts. Great article on the—sometimes surprising—art of Medieval marginalia.

2. Another treasure trove: along with a new site, all 25 issues/years of The Baffler are now online and searchable. It’s not an easy publication to describe, so I’ll let the editor do it: “a loose collective of disaffiliated culture critics, obsolete knowledge workers, poets, illustrators and closet utopians.”

3. A poetry pairing: A Paris Review interview with poet Carol Muske-Dukes featuring musings on “unoriginal genius” and an unhappy riposte from the editor of The Found Poetry Review. Bonus: the minor-key imbroglio led me to this collection of found poems generated from David Foster Wallace’s writings.

4. Take a gander at Cheong-ah Hwang’s delicate paper sculptures, such as this tracing paper hummingbird.

5. Today in 1947, President Truman signs the National Security Act, creating the DOD, the NSC, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If you see something, say something; I saw the Directorate of Intelligence’s Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications. Unsurprisingly prescriptivist and, judging by its fruit, a good example of how no number or quality style and usage rules make up for poor writing or unhappy content about, say, war crimes (no hyphen, sir-yes-sir). A quick google search reveals a plethora of commentary and highlights.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

Reader B. brings up a fascinating topic (for this book-scribbler who is drawn to collage, assemblage, erasure and transformative book arts):

‘When I taught Humument [http://ktxc.to/tph1] a decade ago to college creative writers and had them search local used bookstores for treasures to reimagine and to serve, literally, as doors to their own stories and poems and essays, many students were discomfited by the act of “destroying” a book and thought me cruel and strange and ridiculous to give them such an assignment. Ah, but it led to some fine writing experiments and rich discussions of our relationship to the book as hallowed object: who converses through marginalia and who keeps jottings in separate notebooks, who even dares fold over the corners of pages and who uses bookmarks…’

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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