WORK

“Mother of a New Diagnosis”

How alluring is the pine, its needled limbs bent
heavy with cones. When all was well

I pondered the crown of a distant tree:
bow and sway, sway

and bow, and how an evergreen releases
a soft if imperfect bed

upon a forest floor. I’ve been quite busy,
old tree, shuffling in lint-covered socks, nesting

in my terry-cloth robe. A sparrow
might be wintering on your bough, but my brooding

is now of lancets and pricks. A series, this,
of blood and measure to tell me

what’s next: a quick lick of sugar
for the dangerously deprived? Or must I insist

my daughter lift her hem and choose again
which limb will take the needle?

—Laura Van Prooyen
—from Our House Was On Fire

WORD(S)

clathrate. adjective. Resembling lattice or having a lattice-like structure. A cage-like appearance. A chemical structure in which one component is trapped in the cage-like crystals of another. From Latin clatratus (with bars).

“She tried on a two-piece navy wool, then a sleeveless blouse with a swirly clathrate skirt, but the first was too tight and the second too ample…” (Vladimir Nabokov)

“it had to do with that theologically crucial moment in their history when they, living among the clathrates and frozen gases of their home environment, with visibility minute in any direction, for the first time became aware that “seeing” could become the receiving end of a significant art form.” (Frederik Pohl)

“So, too, with poetry and its multiple traditions, as well as its heretics and outsiders. Some students come to us fully encoded, clathrate with the sounds and rhythms of a poetic thread.” (D.A. Powell)

WEB

1. Slide Show: Capturing Literary Lives, featuring Nabokov, McCullers, Baldwin and others. Hat-tip: Reader C.

2. A new publication intended to bridge the Two Cultures divide, Method Quarterly describes its purpose: “…we wanted to bring together scientists, scholars, artists, and writers across the many fractured boundaries of science, to explore the rough edges and fuzzy uncertainties of scientific methods.” And the first issue is out.

3. ► The Pronunciation of European Typefaces.

4. Brain Pickings has a pleasurable selection of maps of imaginary places from Umberto Eco’s The Book of Legendary Lands, which appears to be a must-have if that kind of thing appeals to you as it does to me.

5. Today is World Diabetes Day, promoting awareness and treatment of—and the search for a cure for—diabetes, which afflicts nearly 390-million people worldwide…including both of my children, who suffer from the Type I (juvenile onset) form of the disease. That population is expected to grow to more than 500-million in the next two decades, with up to half that number going undiagnosed. I’m thankful for the strides in care my children benefit from, but cures are not that far away. The Diabetes Atlas provides easily understandable information and (scary) statistics about this global epidemic that will kill 5-million people this year.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. asks why I: “mentioned Radnoti’s ‘story’, but not his work?” — Actually, that was an editing mistake on my part. Of course I meant to direct reader’s to Radnoti’s poetry, but since it is so intimately fused to his life (and death)…

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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