|k| clippings: 2014-12-05 — emerson emersion

RIP, Claudia Emerson. Another fine poet—and another, by all accounts from friends who knew her, fine person—lost this week.

WORK

Drought

I began to understand
     its severity when glassy
crows came shameless, panting at last
     to the birdbath, and when the locusts
fell to the ground, another failed
     crop. The street lay empty all day,
and the river grew thinner, its spine
     showing through. Only butterflies
thrived—the still air cleft by their
     repeating patterns, the feathering
wings of swallowtails, monarchs;
     I learned from their bright emersion
to rely, for a while, only
     on the eye, the dry horizon.

—Claudia Emerson
—from Late Wife: Poems

WORD(S)

caliginous. adjective. Dim, dark, misty, obscure. Remember darkling a few months ago? From Latin caliginosus, from caligin/caligo (darkness).

“Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls’, avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. ‘Was it very caliginous in the Metropolis?’ ¶ ‘Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated’, Lawrence replied gravely.” (Robert Graves)

“You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!” (L. Frank Baum)

“The shadows that clung to him extended perhaps an inch from his skin, discolouring the air that surrounded him like a caliginous halo.” (China Miéville)

WEB

1. On saving 350,000 manuscripts from libraries in and around Timbuktu from Jihadists → “The Brave Sage of Timbuktu: Abdel Kader Haidara”. Then read “The Real Rebels of Timbuktu” to understand even more why this was necessary in the first place.

2. Count me in for “hegemonkey” → “Words I Need for My Dissertation That Don’t Exist” [Via Reader S.]

3. The Eames’ Powers of Ten meets your browser in a new edition. Makes me feel small…in a good way. → The Scale of the Universe, v. 2.

4. Erica Spitzer Rasmussen’s inventive, mostly circular, books

5. Today in 1933, thanks to Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the rise of bootleggers and gangs, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, ending Prohibition. It says something, though I’m not sure what, that this is both the only amendment that was ratified through state conventions—a method provided for in the constitution to bypass state legislatures—and the only amendment that repeals another. During Prohibition, sales of illegal alcohol are estimated to have generated more than two-billion dollars per year and the US Government lost more than 11-billion dollars in tax income. Not only that, but attempting to legislate temperance turned out to foster excess, more than 1000 people died every year from tainted alcohol, and pharmacies and synagogues became fronts for “medicinal whiskey” and wine, respectively, swelling enrollment. The grape industry did alright, too, selling grape juice making kits with warnings that leaving the juice sitting too long could lead to fermentation. Good times.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. inquires: “Perhaps I sport a…trophy pogon? ¶ Man, Conrad never gets old for me. He always works.”

• A different Reader B. made me literally LOL: “[last edition’s quote by Conrad] Reminds me…I was talking about comic novels with someone once, and he said that ‘by far, the funniest novel I’ve ever read is Lord Jim.’ And went on at some length about how it made him laugh. I remember thinking, ‘wow, this dude is really, really dark.’ Eventually figured out he was talking about Lucky Jim, and the conversation got a lot less interesting.”

• But the same Reader B. also notes: “I was a little surprised and saddened to see Conrad assigned to the purgatory of ‘not-so-often read.’ But I suppose I see the point. I’m resolved to read one of his books over the holidays.” — I hasten to add this is just my perception and may well just be a symptom of my premature aging…

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