WORK
“Outside”
My grandmother sends a letter
from the older country,
large spaces between the words
waiting for me to be born.
In the bedroom upstairs my mother
writes with a red pen in the book of birth.
Outside, the nights are cooler. By the light
of her notebook my sister
imagines her own imagination. She wants
to write everything down at once.
Days are getting shorter.
Leaves are pulling colour from the air.
The school bus stops in front of the house
and the driver calls out. My sister
runs down the steps
toward the open doors
thinking she will know me.
—Robert Gore
—from Contemporary Verse 2
WORD(S)
pawky /PAW-kee/. adjective. Shrewd, cunning, canny. In Scottish dialect: haughty, insolent. From northern English dialect pawk (trick).
“She was at her triturations. Spooning to death in a salver a speckled slug, marked like an ocelot, viscous and sticky. A whitish paste. Crooning a low threnody to her pawky trade.” (Cormac McCarthy)
“Though he is not known as a satirist, his Blood Meridian, about a ruthless band of bounty hunters looking for Indian scalps in Texas in the 1850s, can be read at least in part as a bloody pasquinade on the heroic literature of westward expansion. A pawky gallows humor is a reliable if underappreciated element in much of McCarthy’s work…” (Michael Chabon, from Maps and Legends)
“In this milieu, you suddenly see the urgent meaning of that phrase about everybody needing a good laugh. The Algonquin Round Table could never have been so remorselessly pawky.” (Martin Amis)
“He went on in his pawky way trying to make clear to her his mystical faith in these men who went ragged and hungry because they had chosen once for all between what he called in all seriousness their souls, and this world.” (Katherine Anne Porter)
WEB
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Readers will have noticed my slowly developing obsession with Caravaggio. That’s what you pay me for! → “The mystery of Caravaggio’s death solved at last—painting killed him”.
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$2 bills have made an appearance here before. Apparently I share this interest with some South Americans → The Curious Case of $2 Bills in Ecuador
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For use by “the less formal male” in approaches to “the less formal female” → 19th Century Escort Cards
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Today in 1963, screenwriter and producer Stephen Russell Davies—better known by his pen name Russell T Davies—is born in Swansea, Wales. Some will know him as the creator of the original Queer as Folk television series, many more for his successful reboot of the Doctor Who franchise in 2005. He’s currently at work on Tofu, the third in a trilogy of series about gay life and culture, that began with Cucumber and Banana. As a fan, his work bringing Doctor Who back is enough for recognition, but his outstanding Fresh Air interview, which is funny, humble and insightful—and has nothing to do with Doctor Who—put me over the top.
WATCH/WITNESS
View the entire Rand McNalley HISTOMAP: 4000 Years of World History on a Single Map
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader C. writes: “My favorite use of scaramouch. Freddy Mercury for the win…” — You might enjoy some of the discussons on the song at SongMeanings.net
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Reader S. writes w/r/t the toilet repair that resulted in a museum: “The story about the trattoria-turned-museum is the stuff of my fondest dreams. If only…”
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Reader N. hooks me up with some music: “Have you ever heard the piano duet ‘Scaramouche’ by Darius Milhaud? Here’s an excerpt.¶ It’s very lively and sometimes played on one piano with four hands. You can also find it performed with saxophone or clarinet and orchestra. Milhaud was a member of ‘Les Six’ which also included Poulenc and Honneger. If you like ‘Scaramouche’ you can move on to ‘Le Boeuf sur le toit’ (The Ox on the Roof), a ballet farce and a famous bar in Paris. The bar was named after the ballet and not the other way around.” — Wonderful! I’ve listened to multiple performances of the full piece and Le Bœuf sur le toit (how could I resist a farcical surrealist ballet quoting scores of Brazilian songs made into a show with the help of Cocteau?
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The same Reader N. saw right through me: “I really enjoyed your collection of quotations about the word. Although Jane Austen and Martin Amis may seem to be strange bed-fellows, he has remained as devout an Austenista as can be since he first read her novels as a teenager.” — The pairing tickled me because I remembered Amis discussing Austen multiple times in his nonfiction (and his differences with this father on the topic, if I recall correctly).
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