Another poem from Joseph Stroud today. A little dark to balance the earlier light. I can’t recommend Of This World highly enough.
WORK
“My Father Died”
I put down the phone. I put down the phone.
What is there to hold on to? Now grief
will have its way. There is a great machine
in the blackness that dismantles one moment
from the next. It makes the sound of the heart
but is heartless.
—Joseph Stroud
—from Of This World: New and Selected Poems
WORD(S)
shirr /shər/. noun or verb. To draw cloth together (into a shirring) using parallel threads. To bake shelled eggs until set. To poach eggs in cream instead of water. Origin/etymology: unknown.
“…there I would sit, with a dummy book or a bag of bonbons, or both, or nothing but my tingling glands, and watch her gambol, rubber-capped, bepearled, smoothly tanned, as glad as an ad, in her trim-fitted satin pants and shirred bra.” (Vladimir Nabokov)
“…they rode with the slamming and jarring of the wagon half shirring the meat from their bones so that they cried out to be left and then they died.” (Cormac McCarthy)
“Jocelyn said he made it sound as though that were the only reason he’d moved out, because restaurant eating would be so swell. She felt she’d been traded for shirred eggs.” (Karen Joy Fowler)
“…A bird
drinks from the small sheer pond
of its rain-shimmering face, from its own
reflection, the wind-shirred sky’s.”
(Claudia Emerson)
WEB
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New York Public Library Shares Decades of Hilariously Weird Reference Questions. Pairs well with Questions Your Local Librarian Will Not Be Answering for You.
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I love this project. Probably because I love projects of self-exploration and serendipity. → Date Jar
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“Maybe handwriting is neither a lost art nor an anachronism; perhaps new technology will show there is some useful alchemy left in the way language, the body, and our sense of identity intertwine.” → What’s the Point of Handwriting? [Thanks Reader M.]
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Today in 1823, Joseph Smith—religious leader and founder of the Mormon church—under direction from the angel Moroni, discovers the golden plates he would eventually translate as the Book of Mormon. According to Smith, Moroni prevented him from removing the plates from their hiding spot for four years. Then Moroni forbade Smith from letting anyone see the plates while Smith spent years translating them. Finally, eleven trusted confidants (now known as the Book of Mormon Witnesses) were allowed to see the 30–60 pounds of thin gold leaves before Smith returned them to Moroni. Or so it is related in The Book of Mormon.
WATCH/WITNESS
![The Writer Who Couldn't Read [show images; click to view]](https://buttondown-attachments.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/3f8cc868-a3e9-40d2-812b-2daf9be220d9.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJEXF6S6TCOKT7N3Q&Signature=Q%2FkhaKuLvWQdnIZPBRBSqQJogtQ%3D&Expires=1707568639)
“Imagine you wake up one morning and can’t read. Your eyes work, but the letters on the page have turned into squiggles. They make no sense. Now meet Howard Engel, a writer of detective stories, who has this condition, but amazingly, has found a way to trick his brain to almost read again.” → ►The Writer Who Couldn’t Read
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader B. has a musical poetry moment: “Love that Stroud poem. ¶ As I reread it, some furious black metal started playing from another device near me, and I imagined Stroud’s voice in that growling ferocity. Nice.”
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Reader A. Knows Who’s Who: “Happy Who day! Seeing in high school, ”The Kids Are Alright“ was my call to the Who and to rebellion. For many a year I can pretty much recite the whole skit. I once wrote my own quasi analysis of the wording of the opening, even if it was scripted, it was clever. ¶ Thanks for the full link (I updated my own old post), the track on the album does not have all of the end parts, and you never see on the album that Townshend smashes Tommy’s acoustic guitar ¶ ‘Hope I die before I get…’”
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