Thy quiet house.
And Ezra Pound's Drafts & Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII.
The month of December was one in which I woke exualtant and now I am only too happy to have a quiet house. My children (grown men at that) make me so happy at Christmas that I can literally "see with the eyes of coral or turquoise."
The last literary discussion I was involved in was with the Bay area poet Joseph Lease. I asked him to submit to Many Mountains Moving which will be out in time for the NYC AWP. He submittd a poem which I won't reveal here in the hopes that someone out there in the blog netherland will buy the journal when it comes out & see for him/herself the beautiful pieces of work we acquired from such luminaries as Dorianne Laux & Diane Glancy. Our website is: www.mmminc.org
Anyway, Joseph Lease and I were talking about Cormac McCarthy (who else) and Ezra. Do you know there is a gentleman who has compiled a "concordance" of vocab used in McCarthy's "Suttree?" It is meticulously researched with each page number recorded beside each word that is used. Also, surprisingly, there is a website linked to it that brings up photos of each area of Tennessee mentioned in the book along with quotes & corresponding page numbers. Here is the url for those rabid McCarthy fans: http://www.johnsepich.com/a_concordance_to_suttree.pdf
My son Aaron says that in "The Road" he believes that the family who found the little boy at the end of the book had been following them all along based on dialogue like, "There was some discussion whether we should even come after you..." Or something like that. Plus, the fact that the father did mention somewhere that he believed they were being followed. I'm sure others have picked up on this, but I had not. I will have to mention this to Joseph who loved the novel, but like many people, found it lacking in "community." I will have to ask him more about that.
Maybe I will ask the guy at Borders who ordered a copy of "Blood Meridian" for me & held up the long line of customers because he was one of "those people." The Cormac people. He wouldn't let me leave. He wanted to talk "Suttree" and nothing but "Suttree." These people are popping out of pods everywhere. I'm glad. I've been reading Cormac for years & was beginning to think I was weird. How many people laugh at characters who fuck watermelons??
Anyway, (I thrive on rough transitions) this new year is starting off with a certain loveliness. For instance, Rachel's engagement party last night was lively with young women so beautiful I had to sigh. And I, being 48 and slightly wiser, can say truthfully, yes, Ezra, "somewhere in the snarl is a tenderness" and when Rachel walks down her wedding aisle we will all see in "the long suavity of her moving, willow and olive reflected..."
