Ever-eager to cite my sources, the subject line is John Elstad making a 2nd or 3rd pool shot in a row, and, by domino citations, Josh doing and exclaiming likewise. It's also a celebration of inspiring activity of late, if just a smidgeon is apparent here.
Stillwater Symposium was born 4 years ago--January 2011 under the possible names 'Karamazov' or 'Idiot' or 'Woebegone' productions--glad we had the good sense to resort to Stillwater! But there are reasons why those other names were bandied about.
Mom has been a scrapbook-maker extraordinaire, linking here-and-now to the lore of Loftness reunions and Skideroo. Stillwater hopes to do this, too.
Songs To Listen To a'Gin and a'Gin inspires this 335th Stillwater post (with a couple more I see in draft stage). The lists have been great to investigate, especially when annotated, and I was going to add my 2015 rendition with the rather banal side B of Van Halen's debut, "Jamie's Crying" (whistling that in happiest times while walking Bronx); instead, I decided to write a poem on four artists that I've continued to read--and sometimes teach--for now over 30 years. Quartet, from English-Russian origins, then, is my offering for this symposium.
Note, please, my sly grammatical ascription of the singular for this 'symposium'--we have many-a-symposia to bandy about! We want stories from Arizona and Central Illinois, updates serendipitous and salaried. I was honored this week, for instance, to help host Laurie Halse Anderson, author of young adult literature, and to hear Emma's report about how she presented to 4th-graders, and to see how she did with my 10th- and 11th-graders. One of the latter wrote an article for our online newspaper, and while I don't preside over that elective anymore, I'm thrilled she is there to sustain it.
In this season of Lent, we are blessed in our humility. God saves us--nothing else. As caricatured as it may seem, I've spend a lot of time these past weeks on Dostoevsky's mix of intellectual passion and spiritual circumspection--those terms shall not (cannot) pin-hole his discursive method. "That's what I'm talkin' about" is a polyphonic means to polyphonic meaning--I'll cite Bakhtin here as my source. The slippery slope, many might argue, is that anyone talking = anyone right. Democracy has employed mechanisms like the Electoral College and Oliver Wendell Holmes' 'marketplace of ideas'. I like how we're using the net: our symposium, engendered in Psalm 23, and hooks and hopes when we all meet again. Looking forward to July 18th!...
I like your poem, Dan, but make it more than a link! Why not the 336th post? Let us see upfront your version, unique as always, of songs to listen to again and again. And if you're going to link anything, link us to Shakespeare, Fyodor, Shostakovich and the Floyd. But let your poem stand on the first level!
ReplyDeleteBut hurry, as I already have some possible posts for 337 and 338. We have, for one, an open invitation out there for Andrea to join us. And, coincidentally, I have a quartet of my own I just recently finished: four sonnets tied, a la Eliot, to the elements.
Thanks, it was a fun poem to fit together, and the decision to keep each composer to 4 was key, as I didn't want to contrive connections between, say, Ummagumma and the Underground Man (though now that I think about it...;) Shostakovich produced so much I have yet to hear, so I wasn't as informed there. I had dreamed long ago of doing a comp lit degree and investigating Shakespeare's influence on Dostoevsky--his references are only occasional--but I think this poem will suffice.
DeleteI posted it as a link because more on my mind for this belated 4th birthday of Stillwater was the positive traffic and ways to stay in touch, as well as a reminder for us to develop projects and post them in multiple places. I look forward to your sonnets, whether here or on one of your other blogs.
Quartet, from English-Russian origins
Hamlet, scholar more than prince, taking duty to the hilt, is
Raskolnikov, a sacrosanct adieu to the siege he hastened set for
Symphony #7, patient corpses—some of cannibals—dreaming of
The Dark Side of the Moon, us and them and lunatics between.
Agued Lear, renegade of all he gave away, to faithful fools and
Brothers Karamazov, lusting inquisitions that bargain souls, not
Babi Yar, where monuments of mind surcease, save those who risk
The Wall, the brick-by-brick design to be strangers in this town.
The Scottish play, lest we name names, is the pig within: Mob,
Demons, or the Possessed, Kirilov killing self or Shatov—nichovo!
Lady Macbeth at the Mtsensk, whose barrenness is faultless, makes
Animals, cullingly, of us all: gotta have a real need not to drown.
Othello, you beast with two backs, jealousy seeded within, you
Idiot, an angel who may have prevailed over fits epileptic to hear
Opus 107, the unfettered cello, if not quite unstrung or undone. We
Wish You Were Here, all told above, to play out your parts again.