WhimsyLand

This weekend was largely devoted to MI-4, the execution of a surprise birthday party for Cath, my friend, ex-wife and mother of my children.  Our sons and I had made her believe that we were unavailable for her birthday on Sunday:  Kyle gaming, Derek at school in Chicago, me having to work.  Meanwhile, Kyle was helping with the subterfuge, Derek was getting classes out of the way to be able to fly in, and I was back-channeling Cath's friends in the interpreting/translating community about how and where we would show up.  A couple of dozen of us rendezvous'd outside Adriana's house, where Cath and her good friend Jodie were having a small birthday lunch.  We perched on the sidewalk behind our cars like that scene from The Birds until the moment when Ruth led the procession, playing the guitar and leading a round of the Spanish Happy Birthday Song, which I lip-synched.  The first time I met Cath, she was keeping a conversation going  in both directions simultaneously among three Spaniards and three Americans, none of whom spoke of word of the others' language.  So the fact that Cath was speechless was a minor wonder.  Many bottles of good Spanish wine later(Coto de Imaz, Pesquera, ...) , we all went home.  I was mainly recuperating yesterday.

The latest issue of Poetry I've received has a subdued monochrome cover with a rendering of Pegasus.  There was quite a lot to like in the issue, though.  John Berryman had 8 poems.  I liked The Cage and a couple of others.  This passage from From The Black Book:   "Grandfather, sleepless in a room upstairs / Seldom came down; so when they tript him down / We wept.  The blind light sang about his ears, / Later we heard.  Brother had pull.  In pairs / He, some slept upon stone."  Lloyd Frankenberg contributes Jerusalem.   William Jay Smith offers up three poems, one of which is called For A Deaf Angora Cat:  "The jungle lies about you, and the ground / Is measured by your stealthy step, the sound / of birds extinct in pure, autumnal flight. / What centuries of breeding, ah, poor dear".  Then, Cynthia Pickard and Hanson Kellogg, the latter with this from Four Disinterested Parties:  "Alcohol offers dimensions and a vanishing point; / Benzedrine qualifies the metaphors. / I am alone and the ten thousand / Pressed against me, hip, thigh, breast and the seeking fingers".  Next up is Grace Baer Hollowell, then Catherine Davis with a bunch of poems, this from Arachne: An Ode:  "You weave a secret snare / That shudders at a touch / And hangs upon the air, / Yet seems not anywhere,".  Norma Farber, the famous vocalist, has a single poem, Inform Yourself Completely.  The Opinion section has an essay called Homage to St.-John Perse.  The Reviews section includes The Heresy of Paraphrase, and interesting and seemingly competent review of C. M. Brown's The Creative Experiment, which discusses parallels among the literary work of Mayakovsky, Apollinaire, Pasternak, Eliot, Garcia Lorca, and Cavafy.  There's a mixed review of H.D.'s By Avon River and The Travelers by Henry Rago, "whose poems have appeared here and there for years" (sounds familiar).  Frank Jones  contrasts four recent books on Goethe, Paul Goodman looks at The New Romanticism, Richard Eberhart comments on The Labyrinth by Edwin Muir, and John Holmes takes a look at 20 years of Edouard Roditi's work.  News Notes bemoans the fact that a number of small presses have "folded":  "To the average reader, the term probably connotes a heavy collapse, as of brick walls falling.  But the editor is more likely to think of paper softly slipping from a shelf, of thousands of proofs, pages and pages of manuscript, bills and files and letters, all settling to a level mound, heavier than leaves, thicker than snow".  Poetry notes that the 25 Books Received includes Elegies by Muriel Rukeyser.

OK, I know the gig is up for most of you.  The volume of Poetry was hand-carried by Derek from a Chicago bookfair on the plane to give to me for an early Father's Day present.  It was published in the month and year of my birth, January 1950.  An amazing 80% of the volume was metrical, and the work was mostly competent but not anything to get your blood running.  Something to remember when you wish for the good old days when Poetry was avant garde.