“They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.”
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I love Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations. His Hamlet is absolutely genius. While watching HBO tonight it had a commercial for his new film As You Like It, being broadcast on HBO August 21st. It is sad that he couldn't get theater distribution in the US, but I'll take it anywhere. Set during 18th-century Japan, this adaptation looks beautiful. Set your DVRs and enjoy!
Ingmar Bergman influenced my life in so many different ways, primarily through his films, that I am a little shocked on hearing of his death. I would even call him a personal hero, of a sort. He always seemed like a immortal artist that would go on forever, pushing the boundaries of film and stage. One of the great artists of the 20th century is gone. But he will live on forever in his films.
My first exposure to Bergman was The Seventh Seal during my high school days. It opened my eyes to the power of film, and that it can reach heights of tremendous power and artistry equivalent to literature and poetry. And I was watching Wild Strawberries just last week.
May he have a peaceful rest.
Here are some clips and interviews:
For Ingmar Bergman fans, like myself, this is hilarious.
Well, to continue my poetry kick, I was at B&N a week ago and found a new anthology of Spanish poems, called The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance. It caught my attention because it is an area I know little about. Translated by Edith Grossman, who did the recent Don Quixote translation, put this books together. There is even an intro by Billy Collins. It is a slim volume though at 192 pages, I would like something a little heftier.
One thing I do really like about it is that the Spanish is on one page, with the translation on the facing page. That is something I wish would be done more often with translating poetry. You can retain and enjoy the sound and musicality of the original, even if you don't know the language. I definately will be adding this to my collection when it comes in a paperback.
In the recent New Yorker there is an article about Thomas Hardy. This poem, "To Sincerity," referred to in the article, unexpectedly stuck me. So nice and compact, yet bursting with energy and thought. I've never read any Hardy poetry before, only his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge in high school. I going to pick up his poems and delve.
Life may be sad past saying,
Its greens for ever graying,
Its faiths to dust decaying;And youth may have foreknown it,
And riper seasons shown it,
But custom cries: "Disown it:"Say ye rejoice, though greiving,
Believe, while unbelieving,
Behold, without perceiving!"
In the past couple of months, my interest in poetry has developed beyond my own expectations, somewhat surprising myself. This partly stemmed from the recent English classes I've taken, and over last summer I was picking up the occassional poem to read. Then something happened, I'm not quite sure what, but poetry has become a intense passion lately. So, I'll have much to talk about this new journey.
This brings me to the recent essay "American Poetry in the New Century" by John Barr, the president of Poetry Foundation, originally published in the Sept 2006 issue of Poetry Magazine.
As I read his thoughts, I found them quite provocative and agreeable to my own sensibility. The essay has also caused a minor stir in the poetry world, pissing off quite a few poets. In addressing contemporary poetry John Barr basically says that it is tired and lacks the ability to address the audience. Here are a few excerpts:
A new poetry becomes necessary not because we want one, but because the way poets have learned to write no longer captures the way things are, how things have changed. Reality outgrows the art form: the art form is no longer equal to the reality around it.
The need for something new is evident. Contemporary poetry's striking absence from the public dialogues of our day, from the high school classroom, from bookstores, and from mainstream media, is evidence of a people in whose mind poetry is missing and unmissed.
I think the responsibilities of the public to poetry are nil. No one should read poetry because they are supposed to. That's like listening to tony music that puts you to sleep when no one is looking. How often do you go to the movies out of a sense of duty? Rather, I think the responsibilities are all on the part of poetry to its public.
Poetry needs to find its public again, and address it. Poets can help accomplish this by bearing in mind the influences of how they live on what they write, and of what they write on how their readers live.
"To have great poets, there must be great audiences too," Whitman said, and then he wrote for them. Groundbreaking new art comes when artists make a changed assumption about their relationship to their audience, talk to their readers in a new way, and assume they will understand.
So, does poetry matter to anyone out there anymore?
Looking for what was in the new issue, I wasn't expecting this when I surfed over to The Paris Review. Stephen King is interviewed for their long running Art of Ficiton series. Not the person one thinks of in the same sentence with The Paris Review. I imagine that some literary types will be disgusted with this developement; I can think of a couple of my English professors that may be stunned in disbelief. But I think it is rather telling about Stephen King's rise to the status of "literature." Ever since he was given a Distinguished Contribution to American Letters award by the National Book Foundation, and has published sporadically in The New Yorker, the King has been going through a re-interpretation of sorts. It's interesting to watch, but even funnier to see people get pissed off about it. I'll definately be picking up the issue.
If you haven't heard yet, Houghton Mifflin is publishing a "new" book by J.R.R. Tolkien titled The Children of Hurin, edited and put together by Christopher Tolkien. It will feature a new map by Christopher and a book cover by Alan Lee. It will be a stand alone work.
I am very curious to see how this will turn out. Will it be another history-like compilation, similar to The Silmarillion? Or more of a novel like LOTR? It's difficult to tell at this point, but the tale of the Children of Hurin has been already published in pieces and parts in Tolkien's other post-LOTR works. Over at Wormtalk and Slugspeak, Professor Michael Drout gives a excellent break down of the what's been published before. It is unclear if the "new" work will include any previously unpublished stuff. For the sake of Gandalf, I hope so.
On hearing this news, I started getting that Tolkien nostalgia, and have been going back to some stuff in the History of Middle Earth volumes, primarily in regards to Aelfwine of England, a character that could have his own novel, if I had my way. There is so much vast beauty in all those old tales from the First and Second Ages that just take me to a place of real wonder. I think it might be time for me to starting rereading LOTR again. Ever since the movies, I have had a difficult time picking up those books. I liked the movies, in a disconnected sort of way, but they have given me some difficulties in connecting and approaching the novels. But I love those books regardless. They are what introduced me to literature and was the soil and seed to my future passion.
It's been interesting that a lot of hits to my blog come from Google searches that relate to my literature papers, London by Blake and Frankenstein by Shelley. So I present the next in my series. This is an interpretation of the short story "Clay" by James Joyce which is part of the collection Dubliners. So we get the usual themes of paralysis, epiphany, etc... so if you like, leave a comment, or any feedback that would improve my work. Anyways hope you enjoy.
In “Clay,” by James Joyce, the first paragraph offers a simple detail, “These brambracks seemed uncut; but if you went closer you would see that they had been cut…” (Joyce, Dubliners 95). This ordinary cake at the beginning offers the reader a guide on how to view the subsequent story, where things that may seem a certain way on the surface, can be revealed to be something different upon a closer look. The protagonist Maria cut the cake, thus offering a connection between Maria’s action and the revealed nature of the cake. Applying this metaphor for Maria’s life, the reader may unearth the possibility of another life, a secret life, that isn’t apparent on the surface, but changes upon acute inspection.
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