I came across another good link . . . need more Victorian narrative in your life? (And who doesn't, really?) Victorian Secrets can provide. I find a new resource for Victorian reprints very exciting indeed!

And I've started rereading Pride & Prejudice in response to watching Lost In Austen. I couldn't help it. It's the kind of world I just need to get lost in at the moment, I think. The language, the characters. The intelligent candour of Lizzie, the small-minded hilarity that is Mrs. Bennet . . . and what can one say of Mr. Darcy!?!

An excerpt:

After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought; re-considering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

Otherwise, it's business as usual. Poetry reviews awaiting, novel-writing and poetry mss languishing, but it's such a lovely day for a walk:




And/or some poetry reading (some Dickinson, perhaps?):

# 955

I sing to use the Waiting,
My Bonnet but to tie
And shut the Door unto my House
No more to do have I

Till His best step approaching
We journey to the Day
And tell each other how We sung
To keep the Dark away.

Stumbling Into Beauty

Outdoors the weather is determined to remind me that winter is inevitable. Cold rain, grumpy-looking clouds, a rash of stripped leaves littering the backyard. But isn't it wonderful when a chance click, or a left turn during a walk instead of a right turn, or an impulse drive on a Tuesday afternoon brings you to something inspiring, something meaningful, some unexpected beauty?

Recently:

1. During a visit to a blog I frequent, I came across a link to My Porch blog, a lovely place to read about books and such. I'm now inspired to find some Sarton books to read, for example, and I think I may have found another new stopping-place on my daily blog ramble.

2. While on a Saturday afternoon walk, we came upon a fox. There is a forest-load of foxes round these parts this autumn. Poor rabbits, was my first reaction. But coming upon a fox or two when out and about can be quite a thrill (this increases my wildlife sightings considerably as well . . . ordinarily we see a lot of deer and raccoons, but lately I've noted a coyote, several moose, foxes, and a wary, but greedy groundhog determined to eat as much as possible before darting into the bushes to get away from me and my camera).

3. I've been reading two wonderful books of poetry. The first, One by Serge Patrice Thibodeau, is a small, exquisite gem of a collection. The second, Looking into Trees by Douglas Lochhead, is deceptively easy to access . . . and then you notice the layers of metaphor, the dance of trees, dreams, lips, and love.

4. And I finally took the plunge and started watching Lost In Austen. What a treat. Filled with humour and respect for Austen, it's quite enjoyable so far (though Miss Price's lack of appropriate hairstyle when at Longbourn is starting to irritate for some reason).

Currently Listening To: To Be By Your Side by Nick Cave. Having just finished reading Nick Cave: The Complete Lyrics 1978 - 2007, I thought I'd give the music another listen. His writing has the depth, at times, of a great (though sometimes wacky, disturbing and dark) novel. Which reminds me, I now want to give this and this a try as well.

Just Finished Reading and Enjoyed (with only a few reservations): The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness by Anne Simpson. Though a little uneven in terms of focus (and, for me, interest), this is a beautifully expressed, interesting and readable collection of essays about the art of writing, specifically the role/importance of metaphor. These exploratory essays, acutely observational with a healthy dollop of literary criticism and some personal narrative thrown in, contain so many wonderful passages -- and even entire essays (especially the one which includes discussion of Elizabeth Bishop, "World At Play") shine and flicker in meaning and tone.

What I found myself enjoying most, other than the lovely Simpson sketches included in the book, was the linking of writing and the self with the environment. Timely, and an interesting way to further her exploration of what she means by the Other.

An excerpt:

From the unfamiliar hoots of an owl, the shriek of a blue jay, or the discreet mourning of the dove come the curious enigmas of language, a voicing of life that isn't understood, but, nonetheless, weirdly comprehended.

Because of this interest in what lies just beyond knowing, the individual concerns of the poet -- any poet -- are not necessarily poetry's chief concerns. It is not primarily interested in the self. And its point of view is not singular. It embraces a wider field, with a range of points of view, and a plurality of languages.

Still Watching, Still Frustrated But Entertained By: The Tudors. We are now viewing the Season 2 dvds and are just as baffled as ever over what particular 'take' on Henry's character (historically speaking) the show is going for. So far, Henry seems a bit of a caricature in terms of motivation (and I won't begin mentioning the inaccuracies). But, of course, this has brought me to a number of fascinating (and not so fascinating) books on the Tudors et al . . . so I can't really complain. Of particular interest to me is Anne Boleyn. And, thanks to Juxtabook's recommendation, I've started on (and am currently enjoying) David Starkey's Six Wives.

Having finished Denise Roig's Butter Cream: A Year in a Montreal Pastry School, I still can't decide whether I really liked it or not. Written with a kind of journal-like approach, I found the story of the author's struggles with pastry and pastry instructors lacked cohesive details. When reading about food (especially when reading about food!), I have come to expect writers to proffer sensory details that cause noses to twitch in illusory anticipation and taste buds to rejoice (if vicariously). While Roig's book provides some tantalizing recipes within its pages, it seemed a bit bland overall. The first person account takes us through a year of Roig's life as she attends pastry school as a fifty-something writer. While working on her own writing projects, Roig is faced with unexpected pastry school challenges that tell her a great deal about herself and her fellow students. But what did it tell us?

I think I wanted to know more, really. More impressions of the people surrounding her based on more of what they did/said/shared, more of what she was thinking (shared thoughts felt hesitant/reticent to this reader), more of what she was tasting. More, I guess. And the mood really strikes one as being predominantly weary (which makes sense, given the strenuous nature of the project).

That having been said, I was interested enough to keep reading, Ms Roig is not a boring narrator. Ultimately, I found myself wanting to try making some butter cream (not to mention chocolate mousse and black forest cake). And that can't be a bad thing, right?

Turning leaves. Blue jays sky-popping in colour and sound. That leftover frost in the morning. It must be the fall of the year. Which means the schoolbuses are out -- the children are dragging their feet as they walk by our house in the mornings -- and visions of school supplies dance in my head. After living the life of a teacher for so many years, it feels a little unnatural for the fall to be 'business as usual' at casa Inkslinger. For years the turn of the wind and leaves towards winter meant brisk thoughts as well as evenings cozying up to a sweater. But writing, too, can go through a seasonal shift. I find my characters are clearer under the influence of the chilling air. The poetry reorganizes itself around thoughts of bright colour in crisp sunlight. The outside just seeps in.

Reading, too. Summer is lazy reading. Autumn brings literature, history, books of essays. I'm still a teacher (or student?) at heart, perhaps.

Speaking of school, autumn, and books. I've just started a new one. Colin McAdam's Fall. It's about a couple of private schoolboys evidently. It startles as it starts and I'm already anticipating enjoying a good read. And I'm still savouring Anne Simpson's Marram Grass. Ah, thank goodness for good writers!

Reading Anne Simpson's Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness is just such a great treat, something for a writer to revel in.

Here's an excerpt . . .

We inhabit language bodily, letting the air move through us, allowing ourselves to be thresholds. Yet a sense of otherness, which might speak through us, is too often scoured away. We favour the analytical model; we depend upon it. There is nothing wrong with it, but we have allowed it to supersede other forms of expression: astonishment is ironed out of it, lament and ecstasy eradicated. The language we have come to value is utilitarian. It has clarity. It has purpose. It provides us with a means to an end. We place a premium on language that gets the job done quickly and efficiently -- a mere tool employed by active people.

And in other, non-poety findings (though isn't art poetry and vice versa?): I've been looking here, at these, lately.

A Catch-All, Catch-Up Moment

Currently listening to: Copland's Appalachian Spring (which always feels like Fall to me . . . apples, cider, cherry pie). And, rather fittingly given the time of year and recent anniversaries just celebrated, reminds me of my wedding day.

Recently Watched and Enjoyed Immensely: a handful of fun Cary Grant films, including Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (houses again!), and Mr. Lucky (which was funny, but an unusual role for the great Mr. Grant). I love films from the Golden Age of Hollywood (thank goodness for dvds and TCM). That's not to say I don't appreciate a good contemporary film (or even flick), but there's something about those accents, the timing, the lighting, the costumes. The good, solid story construction and character development of an old film!

Recently Read and Finding Myself Underwhelmed By: Doris Lessing's The Cleft. Okay, it's an obvious kind of title. Okay, it's about the man/woman divide and that can be a narrative dark hole. And okay, it doesn't really have a typical narrative. But all of that didn't bother me at all, because, really, Lessing is a great author and she even makes done-to-death-and-should-be-boring interesting. I found it kept my attention, the way she handled the split telling of the tale was interesting (a Roman historian living in the time of Nero tries to compile and comment on the fragmented/biased histories passed on by the Clefts through the Memories, and, later, the Monsters), but somehow it just left me wanting. Something in the narrative to equal the ideas presented? Or more emphasis on story, less on familiar ideas? You see? I'm not even sure what it was I was missing. But I was missing something.

Not that great writing has to be 'new', if you know what I mean, but I think the content has to measure up to the form of the tale. I thought it was an innovative approach, and a solid examination of the origins of . . . well . . . people as gendered beings, but it just didn't hang together for me. Love Lessing's writing, though, so I'll keep reading, try another of her novels.

Currently Reading and Absolutely Loving: The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness by Anne Simpson. A contemporary poet (and a good one, too) ponders poetics. And it reads just like I wanted it to when I opened the hand-friendly pages proffered by the wonderful Gaspereau Press. More to come on this book, that's for sure!

What a week!

It all started with finding out that my late grandfather's house was for sale. The house that became a home away from home as my father trekked his family all across North America. The house that held my aunt's take-no-prisoners attitude and my grandfather's Presbyterian stoicism. The house in which a small child -- intimidated by countless, older, worldlier cousins -- followed her sweet-faced, always-ready-for-a-hug grandma around for morning chores (open the curtains, dust what needs dusting, get the kettle going, wind the clock, etc). A house, in short, filled with some good, warm memories, the steam off the vegetables, pie in the oven kind of memories, you know what I mean. And it so happens Mr. Inkslinger and I have been cautiously looking around for a home of our own to purchase. Emphasis on cautious. Emphasis on home of our own.

It's strange about houses. How they retain something of the inhabitants within their inanimate presence. It seems important to find the right one.

So, blogging and reading have suffered as we've been scrambling (timing is a bit off) to rustle up the necessary financing, etc. I have to find more freelance work. Mr. Inkslinger needs to negotiate with the money people. And while there's still a ways to go (colloquially speaking), we're hopeful. And that's enough to warrant a breather, some reading, and some catch-up blogging.

It's got me thinking about fictional houses. The backdrops, or virtual characters, in novels of the wall and roof variety. Certainly Mary Stewart's novels make good use of the idea of home. The houses embody much in her adventures. Of course there's Austen's Pemberley (P&P . . . how much does viewing Pemberley have to do with changing Elizabeth Bennet's mind?), Montgomery's Green Gables, Winterson's Tanglewreck. There must be more . . .

Certainly one of my recent reads (with thanks to a great review over at Ex Libris that called my attention to this novel!) makes much of Navron, the home in Cornwall to which Du Maurier's heroine, Dona, escapes. In Frenchman's Creek (quite a different story from those I've read by Du Maurier), Dona St. Columb finds respite and then adventure with an unusual manservant and a French pirate. It's set during the reign of Charles II, and Dona's restlessness, her need to escape to Navron, reflects a certain (moral) malaise. Unexpected love, the inevitable choices attendant thereto, and the pursuit of freedom are blended into a rather lyrically told tale. The countryside, Navron, the escapades, the emotions, are all given such detail.

A couple of excerpts:

The long rollers of the Channel, travelling from beyond Lizard point, follow hard upon the steep seas at the river mouth, and mingling with the surge and wash of deep sea water comes the brown tide, swollen with the last rains and brackish from the mid, bearing upon its face dead twigs and straws, and strange forgotten things, leaves too early fallen, young birds, and the buds of flowers.

Gorgeous . . . and then some thought-food, too . . . (exchange between the unusual manservant and Dona)

'Would it not be possible to be free, to do as he pleases, and yet not be a pirate?'

'My master thinks not, my lady. He has it that those who live a normal life, in this world of ours, are forced into habits, into customs, into a rule of life that eventually kills all initiative, all spontaneity. A man becomes a cog in a wheel, part of a system. But because a pirate is a rebel, and an outcast, he escapes from the world. He is without ties, without man-made principles.'

Really good read.

Poetry, Respite

While I appreciated Peter Sanger's recent Aiken Drum (2006), I couldn't 'get into it' as I did his Earth Moth (1991). So, since this week has been one of those pressure-cooker kinds of weeks, I decided to revisit Earth Moth and enjoy all over again those precise lines, the choice alliteration and assonance, and all those memorable images.

And I thought I'd share one . . .

Mare's Skull by Peter Sanger (from Earth Moth)

Here in its skull your fingers touch
the language's stubborn structure.
This was a flange of air, and this,
one of water; there, the dry bone
of earth simmers green flames
as moss re-kindles its surface.

Through crook and strait a lost time
recovers its ritual, eyes
close their sockets, breathing draws out
up its throat, and a dream becomes
foal in your arms, both in one,
its skin a sweet smell of bran.

Bone in its muzzle of water,
darkness harnessed by light, earth
unexanimate run their green
fire through the fields
like horses ridden by blood,
or still, intuit what holds.

A Must-Read Novel: Margaret Sweatman's The Players

Margaret Sweatman's The Players is the kind of novel that just feeds the desire for and appreciation of good writing. I read it and loved it as a reader, but I appreciated it, and was inspired by it, as a writer as well; the snapshot-like moments of character clarity, the description of the New World landscape. Like Mary Novik's Conceit, Sweatman's novel transports the reader to a different time and place, but provides recognizably up-to-date characters who live and breathe in the imagination. The characters feel contemporary even though the setting is late 17th century England (and then Canada). And how Sweatman controls setting, perspective, and plot! She doesn't rely on the exotic nature of and/or nostlagia for the past to move her story forward, or as a crutch when creating characters (there are no genre shortcuts here). These players (in the game of chance as well as players in the theatrical sense) are nothing if not gut-wrenchingly human.

Lilly Cole, a character with secrets who remains elusive, mutable, fascinates and manipulates her way into court society (or, at least, the king's bed) under the direction of the beautiful but tragic poet-courtier playwright and drunkard Bartholomew, the Earl of Buxborough. Gaining the king's favour and attempting to avoid the virulent moralizers (like the creepy Sir George Rose), Lilly endures violence and indifference, fighting her way to survival with the French adventurers to Canada. While the adventurers, Radisson and Des Groseilliers, promise the king riches, and a passage to China, Prince Rupert becomes entranced by the notion of obtaining Rupert's Land through them. The French adventurers, with their Governor of the Voyage (the fascinating Quaker, Magnus Brown), are quickly and expertly rendered. Not to mention Weaabinakaabo, perceptive, witty, and powerful leader of the native people they seek to trade with, who is a particularly well-wrought character.

Which is all to say this: not only did it hold my attention, I found myself holding my breath from time to time as Lilly's situation increased in tension and danger. And that's just the story, an interesting, engaging tale about a courtesan bent on survival in a hostile environment. But then there's the writing itself, which is refreshingly good. Sweatman knows how to paint a backdrop, provide subtle character markers (King Charles II's phsyiognomy connected to geography is a brilliant stroke, for example, as it tells so much through the use of a swift, integral metaphor), and she proffers phrases that sing.

An excerpt:

Into this precarious world fell the snow, bluing the dawn, melting at noon, covering the shore til the tide rose and swept it out to sea, where it stayed, thickening, until the river and the bay were coated in grey-green slush.

Only the presence of Dogg kept Lilly from freezing to death in her sleep. She struggled out every few hours, waking herself up in the night to bring in more wood. Sleet, hail, snow. It was so cold in her tent that a kettle placed against the fire was too hot to touch on one side but covered in an inch of ice on the other. She wore everything she could find, and no one but Bart was yet aware of her changing shape. The baby had started to move. She thought about Charles. His size, for one thing, his extremely long feet. She was amazed -- how intricate was this growing thing, like a magnificent ship inside a bottle. But how does one get the ship out of the bottle?

It was a pleasure to read this novel. From story construction to the handling of prose, nothing falters. It isn't a heavy book, but it definitely highlights the vulnerability of women, the transcience of the New World at the hands of the Europeans, the fragility of society and decency. Thought-provoking without being overly ponderous, complete with scintillating prose and memorable characters. The omniscient point of view even lets us in on Charles II's thoughts! What more could one want?

*Thanks to Goose Lane for the ARC! What a wonderful read!