This hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds of
uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ’38) out of their
rotting hearts generations rise
trying once more to become
the forest
just beyond them
tall enough to be called trees
in their youth like aspen a bouquet
of young beech is gathered
they still wear last summer’s leaves
the lightest brown almost translucent
how their stubbornness has decorated
the winter woods
on this narrow path ice tries
to keep the black undecaying oak leaves
in its crackling grip it’s become
too hard to walk at last a
sunny patch oh! i’m in water
to my ankles APRIL
Author: Biblioklept
March — Theodor Severin Kittelsen
The Ill-Matched Couple — Goya
Watch Seasons, a lovely animated short film by Yuri Norstein
Live long and prosper (Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon)
One day, the Meridian having been closely enough establish’d, and with an hour or two of free time available to them, one heads north, one south, and ’tis Dixon’s luck to discover The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, “Live long and prosper.” The area just beyond the next Ridge is believ’d to harbor a giant Golem, or Jewish Automaton, taller than the most ancient of the Trees. As explain’d to Dixon, ’twas created by an Indian tribe widely suppos’d to be one of the famous Lost Tribes of Israel, who had somehow given up control of the Creature, sending it headlong into the Forest, where it would learn of its own gift of Mobile Invisibility.
“And . . . do you folk wear Special Hats, anything like that?” inquires Dixon.
From Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon. (More/some context).
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — Hayao Miyazaki
Max Frisch/PK Dick biography (Books acquired, 2.19.2015)
I took my daughter to the bookstore last Thursday, where she traded in a bunch of Junie B. Jones books for more Junie B. Jones books. Anyway, I didn’t intend to pick up anything for myself, but, well…
“The Harlem Dancer” — Claude McKay
Ship in a bottle (Inherent Vice)
RIP Leonard Nimoy
RIP Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015
I was born in 1979 and there was always Star Trek—always Spock. The reruns on local TV (after them, episodes of The Twilight Zone in black and white). Later, The Next Generation—it was the only show we, that is, my family, were permitted to watch while we ate TV. We ate pizza in front of it. Ambassador Spock made an appearance in a two-parter! Leonard Nimoy directed my favorite of the Star Trek films, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home—you know, the one with the whales? The oh-so misunderstood one? Still love it. I remember watching it with my grandmother, she incredulous. Watching it again in college, laughing so hard. What a film. No Star Trek without Spock, no Spock without Nimoy…but he’s always there, his presence confirmed all the more by its absence. Live long &c.
The Abduction — Max Klinger
Untitled (Tiger) — Aleksandra Waliszewska
“Publishing” — John Steinbeck
“Publishing”
by
John Steinbeck
from his 1969 “interview” in The Paris Review
EDITOR
The book is out of balance. The reader expects one thing and you give him something else. You have written two books and stuck them together. The reader will not understand.
WRITER
No, sir. It goes together. I have written about one family and used stories about another family as—well, as counterpoint, as rest, as contrast in pace and color.
EDITOR
The reader won’t understand. What you call counterpoint only slows the book.
WRITER
It has to be slowed—else how would you know when it goes fast?
EDITOR
You have stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what.
WRITER
Yes, I have. I don’t know why. Just wanted to. Perhaps I was wrong.
SALES DEPARTMENT
The book’s too long. Costs are up. We’ll have to charge five dollars for it. People won’t pay five dollars. They won’t buy it.
WRITER
My last book was short. You said then that people won’t buy a short book.
PROOFREADER
The chronology is full of holes. The grammar has no relation to English. On page so and so you have a man look in the World Almanac for steamship rates. They aren’t there. I checked. You’ve got the Chinese New Year wrong. The characters aren’t consistent. You describe Liza Hamilton one way and then have her act a different way.
EDITOR
You make Cathy too black. The reader won’t believe her. You make Sam Hamilton too white. The reader won’t believe him. No Irishman ever talked like that.
WRITER
My grandfather did.
EDITOR
Who’ll believe it.
2ND EDITOR
No children ever talked like that.
WRITER (losing temper as a refuge from despair)
God damn it. This is my book. I’ll make the children talk any way I want. My book is about good and evil. Maybe the theme got into the execution. Do you want to publish it or not?
EDITORS
Let’s see if we can’t fix it up. It won’t be much work. You want it to be good, don’t you? For instance, the ending. The reader won’t understand it.
WRITER
Do you?
EDITOR
Yes, but the reader won’t.
PROOFREADER
My God, how you do dangle a participle. Turn to page so and so.
There you are, Pat. You came in with a box of glory and there you stand with an arm full of damp garbage.
And from this meeting a new character has emerged. He is called The Reader.
THE READER
He is so stupid you can’t trust him with an idea.
He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.
He will not buy short books.
He will not buy long books.
He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.
There is some doubt as to whether he can read.
Ship in a bottle (Inherent Vice)
“Tired” — Fenton Johnson
A Cotton Office in New Orleans — Edgar Degas
Film Poster for Antonioni’s Blow-Up — Tomer Hanuka
Biblioklept 