A poem by Richard Reeve introduced me to the accipiter. I Googled it to find it’s a cadillac of a hawk built for fast flight in woodlands. Love the word. I listened to the online pronunciator for good measure. The recording said “accipider.” It reminded me of something I notice all the time: We Americans voice our intervocalic apico-alveolar stops! We say “wading” instead of “waiting.” We can’t tell the latter from the ladder or the bitter from the bidder or the writer from the rider. It’s all the more noticeable to me since I listen to British talk radio and often converse with an English republican. How language evolves isn’t at all in the direction of clarity. It’s rather in a direction which tends to mutty the wadder in support of our penchant for talking past one another.
Desserts have been made with unorthodox ingredients, like plankton. Credit… Ditte Isager for The New York Times.
All these words are Pete Wells’s words. I’ve merely culled them selectively from his essay on Noma into a poem-like structure. I’m darned if there’s not a Whitmanesque vibe to it.
It was here in the reindeer lichen and puffed fish skin Here in the signal-orange berries of wild sea buckthorn In the sour, heart-shaped leaves of wood sorrel Picked, snipped and dug up
It was here in the burning hay that perfumed It was here in the keening acidity of pickled and fermented ingredients In the gentle sweetness of parsnips and other vegetables That took the place of fruit in desserts
It was here in the slates, rocks, seashells, logs and rustic pieces of hand-thrown pottery For transporting food from the kitchen to the table It was here in the bony, opaque, angular, off-center, unpredictable, odd-smelling wines made in the Jura and the Loire by natural and biodynamic methods
It was graceful, it was coherent I wasn’t prepared for the shimmering beauty Like the iridescent silhouette of a starfish brushed on a plate with edible paint And covered with the sparkling roe of wild Danish trout
Unprepossessing liquid that looked as if it had simply seeped out of a clam Would turn out to be a sauce full of pleasure and complexity The next course would do it again But in a different key at another volume
The fermentation suite was full of jars of grains and yeasts and fruits Whose molecules were breaking down and rearranging The research and development laboratory was ready for new discoveries The greenhouse was under construction.
“We’re in here for life. But we’re not in here for one thing. It can change.” I can’t quite say I’ll be sorry when it’s gone. In many ways Its excellence had become inseparable from the culture of overkill That now defines the windswept high peaks of fine dining
Once he gets rid of those pesky diners Maybe he could ask a small team of scientists To look into ways to shrink great dining experiences Down to a size that is both more human and more humane
(Pete Wells, “Noma Spawned a World of Imitators, But the Restaurant Remains an Original,” New York Times, 1-9-23)
I’m aware that I read poetry in too forensic a way, particularly poetry of the moment. Is it because I identify as a translator? I broach a new poem in English with a cocked snoot, I’m afraid. It’s recognizable as a defensive stance. I don’t want to be made fool of by a style of poetryship that escapes me.
A friend with a distinguished career of teaching and publishing in a university’s non-fiction program shuns poetry. It smacks to her of too many gatherings in which literary colleagues rhapsodize over poems which only they, and not she, seem to understand. (She said.)
I warm to abstraction and surrealism in painting, but bridle at speech I find unconstruable. Bizarre word reference is predictable. Robert Lowell described a bad morning once by saying, “I woke up in a police whistle.” It’s dotty, but it scans conventionally — subject, predicate, etc. There are days I wake up on Alpha Centauri.
Unlike word reference, what strands me in petulant pedantry is the flouting of syntactic relationships, a je m’en foutiste disregard for the architecture of sentences. Dealing with it is like exchanging pleasantries with the taciturn Gallego encountered in a Spanish stairwell: you’ll not find out whether he’s going up or going down.
Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars. Let me see what life is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words, hold my hand, in other words, darling, kiss me.
Bart Howard’s old song makes no sense! There’s no oxygen to breathe in outer space; no one can walk around on other planets. What does “play among the stars” even mean? But I kind of get the point when it says, “In other words, hold my hand.” Aha, that lets the gas out of the waffle: The song is trying to get across in a flashy way that it would be thrilling to hold someone by the hand. (The rest of it is a street crime in Doha.) The Beatles nailed the thing without the folderol: “I wanna hold your hand.” And “Why don’t we do it in the road? (No one will be watching us.)”
The folderol is the metaphorical bit, of course. It’s the stuffing of poetry, except poems don’t get to the “In other words” part. That’s left to the reader.
A useful rhythm can be extracted from “Fly Me to the Moon.” It clots in triplets, doublets and singlets:
LA-dee / da-dee / DA dee-da-dee / la-dee / da-dee / DUM dee-dee / dee-dee / la-dee-da dee-da-dee / da-dee / DUM dee / da / dee / DA DUM / DUM / DUM dee / DA / dee / da DUM-dee / DUM / DUM
Word doodles can be built using the rhythm as a template — but with subtle variations!
Bluebonnet kool-aid molasses puddled on the roads infrastructure bellyache on bumper-sticker toads jackknifed again play called foul sequestered turd darling kiss me
(Can Chat-GPT do this? I wonder!) The doodles can window gaze real poems that aren’t other-wordable, such as this one:
In this unveiling: a rain-stabbed / blackbird’s obsidian sigh rises // from meat-fragrant slits / in our speech patterns, // where a way of seeing home,/ smeared on walls with elbow blood, // is also a way of nozzling / bird caw to thieved land, // or scissoring fog-lobed night / into crescent moons, // while a bell’s deoxygenated moan / weeping for its lost reflection, // is hauled away on a horse-drawn hearse. (“Unveiling,” Sherwin Bitsui, Poetry, January 2023)*
*Note I quote the poem in its entirety. I’m culpably ignorant of the detail of “fair use” and all that. I may risk one of Poetry’s lawyers pistol-whipping my ass with a copyright clause. My excuse is that when this poem starts there’s no stopping it until the hearse. In other words, actually, that’s true of life. Don’t sue me.
For studying Arabic, Congruent (1) translations can be invaluable for working out particulars of the language’s behavior. Freewheeling translations are more pleasing to read, but can be “noisy” in a such a way as to create their own problems. Does an honorable man compel himself to endure suffering, as opposed to resigning himself to it?
The first verse of a well-known Arabic poem (2) says this:
“When a man’s honor was not (has not been) soiled by baseness, then every garment he puts on is beautiful.”
‘iḏā-l-mar’u lam yadnas mina-l-lu’mi ^irḏu-hu When the man [‘iḏā-l-mar’u] was not soiled [lam yadnas] from baseness [mina-l-lu’mi] his honor [^irḏu-hu]…fa-kullu ridā’in yartadī-hi jamīlu … then every garment [fa-kullu ridā’in] he puts it on [yartadī-hi] beautiful [jamīlu].
Here’s Arberry’s translation of the poem’s second verse:
And if he has never constrained himself to endure despite, then there is no way (for him) to (attain) goodly praise.
wa-‘in huwa lam yaḥmil ^alaA-n-nafs(i) ḍaim(a)-ha And if he [wa-‘in huwa] did not carry (has not carried) [lam yaḥmil] upon the (his) soul (self) [^alaA-n-nafs(i)] its injury [ḍaim(a)-hā]…fa-laisa ‘ilA ḥusn(i)-ṯ-ṯanā’(i) sabīl(u) … then there is not [fa-laisa] to the goodness of praise [‘ilA ḥusn(i)-ṯ-ṯanā’(i)] a way [sabīlu].
Arberry spends a footnote on the verse: “The usual meaning of ḍaim is ‘wrong, injustice’; here the intention is clearly ‘being unjust to oneself’ in the sense of compelling oneself to endure intolerable hardships.” One doesn’t normally take extra lengths to explain what he affirms to be clear. It’s not ḍaim that’s problematic (for me); it’s the verb phrase with ḥamal(a), “to carry.” An interpretation that leads to the forcing of oneself to suffer the “intolerable” doesn’t leap out from the Arabic.
In the Arabic, lam yaḥmil (“he did not carry”) is followed by preposition ^alaA, which can mean over, upon, above, against, to, on account of, and notwithstanding. Its object nafs doubles as “soul” and “self.” Noun ḍaim (“injury)” is the verb’s direct object, and its affixed possessive modifier -hā refers to nafs.
My breakdown of the line is this: “And if he did not carry (has not carried) upon the (his) soul (self) its injury, then there is not to the goodness of praise a way.”
I would have translated it like this: “And if he has not borne personal injury (patiently), then there’s no path (for him) to (merit) good praise.”
With guidance from Wehr (3) and Lane (4), and especially from Wright’s (5) discussion of ^alaA, I can see my way to a translation that approximates Arberry’s:
“And if he has not inured himself to personal injury, then there’s no path (for him) to (merit) good praise.”
Notes (1) Congruent (matches the source text fairly closely, with minimal liberties taken for readability); Omissive (suppresses elements of the source text without obvious justification); Expansive (adds interpretive structure or content not discernible in the source text but plausibly deriving from it); Inventive (carries the “expansive” element to a level not obviously supported by the source text); Transgressive (departs from the source text in a way that seems to betray the poem’s letter or spirit). (2) As-Samau’al, pp. 30-32 in A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University Press, 1965. (3) Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Edited by J Milton Cowan, Cornell University Press, 1966. (4) Edward William Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon, vols 6–8 ed. by Stanley Lane-Poole, 8 vols (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863–93). The entry for root ḥ-m-l. — fulān(un) lā yaḥmilu-ḍ-ḍaim(a) — “such a one refuses to bear, or submit to, and repels from himself, injury.” — ḥamala ^alaA nafs(i)-hi fīY-s-sair(i) — “He… tasked himself beyond his power, in journeying, or marching.” (5) W. Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, reprint by Simon Wallenberg Press, 2007, ii, p. 168. — yaḥmil(u)-l-‘insān(a) ^alaA-l-ẖair(i), “induces man to do well” means literally “carries him towards good,” Wright states. — ‘al-fiqh(u) ma^rifaẗ(u)-n-nafs(i) mā la-hā wa-mā ^alai-hā — Learning is the soul’s cognizance of what is for its good and for its hurt. — hamm(u)-l-‘āẖiraẗ(i) yaḥmil(u)-l-‘insān(a) ^alaA-l-ẖair(i) — Concern for the life to come induces man to do well (lit. carries him towards good). — mā ḥamal(a)-ka ^alaA hāḏihi-d-da^waA-l-bāṭilaẗ(i) — What induced you to set up this empty claim?
The “paypal mafia” photographed at Tosca in San Francisco, Oct, 2007. Back row from left: Jawed Karim, co-founder Youtube; Jeremy Stoppelman CEO Yelp; Andrew McCormack, managing partner Laiola Restaurant; Premal Shah, Pres of Kiva; 2nd row from left: Luke Nosek, managing partner The Founders Fund; Kenny Howery, managing partner The Founders Fund; David Sacks, CEO Geni and Room 9 Entertainment; Peter Thiel, CEO Clarium Capital and Founders Fund; Keith Rabois, VP BIz Dev at Slide and original Youtube Investor; Reid Hoffman, Founder Linkedin; Max Levchin, CEO Slide; Roelof Botha, partner Sequoia Capital; Russel Simmons, CTO and co-founder of Yelp. PHOTO BY ROBYN TWOMEY FOR FORTUNE (Jeffrey M. O’Brien, “The PayPal Mafia,” Fortune, 11-13-07)
“Last month, Mark Zuckerberg spent hours touting his love of jiujitsu, wrestling and UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship] on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is known for its hypermasculinity. Watching TV was not active enough, Mr. Zuckerberg said.
“Compared with social media, TV was ‘beta,’” [Mr. Zuckerberg said.]
(Erin Griffith, “Silicon Valley Slides Back Into ‘Bro’ Culture, New York Times, 9-24-22)
Postscript: This item is a carry-over from last year’s clogged blog log. I almost discarded it, as it gives me the uncomfortable feeling that in posting it I flirt with melting into the morass of vacuity and snark that already swamps the virtual airways. However, I carry the stubborn conviction that if we wee males don’t stop repressing and brutalizing the females of our species, the species will go down the toilet. On reflection, it seems worth the risk of seeming frivolous in order to document powerful pipsqueaks’ shallowness in support of a deadly earnest point.
The Thomas Hardy Tree toppled over in a London cemetery. Acrylic on cardboard.
Thank you for your visits to this blog and for indulging its mischief in 2022. More joy and less loss be ahead for each and all!
(JMN)
“I’m convinced. Eliot finished poetry off.”
(Matthew Walther)
The problem is not that Eliot put poetry on the wrong track. It’s that he went as far down that track as anyone could, exhausting its possibilities and leaving little or no work for those who came after him. It is precisely this mystique of belatedness that is the source of Eliot’s considerable power. What he seems to be suggesting is that he is the final poet, the last in a long unbroken line of seers to whom the very last visions are being bequeathed, and that he has come to share them with his dying breaths.
(Matthew Walther, “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago This Month,” New York Times, 12-29-22)
I would say the visions are being “vouchsafed” rather than “bequeathed.” It’s more poetic! Of all the examples of poetry in its pomp to adduce, Walther picks Robert Southey. John Donne would sound more contemporary.
What’s all this death talk about poetry anyway? (Next they’ll claim figurative painting is dead. Or God is dead. Wait, they already did!)
Isn’t it poetry’s remit to induce ejaculatory befuddlement in its perennially scant coterie of adepts? There’s plenty of grist for that mill. This lurching old world of ours affords ample scope for misery as keen as T.S. Eliot’s to flourish for another thousand years.
Vija Celmins, “Gun with Hand #1” (1964), oil on canvas. Credit… via Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Edward R. Broida in honor of John Elderfield.
When my dad died in 2013, his shed (now mine) was full of guns. I inherited his art supplies, so I took up painting again after a long hiatus. My subjects came to be things I was afraid of. The shed started filling up with paintings that had guns in them. Also, men wearing cowboy hats, a source of dread since childhood. In 2016, paintings of Trump joined the flow. I think the exorcistic daubing helped; I’m purged of those subjects now, if not of the fear.
I was intrigued to discover that Vija Celmins also painted guns. One of them appeared in an October exhibition of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles commemorating Joan Didion, dead at 87 in 2021. Hilton Als, a longtime friend of Didion’s, was co-curator of the show.
Alsused a Vija Celmins painting depicting a disembodied hand firing off a gun into a vast expanse — “Gun With Hand #1” from 1964 — in a part of the exhibition that covers the ecstatic review in The New York Times of “The Executioner’s Song,” the book by Norman Mailer about the execution of Gary Gilmore. “She talks about the weird, inarticulate nature of the West and the sky,” Als said of the review. “And I immediately thought of Vija Celmins. And then when I was going through Vija’s work there was a gun — someone shooting a gun in the kind of space Didion was describing.”
(Adam Nagourney, “Joan Didion and the Western Spirit,” New York Times, 10-6-22)
Torkwase Dyson’s suite of paintings shown at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2020, inspired by the environmental crisis of the Gulf Coast. It was called “Black Compositional Thought: 15 Paintings for the Plantationocene.” Credit… Torkwase Dyson.
“The paintings introduced a range of blue colors — oceanic, but resisting a direct reading.”
This review bristles with strange energy, coercive structures, geographies of enclosure, and the verb catalyze. But of all the advanced art talk on display, my favorite specimen is “resists a direct reading.”
(Siddhartha Mitter, “An Artist’s Gateway to Freedom and Possibility,” New York Times, 11-10-22)
EthicalDative 
What Are We Wading For?
A poem by Richard Reeve introduced me to the accipiter. I Googled it to find it’s a cadillac of a hawk built for fast flight in woodlands. Love the word. I listened to the online pronunciator for good measure. The recording said “accipider.” It reminded me of something I notice all the time: We Americans voice our intervocalic apico-alveolar stops! We say “wading” instead of “waiting.” We can’t tell the latter from the ladder or the bitter from the bidder or the writer from the rider. It’s all the more noticeable to me since I listen to British talk radio and often converse with an English republican. How language evolves isn’t at all in the direction of clarity. It’s rather in a direction which tends to mutty the wadder in support of our penchant for talking past one another.
(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved