post of assorted things
Apr. 4th, 2013 07:55 pm1) I've been thinking about this poem since ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
samskeyti posted it on their journal a few days ago. It's by Elizabeth Bradfield and is from Approaching Ice, her volume of poetry about polar explorers.
and I still have my doubts about
free verse,
being disinclined to believe
that putting in some line breaks turns
prose into poetry.
But if I think of it as a ficlet rather than comparing it to "The Good Morrow" or "The Waste Land" (which is free verse, yes, but excellent free verse) I like it much better. ( my thoughts on RPS and artistic respectability; cut for length )
2) I drove the 50 miles (each way) to Albuquerque today to visit the Magical Bookstore, bringing a bunch of my own books to sell and hoping to acquire exciting new ones. I didn't unearth any amazing queer books today, but I did get Understanding the Former Prisoner of War: Life After Liberation, by Guy J. Kelnhofer Jr., which is highly relevant to my interests. It's even signed by the author, who was himself a POW in Japanese custody from 1941-45. I haven't read it yet but it has some first-person accounts by ex-POWs that look informative. I also snagged the April issue of Harper's, because "new fiction by John Le Carré" was emblazoned on the cover and I couldn't resist. It also has a good article on how the Christian hippies of the 1960s became the right-wing evangelicals of today, an excerpt from a 1980s piece by Claude Lévi-Strauss on cultural definitions of parenthood and family, and Terry Eagleton reviewing a new biography of Karl Marx.
3) I recently watched the 1969 film Battle of Britain, which has a cast of bazillions, some nice aerial combat sequences, flat characters, an overcrowded yet aimless storyline, and Susannah York as a WAAF in a wildly period-inappropriate hairstyle. York's character is scolded for her war work by her Canadian RAF-pilot husband, who likes to pontificate about a woman's place and with whom I think we're supposed to sympathize. Luckily they're not in the movie that long; as I said, cast of bazillions and an overcrowded storyline. There is one very good scene set the day after the Luftwaffe called off its attacks on RAF airfields: the pilots, aircrews, operations room staff, etc. wait anxiously in dead silence while nothing happens. It's not historically accurate--the attacks didn't stop, they just started targeting cities instead--but it's the most effective moment, emotionally, in the whole film. The other thing I liked was a moment in which York's character is introduced to a new ops room staffer, an ex-pilot whose face is scarred from severe burns. TBoB is the earliest war film I've seen that touches on this particular topic. Other films have lots of shots of Spitfires and Hurricanes going down in flames, but their pilots are never shown to survive and be scarred as many real pilots were. And, unless film make-up was a lot better than I think it was in 1969, the ex-pilot was played by an actor who had himself experienced that kind of injury.
On the subject of war films, Netflix has finally sent me King Rat, which has been at the top of my queue for ages. Perhaps I will end this post and start watching it now.
samskeyti posted it on their journal a few days ago. It's by Elizabeth Bradfield and is from Approaching Ice, her volume of poetry about polar explorers.Against SolitudeI'm afraid that I don't think very highly of it as a poem. My tastes are old-fashioned
Leave your reindeer bag, damp and moldering,
and slide into mine. Two of us, I'm sure, could
warm it, could warm. Let me help you from your traces,
let me rubs what's sore. Don't speak. Your hair has grown long
in our march, soft as my wife's. Keep your beard turned
toward the tent's silk, your fusty breath — I know none of us
can help it, I know, and truthfully I'm glad for any scent in this...
Hush. How long has it been since my mouth has held anything
other than ice and pemmican? Your skin, though wan and sour,
is firm, delicious. Yes, your shoulder, your hip. I'd not thought
how soft a man's hip would be, how curved the flesh above the backs
of his thighs — listen. Do you hear the wind moaning, the ice
groaning beneath us as it strains?
and I still have my doubts about
free verse,
being disinclined to believe
that putting in some line breaks turns
prose into poetry.
But if I think of it as a ficlet rather than comparing it to "The Good Morrow" or "The Waste Land" (which is free verse, yes, but excellent free verse) I like it much better. ( my thoughts on RPS and artistic respectability; cut for length )
2) I drove the 50 miles (each way) to Albuquerque today to visit the Magical Bookstore, bringing a bunch of my own books to sell and hoping to acquire exciting new ones. I didn't unearth any amazing queer books today, but I did get Understanding the Former Prisoner of War: Life After Liberation, by Guy J. Kelnhofer Jr., which is highly relevant to my interests. It's even signed by the author, who was himself a POW in Japanese custody from 1941-45. I haven't read it yet but it has some first-person accounts by ex-POWs that look informative. I also snagged the April issue of Harper's, because "new fiction by John Le Carré" was emblazoned on the cover and I couldn't resist. It also has a good article on how the Christian hippies of the 1960s became the right-wing evangelicals of today, an excerpt from a 1980s piece by Claude Lévi-Strauss on cultural definitions of parenthood and family, and Terry Eagleton reviewing a new biography of Karl Marx.
3) I recently watched the 1969 film Battle of Britain, which has a cast of bazillions, some nice aerial combat sequences, flat characters, an overcrowded yet aimless storyline, and Susannah York as a WAAF in a wildly period-inappropriate hairstyle. York's character is scolded for her war work by her Canadian RAF-pilot husband, who likes to pontificate about a woman's place and with whom I think we're supposed to sympathize. Luckily they're not in the movie that long; as I said, cast of bazillions and an overcrowded storyline. There is one very good scene set the day after the Luftwaffe called off its attacks on RAF airfields: the pilots, aircrews, operations room staff, etc. wait anxiously in dead silence while nothing happens. It's not historically accurate--the attacks didn't stop, they just started targeting cities instead--but it's the most effective moment, emotionally, in the whole film. The other thing I liked was a moment in which York's character is introduced to a new ops room staffer, an ex-pilot whose face is scarred from severe burns. TBoB is the earliest war film I've seen that touches on this particular topic. Other films have lots of shots of Spitfires and Hurricanes going down in flames, but their pilots are never shown to survive and be scarred as many real pilots were. And, unless film make-up was a lot better than I think it was in 1969, the ex-pilot was played by an actor who had himself experienced that kind of injury.
On the subject of war films, Netflix has finally sent me King Rat, which has been at the top of my queue for ages. Perhaps I will end this post and start watching it now.
