Sublime surroundings
Amazing late summer, early fall, perfect for end of the season projects, and last ditch outings; we need more of the latter.
Finished the Robert Penn Warren Reader, and found some lines of poetry in his latter works that stirred memories. In a poem called FAR WEST ONCE, the narrator is trying to fix an experience in his memory, in case he never makes it back to the spot again. He describes getting back after a day on the trail, going to dinner and to bed...
"And to sleep - and even in sleep to feel
The nag and pretensions of day dissolve
And flow away in that musical murmur
Of waters; then to wake in dark with some strange
Heart-hope, undefinable, verging to tears
Of happiness and the soul's calm."
I'm re-reading Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio". The last time I read it was back in Detroit in 1978, as I sat in the downtown precinct of the Detroit Police, trying to report a hit and run I'd just experienced out on the freeway, when a trailer truck veered about a foot out of its lane as it passed me, crunching in the driver's side door. I was reminded of this because I wrote down salient details of the accident on the inside back cover of the little Anderson volume. There was considerable dissonance between the atmosphere of the stories and that of the police station, which was a hive of screaming arrestees, drunks, hookers, crooks, and pimpy-looking guys of all colors and stripes, the parde of which I watched from a bench which was kind of like an over-sized wooden church pew.
I've been thinking the stories seem odd, quaint, dated, but then I come upon passages such as this, in a story called "Godliness": "The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beatuy would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about him."
An observation from a character's mouth; Anderson isn't around thses days to see self-purported "men of God" ramp up the acquisition to an insane degree. And the "men of Allah" jones after the same addictive substance.
Finished the Robert Penn Warren Reader, and found some lines of poetry in his latter works that stirred memories. In a poem called FAR WEST ONCE, the narrator is trying to fix an experience in his memory, in case he never makes it back to the spot again. He describes getting back after a day on the trail, going to dinner and to bed...
"And to sleep - and even in sleep to feel
The nag and pretensions of day dissolve
And flow away in that musical murmur
Of waters; then to wake in dark with some strange
Heart-hope, undefinable, verging to tears
Of happiness and the soul's calm."
I'm re-reading Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio". The last time I read it was back in Detroit in 1978, as I sat in the downtown precinct of the Detroit Police, trying to report a hit and run I'd just experienced out on the freeway, when a trailer truck veered about a foot out of its lane as it passed me, crunching in the driver's side door. I was reminded of this because I wrote down salient details of the accident on the inside back cover of the little Anderson volume. There was considerable dissonance between the atmosphere of the stories and that of the police station, which was a hive of screaming arrestees, drunks, hookers, crooks, and pimpy-looking guys of all colors and stripes, the parde of which I watched from a bench which was kind of like an over-sized wooden church pew.
I've been thinking the stories seem odd, quaint, dated, but then I come upon passages such as this, in a story called "Godliness": "The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beatuy would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about him."
An observation from a character's mouth; Anderson isn't around thses days to see self-purported "men of God" ramp up the acquisition to an insane degree. And the "men of Allah" jones after the same addictive substance.
posted by isabelita at 6:33 PM
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