“Woolf’s blunt criticism of Julian’s poem, her dig that it might be mere youthful experiment, the leavening (yet peremptory) dollop of praise, and the call to chores all typify the complexity of their relationship. The following year, after Julian’s first book of poems came out, Virginia declared, “He is no poet.” She once described her relationship to him as “half sister, half mother, and half (but arithmetic denies this) the mocking stirring contemporary friend.” Though she frequently expressed criticism of his writing, she ultimately published one of his books at the Hogarth Press.”
Read Harman’s translation out loud, and you will feel the physical power of Kafka’s language.
A Message from the Emperor
The emperor—it is said—sent to you, the one apart, the wretched subject, the tiny shadow that fled far, far from the imperial sun, precisely to you he sent a message from his deathbed. He bade the messenger kneel by his bed, and whispered the message in his ear. So greatly did he cherish it that he had him repeat it into his ear. With a nod of his head he confirmed the accuracy of the messenger’s words. And before the entire spectatorship of his death—all obstructing walls have been torn down and the great figures of the empire stand in a ring upon the broad, soaring exterior stairways—before all these he dispatched the messenger. The messenger set out at once; a strong, an indefatigable man; thrusting forward now this arm, now the other, he cleared a path though the crowd; every time he meets resistance he points to his breast, which bears the sign of the sun; and he moves forward easily, like no other. But the crowds are so vast; their dwellings know no bounds. If open country stretched before him, how he would fly, and indeed you might soon hear the magnificent knocking of his fists on your door. But instead, how uselessly he toils; he is still forcing his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he overcome them; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to fight his way down the steps; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to cross the courtyard and, after the courtyard, the second enclosing outer palace, and again stairways and courtyards, and again a palace, and so on through thousands of years; and if he were to burst out at last through the outermost gate—but it can never, never happen—before him still lies the royal capital, the middle of the world, piled high in its sediment. Nobody reaches through here, least of all with a message from one who is dead. –You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes.
If you love short stories, or think you don’t love short stories, read Andre Dubus.
Please. Now.
Joshua Bodwell writes about how he found Dubus:
During the bitterly cold February of my twenty-third year, I made a Sunday pilgrimage to an independent bookstore. It was a bland store—utilitarian metal bookshelves, unremarkable carpeting, humming fluorescent lights—but I could always count on the staff’s recommendations. I had never heard of Dubus before, and it would be years of mispronunciation before I learned that his last name rhymes with “abuse,” like “duh-byoos.” But that day, Dancing After Hours (Knopf, 1996) leapt out at me.
I love poems in which the last line sneaks up on you emotionally. This Simic poem appears in the most recent Paris Review.
Nineteen Thirty-Eight
That was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Superman made his debut in Action Comics,
Stalin was killing off his fellow revolutionaries,
The first Dairy Queen opened in Kankakee, Ill.,
As I lay in my crib peeing in my diapers.
Perhaps the greatest American poem to pull off this last minute gut-punch is by James Wright:
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in the green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Apparently this video is widely forwarded but I have never seen it. My thanks the Seth Godin’s Blog.
The poem is written and performed by Taylor Mali. He ‘definitely’ and ‘beautifully’ gives a lawyer friend who asks about his teacher’s salary the answer you dream about.
I just discovered Steven Pressfield’s blog, and he features a section called “Writing Wednesdays.” He wrote a book called The War of Art, which I ordered last night. He writes about breaking through walls of resistance in your work.
The first battle of the day is to get to the desk, open your project, and begin. Pressfield preaches the power of Habit.
“Why? Because habit eliminates thought. Negative, Resistance-spawned thought. If I’m a ballet dancer and I make it my business to take class every morning, habit will compel me to get ready mentally the night before. When morning comes and it’s time for class, habit makes me grab my gym bag without thinking about it, throw in my sweats, my shoes, my Evian water. Habit keeps Resistance from raising its ugly head and starting to talk me into sluffing off. Before I know it, I’m out the door and on my way to class.”
Nizhny Novgorod’s reaction to seeing a black and white photograph projected on a wall. He says:
“Yesterday I was in the kingdom of the shadows.
If only you knew how strange it is to be there. There are no sounds, no colors. There, everything—the earth, the trees, the people, the water, the air—is tinted in a gray monotone: in a gray sky there are gray rays of sunlight; in gray faces, gray eyes, and the leaves of the trees are gray like ashes. This is not life but the shadow of life, and this is not movement but the soundless shadow of movement.”
