When I went on my annual ritual of attending the Folger’s ‘Shakespeare Birthday Bash,‘ I came across a fantastic portrait of Elizabeth that I had never seen before.
Not so much that I previously believed I had seen all portraits ever made of her, but rather that I was mostly just aware of the Folger’s collection of paintings of Shakespearean themese from later centuries.
This was a beautiful bit of portraiture from the late sixteenth century and it’s just… just amazing. It’s known as the ‘Sieve’ portrait and was painted by George Gower.
Sausages are advertised very heavily in Thai television. But to an American, they look exactly like hot dogs.
I see a pale piece of flavorless processed meat, but the ads show the hot dog being breathlessly broken in two by a twenty something male model, steam rising from the warm, delicious center of… well, processed meat. It really doesn’t look any different from a hot dog to me. Or more appetizing.
I mean, I know that I’m vegetarian, so maybe my judgement is a little skewed, but living in DC, we have a lot of good food carts that sell sausages that look pretty good. DC even has a signature one: the half smoke.
And they always use straws…
Believe it or not, just last month was the first time that I had read Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy. It was one of the books that I read in Thailand. It has been sitting in my e-reader (a statement with some metaphysical implications; what/where is a book when it is in, no the general ether, but the ether of a particular device?)
It’s not the sort of thing that’s put on the high school curriculum, at least not in a state, like Florida, where the powers that be have very little interest in the history (nor the future) of African-Americans.
Good lord is it a wonderful, beautiful, brutal read. The first section, covering his life in the South in the early twentieth century. Yikes. Anyway who complains about cultures of violence or the use of the n-word within the black community needs to read this book (incidentally, Ta-Nehisi Coates has been writing some great stuff on this very topic lately; look it up). He writes about poor black kids and the bravado driven by this constant, crushing fear of white people. An uncle killed by whites for the crime of having been financially success and his aunt and mother afraid the leave the house or even ask for the body (much less assume ownership of the business or property). White employers trying to goad the author into literally killing another black adolescent. It’s just terrible to read and more terrible for knowing that it all happened – and that far worse happened, only without a future Pulitzer Prizer winner to chronicle them.
The second part covers his joining and departing the Communist Party. He leaves without disavowing the believe in class struggle and, really, without relinquishing his own, personal communism (small ‘c’), only relinquishing membership in a top down organization.
It reminded me of when I read the piece that Arthur Koestler (now there’s a fellow that no one reads anymore! and I stand by my prediction that, soon enough, Christopher Hitchens, for all his wonderful prose-fying, will find his work placed in the same basket) contributed to the collection The God That Failed. No one is praising Stalinism or suggesting that it was anything but a blight, but, despite the disavowals, not even a staunch anti-communist like Koestler can avoid capturing some of the romance of being a leftist and radical and a communist in the twenties and thirties. The idealism of it all. Wright doesn’t try to walk back the great thrills of that time in his life, like Koestler does, and the work is better for it. It reminds me of a review of a recent Family Guy episode where Peter takes up smoking. Yes, smoking is bad for you. Awful. The world would be a better place if no one smoked anymore. But it’s cool. It just is. Humphrey Bogart looked cooler smoking. Audry Hepburn looked sexier lighting her cigarette. And let’s not even talk about the way Catherine Deneuve could send shiver up the spines of any human (male or female, gay or straight) with the slightest fraction of sex drive just by blowing a puff of smoke from a gauloise. I feel that being a communist in the early thirties was like that.
I was on vacation for a good chunk of March and got some good poetry reading in – finishing a collection by William Carlos Williams and dipping heavily into Wordsworth (who has become my standby in the last several years, replacing folks like Eliot).
So how will I celebrate?
I’ll buy some poetry, I think that’s a given. For a small investment, anyone can do a great deal to support poetry simply by buying a brand new book of poetry. There is an argument for buying directly from the publisher, so that the poet gets a larger share of the proceeds. I actually prefer to buy from a bookstore, so that I can support bookstores, but also, by buying at one, I am doing some small part to make stocking poets more profitable for them, thereby encouraging that store to invest in poetry.
I suppose that I’ll find some poetry readings to attend (check out the Library of Congress’ poetry schedule here)
And, I’m going to read some more Cantos. I started to make some progress again this year after a more than one year hiatus and I’m ready to dive in some more.
What do you say?
the coffee philosopher 