2012 Shakespeare’s Birthday Bash At The Folger Shakespeare Library
Yesterday was the Folger Shakespeare Library‘s celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, an event I had attended for five years in a row now. It’s kind of my thing.
Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain this year, so all the outdoor events were moved inside.
This year, I invited our neighbor’s daughter (she is, as she explained, “11 and a half years old”) to come with me. Normally, this is kind of a solitary event for – I browse the exhibit, listen to a lecture, listen to a lot of music, and check out the books for sale. But with a child, it’s a little different, of course. More drawing portraits of Shakespeare, more taking lessons in sixteenth and seventeenth century courtly dancing, etc.
And, she got up in front of an audience and read a line of Shakespeare from a speech by Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing. That was pretty cool, I have to say. She wanted me to stand next to her and help out, but then while in line, she started talking to another girl, maybe a year or two older and they seemed to make fast friends, as kids are wont to do, so I quietly slipped away.
While I missed my usual stuff (not much sitting and quietly reading and writing while listening to a string quartet), it was great to see a child get their first real introduction to Shakespeare and this language.
Oh, and unlike last year, their scholarly periodicals were set out in the magazine room for me to browse through. It really bugged me last year that they put those away.
Tonight Is World Book Night
So go on… read a book tonight. And because it’s National Poetry Month, how about making that book a collection of poetry? Just saying.
Monday Morning Staff Meeting – What Auden Thought About Rilke
Sunday Book Review – Poets In Eden
Prynne
Jeremy Halvard (better known at J.H.) Prynne is an English poet whose name seemed to keep appearing in articles and interviews. He wasn’t widely published, but he seemed almost to be the unwilling leader of a cult built around himself or perhaps a shibboleth for the kinds of readers looking for someone to continue to work begun by Paul Celan.
My understanding is that he has primarily been published in small locally published (he lives in Cambridge and was an instructor and librarian one of the university’s colleges) slim volumes and chapbooks that didn’t stray too far from the region or a small coterie of readers. Basically, the only thing really available in America (and it wasn’t easy to get mind you) is a collected works simply entitled Poems. Nonetheless, he has inspired a pretty darn impressive volume of secondary literature.
The influence of Celan is pretty obvious, the discursive, recursive, elliptically revolving ‘subject.’ But whereas so much Celan’s work revolved around a single, terrible historical event, Prynne is much wider ranging, covering the geographical and philosophical history of the British isles. At least, I think it does. I won’t lie – I can’t be entirely sure.
You see, I can’t be sure, most of the time, what he’s talking about. He quite consciously resists easy meaning.
Which makes it hard to explain why I like it, but damn do I like it. I can see why folks would seek him out as an act of pilgrimage. He’s building something, he holds the key to something. I don’t necessarily know what, but I can see its beauty – and it’s terror (in the Aristotleian sense).
Weekend Reading – The Bonds Of Poetry
Thursday Morning Staff Meeting – Which Larkin Should You Buy?
Write Like Gertrude Stein
When I was living in Paris (this was almost twenty years ago), a friend suggested to me that if I picked up a book of Henry James and removed two out of every three sentence ending punctuation marks and replaced them with “and,” you would get a pretty good facsimile of Gertrude Stein. I can’t say he was entirely wrong.
the coffee philosopher 