az- Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector - by Benjamin Moser: Oxford Press, August 2009




Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela (The Hour of the Star) opening paragraph:
Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule & life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never & there was the yes. It was ever so. /These things are always./ I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.


Wallace Stevens:
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun. this present sun this coming into. EW re Here Comes the Sun as #48 their list top Beatles songs: 'three blissful minutes of pure sonic warmth'
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one, the cataract? the rejected things ~become opaque~?
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket's horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech, yes: even. even that.
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body mmm, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps hmm - andrew - of wh reminds? not this, another poem, 'the form on the pillow' ~ ? ... here last page blue bound an email "read this poem and I certainly thought of you" The Task by Ashbery 'promise of the pillow and so much in the night to come". conflated w a memory of this line itself. and this line means? the form on the pillow is the affirming, maybe. believe the one thing, it will be affirmed. (y. if it is sunny for you, you will find it sunny. ~maybe. belief finds its affirmation.)
The aureole above the humming house...
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. ..how did we get here? or is it ~ discontinuous. it's what the poet thinks, regardless. no . . . stevens is not ...

The Well Dressed Man With A Beard - A poem by Wallace Stevens - American Poems | After the final no there comes a yes | ... it can never be satisfied, the mind, never. | [..GMH the mind has mountains] Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed O my dear
After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun. If the rejected things, the things denied ..One thing remaining, infallible, would be Enough. ..Green in the body, out of a petty phrase, Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed: .. It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
Sep09: how get fr? one infallible thing, one thing affirmed, after the no the yes >to> It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
~~GMHopkins: O the mind, the mind has mountains. hold them cheap may they who never clung there. =
'O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall. Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap. May who ne'er hung there.' /so it is 'cheap'. and 'hung'. but I leave out: 'cliffs of fall. Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.' like my, that hyphenate 'no-man-fathomed.' mm. and repeated: ' ..O my dear.' nice. like my. my own. mine own. //no. no that repeat is of the musical adaptation I'm looking at, not in the Hopkins sonnet. >>>
~~ "A poet's subject is his sense of the world," he noted in an essay. =Parini article re Stevens, pgmrk z0607 poem. y my subject. my sense of th.
The war between mind and sky - Jay Parini re Wallace Stevens
"A poet's subject is his sense of the world," he once as opposed to many times? okay in fairness,used as emphasis for the fast of doing, the actuality, once upon a time. at a specific time. he did at a specific time, in a specific instance, in fact. anyway I dislike it noted in an essay. // y y y // rw:New edition of complete Wallace Stevens (UkG-bkrev

NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing -
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked `No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.



Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems In Musical Adaptations - Mind Has Mountains

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. *oh. that *is* the comfort.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed O my dear

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, pitched past pitch. no worst, there is none. 'you don't know how far down it goes.'
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed O my dear

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer

O the mind, mind has mountains;
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. oh. fathomed. no man's been to the bottom, sourced the bottom, mapped it. grund. 'you don't know how far down it goes.' ('oh my dear, it's turtles all the way down.')

* again! a meaningful colon. and oh! the colon I am thinking of, as first as the model, to which this is again, is also ah ha G M Hopkins, I love. Spring and Fall.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
~I'm not as convinced at this moment, of my reading: [*that* mind does not hold & cannot articulate what the heart hears, spirit senses.] = It = the blight = you mourn that you cannot know what you ~know. cannot hold, say (logos: gather, make a ratio) what you feel, are (nous).
ie ~ common reading: sorrow's springs = mortality. all grief re one's self, own losses, own death. and this is what heart hearts, ghost guesses. you intuit that you are grieving for yourself. eh.
vs ~ I'm saying: sorrow's springs = sensing sth you cannot say or think. trying to think it and you cannot. so yes, all the new thinking is about loss. and-or, all the loss is about not being able to think. knowing and not knowing. ghost, heartheard, phantom (Moby), *poof*.

here, more clear equation. the comfort = death, sleep. that life ends, the day ends. y.

Can somebody explain Gerald Manley Hopkins poem? - Yahoo! Answers: "the comforting notion that death is the end of life, and each day ends in sleep." for all that it is a yahoo answer, this seems like a competent, helpful gloss:
Here goes, line by line:::
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
No WORST, not no worse. Pitched, sounds like Satan hurled from heaven. He keeps falling this way, hurled down, it the grief always increasing; all he knows is there is no worst. That is, the grief increases eternally. Overtones of a crescendo of rising notes (pitch) and even the blackness of pitch (as tar)
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
And this is why he knows there is 'no worst'; because the pain he has already felt 'teaches' the present and future pain so that like a good student getting wiser and wiser, this pain will continue to get worse.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
The Catholic cries out to the Holy Spirit (known as 'the comforter') and the virgin Mary, who is the intercessor; they aren't apparently helping at all.
...'herds-long'. introduces sheep imagery..... Jesus is the shepherd. (Sheep herd)...
on an age-old anvil wince and sing —
Here's God, the blacksmith; ouch. like hot metal hissing on the anvil as it cools, he in this pain; so here is a hint that he is though struggling seeing this terrible distress as part of a process familiar in a general sense (an age-old anvil) of making something useful. (out of his soul.)
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
'fell' here means terrible, as in 'the fell fiend' wow huh is that not 'the fallen fiend'? Lucifer; and is associated in usage with the devil; so again stressing the horror of the experience.
[okay: Merriam Webster - fell (adj) * Function: adjective * Etymology: Middle English fel, from Anglo-French — more at felon * Date: 14th century 1 a : fierce, cruel, terrible b : sinister, malevolent c : very destructive : deadly]
But of course it has other overtones, of falling, so echoing 'pitched'; and also of the fells mm, part of the wild scenery of the land he loved. Sheep get lost on fells; they are not kindly landscapes, though beautiful; you have to be tough to wander the fells.
As for Fury; the Furies were the executors of divine justice in ancient Greece; if you committed a terrible sin you were pursued by these shrieking terrors. He hints that he has sinned.. but does not specifically gloss, why does Fury say (shriek) "No lingering! Let me be fell; force I must be brief." ? perforce. I do not understand this, not exactly, who what must be be brief?
Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind:
So this is the only shred of comfort I can find, it's not much but anything is better than this whirlwind; .. intensifies the image of adverse weather .... miserable creature that I am, I huddle under it. ...

No worst, there is none@Everything2.com:
Line 8 requires explanation: fell meaning cruel, savage (but also prefiguring the extended image of falling down from great height), force is used as an adverb, as perforce - I am forced to be brief. Hopkins marked a pause on 'fell' to prevent the reader interpreting it as 'fell force'.
'World-sorrow', 'herds-long' and 'no-man-fathomed' are typical examples of his compound adjectives formed somewhat as in German; a poetically useful way to compress meaning into few words. Hopkins achieves an unusual fusion between the intellectual curiousness and emotional content of such constructions.

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.........................................................................................poetry is reminding.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson . good books on the give away shelf this sunday morning . denmark to me it . niedecker flood small works . Winesburg OH little sentence shaped bits of paper . because human understanding, whenever and wherever it is active, always and everywhere keeps on the lookout for: the reason why whatever it encounters is and is the way it is.

The True Deceiver - by Tove Jansson
NYRB Classics (December 1, 2009)
A New York Review Books Original.

Tove Jansson (1914—2001) wrote about the adventures of the Moomin family cute Moomins in a long-running comic strip and bestselling series of books for children. Jansson also wrote novels and short stories for adults, including The Summer Book (NYRB Classics). yes I saw that, a girl & her grandmother. judged it happier than I. summer.

All winter long the snow has been falling on the village.
Katri, yellow-eyed, lives in a room with her simple brother Mats and dog with no name. She hasn't any patience for politeness. Anna Aemelin lives alone in her family mansion, venturing out come springtime to paint exquisitely detailed paintings of the forest floor, to which her young fans insist she add the flower-covered rabbits she is known for.
When Katri moves with her brother into Anna's mansion with the intention of helping around the house, it's not long before she has taken charge of just about every aspect of Anna’s life and livelihood. As the season becomes increasingly oppressive, the two women find themselves engaged in a confrontation that will gradually strip away their cherished illusions. 'product description' online different from & I like it less than on my galley. I did like the book. simple. this happened, then this. Katri organizes all the papers into folders. Anna no longer feels she can trust anyone.
"I loved this book...understated yet exciting, with a tension that keeps you reading. I felt transported to that remote region of Sweden. The characters still haunt me."-Ruth Rendell


also read thr and did not care for, also a NYRB galley: No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon. NYRB Classics (October 13, 2009) Denon’s ravishing novella is a paradisal diversion. Summoned by Madame de T–– to her country house, the young hero of the novella is taken on a tour of the grounds, only the beginning of a night that not only will be full of unanticipated delights. Lydia Davis’s definitive translation of Denon’s slim masterpiece is accompanied by the French text.
"A tale of adulterous love told with impeccable discretion." --The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. manners. discretion. do not care for.

also recently: A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 6, 2010)
Sixteen-year-old Katya is spending the summer working as a nanny in a wealthy Jersey Shore community when she meets Marcus Kidder, an elderly yet dashing artist to whom libraries and pavilions are dedicated all over town. ..Despite each rebuff, she keeps returning to Kidder and soon is posing for his paintings. What sounds like a story of older-man-seduces-young-girl becomes a treatise on female aspiration. There is a subtle mystery at the center of this unsettling short novel: Kidder insists that he has a “mission” for Katya that will be revealed in time. The mission, when it comes, is a dark one, involving not just transactions of subservience and control but of life and death, and readers’ takes on character motivations will govern their reactions. I am curious to see reactions. ends in the mode of ~ a fairy tale, immersed in what Kidder wanted, how he saw it. ~ugly to me, ~accurate, ugly.

put books on give away shelf this Sunday morning. galleys: A Fair Maiden. Remainder. A Country Called Home by Kim Barnes. what else. The Search. The Singularity is Near. book re McCain. Wittgenstein ~ basic works, damaged copy. Lipstick Jihad. book re Sassy, tall & thin like magazine, bright colors. craft magazine bought w bonnie. yale press ~ World Apart Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America
and the rest I do not readily remember. so there.
today the feeling is I do not care, and I am calm. I'm glad to be in a position to be nice to people, to help them find a book, be supportive. ('Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone's Annie.') I think most if not all of it ~ pentecostalism, Edith Wharton re the French & their ways, Power by Lukes, the stupid girl with a dragon tattoo or flaming hair or whatever ~ is not worth caring about, but if you do, you do. I don't. (Denmark's a prison. - A goodly one; in which there are many confines.. - We think not so, my lord. - Why, then, 'tis none to you.)
I do not think there is anyone to tell, and so what is there worth telling.
I mean, if I *really* don't see anyone to tell.
so, tell myself.
no sense of any possible accomplishment, progress. only: you like it or you do not.
type it on dlww. though there is no idea to make anything out of it, no idea of a making that is distinct in completion from in progress, or anything better made than not made. no sense of form, study, learning, realizing, none of that. none of that describes any real experience I've had. only: you like it or you do not.
write it down, throw the paper away.
words written on bits of paper ~ Winesburg, OH. little sentence shaped bits of paper.


Niedecker:

Do not save love

for things

Throw things

to the flood

Paean to Place by Lorine Niedecker. encountered that bit recently as epigraph to Small Works by Pam Rehm


also in my mind ~ 'going out in the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.'

I was thinking maybe this was Didion On self-respect but it's not, it's Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted:
Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.
What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?
I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

so what I've got, what I recognize is: despair, end, beginning, alone, tabula rasa, why this, what does it matter. I opened Heidegger 'Principle of Reason' ~ everything for a reason; understanding looks for the reason in any thing it encounters.
'nothing is without a reason.'
It is because human understanding, whenever and wherever it is active, always and everywhere keeps on the lookout for: the reason why whatever it encounters is and is the way it is.

cadence feeling.

all you get is the sensibility and you either like it or you don't.



"Maybe it's because he's a vampire, I don't know."

now, what makes you feel better?

play. wryness. sharp minds. immersion.

what does not make you feel better? poetry. it seems overly available, like there's nothing to it. you can say anything you want, you're saying this. and I do not feel less alone. you seem to think there's something happening here, and I do not.
[there's just so many ways this could go. I could write it every which way. recombinations, various; as fish in the sea. collage. recall. cadence. again, again. as before. repetition, this time with feeling. and recognition of the other times. before, now. every time with feeling. all the times, all the ways. "you can get it as many ways as you want, sweetheart, 'specially from me." so: it's too easy and there's too much of it.]

Mr. Van Zandt are you interested in botany? No.
Mr. Van Zandt are you interested in aviation? No.

I feel better imagining I get to be not interested, always sunny in philadelphia. and rescue me: I like the not pretending.

Attachment, Separation, Loss.

Inconsolable.


concerned with: attachment. Erikson stage one. trust or mistrust. hope or not. consolable or not.

Wait without hope, for hope would be for the wrong thing.
I've lost hope. It's easier to live without it. First you abandon someone and then someone abandons you.
no. no no no no, how could you abandon someone first? it may it only feels like that. you were just a baby.
the babies in the study who were handled minimally lying on their beds in the same position not moving left indentations.

the baby's hand on mother's face, through the night, that she's there.

if she's there with you, is there anything wrong?
nothing wrong in this whole world.


a plea so desperate it reads Come get me yesterday.

Open your eyes. This is what I look like when I believe in you.


do you have belief in? experience of. achievement. learning-realizing. coming to understand.
do you think someone knows-understands things sachen matters that you do not.
what is there to accomplish?


you will die. if you expect to die tomorrow, what do you do today. I think this, that I would lie down still and think. feel a tension. body. be in it.
no you can't sleep when you are dead. you can't sleep then.


mornings evenings afternoons. I like mornings. have dreaded. 'Nothing here to be afraid of. It's just the morning.' but also have enjoyed. I like evenings. so right now it seems to me that it is afternoons that are uncomfortable. laundry time. full daylight. 3pm. 1pm to 6pm to be sure.


write down everything you remember. would that be worthwhile? interesting, enjoyable. tell me something.


no important secrets. no one is trying to find out. sitting on the floor with the notebook of yours pulled from under the bed, behind the bookcase, feeling surreptitious and reading what you wrote. oh.
what could they read that would matter?
who could read you that would matter?


there is always something between people. or not.


here are notebooks full of meanings, things I wrote.
'I accept you as you are.' - you are not curious?

someone could want to find out about you, every day. did you like this? why? what did you think? why do you say that?
for fun. for the fun of: a whole other person.

the baby's hand on mother's face.
the mother, as baby rolls over: Yay! that's wonderful. you are wonderful.

this is not nothing.

there is nothing here to be afraid of.
I want wholesome now. I'd like feeling and an interesting role to play and something between people and I don't want it to be ugly or impossible or terrifying.

I don't know what to tell you.
why would I write a book, who would I want to tell?

Pilar: So, Guillermo. Interesting choice. I admire the cojones. Next time you might want to hire someone -- who doesn’t work for me--and who isn’t still mad at you for ratting him out.

mm I really enjoy her delivery there. watched it more than once.
:50 sec mark:



mmm I love it. her facial expression: 'interesting choice.'


the breathy 'hire someone' and very quiet, quick 'who doesn't work for me' straight into & with classic bitchy chin jut so-there: 'and who isn't still mad at you for ratting him out.'



scene transcript (or? dialogue text. what they said, written out.) found at
nowmyhousehastwotoasters.tumblr -
Fuck me? Fuck you.
Pilar: You look nice.
Nancy: Well, thank you. You look nice too.
Pilar: So, Guillermo. Interesting choice.
Nancy: Guillermo?
Pilar: I admire the cojones. Next time you might want to hire someone who doesn’t work for me, and isn’t still mad at you for ratting him out.
Nancy: I’ll keep that in mind. Next time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, some bitch told me I had to leave early. Oh, your press-on nails are digging into my arm.
Pilar: You think this is a joke?
Nancy: You took a fucking shot at me, and you hit my kid. And you cut my husband’s balls off. That’s three you owe me, four if we count the balls separately.
Pilar: Let’s make it six.
Nancy: We’re counting yours, too?
Pilar: Esteban needs you and the baby for photos, but Silas and Shane are… what’s the word? Extraneous. We don’t need them to complete our pretty pictures.
Nancy: You come anywhere near my children, I’ll kill you myself.
Pilar: You look stunning in black. The people will be very sympathetic to the grieving mother who has just lost her beautiful children in a tragic… car accident? Or perhaps a plane crash? Or perhaps…


The Deep End of the Ocean - TWoP recap of Weeds 5.13 All About My Mom - by Jacob | p15 of 15:
Out of the mise-en-scène comes a croquet mallet, into Pilar's head and thence to the water, hefted by the increasingly bad-ass terrifying Strange Botwin, terror of the soccer field, biter of karate feet, ghost whisperer, apprentice thug, drug dealer, bird-shooter, fruit punch-mouthed, threesome-haver, junior alcoholic, celebrity disease enthusiast, profane rap artist, valedictory detournist, budding masochist, beheading video terrorist. "I couldn't find a golf club," he explains to his mystified mother, and they watch Pilar's blood fill the water from the shallows all the way to the deep end.


Jacob begins the recap p1
("As I stand before you today on the brink of junior high, here is what I have to say.")

= Shane's graduation speech, season 2:
fuckyeahweeds.tumblr - Shane: As I stand before you today on the brink of...

Shane: As I stand before you today on the brink of junior high, here is what I have to say. You have failed us all! Everything is not okay! We have become alienated, desensitized, angry, and frightened. If we picture Agrestic as an airplane, a grand soaring jet carrying us through the sky, I think you all need to understand - there are mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane.
(Season 2, Episode 12: Pittsburgh)

nice choice, Jacob, interspersing Shane's words of warning through this episode's recap.

Pilar explains: "Esteban needs you and the baby for photos. But Silas and Shane? They are... what's the word... Extraneous. We don't need them to complete our pretty pictures."

("You're not safe. You moved here so that you'd feel safe, but your children are not safe.")


..Strange Botwin, terror of the soccer field, fruit punch-mouth, biter of karate feet, junior alcoholic, apprentice thug.


when Shane ask Silas why he stayed
Silas: "Because it looked like you were going to go off the deep end, and I wanted to be around to jump in."

Dan Chaon pronounced 'shawn' Await Your Reply
~ He believed him and he didn't. Both were true. He was a schizophrenic, and he was faking. He was a genius, and he had delusions of grandeur. good. then eh he was paranoid and ppl were out to get him but ok true enough.
such praise in the reviews, first in washington post I read, and the customer rvws at az. I didn't like it that much. interesting, not bad, but don't you guess that more than one of these guys is going to be the same - ? well maybe I would not have if was not expecting a reveal at the end, per the reviews. welll but it's about identity and the search for someone so.
and then my complaint is he does not seem crazy. only in Miles's recollections of his 'feverish obsessions' but not in any of the personas we see. he just seems an identity-con-artist, and maybe desperate in his wanting that one other person, the twin, the soulmate, but why not stick with Miles? who was his twin and did know & understand him specially?
I think You Remind Me of Me I liked better, but my recollection is vague, and my copy is not marked or folded, and mostly maybe it's the title that impressed me.

did not esp like Lorrie Moore Gate at the Stairs either. I thought of Michelle Wildren You're Not You (again, similarly, a title that drew me) where the couple that the college girl worked for was more interesting. especially the woman. in Gate, I never cared much or got a good feel for Sarah. or for Tassie the protagonist. I liked the little girl Mary-Emma, M-E, Emmie. but sure a two year old easy to like. and what happened in Wildgren's book more interesting, the effect on the protagonist. and why does Moore address me at the end 'Reader this much I learned in college' eh. oh *and* a representative complaint, she says Tassie's head was on fire with ~ names several authors ~ but I got no sense at all of that, no sense Tassie was caught up, impressed, learning, thinking.

I also did not get into the movie District 9 which everyone is praising but there I'll give that it's taste, what entertains you, I suppose the mockumentary style depiction of a segregated alien population is interesting, just the action did not interest me.