From xkcd : “Snow.”
Thinking about age and snow reminds me of what happened when I read a Pierre Reverdy prose-poem to a grade-school class.
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
“Snow”
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 8
Aw, I like that the children said the poet is excited to go play in the snow—
and I, too, feel like xkcd when it snows, and often I recall the excitement of being in grade school and seeing snow start falling outside the window.
Same! And another poetry-visit story: I once made the mistake, if it was one, of interrupting the poetry by mentioning that it had started snowing. The windows were at the back of the room, so the kids hadn’t noticed. Frenzy followed.
This excitement — for teachers and students — is available in college classrooms too. I speak from experience.
That's one of the things I love about us humans--we can get excited about snow, even when we're adults!
You know Louis Macneive's poem "Snow", I assume.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91395/snow-582b58513ffae
"The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it"
No, but I’ll trade you for Emerson’s “The Snow-Storm.”
Facebook reminds me that I posted this 6 years ago: "I waited in line at the post office 40 minutes, behind a guy with 12 packages all improperly wrapped, and people who wanted to inspect all the Christmas stamps before buying any. But when I came out, it had started snowing. Very pretty."
That’s a nice reward.
Oh, nice, the Emerson poem! Thanks so much—I’d never read it.
Oh so good:
“The frolic architecture of the snow”
I love that line — so stately but playful too.
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