(no subject)

[proximoception]

Twelve books to read, a paper to write for an unfinished class, then applications. And whatever Christmas entails. And domestic bliss to hold my end of up.

Short book suggestions welcome. I might finish Don Juan? When I read it it infects me. Started an ottava rima journal this last time, managed seven stanzas before everything stopped for Apocalypse Move:

These very words inaugurate my journal.
You, reader, read what I, the writer, wrote,
And what I write, you read, may prove eternal,
Though all futurity should take no note,
By replication kept forever vernal
On numberless machines our kids devote
To storing up lost, unsought pasts of data -
Just in case some need should come up later.

My stanza, you'll have guessed, 's ottava rima,
Made popular in Early Modern Italy,
Which English poets later came to deem a
Not unfit form for verse. Bigly or littlely,
For epic or for fun, that is, a theme o'
Love or sober thought, drummy or fiddle-y,
The stanza flexed to fit most any function,
And so I dust it off without compunction.

Yeats used it well, and Browning too - Keats poorly,
To riff on old Boccaccio, the rapscallion.
Shelley used it beautifully and surely,
Wordsworth just to translate from Italian
Some bits of Ariosto's poem. Less purely,
In German, Goethe told of how his stallion
Drooped pining for his mare - whilome so fiery,
Though fetching fillies neighed nigh - in his Diary.

You'd think that it was that inspired Byron,
The (Anglo) top practitioner of the form,
But there's no sign it entered his environ -
For export Goethe's poem was...rather warm.
It took a poem by Frere to heat the iron
And make in that Lord's head the octaves swarm.
Stendhal, though, claims a Roman, name of Monte,
Wrote poems like Beppo, Byron's first racconte.

But be that as it may, it doesn't ruin
His absolute achievement in the vein:
The sixteen-point-two canto tome Don Juan,
To criticize which I would deem insane.
The horse of art he broke with that's a new one,
Which, though no flier, flashed across the plain
With speed and grace and dazzle heretofore
Unknown in verse - known oft (confess!) to bore.

Lord Byron was a master entertainer,
But something always kept his genius muted
Until she kicked off all that would restrain her
(Imagine what yours might be like if you did!).
The eight-line stanza freed a larger, saner,
Relaxed, though rapid, strain, which fully suited
The Man inside - until then, who much better
Than in his poems was seen in any letter.

Sleepiness is weighing on my rhyming,
And though imagination's freed by sleep
In dreams, before we dream we lose our timing,
Vocabularic reach, and sense to keep
Our purpose straight. When in the state that I'm in,
One's stanza melts and sinks into the deep
Of its own liquid foundering. And so,
To you: adieu! Me too. To bed I go.

It's hard to know what to do with ottava rima past describing ottava rima.

[Turns out this was my 1000th entry.]

Comments

[thelican.livejournal.com]

If these stanzas speak of an infection,
Then let the sickness through you rage and rage.
For gladly will I read your versed perfection,
And follow your ottova from page to page!

Have you ever encountered Vikram Seth's Golden Gate? He wrote it using the Onegin stanza and, like Pushkin, created a novel in verse. I started reading it some years ago and could never really get into it. Still, you might at least be interested in checking it out (if you haven't already, that is).

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I was put onto it by Gore Vidal's blurb - "The Great Californian Novel has been written, in verse (wand why not?)." But had the same experience as you. He handled the stanza well but something was boring.

[thelican.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. The technical expertise of the stanzas seemed like all there was to it: no depth. (I'm glad to have you back me up on this; the Russian language instructor who urged me to read it was so, so enthusiastic about it. I kind of felt like a pill, being as unmoved by the book as I was.)

So, uh: use it as a model of What Not to Do?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Julie's dream project is a Journal of Null Results; mine (for someone else to do) is a Leonard Maltin style paperback book that simply lists movies and books not worth seing and reading. Maybe with brief explanations why - e.g. naming a book that does the same thing better, not living up to its awesome concept (while describing the awesome concept not lived up to) etc.

[thelican.livejournal.com]

I can see how such a journal might appeal to a scientist. Has Julie seen this book: BEING WRONG: Adventures in the Margin of Error?

Your project is sort of the inverse of Borges' reviews of imaginary books. But I do kinda like the thought: ideally, such a time-saver! Would also serve as a book of object lessons for would-be artists.