Wheels up for Japan!

Wheels up for Big Frank; he's heading for the Osaka sun. He's got his new camera; Japan is such a rich place to shoot. There will be regular posts coming - photographs, and maybe even a few poems. Mata ne!

C.K. Williams and the revealing glimpse

Big Frank is still looking for those poetic anecdotes. He has been reading C.K. Williams, who takes glimpses he has made and centers them on abstract qualities that they imbody: conscience, anger, resentment, greed, failure, fame, regret, self-knowledge, etc. etc. The scene, the event he relates embodies the abstraction of the title. Here's an example where he takes the act of forgetting notes while playing a piece of music and relates it to lost love. This is an interesting twist, because the first forgetting is one where what was forgotten one is trying to remember, but it's been temporarily replaced with false notes, while in the second the lost love that keeps coming to mind is equated with the "false notes" and the interval of waiting is for what existed before that love:

Vehicle: Forgetting

The way, playing an instrument, when you botch a passage you have to
stop before you can go on again --
there's a chunk of time you have to wait through, an interval to let the
false notes dissipate,
from consciousness of course, and from the muscles, but it seems also
from the room, the actual air,
the bad try has to leak off into eternity, the volumes of being scrubbed to
let the true resume . . .
So, having loved, and lost, lost everything, the other and the possibility
other and parts of self,
the heart rushes toward forgetfulness, but never gets there, continously
attains the opposite instead,
the senses tensed, attending, the conductors of the mind alert, waiting for
the waiting to subside:
when will tedious normality begin again, the old calm silences recur, the
creaking air subside?

And one more; this one on Petulance -

Love: Petulance

She keeps taking poses as they eat so that her cool glance goes off at
perpendiculars to him.
She seems to think she's hiding what she feels, that she looks merely
interested, sophisticated.
Sometimes she leans her head on her hand, sometimes with a single-
finger covers her lower lip.
He, too, will prop his temple on his fist, as though to make her believe
he's lost in thought.
Otherwise he simple chews, although the muscles of his jaws rise vio-
lently in iron ridges
Their gazes, when they have to go that way, pass blankly over one an-
other like offshore lights.
So young they are for this, to have arrived at this, both are suffering so
and neither understands,
although to understand wouldn't mean to find relief or overcome, that
this, too, is part of it.

You can listen to Williams read some of his poetry here, where he read at TED.

The Poetic Anecdote

Big Frank has been thinking lately about poetry. Why is it that the content of the poem is relaid at a slant? With prose the thought or feeling is laid out directly. The person says that they have this kind of idea or this kind of feeling. There is a label put on it and some examples and explanation put to it. With poetry there is a recognition that the idea or feeling is bigger than the explanatory power of words -the lexicon cannot carry the load. It is bigger than words, and so something more resonanat is sought - images, symbols, metaphor, or ancedotes. It is the first three that most poets rely on, but the anecdote is very powerful when applied to something different. Here's an example from a great poem by Don Paterson:

The Gift

That night she called his name, not mine
And could not call it back.
I shamed myself and thought of the blind
girl in Kodiak

who on the stoop each night
to watch the daylight fade
and lift her child down to the gate
cut in the pallidade.

And what old caution love resigned
when through that misty stare
she passed her boy not to her bearskinned husband
but the bear.


Here we have a horrific story that is linked to one lover calling the other by the name of a previous lover. The irretrievable loss of that "gift" is captured in all its intractability in the story of the blind woman mistakenly handing the child - out of love - to the bear. This is poetry. It cannot compare in force or poignancy to a simple prose summary of the slip of tongue. Such poems are rare.

Do Mandroids Dream of Electric Colors?

Two Views
---- Big Frank Dickinson

If the will could dream would it be in color;
Waiting outside the frame and leaning in . . .

Photo - Big Frank Dickinson

Night In The Park

News

---- Big Frank Dickinson

.

At first glance it is the dark park that captures

Your attention; and, of course, the question:

Why is this man reading the newpaper

On this parkbench at night - alone,

At the prow of a row of benches

Under the blast of light from the lamp above

Which is wildly reflected on branches that spread

Seemingly windblown in the glare a single lamp?

The wildness of the reflected folliage

Belies the relaxed calm of the late-night reader

Whose legs sprawl, as though, relaxing in his

Living room lounger, safely, and securely at home

Where he certainly is not. His dark profile

Is starkly set off against the white of the open paper.

Want adds? "Dishwasher, no experience needed",

Personals: SWF, no headgames, looking for romance"?

Perhaps a headline: "Ten Dead in School Shooting",

Or a filler: "Tax Levy Turned Down".

Maybe a random story that goes along with his cursory

Coverage of this news, postponing the delivery

Of his: a lost job, stark diagnosis, or something

Nonnegotiable like "I can't do this anymore."

Surrounded by good stuff!

The corners of your life carry their own beauty;

These are the everyday moments that greet you

As you ply your day, and these are the everyday

Appearances that you take for granted and lose

Their solace, despite the fact that you created them

To do exactly that - give you pleasure as you

Live your day-to-day life. No need to obsess

On clouds, or sunsets, or the scent of flowers,

Look at the pictures you took, the dishes you bought,

And take pleasure in what you took pleasure in still.

Portents?

Just when Big Frank was ready to consign the puffy portents of June to the autumnal pile of drifting leave, there appears in the sky the full rich clouds that signal good things. Well, OK, that's a bit of the pathetic fallacy, but who is immune to that? We all look for portents to match the hopes that we have - some kind of objective (or so we think, or want to think) sign that good things are coming etc. etc. Big Frank saw his today - but hey, that cloud didn't just have his name on it. It's cloud with the silver lining (note that underbelly of silver?). It's going to be OK - all's well, and all will be even better - soon - very soon!

Autumn Clouds

Big Frank has a new camera! What better way to start than with clouds. The picture above was taken from his deck looking east. It is the sunset reflected on the eastern clouds receding with the glow of the sunset lingering - but for a few short minutes. Darkness seems to fall in the fall; it comes quickly and suddenly. The clouds on which it shines are not the large cumulus clouds full of hope and tinged always with the possible threat of storms, no these are autumnal clouds. They are nostalgic, gentle, lingering banks that fade easily into the dark.

Proust Speaks Out

1. Big Frank has turned from Connely to Proust, a much much richer source. Here are a few choice quotations:
   
   Our belief that a person takes part in an unknown life which his or her love would allow us to enter is, of all that love demands in order to come into being, what it prizes the most, and what makes it care little for the rest.
   
   All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Love is space and time measured by the heart.

Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages.

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.

Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

Cyril Connolly

Big Frank has been reading "The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle" by Palinurus (Cyril Connolly). Hemingway described the book in this way: "A book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough." Big Frank concurs.

Here are a few choice quotations to mull over. There are lots more, . . . maybe later:

"Three faults, which are found together and which infect every activity: laziness, vanity, cowardice. If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom. Yet it is only the thinking which begins when habit-thinking leaves off which is ignited by the logic of the train of thought, that is worth pursuing. A comfortable person can seldom follow up an original idea any further than a London pigeon can fly."

"Further considerations on cowardice, sloth and vanity; vices which do small harm to other people but which prevent one from doing any good, and which poisen and enfeeble all the virtues. Sloth rots the intelligence, cowardice destroys all power at the source, while vanity inhibits us from facing any fact which might teach us something; it dulls all other sensation."

"And 'living from beauty': in one lovely place always pining for anyother; with the perfect woman imagining one more perfect; with a bad book unfinished beginning a second, which the almond tree is in blossom, the grasshopper fat and the winter night disquieted by the plock and gurgle of the sea, - that too would seem extinct forever."

Hopper's Lonely House

Lonely House
---- Big Frank Dickinson

It's funny how when she is in the house
That it somehow seems to be her friend
The way those close to you can comfort
Just by their nearness and availability.

However, outside now it's clear: she is wrong.
This house somehow survived some major
Demolition, urban renewal, or decay;
It is an island of solidity in the midst of nothing.

It was a rowhouse, but has lost it's row;
Built of stone with pillars attending the door,
Three stories, with awnings covering the
Windows that shyly shelter her well-kept

Interior, surely as neat and well-cared for
As the the exterior demonstrates, yet
There is nobody to see, nobody at all
Except the owner who sits alone outside

Against the hugely blank wall of her home,
A tiny figure, dwarfed by the house.
She sits outside and flits in her mind
Back to when she was in a real row

Each home seeminly as solid as the wall behind her;
No matter; they gave up; they moved on, either
Back to where they had been, or on to new neighborhoods;
But not her, no, she held to her principles; stood her ground.

She is sitting proof of the force of determination.
Now, on her little chair, in the emply lot, against the wall
She turns her thoughts to her upstairs bedroom;
"It might just be time to get that new comforter".

Hiking to Steven Lake

Konrad, Aneta, and Big Frank hiked up to Steven's Lake today. It right smack dab on the border between Idaho and Montana. The climb up is pretty steep, but the lake is gorgeous and we had it all to ourselves. A fantastic day!

Clouds over Spokane

Konrad and Aneta at Arbor Crest

The Arbor Crest Winery's Cliff House is one of the most beautiful locations in all of the Spokane area. Originally built in 1924 by Royal Newton Riblet, an inventor who patented a number of devices, including a sprinkler system, and a mechanical parking garage. Now it is the flagship location ofr Arbor Crst Winery, with over 75 acres of grounds perched high above the Spokane valley floor. The three-story Forentine house complete with an arched gatekeeper's house, a sunken rose garden, an open air pagoda, a life sized checkerboard, and over 4 acres of gardens is visible for miles and beckons visitors to come up an taste their wine. Big Frank did just that with his son Konrad, and his girlfriend, Aneta.

Konrad's Back in Town

Big Frank's son, Konrad, is back in Spokane. He's been abroad for the past four years (living in Poland), and finally decided to make a trip back to the states. His sister and dad have been enjoying having him back. The above photos were taken in Idaho on Lake Coeur d'Alene - beautiful day and the water looked so inviting. I can't believe that we didn't jump in - or throw each other in.