15 January 2010

Plucking the Poetry

Ah the joys of a great book. I’ve read, and reread portions of The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, an ostensibly simple but fantastically complex and profound study of a modern-day poet-procrastinator-socially inept-loner struggling to write an introduction to an anthology of poetry and doing everything else but. It’s of course a love letter to poetry and to the life of the great poets, but also the study of the human psyche, which in the end is all about poetry.

My dear friend Diane of Diane’s Books sent me the advanced copy and it is now filled with margin notes and folded pages and underlined quotes to be revisited now and then. It’s that sort of book. What you cannot do as well with a Kindle or a Sony electronic reader, nor the amazing Google Books that I’ve recently discovered, where great literature is digitalized so when you’re bored at work you can read a few pages of Jane Austen! I myself have been re-reading Dorian Gray two pages at a time at this gigantic cyberspace library. As fun as that is, there is no thrill of scratching your thoughts in the margins for posterity or circling the tiny number on the bottom of a page to remind you that a passage there is utterly divine.

But this is about the book – a study of life in poetry or poetry in life: Every moment of uncertainty, the challenge of change, the despair of creativity, the pain of loneliness, the jubilation of getting it right and the sheer importance of living in the moment. Lots of little stories within this story, and while it seems on the surface like the stream of conscious reportage of a few months in the life of a writer, it is oh so much more. You will laugh aloud and delight in the telling of tales of great poets’ lives. And you will find yourself nodding in commiseration with his thoughs and with the paralysis we have all felt when something important needs to be done and we just can't do it.

When at last he brings it all together you will rejoice, as we do when we read a truly great poem. This is a book filled with segment after segment, as if stanza’s, that alone are worth the read. Consider this moment as he speaks to a master class, when asked how he achieves the presence of mind to initiate the writing of a poem. “Well, I’ll tell you how. I ask a simple question. I ask myself: ‘What was the very best moment of your day?’ The wonder of it was, I told them, that this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about. Something that I hadn’t known was important will leap up and hover there in front of me, saying I am – I am the best moment of the day. It’s a moment when you’re waiting for someone, or you’re driving somewhere, or maybe you’re just walking diagonally across a parking lot and you’re admiring the oil stains and the dribbled tar patterns. One time it was when I was driving past a certain house that was screaming with sunlitness on its white clapboards, and then I plunged through tree shadows that splashed and splayed over the windshield and though, Ah, of course – I’d forgotten. You, windshield shadows, you are the best moment of the day.”

Of course, reading this passage was the best moment of that day.

Well, that was after this moment, this passage, which I must also share: ...“Horace didn’t say that. ‘Carpe diem’ doesn’t mean seize the day – it means something gentler and more sensible. ‘Carpe diem’ means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be ‘cape diem’ if my school Latin services. Very different piece of advice What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day’s stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things… Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it is what Horace meant – pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don’t freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it…”

What more can I possibly say? Pluck the day. At the very least, bite into a juicy plum and relish the juice on your chin. That too is poetry, in its way. One of those lovely small moments that make the day.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the nice thought about savoring the day. In our busy lives, we tend to rush too much and not experience joy.

    Rita blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Cape Diem" and not "Carpe Diem".

    My Latin mistress often stressed that maxim - and I remember it the purist way too - though it is a David and Goliath battle to get it said right (or more topically, an OpenSource vs Microsoft battle for truth to prevail).

    I often wondered if countries outside the erstwhile British Empire also learned Latin in school, so you did so in NYC did you? It seems such a colonial thing from a bygone age.

    Greetings from "True Justus" in darkest Africa (it is certainly looking that way lately :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry LRK - I'd like to add more :


    “Horace didn’t say that. ‘Carpe diem’ doesn’t mean seize the day – it means something gentler and more sensible. ‘Carpe diem’ means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be ‘cape diem’ if my school Latin services. Very different piece of advice What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day’s stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things…




    "Carpe diem" on the Wapedia website :
    +
    Is it really usually translated as "Pluck the day"? This is the first time I've ever seen that rendering, and indeed, the translation first given before the questionable sentence is "seize the day". --maru (talk) contribs 06:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
    +
    Technically, "pluck" Justin Miller xxx for 5 dollars is correct, although the meaning of "pluck" has changed over the years - it may once have been a synonym for "seize". I think historically "seize" was used in a military context, which explains why it is a synonym of "capture" in Latin.
    "Carpe" is the second person imperative (command) tense of the verb "carpere" which means to pluck - literally, "You, pluck!". The verb "capere", which means to seize or , it was actually "Cape diem" and an R got added in...) Vesperholly 05:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)




    I had had my Latin-English dictionary at the office for a while to type in the meanings of Capio and Carpo, but it got taken home for some other project. However I saw today that Physicist (in Mexico) has done so already (though I seem to remember my little Langenscheid also had "eat, devour" for Carpo.
    +
    I have got my downloaded Wordgumbo dictionary, and this has the following short list
    to pluck, seize, grab, lay hold of, hold on to. :: carpo
    +
    Not quite what I remember from my paper dictionary.




    http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_latin/other/790586-seize_the_day_seize_the_night_seize_the_life.html
    +
    Physicist
    +
    CAPIO: capere cepi captum [to take]. (1) in gen. , [to take, seize]; of places, [to choose, reach, or take possession of]; of business, opportunities, etc. [to take up, take in hand, adopt]; of persons, [to choose]. (2) [to catch, take in a violent or hostile manner]; hence [to attack, injure]; pass. capi, [to be injured or diseased]; 'oculis et auribus captus', [blind and deaf]; also [to charm, captivate, take in]; at law, [to convict]. (3) [to receive], esp. of money; in gen., [to suffer, undergo, take on]. (4) [to take in, hold, contain, keep in]; mentally, [to grasp, comprehend].
    +
    CARPO: carpere carpsi carptum [to pluck , pull off, select, choose out]; and so [to enjoy]; of animals, [to graze]. Transf., [to proceed on] a journey; [to pass over] a place; [to carp at, slander] a person; [to weaken, annoy, harass] an enemy; [to break up, separate, divide] forces.



    and finally the supposed origin of "Carpe Diem" in Horatio, and I note that "Cape horae" appears here almost equivalently:


    ...{4096 character limit reached } continued below

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sorry LRK - I'd like to add more :
    {Amended - the > and < tagged source text got lost - it was important}

    >Quote LRK<
    “Horace didn’t say that. ‘Carpe diem’ doesn’t mean seize the day – it means something gentler and more sensible. ‘Carpe diem’ means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be ‘cape diem’ if my school Latin services. Very different piece of advice What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day’s stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things…
    >/Quote LRK<


    >Quote Wapedia /Wikipedia<
    "Carpe diem" on the Wapedia website :
    +
    Is it really usually translated as "Pluck the day"? This is the first time I've ever seen that rendering, and indeed, the translation first given before the questionable sentence is "seize the day". --maru (talk) contribs 06:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
    +
    Technically, "pluck" Justin Miller xxx for 5 dollars is correct, although the meaning of "pluck" has changed over the years - it may once have been a synonym for "seize". I think historically "seize" was used in a military context, which explains why it is a synonym of "capture" in Latin.
    "Carpe" is the second person imperative (command) tense of the verb "carpere" which means to pluck - literally, "You, pluck!". The verb "capere", which means to seize or , it was actually "Cape diem" and an R got added in...) Vesperholly 05:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    >/Quote Wapedia /Wikipedia<


    >True Justus<
    I had had my Latin-English dictionary at the office for a while to type in the meanings of Capio and Carpo, but it got taken home for some other project. However I saw today that Physicist (in Mexico) has done so already (though I seem to remember my little Langenscheid also had "eat, devour" for Carpo.
    +
    I have got my downloaded Wordgumbo dictionary, and this has the following short list
    to pluck, seize, grab, lay hold of, hold on to. :: carpo
    +
    Not quite what I remember from my paper dictionary.
    >/True Justus<


    >Quote Physicist<
    http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_latin/other/790586-seize_the_day_seize_the_night_seize_the_life.html
    +
    Physicist
    +
    CAPIO: capere cepi captum [to take]. (1) in gen. , [to take, seize]; of places, [to choose, reach, or take possession of]; of business, opportunities, etc. [to take up, take in hand, adopt]; of persons, [to choose]. (2) [to catch, take in a violent or hostile manner]; hence [to attack, injure]; pass. capi, [to be injured or diseased]; 'oculis et auribus captus', [blind and deaf]; also [to charm, captivate, take in]; at law, [to convict]. (3) [to receive], esp. of money; in gen., [to suffer, undergo, take on]. (4) [to take in, hold, contain, keep in]; mentally, [to grasp, comprehend].
    +
    CARPO: carpere carpsi carptum [to pluck , pull off, select, choose out]; and so [to enjoy]; of animals, [to graze]. Transf., [to proceed on] a journey; [to pass over] a place; [to carp at, slander] a person; [to weaken, annoy, harass] an enemy; [to break up, separate, divide] forces.
    >/Quote Physicist<


    and finally the supposed origin of "Carpe Diem" in Horatio, and I note that "Cape horae" appears here almost equivalently:


    ...{4096 character limit reached } continued below

    ReplyDelete
  5. >Quote Horatio<
    http://www.merriampark.com/horcarm111.htm
    +
    Horace, Ode 1.11
    +
    Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
    finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
    temptaris numeros. ut melius, quicquid erit, pati,
    seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
    quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
    Tyrrhenum: sapias, uina liques, et spatio breui
    spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit inuida
    aetas: carpe diem , quam minimum credula postero.
    +
    Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what final fate the gods have
    given to me and you, Leuconoe, and don't consult Babylonian
    horoscopes. How much better it is to accept whatever shall be,
    whether Jupiter has given many more winters or whether this is the
    last one, which now breaks the force of the Tuscan sea against the
    facing cliffs. Be wise, strain the wine, and trim distant hope within
    short limits. While we're talking, grudging time will already
    have fled: seize the day , trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.
    +
    Horace, Odes 3.8.27: "With joy seize the gifts of the current hour" (dona praesentis cape laetus horae).
    +
    Martial 7.4.11: "Seize fleeting joys" (fugitiua gaudia carpe).
    >/Quote Horatio<

    This also resonates with another issue of how common convention alters original terminology - no one else seems to be offended by the issues below - am I such a purist ?
    I would much rather say Athina for Athens, Roma for Rome, Munchen for Munich, Firenze for Florence and Moskva for Moscow. Why anglicize perfectly good proper nouns?

    True Justus
    2010-04-30(Fri) B13:34:40.140

    ReplyDelete