Zukofsky & Goldfish

and this morning I come upon this:


"Children know we may see poetry with our ears: ABCD goldfish? MNO goldfish! OSMR goldfish. And that is our first delight in words that they hopscotch sequential noise - A poet, we say, has vision. Louis Zukofsky's vision came from excision of all but ears to the language itself, letter by letter: A. Like Nature, he was bent on ever more intricate goldfish. "Homer's Argos hearing/ Handel's Largo as/ The car goes". It is needless to state that this is first a telescope, before it is a poem. Behind the wheel, fiddling the syllables, the finest ears in the business is heading somewhere 100,000 years an hour (or so). Do you not hear them thunder?"

(Ronald Johnson)

To resume ...

... where we left off.

Things that have happened:

1) discovered I like eating mussels

2) decided to read some novels (other than those I am obliged to teach)

3) realised that I should have read Patrick Hamilton years ago - most especially 'Hangover Square'.

4) finally succumbed and bought an iPod Nano

5) discovered

i) that iTunes Store is not all it's cracked up to be
ii) that you cannot buy films from Belgium
iii) that this is just as well since - given the size of the screen - you wouldn't want to watch a full-length feature
iv) how nifty having a screen is (as against the Shuffle) and the delights of Cover Flow

6) enjoyed lying in bed listening to BBC podcasts and hi-jacked Comedy

7) finally read 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' - a book which hanted my childhood years of library browsing (starts well and then veers into sub-Dickensian pastiche) - and am currently reading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' (another Surely You Must Have Read prep school favourite).

8) decided that Moleskine notebooks might not be just a marketing gimmick and actually rather well-made and practical

9) not got down to it (for reasons too complicated to elaborate)

10) rediscovered Bjork & decided to listen back through her CDs

11) made a resolution to resist further purchases (Amazon, SPD, etc) due to ...

12) big news that, yes, it looks for real that we'll be buying the house next door

That's it for this afternoon. There is seafood risotto to be made with yesterday's prawn shells and today's mussels.

Rain. And tomorrow is Monday.

Phase Two

Back from the UK, a couple of days in Brussels, now off to the north coast of France. Plenty of sea air, fish soup and quality time 'en famille'. What better way to begin November?