Victoria Chang Quoting Louise Gluck: More About Process

The quote from Louise Gluck is on p. 85 of Dear Memory:

• At the heart of that work will be a question, a problem. And we will feel, as we read, a sense that the poet was not wed to any outcome. The poems themselves are like experiments, which the reader is freely invited to recreate in his own mind. Those poets who claustrophobically oversee or bully or dictate response prematurely advertise the deficiencies of the chosen particulars, as though without strenuous guidance the reader might not reach an intended conclusion.

Victoria Chang: “Louise Gluck talks about how writing is the act of learning to know.”

It is very interesting how Chang, in writing about grief, ends up writing about writing.

Stay tuned.

Dear Memory, p. 37

from a letter addressed to “Dear Teacher”:

• Years later, I wrote you an email telling you that I became a writer because of you, because of your class. I wrote that you probably didn’t remember me. You wrote back saying that you did remember me, that you always knew there was something burning beneath. I didn’t even care if you were lying. You were right. Poets live between a fire and a great fire.

Hero of Her Story

Hannah Sward completed college as an older student (She was in her early 30s). She was still on meth, but she managed to complete.

She went out for job interviews. She was called back for this one job four times. The fourth interview was with the Dean of a Law School.

I wanted this job. I couldn’t bear the thought of going on any more job interviews. There was a knock on the door. Ms. Yamamoto cracked it open. “Your next appointment is here.”

I went home and wrote Dean James a Thank-you card. I had read that’s what you are supposed to do after interviews.

……….

It had been a week and I hadn’t heard from the Law School. I was washing my white button-up shirt in the bathroom sink with plans to go on an interview for a nine-dollar-an-hour tutor position at an Elementary School. The phone rang. It was HR from Southwestern.

“We would like to offer you the position of Dean’s Office Assistant. When can you start?”

— Strip, p. 202

John Evelyn’s Kalendarium Hortense or, The Gard’ners Almanac

January: To be done in the Parterre and Flower-Garden

Set up your Traps for Vermine, especially in your Nurseries of Kernels and Stones, and amongst your Bulbous-Roots. About the middle of this moneth, plant your Anemony-roots and Ranunculus, which you will be secure of, without covering, or farther trouble: Preserve from too great, and continuing Rains (if they happen) Snow and Frost, your choicest Anemonies and Ranunculus: Also your Carnations, and such Seeds as are in peril of being washed out, or over-chill’d and frozen; covering them under shelter, and striking off Snow where it lies too weighty; for it certainly rots, and bursts your early-set Anemonies and Ranunculus etc.

Flowers in Prime:

Winter cyclamen, Black Hellebor, Narcissus

• About the author: John Evelyn is best known today for his Diary, second only in reputation to that of his friend and fellow diarist, Samuel Pepys. In his own day he was famous for Sylva, his great work on trees and timber management, and he was also writing meticulous notes on the upkeep of his garden at Sayes Court — instructions for his gardener ‘which may be of use for other gardens. In Directions for the Gardiner he advises how to cultivate and tend perennials, annuals, root vegetables, and trees, with lists of plants and gardening terms and tools.

Hubris

When the invasion began, most people thought Ukraine would be crushed by its much larger neighbour. Many would have understood if Ukraine’s defenders had run away. Mr. Putin clearly expected the Ukrainian army to fold: his troops arrived with their dress uniforms ready for a victory parade but without nearly enough food.

— The Economist Holiday Double Issue 2022

The Economist Country of the Year: “It has to be Ukraine.”

Reading The Economist (19 Nov 2022)

Self has a pretty big pile of things to read, now she’s back home. She finally got to The Economist of 19 November, which has a very interesting article about how Ukrainians are adjusting to the reality of daily shellings.

Cities like Dnipro are installing mobile bomb shelters, “made of modular sections of thick concrete” that “are now being deployed on Ukrainian city streets so that people can take shelter during the frequent air-raid alerts.” These “can be lifted into position in hours. The thick concrete walls won’t withstand a direct hit . . . but they will protect against blast waves, shrapnel and flying glass.”

In addition, “the city council organises concerts in the metro.” The metro “was never considered a very good way of getting around the city. But now it’s the safest place, we have found a more practical use for it.”

“Construction companies are advertising dual-purpose cellars, lined in reinforced concrete or 4 mm-thick steel plates that can be used for saunas, storing wine or sheltering from bombs.”

“One metallurgical company, which had been making highway barriers before the invasion, joined a construction company to invent the Hobbit House, a burrow made of 10cm-thick concrete walls with a 15cm reinforced-concrete dome designed — hence the name — to be partially buried and covered with grassy sod.”

Last Wordless Wednesday of October 2022

Main House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Republic of Ireland

Posting for Wordless Wednesday

Sentence of the Day, First Sunday of August 2022

His name (Jobs) is listed on the patent for the white power brick used by the MacBook as well as its magnetic connector with its satisfying click.

—steve jobs, by walter isaascson, chapter twenty-six: design principles

My MacBook Air at the AWP Annual Conference in Philadelphia, March 2022

The Restless Mind

Self is about a third of the way through Steve Jobs (If anyone is DYING from all the Steve Jobs quotes and hoping she just moves on, the answer is: newp)

At this point, Jobs has been kicked out of Apple, humiliatingly, by the man he helped install, John Sculley. He’s had temper tantrums culminating in “bursting into tears” right there, in the office, in front of his team.

Let me tell ya, the bursting into tears thing is something Jobs does often. He is so temperamental. There will never, ever be anyone who takes his job as seriously as Jobs did. No, it wasn’t just a job, it was a passion. Self does not think it is anything to be ashamed of.

He takes a time-out by going to Europe with his girlfriend. When he returns to the San Francisco Bay Area, his ever-restless mind leads him to place a call to “the Stanford biochemist Paul Berg to discuss the advances that were being made in gene splicing and recombinant DNA.”

Berg described how difficult it was to do experiments in a biology lab, where it could take weeks to nurture an experiment and get a result. “Why don’t you simulate them on a computer?” Jobs asked.

— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter Eighteen: NeXT

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Steve Jobs at Thirty

From an interview with David Sheff, a writer for Playboy:

Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck on those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.

I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back . . .

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere.

— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter Seventeen: Icarus