Another Gluck poem with a great ending. The title is a Greek word meaning to return home or welcome home.

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

And here is a link to many poets reading at our many poetry readings over the years. You will find both Gluck and Seamus Heaney, among others.

http://www.ccri.edu/engl/Galway_Kinnell_poem_video.html

Here's a link to a video of Joey Ramone singing a John Cage piece using Finnegans Wake as its text. I'm around page 300 of the text, but I can only handle three to four pages at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vqUxreEag

Reading The City and The City by China Mieville who has fast become my favorite science fiction author.

The final two lines of 'Nostos' were quoted and tweeted out by Mary Karr some time ago without recognition of a poetic source. Now I know. Beautiful writing.

I was not expecting that!

Only a few hours of Finnegan's Wake left. I'm not getting nearly as much out of it as Ulysses, mostly it's like being tossed by waves on an open ocean.

Up next, Gravity's Rainbow?? Never got through much of that.

That's a great poem. I'm going to steal the last two lines.

Perido Street Station is wonderfully alien and bizarre.

I've read that and Embassytown, which is also terrific.

Dom, and check out our poetry series. Your students would get a kick out of Jeffrey Harrison reading "God's Penis."

I actually bought freedom instead, I heard they are both similar yet different. I opted to buy freedom instead?

nothing wrong with going back to the corrections later right?

Yup, embassytown has some great ideas in it but omg it needed an editor to cut out some of the verbiage and the ending is a bit weak Hollywood nonsense.

I really liked the city and the city and embassytown, but I've failed to engage with any of his other books.

Yeah, order doesn't matter. I think they are somewhat similar yet different, yes. The Corrections is slightly more highly regarded. I've read them both 3 times, and I rarely reread novels.

Thanks kokiri.

"Freed from rage" was one of my favourites in the collection, I linked it in my blog if you care to click through or google it yourself. So you have not read Finkler's Question, the work that won the Mann Booker?

In any case, I will bypass Zoo Time if that is the only choice presented to me in future until I have something more to supercede your recommendation.

Cheers anyway.

11/22/63 has recently been announced by Hulu as a 9 hour miniseries to be released in 2015

Kings Oswald book was great. Only Stephen King could write that book

80 pages remaining in Infinite Jest, then starting The Road.

I'm kind of sad that I've elomonaded the book's map.

I've been trying to read Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought for about three weeks now and am not far in.

It's not just that it's not compelling, and I don't think it's particularly well written, it's hard. It's about how different parts of speech and language structure reflect some structures of the mind and not really knowing any of the linguistic stuff going in doesn't help. BUT, I think there are some really interesting insights coming.

Probably by way of procrastinating, I saw Vonnegut's Galapagos lying around and reread that between yesterday and today. So it is.

Anyone read Ayaan hirsi Ali?

Finished No Country for Old Men in a couple of sessions of reading. I enjoyed my first encounter with Cormac.

Dunno if it's listenable outside the UK, but here's an interview with Jacobson Abt his latest book (and all the other Booker prize nominees):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl

Have you seen the movie? If not I am envious that you've done it right

Thanks Kokiri.

JudgeHoldem: No I have not seen the movie.

I knew that a movie of it had been made and that it was considered quite favourably, so bear that in mind when I say that: I was reading it yesterday thinking it would be an easy book to turn into a script. I have no knowledge of the art of scriptwriting but the prose was so tightly wound, with brief scenes and an internal life that probably could be acted - that if I had not already known that it had been made into a movie I would not have been suprised.
If that makes sense.

If I was neither lazy or poor or I could live with myself being dl thief - I would watch the movie in the near future. As it stands - I guess I will wait to see it come out on free to air or see if I can borrow it at my local library.


I could not find Blood Meridian at my local library, last time I was there, so apart from that is there another McCarthey book that someone could recommend in its place?

p.s. I actually do not know how or where to dl movies, which is a small blessing as it would be another unnecessary temptation in my life.

Ncfom the movie is a treat

I always liked "Suttree."