I volunteered at the university’s poetry festival yesterday (which is chaired by my Harlem Renaissance professor), and listened in on one of the speakers, who was not reading his own poetry, but lecturing about poetry. Which I find more interesting. He had some interesting things to say about poetry vs. prose and the way that we read differently when something is in lines (i.e., we expect unlined prose to follow narrative logic, while we expect lined poetry to follow the logic of sound). He used several examples, including one from King Lear–a set of lines which in the first quarto is prose, but is lineated in the folio edition. Another example was a prose poem by contemporary poet John Ashbery, which starts in lines, but then ends with an un-lineated section. Yet the logic remains poetic rather than narrative, as you’d expect prose to be. Pretty interesting. (I think you could even extend this into the filmic arena, actually…perhaps in the way some films suppress narrative logic in favor of formal logic.)

Anyway, one of his examples was from James Joyce’s Ulysses–the “Sirens” section, which is lined. I haven’t read Ulysses, but the speaker pointed out that this poetic part, which seems semantically meaningless, is mirrored by the prose of the next section. This section is the pure sound without the narrative explanation. I can’t decide whether this makes me scared to death to read Ulysses, or really eager to do so. Here’s the poetic section in question:

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.
Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who’s in the….peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
O rose! Castile. The moon is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Bloomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.

I like verbal experimentation, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get past the sounds and connect it with any meaning whatsoever, the way real Joyce people do. I had enough trouble keeping track of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is nowhere near as experimental as this. But if I want to focus in any way on literary modernism….gotta have Joyce. Like I said, reading this passage both attracts and repells me. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do…

Meant to post this Thursday. Forgot. That’s what I get for writing it early and leaving it in draft status…ah well.

This week’s trailers. My pick for one I’d go see: The Lookout. My pick for top box office of this group: Blades of Glory. The art film of the week is Denmark’s After the Wedding, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but it’s only in New York and LA. I looked up the theatre listings for New York the other day just for kicks, and almost packed up my belongings to move there that instant. But then I reminded myself that by the time I paid the rent, I wouldn’t be able to afford the movie tickets. Or the parking. Or the cab fare. Or food. So I decided to wait for more opportune circumstances to avail myself of the incredible New York filmgoing scene.

Trailers and commentary after the jump.

Click here to read on!

This is late because my host had server issues.

Ryan has been Sanjayaed. And the show has hit a new low. Wow. Actually, on him, it sort of looks like one of those Roman Centurian helmets.

Horsies! A little better than the previous Ford videos so far this year. Still not, you know, music video classics. ;)

Results after the jump.

Gwen Stefani performs. Can we hope that it won’t suck like most results show performances? I have high hopes. I mean, most of the time the performers are old. Gwen is at the TOP of her game. I bet she’d be fun to hang out with. She doesn’t seem like, pretentious and stuff, like a lot of big stars. I still like No Doubt better than Gwen solo, though.

Click here to read on!

This should be interesting. I like Gwen Stefani. Okay, I like No Doubt, and I don’t mind Gwen Stefani’s solo stuff. Exactly how well the Idols are going to do Stefani/pop songs…yet to be determined. I’m not hugely optimistic, but that gives them lots of room to impress me, right?

Wow, she looks really different when she’s not…you know…in a music video. Hmm. Also, how old is she? She looks younger than some of the Idols, but I’m not sure that can be the case–No Doubt has been around for a while.

LaKisha Jones
song: Last Dance
original performer: Donna Summer

I’m tired of “Last Dance.” But she did a good job with it. (You may need to excuse me tonight; I’m cooking, too [I know, right?], and I’m a little distracted.)

Chris Sligh
song:
original performer:

I mostly missed that, but it didn’t impress me from the kitchen, and obviously didn’t impress the judges. His schtick is starting to get annoying, too.

Gina Glocksen
song:
original performer:

Okay, see, I was going to say it was a little boring, but the judges’ reactions make me think I just couldn’t hear it well enough over the cooking. (Yeah, I’m excited about the cooking. Shoot me.)

Sanjaya Malakar
song: Bathwater
original performer: No Doubt

OMG HIS HAIR. Also, hee to Gwen’s commentary on him. Might not have been his best move to pick one of her songs. Just a thought. I’m sorry, I was too distracted by the hair to hear the song. It wasn’t, like, horrible, but it wasn’t, like, good.

Haley Scarnato
song:
original performer:

I’m sorry, but she just has one of the most beautiful tone qualities in this competition. If she just had the same kind of power behind it that Kat did last year, she’d be more of a contender. Very good decision to again choose a dress that shows her legs. Because they’re her secret weapon. Or, not so secret. Maybe. Whatever, I liked it. But I’m biased.

Phil Stacey
song: Every Breath You Take
original performer: The Police

I’m over Phil. I don’t know why. He was always sort of a on-the-fence guy for me. He’s got a good voice, but he just doesn’t hit me.

Melinda Doolittle
song:
original performer:

There’s just really no comparison between Melinda and everyone else in the competition. She’s on her own plane of existence. In a good way. In a very, very, very good way. Touchdown.

Blake Lewis
song:
original performer:

No beatboxing. But it wouldn’t have fit with the song, so it’s good that he didn’t. He’s still super-sexy and I still want him. Beatboxing or no. Hee…the guys both thought it was a little boring, and Paula’s like, NO. See, it’s a girl/guy thing. He’ll have all the girls on his side pretty much no matter what he does.

Jordin Sparks
song: Hey Baby
original performer: No Doubt

More musical than Gwen thought it was! Hee. That’s just funny. She’s got the voice to handle Gwen’s songs, too. Difficult song to sing, and she did a great job! Lots of fun. Now I want to listen to No Doubt for the rest of the night.

Chris Richardson
song: Don’t Speak
original performer: No Doubt

Woo hoo! Classic No Doubt! Really good fit for his voice, too. I like the way he’s softened it up.

This is a sort of weird week. No one crashed and burned, really, and no one (except maybe Melinda and Jordin) really blew it out.

Best This Week: Melinda, Jordin, LaKisha
Going Home: Too hard to call. I’m still all for voting Sanjaya off, but I’m not thinking that will happen. Bottom three: Sanjaya, Gina, Chris S. Probably Haley instead of Gina or Chris S. But I’m not going to think about that right now.

Notwithstanding the Veneration due, and paid to Homer, it is very strange, yet true, that among the most learn’d, and the greatest Admirers of Antiquity, there is scarce to be found, who ever read the Iliad, with that Eagerness and Rapture, which a Woman feels when she reads the Novel of Zaida¹; and as to the common Mass of Readers, less conversant with letters, but not perhaps endow’d with a less Share of Judgment and Wit, few have been able to go through the whole Iliad, without struggling against a secret Dislike, and some have thrown it aside after the fourth or fifth Book. How does it come to pass, that Homer has so many Admirers and so few Readers? And is at the same Time worshipp’d and neglected? (Voltaire, An Essay on Epick Poetry, 48-49)

The more things change, the more they stay the same…there were fake bibliophiles even back in the 18th century! (I typed that from a fascimile, thus the weird spellings and capitalization. I could’ve modernized it, but why? But I did use a regular “s” everytime he had an “s” that looks like an “f”. That’s the bad thing about fascimile versions.) Anyway. I found that amusing. I can just see some 18th-century schoolboy hurling his Homer across the room.

¹ Apparently a popular novel of the time. I found one Zaida written by Augustus von Kotzebue, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the same, since this essay was published in 1727, and Kotzebue wasn’t born until, like 1760. In any case, novels were new at the time and generally held in contempt and considered only suitable for flighty women, which is the import of what he’s saying here.

I feel for A.D. Harvey and the research he put into writing the Neo-classical vs. Romantic section of this book Literature and History, especially in hunting down and examining the hundreds of epics written according to the Neo-classical guidelines in the late-18th, early-19th century, hoping to come up with something to rival the ancient Greeks.

I have hunted the early nineteenth-century epic through bibliographies and literary journals, ordering up hundred weights of volumes, some handsome quartos in crumbling calf, others cheap editions with mildewed uncut pages, rare, sometimes unique survivors of the piled-up brand-new volumes which once went forth from the warehouse with the pride of the epic poet and have been long since almost all consumed by the various destructiveness and impatiences of the world; I have turned page after page insistently different yet endlessly the same, like tombstones in a forgotten war cemetery; I have searched through the obscuring medium of French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Danish, Swedish and Dutch for a glimmer of hitherto unacknowledged genius, a unique sensibility attempting to liberate itself from the marble blocks of verse, a voice expressing a perception of something that needed to be preserved; and sometimes I have thought that all I was achieving with my growing lists of titles was that for the first time statistical proof was being given of how many boring people there were in the early nineteenth-century (137-138).

It’s rare that a scholarly volume will make me laugh out loud, but that did. Oh, those Neo-classicists and their sameness-inducing rule-bounded-ness.

In other news, I burned my brownies. :( Note to self: when the timer goes off, TAKE THE FOOD OUT. *facepalm*

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Well, Grease: You’re the One That I Want just ended, and I am sad, because I enjoyed that show much more than I had any right to. It’s the Broadway. I LOVE me some Broadway, and I don’t get enough of it. And without spoiling it, because I hate when I randomly come across blogs and spoil myself for reality shows, I’ll just say that that the right people won, for me, although I liked both sets in the final four. Now I want to go to Broadway and see the show. Of course, that’s precisely what the producers are hoping I do, so I think I’ll be rebellious and not. At least, that’s the reason I’m going to give, rather than it’s too far away and too expensive. Yeah. That’s it.

So, NBC? Please do more! I guess there probably isn’t a Broadway revival of a well-known musical like Grease going on every six months, though, is there? And other producers are probably going to wait to see if these two can carry a full show or if David Ian loses his shirt on this thing before they venture to do it themselves. Still. I WANT BROADWAY.

In other TV news, I’m really tired of The Amazing Race coming on late and screwing with my DVR. Is that because of sports stuff in the afternoon? Because about 3/4 of the time, 60 Minutes runs till about 7:30, with throws off TAR by half an hour, and my DVR isn’t smart enough to compensate.