Poetry and April in Paris, BookMarks Update April, 2024

Read my Review

Friends:

'April in Paris' and 'April Showers' are appropriate songs for the two weeks we spent in Paris, and since April is also National Poetry Month, books about France and poetry were the themes that informed my reading this month. These are the books that I read:

Among the many books about Paris, I chose to re-read two favorites. Hemingway's "A Movable Feast", published posthumously from various notes and drafts he had left, is his homage to the Paris of the 1920's when he was, himself, in his 20's, newly married and fresh from WWI. Eighty years later Adam Gopnik wrote 'Paris to the Moon' as the 20th C was about to disappear in the rearview mirror and describes being in Paris with his young family while writing for 'The New Yorker'. Both of these superb writers bring their unique style and experiences to these books. Hemingway struggles with his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, writes his first novel, and agonizes about how a new love will replace his first wife. Gopnik is more centered, established, and fun-loving. His observations about the Parisians, his young son, and being an American in Paris are often laugh out loud funny while also resonating with what we experienced there during our April stay.

To read Simenon while in Paris and to actually walk the streets along 'with' Maigret as he solves yet another murder was a rare treat. While "Maigret and the Ghost" may not be the best of the 75 Maigret novels, it was good enough to keep me turning the pages and showed the Chief Inspector at his most insightful and effective. If you don't know Simenon's fantastic creation, do read one of the 75!

I've always been fascinated by Napoleon, though I would have been hard-pressed to tell you much about him. Maybe it was the hand in his shirt reminding me of my own struggles with heartburn or maybe it was that cool three-cornered cap so evident in David's staggering painting of 'Napoleon Crossing the Alps'. Reading "Napoleon: A Concise Biography" of this young Corsican who became a general of the French Army at 27 and the Emperor of France at 35, was also timely since many of lthe streets in the 17th Arrondissement where we were staying were named after famous battles he had won---Wagram, Jena, Austerlitz, Marengo. I'm usually cowed by the 1000 page doorstop-sized biographies that are the rule these days, so finding this well-written, concise biography was perfect for my short attention span.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) is credited by many with the invention of the short story, and 'Mademoiselle Fifi and Other Stories collects some of his 'greatest hits'. These twenty stories are terrific with vivid characters caught up in realistic situations often tensely unfolding with a surprise, abrupt, and wholly believable ending. Within the first page or two of each story, I was totally engaged and eagerly read on to discover what happened to the characters. There was not a single dud among the 20. It was fun finding this volume in Simpson's, the oldest English bookstore in Paris. This is a great book to keep on your night table, dipping into a story for that 15-20 minutes before you fall asleep, book on chest, and light still burning.

Ed Yong has no clear connection with either Paris or poetry but is one of the best science writers working today. His previous book, "I Contain Multitudes" about the bacterial biome that lives within our bodies was outstanding, and "An Immense World" was named one of the New York Times Best 10 in 2023. His detailed descriptions of how animals other than we humans experience the world is readable, understandable, and eye-opening. Who knew that elephants could sense vibrations from miles away through receptors on their feet or that bats use echolocation to identify and capture insects while avoiding crashing into the thousands of other bats leaving their cave? If you, like me, are a science nerd, this book is for you. If you cringe when you think of your high school biology class, try this book anyway and expand your awareness, awe, and appreciation of the world we live in.

Finally, to celebrate National Poetry Month, I read one book of poems and two books about poetry. Clive James, who died in 2019, was a polymath who wrote about many topics with humor, skill, and a significant dose of cynicism. He wrote "Sentenced To Life" after being diagnosed with leukemia and being told he was unlikely to live much longer. A new treatment gave him ten more years during which he expressed his embarrassment at still being alive in a weekly column in The Guardian as well as writing poems in a more serious vein. I like his literary criticism and essays more than the poems, but there are a few jewels in there. I'm sad that there will be no further Clive James works for me to read.

Edward Hirsch and Stephanie Burt are, with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, the very models of the modern major poet. Both are productive writers (9 volumes for Hirsch, 14 for Burt), both have received top literary prizes, both teach (Hirsch at Houston University, Burt at Harvard), and both evidently felt the need to explain their art form and try to convince readers to give it a try. Why do poets write in defense of poetry while novelists, short story writers, essayists, and biographers feel no need to defend their choice of expression? Probably because many (?most) readers find off-putting the poetry style jargon (villanelle, sonnet, iambs, anapests....) or the often indirect or even inscrutable way of expressing ideas. Both 'How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry' and 'Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems' go a long way to overcoming those concerns as well as introducing the reader to some great poets and timeless works. The 20 years between the publication of these two works is evident in their choice of examples. Hirsch relies largely on Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Williams, Bishop and other classic American poets while most of Burt's poets are writing today, and many of the topics are quite current, e.g. the Iraq war, trump, transgender issues. If I were to choose one of these to read, I'd go with Hirsch, but then again, I'm an old, white, straight guy.

It is the height of irony that during National Poetry Month, my web site, Poetry Tree on the Charles has crashed and is inaccessible. I have my crack tech team (Thank you, Eliza in Salt Lake City) working to resurrect the 12+ years of entries, but so far no luck. Instead of linking to that site, here are two of my all time favorite poems from two all time favorite poets.

Touch Me

by Stanley Kunitz

An Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

One season only,

and it's done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I am frequently struck by the expression of similar thoughts in vastly different mediums. Recently, I came across an example which seemed especially relevant to this stage of my life, one characterized by trying to come to terms with aging, what seems like a rapidly narrowing set of capacities, and a sense that the future will call for a different approach to nearly everything. While searching for some words of wisdom to address these sobering thoughts, I came across good advice from two men who have probably never been mentioned in the same paragraph, William James the 19th C. philosopher and Bob Seger, the 20th C leader of the Silver Bullet Band. James wrote in his 1890 'Principles of Psychology' that "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook" and Seger wrote in his 1980 hit song, 'Against the Wind' "Well those drifter days are past me now/I've got so much more to think about,/Deadlines and Commitments/What to leave in /What to leave out." Wise words from two wise men.

Good reading and good travelling!