http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2011/dec/12/ts-eliot-poetry-prize-pulled-out
Interesting to see what she thinks is the place of poetry, and how poetry and economy are at odds, a viewpoint shared with writers down the centuries...Yeats, Gissing, P. B. Shelley spring to mind...
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Love, love, love this book. There are just some books that when you lose yourself in them, you do what tends to be known by the cliche of 'finding yourself'. For me, this was one of those books. I got absolutely lost in it, and wow. Here I am with a subtle but fundamental shift in paradigm.
Mrs Dalloway reveals the interior worlds of several characters, most of them somehow connected with socialite Clarissa Dalloway, over the course of a single day in 1920's London, as Clarissa prepares to host a party. Written in almost continuous prose, unbroken by chapters, the narrative flickers seamlessly between characters as they pass each other in the street etc. A large part of the narrative focuses on Clarissa's past loves.
I loved Virginia Woolf's style. I have never read her before, but I fell absolutely in love with her on the first reading. Her ability to convey the second-by-second experience of what it's like to be a person was beautiful, poetic, apt. It reminded me of D. H. Lawrence a lot, but was so much more readable. Whereas Lawrence verges on the ridiculous on occasion, describing people 'wincing through their wombs' etc., in Mrs. Dalloway I felt Woolf pitched it perfectly. I could not put this book down, I was absolutely swept up in the flittering and flurrying of 1920's London, to the extent that I had severe physical pangs for the British Museum, white marble terraces with black doors in leafy boulevards, and black cabs.
Definitely a book I need to read more than once. Now that it has changed my life I think I should probably go back and look at language, context, etc., the stuff I am supposed to be studying it for...sorry for the crap review, it's just my mind is still reeling from this one. Profound. Absolutely profound!
Mrs Dalloway reveals the interior worlds of several characters, most of them somehow connected with socialite Clarissa Dalloway, over the course of a single day in 1920's London, as Clarissa prepares to host a party. Written in almost continuous prose, unbroken by chapters, the narrative flickers seamlessly between characters as they pass each other in the street etc. A large part of the narrative focuses on Clarissa's past loves.
I loved Virginia Woolf's style. I have never read her before, but I fell absolutely in love with her on the first reading. Her ability to convey the second-by-second experience of what it's like to be a person was beautiful, poetic, apt. It reminded me of D. H. Lawrence a lot, but was so much more readable. Whereas Lawrence verges on the ridiculous on occasion, describing people 'wincing through their wombs' etc., in Mrs. Dalloway I felt Woolf pitched it perfectly. I could not put this book down, I was absolutely swept up in the flittering and flurrying of 1920's London, to the extent that I had severe physical pangs for the British Museum, white marble terraces with black doors in leafy boulevards, and black cabs.
Definitely a book I need to read more than once. Now that it has changed my life I think I should probably go back and look at language, context, etc., the stuff I am supposed to be studying it for...sorry for the crap review, it's just my mind is still reeling from this one. Profound. Absolutely profound!
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Catch-up and Pig by Andrew Cowan
The irony is, I've just finished my first semester of my degree in Eng Lit at UEA, and have been reading all sorts, but haven't found the time to write about any of the texts I've come across. Apologies for such a long lonely desolate gap in blogging, but rest assured I will try and be a bit less useless from now on!
I've been writing lots - had a gap where I didn't seem to be able to write at all, and then when I finally did start writing it all came out as self-indulgent crap. Although there have been some good things I've written...lots of lyrics, for example, and an epic prose poem, and I started writing some short stories and a play script...poetry is still the only thing I seem able to finish off to any degree of finished-ness, but I'm beginning to dip my toes in other things, we shall see where it takes me...
Possibly the biggest change since I last blogged is that my whole life has been turned upside-down, my horizons have been broadened, my world view rounded, my personal development developed, my heart and soul have been made exultant, my intellect has been astounded etc. etc. by my new love for the Romantics. Primary school murdered Wordsworth for me cruelly and in cold blood many years ago, but I have rediscovered him through The Prelude. In terms of studying it, it's a pain in the arse because every sentence is about 2385082370875023 lines long and by the time you get to a full stop you can't remember what on earth he was talking about at the beginning. But even so, I loved it. And Percy Bysshe Shelley! What a babe! What a legend! Me and Shelley, we got a thang going on. I love that dude. The epicnosity of ol' Percy B. cannot be described. Basically he's just a well cool dude.
What I love about the Romantics is how kick-arse they were. They were absolutely radical, and I hadn't appreciated that before. Also, Wordsworth was a bit of a babe for being in France during the Revolution. And they still interest me despite the fact that most of them became beige beaurocratic Tories in later life (although Shelley - what an awesome dude he was! - wrote an Elegy for Wordsworth when Ol' Bill was still alive to bemoan his loss of principles and abandonment of his duty to the Great Goddess Poesia). Who would've thought it? Me absolutely besotted by the Romantics?!
Anyway, aside from Ol' Bill and a bit of Percy Bysshe I've had John Gower, Chaucer, Hildegard of Bingen, George Gissing, Yeats, Deborah Eisenberg, Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Derek Mahon and so many more, thrust at me with instructions to devour them and come back with some ideas. Loving every second of it. I shall review Deborah Eisenberg at a later date for sure, as I AM ACTUALLY HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH HER WRITING.
Anyway, I also skimmed Eugene Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros' for a French Module (in the original French). Very interesting play. I think I'd like to see it on the stage though; it was some what depressing rushing it within the last two days I had to write an essay on it. And also, again for a French module, I have been organising a bilingual poetry slam event. Despite the unhelpful interfering of a particularly negative tutor who twisted our arms and made us cancel our first planned event, it is back on for January now. Fingers crossed all goes to plan. It probably won't. But at least it was a good idea in the first place, it had potential to be amazing, and I can now turn to the uplifting and sustaining works of the Romantics to cheer myself up if it turns out to be a complete flop. But yeah, anyway, if anybody reading this happens to be in Norwich on January 24th, head down to the Workshop on Earlham Road. There will be food, there will be booze (you have to pay, we're students, we can't afford it, sorry) and there will be poetry. So come on down and help make it a success, so that I don't have to seek comfort in the papery posthumous arms of Percy. Please.
Anyway, onto Andrew Cowan's 'Pig' which I have just read in preparation for next semester's so-called hard work. 'Pig' tells the story of Danny, who lives on the outskirts of an industrial town that has suffered with the closing of its steel works. His grandparents live in a cottage, where they grow their own food and keep a pig. When Danny's gran dies, and his Grandad is removed to a home, he takes on caring for the pig and looking after the house. He and his Indian girlfriend Surinder use it as a meeting place. Their relationship is secret and set against a backdrop of racist tension. As the summer progresses, this tension begins to rise and Danny and Surinder's hiding place is in jeopardy from the encroaching of a theme park to be built behind the cottage.
I enjoyed 'Pig'. What struck me about Cowan's writing was the attention to detail. The appearance, smells, textures of settings in particular was highly evocative and very skillfully crafted. The characters were believable, and the voice of Danny was convincing (although I felt he was maybe portrayed as a little younger than he was supposed to be). I think the novel stands on the intense detail that Cowan manages to convey. What would otherwise be a fairly ordinary novel about fairly ordinary people in fairly ordinary situations becomes a page-turner through the quality of the writing. That said, I was glad to finish the book, and to be able to move on. It felt like a holiday read, a book to ease me into something I could really get my literature-hungry teeth into (now halfway through Mrs Dalloway, and loving it). So yeah, it was a nice book, a pretty good book, but not one I'd go back to (unless I had to study it...oh, wait!) and not one that made my imagination do dizzying loop-de-loops or scale great heights of intellectual magnificence...
Anyway, that is it for now. I see that I have two new followers. Welcome, and thank you! I'm on the old Twit-twoo if you're interested, it's @FloMoses.
Anyway, obrigada for your patience and ate ja :)
I've been writing lots - had a gap where I didn't seem to be able to write at all, and then when I finally did start writing it all came out as self-indulgent crap. Although there have been some good things I've written...lots of lyrics, for example, and an epic prose poem, and I started writing some short stories and a play script...poetry is still the only thing I seem able to finish off to any degree of finished-ness, but I'm beginning to dip my toes in other things, we shall see where it takes me...
Possibly the biggest change since I last blogged is that my whole life has been turned upside-down, my horizons have been broadened, my world view rounded, my personal development developed, my heart and soul have been made exultant, my intellect has been astounded etc. etc. by my new love for the Romantics. Primary school murdered Wordsworth for me cruelly and in cold blood many years ago, but I have rediscovered him through The Prelude. In terms of studying it, it's a pain in the arse because every sentence is about 2385082370875023 lines long and by the time you get to a full stop you can't remember what on earth he was talking about at the beginning. But even so, I loved it. And Percy Bysshe Shelley! What a babe! What a legend! Me and Shelley, we got a thang going on. I love that dude. The epicnosity of ol' Percy B. cannot be described. Basically he's just a well cool dude.
What I love about the Romantics is how kick-arse they were. They were absolutely radical, and I hadn't appreciated that before. Also, Wordsworth was a bit of a babe for being in France during the Revolution. And they still interest me despite the fact that most of them became beige beaurocratic Tories in later life (although Shelley - what an awesome dude he was! - wrote an Elegy for Wordsworth when Ol' Bill was still alive to bemoan his loss of principles and abandonment of his duty to the Great Goddess Poesia). Who would've thought it? Me absolutely besotted by the Romantics?!
Anyway, aside from Ol' Bill and a bit of Percy Bysshe I've had John Gower, Chaucer, Hildegard of Bingen, George Gissing, Yeats, Deborah Eisenberg, Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Derek Mahon and so many more, thrust at me with instructions to devour them and come back with some ideas. Loving every second of it. I shall review Deborah Eisenberg at a later date for sure, as I AM ACTUALLY HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH HER WRITING.
Anyway, I also skimmed Eugene Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros' for a French Module (in the original French). Very interesting play. I think I'd like to see it on the stage though; it was some what depressing rushing it within the last two days I had to write an essay on it. And also, again for a French module, I have been organising a bilingual poetry slam event. Despite the unhelpful interfering of a particularly negative tutor who twisted our arms and made us cancel our first planned event, it is back on for January now. Fingers crossed all goes to plan. It probably won't. But at least it was a good idea in the first place, it had potential to be amazing, and I can now turn to the uplifting and sustaining works of the Romantics to cheer myself up if it turns out to be a complete flop. But yeah, anyway, if anybody reading this happens to be in Norwich on January 24th, head down to the Workshop on Earlham Road. There will be food, there will be booze (you have to pay, we're students, we can't afford it, sorry) and there will be poetry. So come on down and help make it a success, so that I don't have to seek comfort in the papery posthumous arms of Percy. Please.
Anyway, onto Andrew Cowan's 'Pig' which I have just read in preparation for next semester's so-called hard work. 'Pig' tells the story of Danny, who lives on the outskirts of an industrial town that has suffered with the closing of its steel works. His grandparents live in a cottage, where they grow their own food and keep a pig. When Danny's gran dies, and his Grandad is removed to a home, he takes on caring for the pig and looking after the house. He and his Indian girlfriend Surinder use it as a meeting place. Their relationship is secret and set against a backdrop of racist tension. As the summer progresses, this tension begins to rise and Danny and Surinder's hiding place is in jeopardy from the encroaching of a theme park to be built behind the cottage.
I enjoyed 'Pig'. What struck me about Cowan's writing was the attention to detail. The appearance, smells, textures of settings in particular was highly evocative and very skillfully crafted. The characters were believable, and the voice of Danny was convincing (although I felt he was maybe portrayed as a little younger than he was supposed to be). I think the novel stands on the intense detail that Cowan manages to convey. What would otherwise be a fairly ordinary novel about fairly ordinary people in fairly ordinary situations becomes a page-turner through the quality of the writing. That said, I was glad to finish the book, and to be able to move on. It felt like a holiday read, a book to ease me into something I could really get my literature-hungry teeth into (now halfway through Mrs Dalloway, and loving it). So yeah, it was a nice book, a pretty good book, but not one I'd go back to (unless I had to study it...oh, wait!) and not one that made my imagination do dizzying loop-de-loops or scale great heights of intellectual magnificence...
Anyway, that is it for now. I see that I have two new followers. Welcome, and thank you! I'm on the old Twit-twoo if you're interested, it's @FloMoses.
Anyway, obrigada for your patience and ate ja :)
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