Marianne Moore. Complete Poems.

What led me to purchase Marianne Moore’s collection was when I reviewed facsimiles of her work. I cannot recall the name of the poem, but I do recall its several shapes and sizes as it shifted on the page, often with several years between revisions. Stanzas were formed, reformed, indented, and centered only to be un-centered later. Lines were enjambed and words sliced so its last syllable fell to the next line.

I fell in love with Moore the editor. So I bought her Complete Poems with the hope to glimpse her revisions over the years. It wasn’t until later that I discovered this was her Deathbed Edition, which collected poems already revised perhaps a dozen times, while excluding versions seemed deemed less-worthy.

One must wonder why I bitch about a collection that plays like a ‘Best of’ album. My only defense is that I wanted total immersion of her poetry, much like I get with the ‘Complete etc.’ collections.

All-in-all, I reckon it’s a silly complaint. Moore has a poetic sensibility beyond most I’ve read. Her poems are enigmatic and dense, incorporating thoughts and facts and magazine snippets from all across the board. The notes at the end are a helpful in enlightening the condensing and maybe even a little stealing Moore had done. Her mind encapsulated a formidable, even intimidating range of subjects and technical knowledge.

But often the meaning and purpose of her poems are utterly overwhelmed by her musicality. The tight composure of each poem, from its aesthetic beauty on the page to its harmonious sound when recited aloud, astonishes. And it will be what calls me back to her works.

There is a really nice interview in The Paris Review:
http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4637

Car Collision in Mexico.

Beer and cycling don't mix.

Dutch man injures posterior in mooning accident

Wed Jun 4, 1:11 AM ET

UTRECHT, Netherlands - Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a "mooning" that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back "for a joke."

It says that at one point the 21-year-old "pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant" that broke and resulted in "deep wounds to his derriere."

The statement released Tuesday says police detained the three men after the incident Sunday morning. But the cafe owner decided not to press charges after the men agreed to pay for the broken window.

The injured man was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/ap_on_fe_st/mooning_mishap

Jerome K. Jerome. Diary of a Pilgrimage.

The joy of any Jerome K. Jerome book is not the destination but the journey itself. I take that back – the joy of any Jerome book are the digressions and tangents during the journey. He lacks the descriptive detail of, say, Mark Twain or even the later Jack Kerouac. In fact, as travelogues, they’re dull and insipid. Jerome’s strengths are his humorous anecdotes, underlying sarcasm, and the orchestrated, snowballing comedic scenes

His second published work, Diary of a Pilgrimage involves a journey. J. (what the narrator calls himself) and B. head to Germany for the Oberammergau Passion Play, a performance that lasts seven hours.

“Will you come?’ B. asks.
Jerome answers:
I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma was coming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated that if I went I should miss her and might not see her again for years, and decided that I would go.

All of Jerome K. Jerome’s characters are selfish, sarcastic, argumentative, lazy, and Anglo-centric. Consider this characterization in his most famous novel, Three Men in a Boat (1889): “That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.” Nowhere is a better summation of his characters.

Consider the scene when the travelers enter an overbooked carriage with every seat reserved by passengers’ luggage. After some shifting (not to mention moralizing), the two break the unspoken rule of luggage laid means seat saved and take one for themselves. The scene’s joy isn’t until another passenger arrives and also shifts luggage for a seat, a maneuver that infuriates the narrator to berate the culprit, despite having done the same.

The humorous tone of the novel, or diary, changes after the Passion play, for obvious reasons. Jerome is very earnest in his Christian beliefs and I, at least, acknowledge the sentiment and emotions put forth in the performance’s description, though I don’t agree with the beliefs. Its structure is a flaw that almost sinks the book.

Yet all his books seem to have such flaws. Three Men in a Boat is dulled by its insistence to be a travelogue and record well-known landmarks of the River Thames. There is also the aimless wandering of his much later Three Men on the Bummel, which is a journey with no destination. Jeremy Nicholas, President of the Jerome K. Jerome Society, summer it up best:

The trump card that Bummel lacks, and which makes Three Men in a Boat what it is, is the River Thames.... It provides the framework for Jerome's discursive narrative. He can stray from the present adventure as much as he likes...but the river holds the whole thing together and gives the book its satisfying unity. The best television situation comedies rely on this same device, a world with clearly-defined parameters. A ramble through Germany and the Black Forest does not provide that.

The key to the passage, I think, is the reference to television situation comedies: That is what to expect from Jerome. Nothing deep or profound, but the comedy is strong enough to shake giants.