A warmth of newborn kittens;
a suckle of queen and her young;
a snooze of kittens in the sunshine;
a tumble of kittens in the violet patch;
a wheedle of felines in the morning
and a squabble at the feeding bowl;
a snuggle of siblings on the window sill;
a quarrel of cats in the moonlight.
(Da capo)
I’m a firm believer that poetry isn’t all about sunny situations and pleasant people, which is one reason why it’s particularly important to separate what’s said in the poem from the person who wrote it.
It is, however, often difficult to show a narrator’s inadequacies without the writer coming across as inadequate as a poet or as a person: if you create a convincingly weak character in your writing, it isn’t always clear that the weakness is intentional.
Continue reading “writers, narrators, realism and reality”
Well, it’s Valentine’s Day , so it seems a good day to post some love poetry. That concept always takes me back to something I read back in 2002 in an interview with Jenaro Talens in the El País literary supplement under the headline “Toda poesía es poesía de amor”. Although I don’t have the original newspaper any more, at the time I made a rough translation of the phrase that leapt out at me:
“All poetry is love poetry. But not in the conventional romantic approach; rather as seen in the impulse of desire towards an otherness…”
The cat in the picture has just been dabbing gently at my fingers, snagging slightly with her claws. This has reminded me of the traditional Spanish joke:
Continue reading “cats, commas and spiders”
More thoughts and words on buses. Starting with my own:
Estación de autobuses
The bus belches, wheezes, shifts
on its haunches and sighs: tired
of waiting for the passengers. They
kick their heels, scuff gravel, grind
cigarette stubs into the ground: tired
of waiting for the bus. The driver
toma su café; se toma
su tiempo.
But, as Flanders and Swann sang, “We like to drive in conveys, we’re most gregarious,” so to make this a proper omnibus edition it seems appropriate to add a few more links.
Continue reading “omnibus edition”
don't confuse the narrator 