Ulysses was distracted

Thor's February 2nd mailbox was thawing out sufficient to receive a good word of advice this morning from Chӧgyam Trungpa:

“Don't mistake the mask and the suit of armor that we’re wearing for the real body, the real birthday suit.” Yeah, it makes swimming the Watercourse much more difficult than needs be.

Speaking of deep waters reflected in the morning mail: Today marks the 141st anniversary of James Joyce's birth, in 1882 Dublin. And, a reminder: Bloomsday this year will fall on Friday, June 16.

Literature and media are increasingly considered distractions at the same time we seem to want more of both. Marshall McLuhan argued that electronic media would rewire our brains.

Frustrated by contemporary distractions? This longing to return to a past age of properly managed attention and memory is hardly new. Our age of distraction and forgetting joins the many others on historical record: the Roman empire of Seneca, Plato, the Song Dynasty of Zhu, the Reformation of Calvin. – Aeon essay 2/2/23.

Here is another arguably worthy distraction emerging from today's mail: A decent summary of Joyce's Ulysses, its legacy, and a note re: Sylvia Beach, Joyce's publisher and owner of Shakespeare and Co. in Paris at the time.

Frog Songs

In Odin’s mailbox this first day of February 1, 2023

Two remarkable poets were born on this date. Galway Kinnell in the 1927 of Providence, Rhode Island. He died in 2014. Kinnell was another influencer of Yers Trooley's turn toward the poet's life. And, Langston Hughes was born on today's date in the 1902 world of Joplin, Missouri.

First Song – Galway Kinnell

Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.

Soon their sound was pleasant for the boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.

It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder's ache
A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.

Turning

In Tew's last day in January 2023 mailbox . . .

… some significant anniversaries recently:

The 1860 birth of Anton Chekhov. The playwright was born 163 years ago Sunday in Taganrog, Russia; in 1845 Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was published in the New York Evening Mirror. Sunday was also the 286th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Paine; the writer (Common Sense) and politician was born in 1737 Thetford, England. And Edward Abbey was born on Sunday's date in 1927; The novelist and essayist was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Abbey's publishing gave us Fire on the Mountain and Desert Solitaire in 1968, and The Monkey Wrench Gang in 1975.

Today marks the births of the Trappist monk and prolific writer Fr. Thomas Merton in 1915 Prades, France; and novelists John O'Hara in 1905 Pottsville, Pennsylvania and Norman Mailer in1923 Long Branch, New Jersey. For another take on Mailer, see The Guardian post.

Yesterday was the 88th anniversary of Richard Brautigan's birth. The poet and novelist was born on this date in 1935 Tacoma, Washington. A prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four books of poetry. He died by his own will in an apparent suicide in 1984. His novella Trout Fishing in America and a short collection of poems titled Revenge of the Lawn were instrumental in my slow turn from academia toward poetry. I'm still turning.