I just wanted to say (albeit later than I should), that I've read Terese Coe's The Everyday Uncommon with enormous pleasure. The book starts with a very fine verse letter to Virginia Woolf, then ranges over a surprisingly broad number of experiences and locales, all of it underpinned by a clarity of line that reminded me of Housman. Bravo Terese!

I'm also getting to other new books by Sphereans with lots of admiration.

Dave

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited June 28, 2005).]

I was also much entertained by Terese's book and particularly by this which I took to be an apt metaphor for mothering the family.

Ark

The river’s up, we’re flooded, launch the ark!
The rubber dinghy’s loaded with the food,
The fishing gear, the children—let’s embark
and head out to the Isles of Altitude,
where we can find a perch to ululate
and mull the tales of far-flung inundation.
Malaria, Mosquitoes? I’ll uncrate
the quinine, homing pigeons, medication.

The mainsail’s torn, good water’s all sold out,
the chimps are in the crow’s nest with your headset,
the mildew’s rank, we’ve lost the runabout—
even if I had a cigarette,
I couldn’ t take more torrents and this growing
wilderness of wet things, oceangoing.


A la Housman, why not?

The Elephant or Force of Habit

A tail behind, a trunk in front,
Complete the usual elephant.
The tail in front, the trunk behind
Is what you very seldom find.

If you for specimens should hunt
With trunks behind and tails in front,
That hunt would occupy you long;
The force of habit is so strong.


Jim






[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited June 29, 2005).]

I'm still munching it and have not starting digestion yet, but I concur with David. I have also just finished Josh Mehigan's The Optimist, which I also recommend.

Yes, it's a wonderful book!

David, that's a very generous comment, especially coming from you, and I'm more pleased than I can say that you think so. I love Housman's clarity. Thank you for saying such a kind thing.

Jim, thank you dear. It's perceptive of you to interpret "Ark" as a poem about mothering; that's true of course, even though I was thinking about these outre global weather anomalies when I wrote it. The weather wouldn't be so threatening, though, if one weren't worried about children. (As with everything else that's threatening.) Thanks for helping me see another side of the poem. That elephant poem is super! Probably "Dolpo Dog" and "Vivienne and Vita" reveal more about my own family than anything else in the book, but that one does as well, as you say.

Michael, I didn't even know you had a copy of the book. (Are you related to Marion Shore, by the way? I've sometimes wondered about that.) Thank you, enjoy, and good digesting!

Bob, thanks a bunch, I appreciate your approval. You must be hip-deep in packing boxes now, and I don't envy you that. I hope the move is good for you and the divine S and L (not Savings and Loan).

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited June 30, 2005).]

Cheryl Snell's review of my book has been published at The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com/discus/me...2304/2702.html

I found out recently I was a semi-finalist in the 2005 Nimrod/Hardman Prize for my poem, "Letter to Anton Chekhov." Also, Smartish Pace has accepted three Ronsard translations and asked for several more.

And Mobius will publish "The Vagaries of English" and "Ubi Sunt: the Fifties" (with a different title, as Jean Hull Herman suggested, and of course with credit to the brilliant Sam Gwynn for the concept).

Many thanks to all here for the workshopping of many of these poems!



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited July 29, 2005).]