I'm not a peasant, but I play one on TV

The Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Life Is a Dream by Lewis Spratlan, and we're seeing it this Friday. To prepare myself and to revisit a play that I read as an undergraduate (but which I have absolutely no memory of), I bought a copy of Life Is a Dream (La vida es sueño) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and translated by Gregary Racz.

Gregary Racz's translation of La vida es sueño is, as Racz explains in a note on his translation, "the first attempt to render the drama entirely in analogous meter and rhyme since 1853, when both Denis Florence MacCarthy and Edward FitzGerald, with varying degrees of success, contemporaneously produced full-length English language versions of the play." A reviewer of Racz's translation wrote, "With Calderón utilizing 'a variety of metrical and rhyming patterns,' Racz's attempt to mirror that in the English is particularly noteworthy. Obviously, a bilingual edition, with the Spanish text facing the English one, would be the ideal solution, but fortunately the Spanish text of the play can readily be found on the Internet, and Racz's version does effectively give a sense of the sound and feel of the original for those who want to focus solely on an English text."

Well, that's pretty cool! As I read, I noticed that most of the verse was iambic tetrameter.

What's life? A frenzied, blurry haze.
What's life? Not anything it seems.
A shadow. Fiction filling reams.
All we possess on earth means nil,
For life's a dream, think what you will,
And even all our dreams are dreams.

And as I kept reading, I thought, "Why is this making me nuts? The translation is acclaimed, and Racz seems to have captured the sound and feel of Spanish. Is it me?"

Then I answered my own question: "Yes, you peasant, it is indeed you. You keep thinking about a certain poem by Longfellow, which is also written in iambic tetrameter, and at the end of every speech in Life Is a Dream, you want to say, 'Excelsior!'"

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

Cormac McCarthy's typewriter

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite modern author. One of the happiest days of my life was August 26, 2005, when Michele and I saw him in the Border's bookstore in Santa Fe, and I approached him and introduced myself to him. We talked for about 10 minutes.

I've read all his books, and I think Blood Meridian and Suttree are masterpieces. The first three pages of Suttree are absolutely breathtaking. What would be cooler than owning his typewriter?

Christie's is auctioning his typewriter on Friday, and I've placed an absentee bid. I won't win it, of course, but it's fun to dream.

Cormac McCarthy is god.

"One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward."--John Steinbeck

On the way home from Santa Barbara, Sophie was moving like a spirited horse heading for the barn, and I debated about whether to make a short detour to Meteor Crater or just keep going. I may have been afraid, as John Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley about Yellowstone, that the neighbors would say, "What?! You were that close to Meteor Crater and didn't go?" So I went.

I forked over my 15 bucks (!!!) and schlepped up the stairs to the rim. The wind was howling, and if I had opened my jacket like a sail, I could have been home in about 10 minutes. Because I was so close to the crater, I didn't really grasp the size of the thing. It's big. I said, "Pretty."

The aerial images, however, give a better sense of the size of the crater. In the lower center of the image is the visitors' center. That's one big honkin' hole in the ground.

And so I've told you afterward, and I feel better for it.

National Poetry Month, and it's still not spring

In a Station of the Metro
Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.


Flowering crabapple petals on a snow-wet bough.

Blossoms and snow

National Poetry Month and Spring

in Just-

by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

in Just-

spring       when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far       and       wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

 from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

     the

             goat-footed

balloonMan       whistles

far

and

wee

Mud-luscious, but not in Los 'Mos this morning.

National Poetry Month and Chuckie and Bobbie

When Chuckie and Bobbie were little kids, they would crack up so easily together. It didn't matter if they'd made the joke a hundred times before, it was always new and always hilarious. 

For example, whenever we went to Albuquerque, they'd look for a Sherwin-Williams Paint sign, and when they saw one, they'd say, "Sherwin-Williams Paints cover the earth--with ketchup!" 

Ketchup covering the earth.

The afternoon cartoons were another source of merriment. Mighty Mouse would urge us to "hold on to your seats as we blast off to this and all of your favorite cartoon stars!" So Chuckie and Bobbie would grab their butts and crack up.


Hold on to your seats!

Every year at Christmastime, they'd laugh like little nuts as they limped around the house using candy canes for support. But the most fun was their reading of Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas." They'd read aloud with lots of expression and seriousness until they reached the lines

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Then the giggles would start.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw out the trash!

A visit from St. Nicholas

That was usually as far as they got. They'd be limp with laughter. And so would we.

National Poetry Month and baseball

The Origin of Baseball
Kenneth Patchen

Someone had been walking in and out
Of the world without coming
To much decision about anything.
The sun seemed too hot most of the time.
There weren’t enough birds around
And the hills had a silly look
When he got on top of one.
The girls in heaven, however, thought
Nothing of asking to see his watch
Like you would want someone to tell
A joke – “Time,” they’d say, “what’s
That mean – Time?”, laughing with the edges
Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper
In a madhouse. And he’d stumble over
General Sherman or Elizabeth B.
Browning, muttering, “Can’t you keep
Your big wings out of the aisle?” But down
Again, there’d be millions of people without
Enough to eat and men with guns just
Standing there shooting each other.

So he wanted to throw something
And he picked up a baseball.