Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Today - Nombre de ______

Love is a beautiful dance that spins
Into the world when the day begins




Sometimes the beautiful are good
And true as they are fair
Sometimes they say please call me up
-- Build castles in the air .....

Her  hands.

Now Snow Again

Now snow again —
“Snow everywhere.
A cold house.
The bright colors of the women”
And my mother
Dying
As if peacefully
at Ten Broek;    I
Can’t cry about that much
Nor about being here
In Yankeeland
Not just so close to homeless, but
So far from home

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The 36 Comic Situations

Also in line with Polti's The 36 Dramatic Situations -- can anyone help me think of some of the main comic situations?

The Ghost River

"The ghost river – everything you are right now, that you will forget when you’re grown up, but that you’ll never stop being."
– from La Vie Promise with Isabelle Huppert.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The 25 Lyric Modes?

With a nod toward Georges Polti's The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, I have been wondering if anyone might like to help me formulate a taxonomy of the lyric modes (or moods) (or authorial stances) perhaps beginning with these:

Anger
Astonishment
Atonement
Complaint
Curiosity
Depiction of or Appreciation of Beauty
Depiction of or Deprecation of Ugliness
Exultation
Fury
Historical Narration
Humor
Joy
Love
Narration
Outrage
Praise
Regret
Sadness

Sarcasm
Wry Wit

Dragging My Shield Behind Me

     Dr. Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington.  "He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something."  Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady?  Was there no romance left among mankind -- no feeling of chivalry?  "He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl, and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it.  It was in this tone that men spoke of women nowadays, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her.
From The Small House at Allington -- by Anthony Trollope

Saturday, July 3, 2010

The Painter's Paramour

“To keep their certainty, they must accuse
All that are different of a base intent,
Pull down established honor,
Hawk for news whatever their loose fantasy invent ....”
William Butler Yeats, "The Leaders of the Crowd"

     “For years, I never knew what to call those colored lights, and before I had a name for them the memory was different.  It was mystery, and close to myth.
     But then my omniscient friend told me that the colored lights were called globos illuminados.  He said the globo man was famous in that part of Mexico, and much in demand at parties and all public celebrations.
     I liked the lights much better, though, when they were just a memory without a name – whey they were dreams.
     And I still think your dreams can rise serenely on the breeze until they self-destruct.  I think your dreams are beautiful and awesome and serene. But life’s not like that.  Life is like the pole.  You know there is a prize.  You know it is impossible to get there by yourself.  But what you don’t know is the way the effort will take all your strength and all of your attention, or how the hecklers in the crowd will hope you don’t succeed because they are afraid to try.”
Christian Gehman, beloved Gravely (Scribner’s, 1984)

     Ah, well, you know -- sometimes things don't work out.  Some books were not meant to be written.  And then there still remain the very real questions -- of what to do next?  of where to go?  where to live? of who still loves me?