Still Unresolved, Again

Checking my journal for 31 December, 2002 - gosh, twenty years ago - I came across this passage: 

I forgot to mention before that I finished Nickleby in KL. The most substantial bit of reading I managed in the rush of making the house livable. The last few chapters flagged a little though not as much as I feared they might. There was real power in the melodramatic sections and bursts of comedy everywhere. An amazingly energetic novel, and much better than critics might lead one to believe.

Realised this meant that it's been two decades since I last read a full novel by Dickens. I know this because with Nickleby I completed all the novels - feeling a bit disappointed there were no more to come, I seem to recall. The only longish thing I've read by the Inimitable since then was Sketches by Boz, which I recall reading in Melbourne, of all places, on one of our December jaunts.

I'm vaguely wondering whether to make a New Year's resolution of making a start on a read-through (or, rather, reread through) of all the major novels, but I doubt that I'll do so, lovely as that sounds. Just got too much on my plate, and still a number of classics of European lit to encounter, never mind stuff from other Far Places. Still, it's nice to contemplate getting immersed in, say, Martin Chuzzlewit to name but one. (A big favourite which I've only read once.)

Not Exactly Finished

I'm feeling a little bit pleased with myself for having completed my cover-to-cover reading of the first volume of The Complete Poems of Archie Ammons. When I excitedly embarked on reading the tome back in late May I don't think I envisaged it taking me the better part of seven months to get to 1977's Highgate Road, but then there were times I found myself so bogged down in particular poems (I'm thinking of Essay on Poetics, I'm thinking of Sphere, among others) that I saw myself still reading the volume in 2022 - not that I would have minded that, but I was keen to move onto Volume 2, or get back to William Carlos Williams (or Robert Lowell, whose big Collected Poems is in my sights.)

By the way, that final short book, Highgate Road, is a belter. Archie at his pithiest, in which mode he excels, as I was previously aware as a devoted fan of his little paperback, The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons. Actually, a few of the Highgate Road poems appear in the collection and it was wonderful encountering them in the bigger volume. Gorgeous stuff!

Oh, and I should finish off here by letting you know that I'm moving on with The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume II: 1939 - 1962. Started last night with The Swaggering Gait and very happy to do so. The great thing about being a poetry-lover is that you really can't lose, eh?

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

Earlier today I chanced a short bit of shaky video, featuring the last moment of King Crimson live. Felt tearful, not just because I'll never get to see the greatest band in the known universe again, but in response to the dignity of Robert uniquely taking the final bow alone.

The Greatest

Finished Ammons's wonderful The Snow Poems today. In a couple of the final sections I caught myself thinking/feeling: This is better than The Wasteland. And Four Quartets. Then thinking: I can't possibly say that; do I really think/feel so? Then thinking: But how about those two other brilliant long poems of the 20C - Crow and Omeros? Is it really better? Then thinking: But it doesn't matter does it? Comparisons are odious/odorous, even if great fun.

Now sort of regarding AA as my idea of the greatest poet (in the English language) of the 20C. But realising that there's quite a list of writers who've occupied that spot in my mind over the years, if only temporarily: Tom Eliot / Yeats / Auden / Robert Lowell / Ted Hughes / Heaney - and, I suppose, Thomas Hardy since nearly all his verse was published after 1900.

Odd that there're no women in my list. Plath, I guess, comes closest, but she seems so much like a special case with a limited body of work. My goodness, what if she'd have lived? Imagine what she might have done had she outlived TH! Also vaguely wondering about Carol Ann Duffy, but she straddles centuries. What if she has a final great period and goes somewhere quite new, a bit like Yeats, unlikely as the comparison sounds?

Again, all a bit pointless, but I find it sort of useful as a way of getting myself doing a bit of thinking.

Mr Teh Tarik - 6

Forgot to mention yesterday that one of the key features of our walk at East Coast Park was my discovery of the excellence of the teh tarik gajah prepared by the Ali Lagoon Corner stall (number 61) at the Lagoon Hawker Centre. Apologies for sounding hideously complacent again, but it's a public service sort of thing to let everyone know this. (Pictorial evidence above - the stall, not the actual tea which, sadly for the environment, came in a plastic cup. But that was the only downside of the experience.)

Sunday In The Park With Noi

We spent the best part of the morning revisiting our old stomping grounds at East Coast Park (pictorial evidence above, and below...) It was a good place to be. A few changes, in terms of new developments in cafes and the like; but lots of old friends, in terms of the splendid trees. Lots of people around also, but sometimes you need people, even if you prefer friendly trees.

Snow On Snow On Snow

I was quite wrong the other day when I confidently predicted I wouldn't see snow on Christmas Day. I've been deeply immersed in the stuff for those parts of the day when I enjoyed reading some segments of Archie Ammons's deeply imaginative immersive epic The Snow Poems. 

When I started on the long poem I forgot that I could easily check the dates of the individual poems comprising the whole in the notes at the back of Volume 1, 1955 - 1977 of The Complete Poems, so I didn't realise, until I checked this morning, that by an odd coincidence I'd reached the poem written on the actual Christmas Eve of 1975 and in the sequence of days that followed (Ammons  writing a poem a day) there was plenty of snow around - wonderfully represented in the great poet's endlessly inventive versifying.

Actually I'd not enjoyed the previous long poem sequence in the volume, Sphere, the Form of a Motion, from 1974, as much as I'd expected I would. It struck me as an unusually abstract, obscurely difficult work. I appreciated it without loving it, if you know what I mean, and that implies a degree of struggling needed to keep going in places. So it was relief to find Ammons on absolute top form in his next extended sequence. Indeed, the editor of the Complete reckons that AA declared The Snow Poems his favourite of the long poems towards the end of his life. I'm finding it such a flowing read that I now think I might meet my target of completing Volume 1 by the year's end, but, I must say, I doubt I'll move right onto Volume 2, 1978 - 2005 next. I've been so immersed in this stuff for so long (the poetry, not the snow) that I think it might be time for a break and a return to progress on William Carlos Williams since I've still got the second volume of the WCW Collected to enjoy.

Compliments of the season to all and hoping you've had a good one, whether snowed in or tropically sweating, whether struggling or flowingly at ease, or whatever!

The Power Of Prayer

On the way to Friday Prayers just now I was listening to a BBC World Service programme related to the world of soccer. It's always a good listen as it features all sorts of interesting angles on the game and is genuinely international in flavour. The piece I caught was about the effects of their religious faith, specifically Christianity, on a couple of players from the EPL, one retired and another still in the game. Both came across as very likable guys with a real sense of groundedness about both their religion and the game. The retired player had only got going in the EPL when he was 27, after his conversion, and it was fascinating to hear how he attributed his late improvement as a player to a new-found sense of perspective resulting from his new-found faith. Anxiety issues that had plagued him since being dropped from the books of Charlton Athletic as a youngster dropped away from him.

He ended up playing for Portsmouth, in the Harry Redknapp era, where he crossed paths with the other player featured, who was in the youth team there during that time. In fact, the programme featured a lovely classic anecdote from Harry himself, relating to the senior player. It seems Harry couldn't find most of the Portsmouth team just before the big game when they were playing the mighty Man U, when the Mighty Reds really were Mighty - the Giggsy, Scholesy, Roy Keane team, three names Harry recalled from the team list he'd just seen. It turns out that his players, having seen the same list, thought it would be a good idea to attend an impromptu prayer meeting set up by the Christian guy - and Harry decided he would attend himself given his own sighting of the list. But then he gleefully chortled that Portsmouth actually won (at Old Trafford, if I'm not mistaken, though I might have got that bit wrong, and can't remember the game myself, probably because I don't want to.)

So there it is: absolute proof of the power of prayer, though painfully so from this perspective.

Not A White Xmas

We were sitting enjoying a cuppa this afternoon in a new coffeeshop in Clementi Mall. Since we'd never been in this spot before the view we were offered, mainly consisting of Clementi Primary School across the road, through some nice big windows, was quite striking for us. Admiring it, in between munching on tasty croissants, Noi suddenly said, more than a little longingly, If only it was snowing!

Gentle Reader, I was shocked. How anyone would want to look out on the dreadful flakes falling (and feel the attendant chill) is quite beyond my understanding. I'm entirely happy to be in a part of the world where we're definitely not going to suffer the archetypal Christmas freeze. I suppose it's no big surprise that my favourite carol is, In the Bleak Mid-Winter (the Holst version.)

New Words For Old

I was nattering to the Missus in the car this afternoon, on the way to the doctor's for the annual medical my employers require me to pass before they give me another contract, when I found myself saying the following, in relation to the latest in the news here related to the pandemic: I'm sure the government are watching very closely for an uptick in Omicron cases.... At this point I suddenly broke off, not because I was stunned by the depth of my rather obvious analysis, but because for the first time in my life, as far as I can remember, I'd used the word uptick out loud. In fact, I pointed out the fact this was so to Noi, who wasn't terribly impressed, probably because she didn't quite get what I was on about anyway, the term being understandably quite foreign to her.

I'm not sure if I was happy or horrified that I'd used the word instead of simply talking about an increase. But I was vaguely impressed at the odd capacity we have of picking up entirely new and cumbersome ways of saying the obvious, as if this came quite naturally.