{"id":17988,"date":"2016-05-06T11:51:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17988"},"modified":"2018-08-15T07:38:51","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T11:38:51","slug":"le-mot-exact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/le-mot-exact\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Mot Exact<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

[Image: Cartoon by James Thurber, originally published in <\/em>The New Yorker December 3, 1932. Caption there: “Touch\u00e9!” One story about this drawing — I have no idea how accurate — says that the magazine’s editors came up with the cartoon caption first, but needed a cartoonist to illustrate it. They assigned it to Thurber because they didn’t want to gross out the squeamish: no one could possibly believe Thurber-drawn characters would bleed.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

It’s not that poetry reveals more about the world, it doesn’t, but it reveals more about our interactions with the world than our other modes of expression. And it doesn’t reveal more about ourselves alone in isolation, but rather it reveals that mix of self and other, self and surrounding, where the world ends and we begin, where we end and the world begins.<\/em> That’s the terrain of poetry, and I think that if we experience the world through our senses, or what we recall of the world in memory, or of our experience in memory, poetry has more to say about that than anything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mark Strand [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every spring
\nI hear the thrush singing
\nin the glowing woods
\nhe is only passing through.
\nHis voice is deep,
\nthen he lifts it until it seems
\nto fall from the sky.
\nI am thrilled.
\nI am grateful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, by the end of morning,
\nhe’s gone, nothing but silence
\nout of the tree
\nwhere he rested for a night.
\nAnd this I find acceptable.
\nNot enough is a poor life.
\nBut too much is, well, too much.
\nImagine Verdi or Mahler
\nevery day, all day.
\nIt would exhaust anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Oliver [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a> (in a slightly different translation):<\/p>\n

How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Friedrich Nietzsche [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the stuff readers often cite as “risky” doesn’t strike me that way at all. What’s really risky, I think, for all writers, is staying with a sensation or image or idea that you have no words for at all and are certain is way bigger than you are. Being up against a thing—a sensation, an idea, a whole project unfolding—that you just aren’t at all sure you can make, a thought you aren’t at all sure you can realize (or one that you won’t realize as vital when it’s there in front of you!) is the big, long-term, committed risk of writing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lia Purpura [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Picture of Little Letters<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think I like this room.
\nThe curtains and the furniture aren’t the same
\nOf course, but the light comes in the window as it used to
\nLate in the morning, after the others had gone to work.
\nYou can even shave in it. On the dresser with the mirror
\nAre a couple of the pictures we took one afternoon
\nLast May, walking down the alley in the late sunlight.
\nI remember now how we held hands for fifteen minutes<\/p>\n

Afterwards. The words meander through the mirror
\nBut I don\u2019t want them now, I don’t want these abbreviations.
\nWhat I want in poetry is a kind of abstract photography
\nOf the nerves, but what I like in photography
\nIs the poetry of literal pictures of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The late afternoon sunlight is slanting through the window
\nAgain, sketching the room in vague gestures of discontent
\nThat roll off the mind, and then only seem to disappear.
\nWhat am I going to do now? And how am I going to sleep tonight?<\/p>\n

A peculiar name flickers in the mirror, and then disappears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(John Koethe [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

“…We don’t give our consciousness sufficient credit for its ability to take in noisy, ambiguous, contradictory givens from the senses, and sort it out: to say ‘this pattern of givens equals the copper bowl that is in front of me now and that was in front of me a moment ago,’ to confer thisness<\/em> on what we perceive. I know you may feel uncomfortable with religious language, but it seems miraculous that our consciousness can do this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Neal Stephenson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The East Berliner, 1989<\/strong><\/p>\n

They didn’t come for the bananas,
\nbut everyone who came through
\nthat hole in the wall wanted one,
\nthe West ready with its Welkommen!<\/em>
\nmountains of yellow.
\nAfter twenty-eight years of concrete-cold
\ndays and only those few flowers
\ndefiant in the cracks of denial,
\nimagine the yellow-fresh sight,
\nthat spike on the tongue,
\nthe fireworks and flares
\nshot through the half-language
\nof heavy machines shattering
\nthe cold Baltic chill, the half-song,
\nhalf-wail of horns, sirens and shouts
\nand behind it all, Beethoven’s 9th,
\nthen that East Berliner, shuffling out,
\nhatless and dazed in a worm-eaten brown coat
\nto see it, and not believe it—
\nthe bright yellow word he\u2019ll take home
\nto his wife, tight in his fist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ginger Murchison [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: Cartoon by James Thurber, originally published in The New Yorker December 3, 1932. Caption there: “Touch\u00e9!” One story about this drawing — I have no idea how accurate — says that the magazine’s editors came up with the cartoon caption first, but needed a cartoonist to illustrate it. They assigned it to Thurber because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"James Thurber. Mary Oliver. Neal Stephenson. Et al. -- masters, every one, of 'Le Mot Exact'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,250,5,50,36,251,713,4159],"tags":[459,595,684,1544,2628,3250,4275,4297,4303,4304],"class_list":{"0":"post-17988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-language-writing_cat","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-humor-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-the-new-yorker","16":"tag-mary-oliver","17":"tag-mark-strand","18":"tag-james-thurber","19":"tag-friedrich-nietzsche","20":"tag-lia-purpura","21":"tag-neal-stephenson","22":"tag-ginger-murchison","23":"tag-touche","24":"tag-httpsbooks-google-combooksidh8v_awaaqbajpgpa18vonepageqffalse","25":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4G8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17988"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20522,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17988\/revisions\/20522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}