{"id":9240,"date":"2011-12-16T12:41:31","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T17:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9240"},"modified":"2013-03-04T13:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T18:34:40","slug":"everything-old-is-new-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/everything-old-is-new-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Old Is New Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[Image: “Extrange shoes,” by user pepel at stock.xchng<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

They miss the whisper that runs
\nany day in your mind,
\n“Who are you really, wanderer?”
\nand the answer you have to give
\nno matter how dark and cold
\nthe world around you is:
\n“Maybe I’m a king.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception. If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, one poet would be enough. But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wallace Stevens)<\/p>\n

…and (highlighted<\/span> portion):<\/p>\n

How It Adds Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.
\nAnd the day I quit the job my father got me.
\nAnd the day I stood outside a door,
\nand listened to my girlfriend making love
\nto someone obviously not me, inside,<\/p>\n

and I felt strange because I didn’t care.<\/p>\n

There was the morning I was born,
\nand the year I was a loser,
\nand the night I was the winner of the prize
\nfor which the audience applauded.<\/p>\n

Then there was someone else I met,
\nwhose face and voice I can\u2019t forget,
\nand the memory of her
\nis like a jail I’m trapped inside,<\/p>\n

or maybe she is something I just use
\nto hold my real life at a distance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happiness<\/em>, Joe says, is a wild red flower<\/em><\/span>
\n plucked from a river of lava <\/span><\/em><\/span>
\n and held aloft on a tightrope<\/em><\/span>
\n strung between two scrawny trees <\/span><\/em><\/span>
\n above a canyon<\/em><\/span>
\n in a manic-depressive windstorm<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,<\/span><\/p>\n

And when you do, you will keep looking for it<\/span>
\n everywhere, for years,<\/span>
\n while right behind you,<\/span>
\n the footprints you are leaving<\/span><\/p>\n

will look like notes<\/span>
\n of a crazy song.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Tony Hoagland)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing…<\/p>\n

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Frost [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like the generosity of numbers.
\nThe way, for example,
\nthey are willing to count
\nanything or anyone:
\ntwo pickles, one door to the room,
\neight dancers dressed as swans.<\/p>\n

I like the domesticity of addition —
\nadd two cups of milk and stir —
\nthe sense of plenty: six plums
\non the ground, three more
\nfalling from the tree.<\/p>\n

And multiplication’s school
\nof fish times fish,
\nwhose silver bodies breed
\nbeneath the shadow
\nof a boat.<\/p>\n

Even subtraction is never loss,
\njust addition somewhere else:
\nfive sparrows take away two,
\nthe two in someone else’s
\ngarden now.<\/p>\n

There’s an amplitude to long division,
\nas it opens Chinese take-out
\nbox by paper box,
\ninside every folded cookie
\na new fortune.<\/p>\n

And I never fail to be surprised
\nby the gift of an odd remainder,
\nfootloose at the end:
\nforty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
\nwith three remaining.<\/p>\n

Three boys beyond their mother’s call,
\ntwo Italians off to the sea,
\none sock that isn’t anywhere you look.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Gustave Flaubert)<\/p>\n

Bob Fosse’s quasi-autobiographical film All That Jazz<\/em> is probably not everyone’s cup of tea; it’s not a typical happy-go-lucky musical, by any means. But this dance number? Wow, hard to resist smiling. Ann Reinking (Fosse’s real-life ex-girlfriend at that time) as Roy Scheider’s girlfriend Kate, and\u00a0Erzsebet Foldi as his daughter Michelle, tear up a stairway, a floor, and the lead character’s sour mood in a tightly choreographed three-minute version of — yes — “Everything Old Is New Again.” (That’s Peter Allen’s live version which plays on the soundtrack; the song was written by but left uncredited to Allen and Carole Bayer Sager.)
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