Robert Burns
Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho’, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Since childhood I have marveled that male birds are so colorful and bright but the females are typically plain, even dull. Take cardinals, for example. While growing up (and even now), glimpses of that bright red bird thrilled me. I would sit and watch it until it finally flew away. As a kid, I couldn’t believe female cardinals were just sort of basic brown. Very different from humans, I always thought, whose females tend to sport the brighter plumage. Yesterday evening the cardinal watching was fantastic at the Washington D.C. St. Andrew’s Society Burns Supper we attended. And what’s more, I got to play cardinal, too.
The male of the species in his bright plumage.
(My wife’s father died in October, 2008. The family, his six children, their spouses and families, all gathered together for the funeral that turned into a three-day celebratory family reunion. I wrote the piece below to accompany the picture.)
Spud's Grandchildren Wearing Spud's Hats
None of us chose that moment to gather, yet we all did, sadly, gladly, sober but smiling, as many, and as one. None chose the location for the reunion. And none of us chose the event that brought us together: Spud’s death. Continue reading
…a memory of castor oil. A lot of talk about castor oil, the pros and cons. Did she even practice taking it in advance? Getting used to the taste, the feel, the horrible stuff?
…an early morning family parade through the kitchen: dad, mom, little brother, me, my view not quite level with the counter top. Why is it still dark outside? Why are we dressed and with our coats on? Where are we going?
…dad carrying me out of the car up a steep, snowy driveway. I know exactly where we are. I come here all the time to play with my best friend. It’s like a second home.
…sitting on the floor playing with little cars and little figures. I always sat with both legs out to the side, sort of reverse cross-legged. “You’re double jointed,” my uncle always told me. A knock on the door, my father walks in. He had dropped me off earlier: hours? yesterday? He walked into the living room where I played on the floor with my friend, and announced, “It’s a boy! His name is David.”
Precious glimpses, 46 year-old memories: my own gift to unwrap today.
Happy Birthday!
Robert Burns
Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo’e best:
There’s wild-woods grow, and rivers row,
And mony a hill between:
But day and night my fancys’ flight
Is ever wi’ my Jean.
I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,
I hear her charm the air.
There’s not a bonie flower that springs,
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There’s not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o’ my Jean.
In this blog I discuss and model ways to shake a dash of literary on your life. (Or serve yourself a thick slab, if you’d like). I call it living literarily. There are a couple of ways to use and enjoy The Life Literary.
1. You can simply read things for the fun of reading. I’ll try to keep my pantry stocked with a good supply of well-written, interesting essays, stories, poems, book reviews, letters (from abroad and from home), narratives (of events), and journals (dated entries that follow the progress of something, like a garden or a grandchild’s birth and growth). I’ll put everything I write in a category (see the list of categories on the right-hand side of the page). Hover the cursor over the category for a description of what’s there. Click the category to see everything in a particular group.
2. You can get ideas and practical suggestions for ways to live literarily. The tabs just under the picture across the top are like chapter titles for a book that might be called Ways to Live Literarily. Click a tab, reveal the introduction to the particular subject. Each chapter has its corresponding category on the right-hand side of the page. You want information about conducting a Literary Event, memorizing poetry, or ways to include writing in your life? Click on the category that interests you and start gathering ideas. Or search for a specific thing using the Search field at the bottom of the right-hand column.
Here’s a tip. Each tab across the top is like the chapter of a book. All posts should fit into one chapter or another, either as an example of what the chapter is talking about or else a discussion of the chapter’s topic.
My quirks (thrown in free of charge): Continue reading
Input and Output
Writing is a cornerstone of literary living.
I love reading a story, memorizing a poem, or watching a good movie. These expand and fill me, my heart, my mind, my soul, and provide valuable raw material for growing, maturing, and simply enjoying life. They are input for me, part of the fuel that keeps me going.
Writing is the opposite: it’s output. Expressing thoughts, ideas, feelings and impressions on paper helps me own and incorporate the input. Writing provides an outlet for things that really need to get out: joy, anger, ideas, dreams and so much more. Living literarily involves both in and out, a balance between the two.
Steam Released
Setting words to paper is like releasing steam from a kettle: it relieves pressure. Writing can even open the floodgates of the soul, providing an outlet for deeply felt things. I want and need to express myself and writing is a primary way that happens. I find I can write worries away, or at least whittle them down to size with words I set to paper. I can understand a concept or recognize a feeling by writing about it.
Over the last 12 years I have lived abroad in some fascinating places and from two I wrote about the life, culture, and people. I sent those accounts in emails to family and friends who forwarded them to their friends. Many wrote to express their appreciation. Ever since I stopped writing these essays, a loyal handful of dear ones have regularly asked when I would start writing again.
Well? Now!
One Doable Bit at a Doable Time
I’m sold on the idea of doing a little bit of something rather than not doing the thing at all. Over the next months, I’m going to write ideas for writing that are more attainable than, say, write a novel or your memoirs or seven pages of a journal per day. Somehow, since writing the last batch of essays from abroad (2004-2006), I have imagined the writing task too big. I’ve thought I needed just the right setting. I’ve thought that with my day job, I really didn’t have time to be a full-time writer (sadly, I don’t). Or that I needed to write something completely original, or at least something as good as John Updike or John Irving or other great writers. Or that the world and the literary market and the Internet are so full of words, words, words, what original thing could I possibly write?
What I’ve discovered is that I can write one sentence a day. Or a paragraph. Or even a page. I can incorporate writing in small, doable, and for me, fun ways. I can also be and trust myself, my eye, my ear, my voice. This is another crucial recognition. And, if it’s words put together by me then it’s original enough to write.
Along with all the ways to live literarily, I will be writing about writing in this blog.
Writing Venues
I’m going to write about lots of ways you can write. Can’t wait to tell you how a commitment to write a Daily Sentence put me back on the path to regular writing. Also, though it’s not original, the practice of writing morning pages had a lot to do with me finally picking up the pen again. I combine doing that with keeping a Family Journal where I mix thoughts and poems and ideas with shopping lists and phone numbers and whatever comes up that needs to be set down. I’ll be including the letters and essays I sent from Bombay and Jerusalem, plus a new set from where I live now on the banks of the Potomac River. Looking forward to writing about keeping a Calendar Journal, possibly one of the simplest ways to start writing. At some point I’ll write about Burns’ Commonplace Book and the other journals and notebooks artists and writers and composers have used.
Ready to let off a little steam, to start your literary output process? Write!
"...is hung with bloom along the bow"
A.E. Houseman
Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bow,
And stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now of my threescore years and ten
Twenty I’ll not see again
And take from seventy springs a score
it only leaves me fifty more
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodland I will go
to see the cherry hung with snow.
...50 springs are little room
(I wrote the first version before finding out that the NYT has a 150 word limit on letters to the editor. Here’s the edited version, less than half the length than the first.)
To the Editor:
I will agree it’s fun to give haggis a kick in the hurdies* from time to time. It’s definitely an acquired taste. I wish the editorial, A Night of Food and Song, had not grouped Burns’ poems in the same category.
I’m a college-educated speaker of American English who reads and memorizes Burns poems and songs. Yes, they use some unfamiliar words but with a glossary at hand, it doesn’t take long to read and enjoy his work with relative ease.
Use the anniversary of Burns’ birth to encourage people to sample his works instead of writing them off as too difficult. He had a keen eye for the human condition and a lively sense of humor. What he wrote rings true. It’s also fun to read.
Go read some Burns. You’ll be surprised how few “thorns and brambles” there actually are.
*buttocks
I will agree it’s fun to give haggis a little kick in the hurdies* from time to time. A sausage made from chopped and cooked sheep’s lung, kidney and heart (with onions, salt, pepper, suet and oats), stuffed inside a sheep’s stomach which is then boiled for three hours sounds pretty horrible, definitely an acquired taste. I wish the NYT Editorial, A Night of Food and Song, had not grouped Burns’ poems in the same category.
I’m an American English speaker who likes Robert Burns works. I have read a couple Burns biographies, memorized a dozen of his poems, and have hosted a Burns supper each January for three years, now. I am a typical college-educated American adult with no special training in Scots dialect (or poetry in general for that matter). Though off-putting at first, with several re-readings and a glossary at hand, it didn’t take long to get the hang of Burns’ language. I can now read and enjoy Burns with relative ease.
