Wonderful, Mark - thank you for a terrific read! Lovely to read - and of course to see! - the different stages of your process. I hadn't heard of the sweetgum, so I looked it up. It's a type of liquidambar - a relation of one in our tiny front garden. It's about to change its clothes into glorious autumn colour!
Liquidambar! What an expressive Latin word. We have lots of them around for a couple of reasons, probably. In addition to their leaves, which they cast off like stripteasers this time of year, they have what one of the area university extension offices calls "their fruit." Actually it look like a coronavirus, a round prickly thing -- like candy trinkets the ladies fling at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Woe be to the kid who ventures barefoot where the things have been laid, which around here is pretty much everywhere. At least they roll and I can roll them off with a leaf blower. We have little saplings pop up everywhere, too -- even in the gutters on the roof when I'm too lazy to clean them (which is usually the case).
Don't get me started about the hickory nuts.
Do your liquidambars (liquidambari, liquidambarae?) have the little prickly balls? They almost look like Christmas tree ornaments.
Mark, that's so interesting - liquidambars don't have those prickly balls. Well, at least I've never noticed any - and from what you've said I certainly would have done!
We don't have hickory trees either - so I've never met their nuts.
I DO have plenty experience with gutters that need cleaning out, though! That's become very clear with the torrential rain we've been having lately. Should've been keeping up with that job....! 🤣
Enjoyed this, Mark. I love the image of “punched tickets” - like we went to a party or concert and celebrated, and now the fall shows the remnants of a good time had. And thank you for the Wendell Berry poem, looking forward to reading it in context with my own poetry development 🩵
Hadn't thought about tickets to a concert, but that actually makes wonderful sense. Another metaphor to play with. Wendell Berry's poem has that little note up top: "to remind myself." That's a charming thing, and I can imagine that he's got a typewritten or handwritten copy posted somewhere in his study in the woods.
Wendell Berry is brave! There was a profile of him a few months ago somewhere ... The New Yorker? He was more charm than grump.
My sonnet still feels uncooked. I'll put my finger on it soon, maybe. The last six lines seem to click, but the first eight still feel a little crooked to me. My seminar starts next week, and i meet my students for lunch today. I'll let revisions steep in my mind a while; got other things to do for a bit.
SEND THEM! I will recall your wise words on critique, of course. Something like the one giving critique is an asshole, yada, yada. Until, a few minutes later (more in some cases), the asshole becomes less an asshole ... or no asshole at all!
Oh their way as a Google link, but if you want to share my clumsy readings with the other readers, feel free to post the link here. Once you’re done slagging me, of course.
I’ll send you my observations ... I just stumbled in a place or two. I don’t know if I would have noticed it quite as much if you hadn’t shared Berry’s poem, where it was very notable to me that I didn’t stumble at all. But that’s what you get when you put yourself alongside a master, huh?
Just looked at the comments, and they're wonderful. If I thought you were an idiot, it was only for a moment. The personification in the poem struck me a problematic, too, and I wonder if it's too ambitious for such a short piece. I like to think of the sweetgum as female, September as male.
I have to figure a way to make this clearer and less an effort to figure out.
I am going to put the Google doc on the main part of the post as a "post script and probably "restack" on Notes to let people know. This exchange shows the utility and wonderful qualities of Substack.
That Berry piece ... I've thought about handwriting it and sticking it on my wall in my study. I recall seeing a picture of his own study -- a little shed actually. It has forty window panes overlooking part of his farm. I think he plunks things out on a typewriter still, maybe after handwriting. No internet, of course. No electricity, probably.
Wonderful, Mark - thank you for a terrific read! Lovely to read - and of course to see! - the different stages of your process. I hadn't heard of the sweetgum, so I looked it up. It's a type of liquidambar - a relation of one in our tiny front garden. It's about to change its clothes into glorious autumn colour!
Liquidambar! What an expressive Latin word. We have lots of them around for a couple of reasons, probably. In addition to their leaves, which they cast off like stripteasers this time of year, they have what one of the area university extension offices calls "their fruit." Actually it look like a coronavirus, a round prickly thing -- like candy trinkets the ladies fling at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Woe be to the kid who ventures barefoot where the things have been laid, which around here is pretty much everywhere. At least they roll and I can roll them off with a leaf blower. We have little saplings pop up everywhere, too -- even in the gutters on the roof when I'm too lazy to clean them (which is usually the case).
Don't get me started about the hickory nuts.
Do your liquidambars (liquidambari, liquidambarae?) have the little prickly balls? They almost look like Christmas tree ornaments.
Mark, that's so interesting - liquidambars don't have those prickly balls. Well, at least I've never noticed any - and from what you've said I certainly would have done!
We don't have hickory trees either - so I've never met their nuts.
I DO have plenty experience with gutters that need cleaning out, though! That's become very clear with the torrential rain we've been having lately. Should've been keeping up with that job....! 🤣
Enjoyed this, Mark. I love the image of “punched tickets” - like we went to a party or concert and celebrated, and now the fall shows the remnants of a good time had. And thank you for the Wendell Berry poem, looking forward to reading it in context with my own poetry development 🩵
Hadn't thought about tickets to a concert, but that actually makes wonderful sense. Another metaphor to play with. Wendell Berry's poem has that little note up top: "to remind myself." That's a charming thing, and I can imagine that he's got a typewritten or handwritten copy posted somewhere in his study in the woods.
I like all of Wendell Berry’s poem ... and big parts of yours :)
Wendell Berry is brave! There was a profile of him a few months ago somewhere ... The New Yorker? He was more charm than grump.
My sonnet still feels uncooked. I'll put my finger on it soon, maybe. The last six lines seem to click, but the first eight still feel a little crooked to me. My seminar starts next week, and i meet my students for lunch today. I'll let revisions steep in my mind a while; got other things to do for a bit.
Crud Mark, I should have asked first--would that be of any use to you? I don’t want to waste your time or mine.
SEND THEM! I will recall your wise words on critique, of course. Something like the one giving critique is an asshole, yada, yada. Until, a few minutes later (more in some cases), the asshole becomes less an asshole ... or no asshole at all!
Oh their way as a Google link, but if you want to share my clumsy readings with the other readers, feel free to post the link here. Once you’re done slagging me, of course.
I’ll send you my observations ... I just stumbled in a place or two. I don’t know if I would have noticed it quite as much if you hadn’t shared Berry’s poem, where it was very notable to me that I didn’t stumble at all. But that’s what you get when you put yourself alongside a master, huh?
Just looked at the comments, and they're wonderful. If I thought you were an idiot, it was only for a moment. The personification in the poem struck me a problematic, too, and I wonder if it's too ambitious for such a short piece. I like to think of the sweetgum as female, September as male.
I have to figure a way to make this clearer and less an effort to figure out.
I am going to put the Google doc on the main part of the post as a "post script and probably "restack" on Notes to let people know. This exchange shows the utility and wonderful qualities of Substack.
Thank you, Tom.
That Berry piece ... I've thought about handwriting it and sticking it on my wall in my study. I recall seeing a picture of his own study -- a little shed actually. It has forty window panes overlooking part of his farm. I think he plunks things out on a typewriter still, maybe after handwriting. No internet, of course. No electricity, probably.