Getting into Keith Moon’s drumming on The Who’s 1971 singles compilation “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy"

Listening to The Who's 1971 singles compilation "Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy" today (after not having listened to the band in a long time), I have especially felt the rush and explosiveness of Keith Moon's singular drumming. On "I Can See for Miles" (1967), Moon provides the thunderous background to the chorus; on "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", his tom-tom playing during the instrumental break creates space for guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwhistle, and session pianist Nicky Hopkins to make fragmented, proto-psychedelic sounds that must have been rare on the pop charts when the song (only the second single the band released) spent eleven weeks in the UK Top 40 in 1965. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 December 2024)

From Diane Seuss’s “frank: sonnets” (2021) to the invention of Russian Matryoshka dolls (1890)

When I prepare poems for class discussion, I sometimes end up down unexpected rabbit holes. These lines begin a poem in Diane Seuss's "frank: sonnets" (2021): "I was raised in a rectangle. Aluminum. There was a rectangular / toy box, red. Sometimes, I’d take out the toys and climb inside. / Rectangle within a rectangle." As the child is inside a box (a rectangle) that is inside a mobile home (a rectangle), I thought of wooden Russian dolls, wondered what they are called, and found the answer: Matryoshka or nesting dolls. But I also learned that they are not a long-lasting Russian folk tradition, as they were only invented in 1890. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 December 2024)

The homesickness of Rezia Smith in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925)

Rereading Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (1925) for a student's MA exam next week, I had to take a break after noticing something I don't think I had ever noticed on earlier readings: the heartbreaking depiction of the Italian wife of shellshocked World War One veteran Septimus Smith. Lucrezia, or Rezia for short, married Septimus at the end of the war and moved to England with him, and it is the homesickness of the emigrant with a mentally ill husband that moves me: "Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters sat making hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people walking, laughing out loud [...]." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 December 2024)

Emily Dickinson’s birthday and Austin Dickinson’s new hat

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday (10 December 1830), so I made sure to read two more letters from Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell's edition of her collected letters. They were written in Amherst in October 1851 to her brother Austin, who was teaching school in Boston. Dickinson's letters to Austin are especially full of her wit, as when she mentions her eagerness to see his new hat: "Father says you wear a white hat, cocked up at the sides - know I shall like it's looks and want so much to see it - as for the wearer, I want to see him too - but which the most - prithee?" (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 December 2024) 

On not grading essays

This fall, in our first-year academic writing courses at the University of Basel English Department, Peter Burleigh and I have stopped grading the essays. We both feel liberated from the pressure of the grade. We still write detailed comments – and feel like the comments themselves are better than before, without taking more time to write. For the course evaluations, I asked the students to comment on not having grades, and all of them thought it was great. And I have been getting a lot more individual feedback about how useful the comments are – which might imply that the students are reading the comments more now than when the essays were graded. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 December 2024)

The many great covers on Rebekka Bakken’s “Always on My Mind” (2023), including Greg Brown’s “Brand New Angel"

"Always on My Mind", a 2023 album by Norwegian singer and pianist Rebekka Bakken, who is performing solo at the Martinskirche in Basel this evening, includes songs by many great songwriters: Nick Cave ("Red Right Hand"), Don McLean ("Vincent"), Peter Gabriel ("Here Comes the Flood"), Randy Newman ("Louisiana 1927"), Bob Dylan ("Where Teardrops Fall"), Elton John and Bernie Taupin ("We All Fall in Love Sometimes"), and Paul McCartney ("Yesterday"). That selection would be enough for me to love the album, but Bakken also includes "Brand New Angel", a song by my favorite songwriter of all, Greg Brown, from his most recent and probably last album, "Hymns to What Is Left" (2012). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 December 2024)

"'Tis my part to use that language”: The Gay Beggars production of “The Witch of Edmonton” currently running in Basel

"'Tis my part to use that language," says Winnifred to Frank when he asks her whether she forgives him for what the crimes that he has committed. But on stage, the line from Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley's 1621 play "The Witch of Edmonton" also seems in the current production in Basel by the Gay Beggars to refer to how the actors have learned to "use that language" from the seventeenth-century to play their parts. The lively and wide-ranging production runs for four more shows at the Kellertheater at the English Department of the University of Basel: Sunday, December 8, and then Friday to Sunday, December 13 to 15. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 December 2024)

 

Jacques Roubaud (1932-2024), poet, novelist, mathematician

When I lived in Saarbrücken and worked at the University of the Saarland from 1993 to 1995, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture and reading by the poet, novelist, and mathematician Jacques Roubaud. As a founding member of Oulipo, the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, his work explores literary constraints of all kinds, from traditional approaches like lipograms to approaches invented for individual works. Along with his poetry and fiction, Roubaud also wrote among other works an excellent 1978 study of the history of meter in French verse, "La Vieillesse d'Alexandre: essai sur quelques états récents du vers français". Jacques Roubaud died yesterday, 5 December 2024, on his 92nd birthday. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 December 2024) 

The pronunciation of Salvador Dalí’s name and Taylor Swift’s “the last great american dynasty"

As I have learned from Spanish, the last name of painter Salvador Dalí is stressed on the second syllable, not the first as it usually is in American English. He comes up in Taylor Swift's "the last great american dynasty" ("folklore", 2020), which is about his friend Rebekah Harkness, who married into money, became a socialite, composer, and philanthropist, and lost "on card game bets with Dalí." But Swift pronounces his name the American way, so when I mentioned Dalí and the song today to my Spanish teacher (a fellow Swiftie), she knew the song, but had never understood that Swift was referring to the painter and not someone named "Dolly." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 December 2024)

Ambitious first songs and poems opening debut albums and books: Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” (2006) and Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” (1966)

Today in my Volkshochschule beider Basel course on Taylor Swift, we'll be discussing "Tim McGraw", the first song on her eponymous album from 2006. As I wrote back in January, the song is a statement of the singer and songwriter's ambition, narrowly, to be better known than country singer Tim McGraw, but broadly, to be even more popular than that. The song's marking of ambition to start Swift's career reminds me of "Digging", the first poem in "Death of a Naturalist", Irish poet Seamus Heaney's 1966 debut collection. Now I'm trying to think of other songs and poems that open debut albums and books and so powerfully express the artist's ambition. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 December 2024)

Two striking copies at the St. Gallen Abbey Library

My wife Andrea bought us day-passes for the Swiss railway system for my birthday in August, so on this cold December Sunday we took the train to St. Gallen to visit the Abbey Library. Two objects on display there really struck me, and both are copies. The first is the St. Gallen globe from the 16th century, which is 2.33 meters high. But in 1712, troops from Zurich and Bern stole it when they plundered the Abbey, and the original is still in Zurich. The second is a seventeenth-century copy of a painting from the Basel Art Museum: Hans Holbein's sixteenth-century painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 December 2024) 

Swiss broadcaster Blue Sport and the varieties of German used in their broadcasts

The Swiss television channel Blue Sport broadcasts all the matches of the Swiss men's football league, the Super League. Until recently, their German-language broadcasts had one commentator, but now they have a second commentator, always a former Swiss player in the league (and often a former Swiss men's national team player). One feature of these broadcasts strikes me as unusual: The main commentator speaks Swiss High German, but the second commentator speaks his particular variety of Swiss German. This is so consistent it must be a conscious decision by the broadcaster. I've listened to sports broadcasts in many countries, but I've never before heard one where two commentators speak different languages. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 November 2024) 

Abstract: On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense

In "Tim McGraw", the first song on Taylor Swift's eponymous 2006 debut, a boy flatters a girl by comparing her eyes to "Georgia stars", and she responds, "That's a lie." This begins Swift's exploration in songwriting of rhetoric, lies, and truth. Through the lies and truths of rhetoric, that song's speaker negotiates the meaning of her former relationship with herself and with her ex-boyfriend. Truth, lies, rhetoric, and the negotiation of truth, as well as rumors and the simultaneity of truth and lies, are also addressed in such later songs by Swift as "Dress" (from "reputation", 2017), "illicit affairs" ("folklore", 2020), "happiness" ("evermore", 2020), and "Cassandra" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 November 2024)

 

Note: This is the abstract for "On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense", my talk on Taylor Swift on Tuesday, 10 December, at 1 pm, in room 11 of the English Department of the University of Basel, Nadelberg 6, Basel.

"I do not agree with being a white Otello”: White tenor Francesco Meli apparently thinks opera audiences are stupid and unimaginative

Tenor Francesco Meli is currently performing the title role in Verdi's "Otello" at the La Fenice opera house in Venice, and the white singer has publicly objected to one feature of the production: "I do not agree with being a white Otello." That is, the director of the production, Fabio Cerese, decided that Meli would not wear blackface for the role. Meli seems to think that the audience needs to have his face be painted black or they won't understand what's happening. Apparently, he thinks opera audiences are incapable of using their imaginations. La Fenice could of course solve the problem by hiring a black tenor to sing the role instead. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 November 2024)

 

“And so they went on […] keen for the worry”: An evening with the Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel

At our Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel this evening, we took up where we had left off last time: "And so they went on, the fourbottle men" (FW 95.27). And so we went on, without four bottles but with lots of good cheer and great insights into "the framing up of such figments in the evidential order" that constitute James Joyce's 1939 novel. When we finished our hunting, a hunt had begun: "Gundogs of all breeds were beagling with renounced urbiandorbic bugles, hot to run him, given law, on a scent breasthigh, keen for the worry" (FW 96.36-97.2). For once, we completed much more than one page in our "upframings". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 November 2024) 

Names of bands I’ve been in from the 1980s to today

My 1980s band at Stanford first changed names at every gig, including Ask Andrew, The Bears, and The Sound and The Furry (one five-word name). Then we settled on Petting Zoo. Everyone else left town after graduation, but I stayed in Palo Alto for a year and formed Onomatopoeia. Asked what genre we played, I'd say, "Means what it sounds like." After not having bands in Philadelphia or Berlin, my short-lived band in Saarbrücken was Psychic Sidekicks. In Basel, my acoustic folk trio Human Shields had  a great run from 2006 to 2017. After a few years of hibernation, I hope to resurrect Human Shields with a new duo in 2025. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 November 2024)

How to write a Bob Dylan song: A creative-writing exercise

My latest exercise for my poetry and songwriting class is to "write a Bob Dylan song", like "Queen Jane Approximately" from "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), with a one-line refrain to end each stanza: "Won't you come and see me, Queen Jane?" First, come up with a good refrain line that ends with a good rhyme word. Then pick a form for your stanzas, the simplest being a quatrain with an ABAB rhyme. Then make a list of rhymes for your rhyme word. Now write lines to rhyme with your refrain, and then brainstorm what goes around those lines. Write many more stanzas than you need, then keep all the good ones. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 November 2024)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “Summer” and a "hieroglyphic profile” of Napoleon in Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880)

Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880) takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, around 1806 and the Battle of Trafalgar. The novel refers to a caricature of Napoleon that it calls "a hieroglyphic profile", with such features as a hat that is "a maimed French eagle", a face "of human carcases", and an ear that is "a woman crouching over a dying child." I had not heard such images called "hieroglyphic" before, but I know them from the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), such as those I once saw in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: a profile of "Summer", for example, made up of cherries, a peach, a cucumber, and other summer crops. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 November 2024)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Summer”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Public Domain

“Neck or nothing” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” (1880)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880), while they are trying to protect Bob Loveday from a press gang, Matilda Johnson tells Anne Garland that "it is neck or nothing with us now." Although I did understand "neck or nothing" immediately, I would have said "all or nothing". My sense is that I had never heard the expression before, but it has a long history: the entry for the expression Oxford English Dictionary has citations from 1673 to 1968, whose authors include Jonathan Swift and William Cowper. There's even a quotation from Charles Dickens – but it's from "Sketches By Boz" (1836), which I didn't read when I read all of Dickens's novels. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 November 2024)

Update: Of course now I have found the phrase in Dickens’s “Martin Chuzzlewit” (1844): “[…] he'll fill his wehicle with passengers, and start off in the middle of the road, neck or nothing […]”. But according to the online Dickens concordance, that’s the only use of the phrase in one of CD’s novels.

“I should like to study mathematics – to know about the stars”: From Katherine HIlbery in Virginia Woolf’s “Night and Day” (1919) to Jakob Bernoulli and Thomas Pynchon

In Virginia Woolf's "Night and Day" (1919), Katherine Hilbery has a "purely imaginary dialogue" in which she hesitantly reveals "her ambition" to herself and her imaginary interlocutor: "I should like [...] to study mathematics – to know about the stars." This wish recalls something said by the Basel mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (1654-1705): "Invito patre sidera verso." I first came across Bernoulli's motto in Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" (1997), where it is quoted in an English translation: "Against my father's wishes, I study the stars." I later used it as an epigraph to a poem I wrote for my mathematician father's 70th birthday, "Ars Conjectandi" (the title of Bernoulli's book on probability). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 November 2024) 

A snowy walk in Liestal to get to a concert

When the train from Basel reached Liestal station, I made my way through the first winter snow to the bus stop, but the next bus was delayed by 45 minutes. So I put the address into my phone and followed the GPS to the venue. The paths I went down were often narrow, and the streets and sidewalks had not been cleared, but I had thought of getting my winter boots out, so with a bit of care, I never slipped. I made one wrong turn and walked down a beautiful footpath in the snowy night to a dead end. But I found my way back and arrived at the venue. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 November 2024)

“Herself, and not her music”: Emily Dickinson goes to a Jenny Lind concert, 3 July 1851

On 3 July 1851, twenty-year-old Emily Dickinson went to a concert in Northampton, Massachusetts, by the Swedish singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887). Three days later, she wrote about it to her brother Austin, who was then living in Boston: The singer, not her singing, was what captured Dickinson's attention: "Herself, and not her music, was what we seemed to love – she has an air of exile in her mild blue eyes, and a something sweet and touching in her native accent which charms her many friends." Yet Dickinson could not name what charmed her about Lind: she "seemed to love" her, with that vague "air of exile" and "something" about her accent. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 November 2024)

Participating in and attending events at the BuchBasel literature festival, 15-17 November 2024

At this weekend's BuchBasel literature festival, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel on Taylor Swift with moderator Svenja Reiner and writer Anne Sauer, author of the recently published book "Look What She Made Us Do: Anne Sauer über Taylor Swift". But I also heard superb talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (at the opening ceremony on Friday), by photographers Johny Pitts and Eddie Otchere on Otchere's photography, by Carolin Emcke on "queer life", and by Pitts and poet Roger Robinson on their collaborative book of photographs and poems, "Home is not a Place". Pitts and Robinson's title also came up as a theme in the other events I heard. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 November 2024)

Turning 22,000 days old

On my 60th birthday in August this year, I wondered how many days old I was. I found an internet page to calculate it: I was 21,915 days old. That made me wonder when I would turn 22,000 days old, so I used that page to calculate it: 16 November 2024 (today). Then I forgot about it, until yesterday, when I was reminded of the number by a calendar alert that I had set up and then forgotten. If all goes well, I'll make 23,000 days on Friday, 13 August 2027, 25,000 days on Wednesday, 2 February 2033, and 30,000 days on Friday, 12 October 2046, at the age of 82. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 November 2024)

Don Q speaks to crowds and empty rooms

Don Q told crowd after crowd what he saw, and they saw what he said he saw. As he kept speaking and speaking, the crowds thinned out until the rooms were empty, but he kept speaking to the crowd he still saw before him. The former members of the crowd had left, but they kept seeing what he said he saw, and they told others about what they saw that he said he saw, until half the people saw what others said they saw that he said he saw. Meanwhile, Don Q left an empty room, went outside, and was followed by the crowds that saw what he said he saw. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 November 2024)

A “tattoo” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” and the annual Basel Tattoo

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major", the Royal Army's Dragoons show up in the village of Overcombe, and Anne Garland hears them break the silence of the night: "Louder sounds [...] came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the right by the camp of the Hanoverians, and further on still by the body of infantry. It was tattoo." The "tattoo" is a military signal played on drums or bugles, but I only learned the term in 2006 with the first Basel Tattoo, a show of military bands that has taken place every summer since then (except for 2020 and 2021, when it was cancelled due to the pandemic). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 November 2024)

The trolley problem, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the television series “The Good Place”, and allegory and literature as thought experiments

This morning, on my way to teaching a session on Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948), I passed a classroom where I spotted a slide from a presentation on "the trolley problem", philosopher Philippa Foot's 1967 thought experiment. In class, then, we discussed "The Lottery" itself as a literary thought experiment akin to the trolley problem and the scientific thought experiments of Albert Einstein or Erwin Schrödinger. But I also referred to the vivid, macabre presentation of the trolley problem in episode 6 of the second season of the television series "The Good Place". Ultimately, we linked "The Lottery" as a thought experiment to allegory in particular and to literature in general. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 November 2024)

Screenshot from Season 2, Episode 6 of The Good Place

The playwright “Colman” and the actor “Bannister” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” (1880)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880), which is set during the Napoleonic Wars, the main characters go to see a play in Budmouth: "To-night it was one of Colman’s, who at this time enjoyed great popularity, and Mr. Bannister supported the leading character." Charles Bannister (1738-1804) was an English actor and singer who was widely celebrated for his performance as Caliban in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". "Colman" is probably George Colman the Younger (1762-1836), whose play "The Iron Chest" premiered in 1799 with Bannister in the cast. But it could also be his father George Colman the Elder (1732-1794), if any of his plays were still being produced after his death. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 November 2024)

Update, 13 November 2024: A friend on Facebook quoted the manuscript of Hardy’s novel, which names Colman’s play as “The Heir at Law”, and added that “Bannister” is more likely to be Charles’s son John Bannister (1760-1836).

Don Q and a rifle

Don Q held up a rifle and said it was a microphone. He held up a dagger and said it was a pen. He held up a bomb and said it was a clock. He held up a skeleton and said it was a mannequin. He held up a tombstone and said it was a bench. He held up body armor and said it was a suit. He held up a tank and said it was a bicycle. He held up barbed wire and said it was kite string. He held up a drone and said it was a balloon. He held up his mask and said it was his face. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 November 2024)

Don Q and the clouds

Don Q saw clouds on the southern horizon: “See the dust rising from all the approaching giants, who grow every day.” He saw clouds on the northern horizon: “See the dust rising from all the giants among us, who grow every day.” He shouted louder until the people nearby, hearing nothing else, asked Don Q what to do about the giants. “We must send all the giants beyond the horizon.” The clouds from the southern storm kept growing every day, blowing their wind and rain towards the smoke from the northern fires, which kept growing every day. “The giants, the giants,” Don Q shouted. “The giants, the giants,” the people cried. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 November 2024)

“I cannot tell the sum”: A cento for the day after the election, November 2024

I cannot tell the sum

I cannot see a spoke

I cannot see - your lifetime -

I cannot vouch the merry Dust

I cannot buy it - 'tis not sold -

I cannot be ashamed

I cannot be proud

I cannot meet the Spring - 

I cannot want it more -

I cannot want it less -

I cant tell you - but you feel it -

I cannot see my soul

I cannot make the Force

cannot fold a Flood

cannot feel the seam

cannot solder an Abyss

cannot prick with Saw

cannot make Remembrance grow

cannot comprehend it's price -

All this and more I cannot tell - (Andrew Shields, #111Words, a cento, 6 November 2024)

I can’t pretend like I understand: A cento for Election Day 2024

I can't pretend like I understand. I can't even be sure. I can't even say it with a straight face. I can't unlock it. I can't hear you any more. I can't get no relief. I can't hear one single word. I cannot explain that in lines. I cannot play this game. I can't make it all match up. I can't say anything to your face. I can't remember what it's like. I cannot be excused. I can't help myself. I can't even touch the books. I can't sing a song that I don't understand. I can't get out of bed. I cannot move; my fingers are all in a knot. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, a cento, 5 November 2024)

Wikipedia’s List of female United States presidential and vice presidential candidates – and comedian Gracie Allen’s 1940 spoof campaign

There's a Wikipedia "List of female United States presidential and vice presidential candidates" that goes back to Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child receiving nomintaton votes at the abolitionist Liberty Party convention in 1847. Only two women have ever received electoral-college votes for President, both in 2016: Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party and indigenous activist Faith Spotted Eagle, who received a vote from a faithless elector pledged to Clinton. But my favorite piece of trivia is in the list of women who have received 40,000 or more votes for President: it concludes with comedian Gracie Allen, whose 1940 spoof campaign for President for the Surprise Party garnered 42,000 votes nationwide. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 November 2024)

Mosquitoes in poems by Jane Hirshfield and Meagan Chandler

I have a set of online poetry magazines that I read to find poems to send Facebook friends on their birthdays. This morning, I read "I Was Not, Among My Kind, Distinctive", a new poem by Jane Hirshfield in the November 2024 issue of "Poetry": "I fed the world’s mosquitoes who fed the world’s bats." Perhaps that line would not have stuck in my head if it was not for "The Horse Trail", by Meagan Chandler, from the excellent Singapore-based daily literary magazine "Eunoia Review": "[...] the humming mosquito tickling / my ear with thirst as I clear a way through tangled reeds / convinces me that I am needed [...]." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 November 2024)

 

“Torius”, the earliest known named resident of the area that is now Basel

For my sixtieth birthday in August, my wife and my in-laws gave me a subscription to the new ten-volume history of Basel, "Stadt.Geschichte.Basel". Since then, I've been reading the first volume, one or two pages at a time, and in the last few days, I've arrived at the section about the Basel area during the Roman Empire. This morning, I came across an illustration of a "Gepäckanhänger aus Geweih" ("Luggage label made of horn"), which has an inscription: "T.Tori". As the book notes, this refers to the name of the luggage's owner, "Torius", which makes this otherwise unknown soldier the earliest resident of what is now Basel whose name is known. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 November 2024)

“Crackle”: The fifth derivative of position

I wanted to look up "crackle" because I wondered from a poem by Ada Limón if it might be the name of a bird (as the context of the poem suggested). It's not, but it is a name for "the fifth derivative of position". In order, the derivatives of position from the first to the sixth are velocity, acceleration, jerk (or jolt), jounce (or snap), crackle, and pop. Yes, the fourth to sixth derivatives are named after the characters in advertisements for Kellogg's Rice Krispies: snap, crackle, and pop. The latter don't come up often, but according to Wikipedia, reduction of snap, the derivative of jerk, to zero improves railway tracks. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 November 2024) 

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Ohio sixth-graders in 1976

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released as a single in the United Kingdom on 31 October 1975 and in the United States that December. At some time before June 1976, my sixth-grade music teacher at Ottawa Hills Elementary School in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, brought the song in for us to hear, discuss, and sing. We went through it so often that I have had all the lyrics and all the instrumental parts memorized ever since I was eleven. Or as a classmate said when I wrote a March 2010 post about listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with my children Miles (then 10) and Luisa (then 6), "the lyrics are burnt into my brain." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 October 2024) 

A day with Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and James Joyce

My day began with a deathbed confession of a murder from half a century earlier: “You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat” (Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado). It continued with the sense of overhearing someone quoting 1 Corinthians 2:9: “‘Eye hath not seen’ may possibly / Be current with the Blind / But let not Revelation / By theses be detained—“ (Emily Dickinson, “The Lilac is an ancient shrub, Fr 1261). It ended with a further Biblical allusion, to Matthew 7:3-5: “from Lesbia Looshe the beam in her eye” (James Joyce, “Finnegan's Wake”, 93:27-28). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 October 2024)

Images of champagne in Taylor Swift lyrics

The first mention of champagne in Taylor Swift's songs is in a description of "big parties" in "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" ("reputation", 2017): "Everyone swimming in a champagne sea". This image of swimming in champagne returns in "the last great american dynasty" ("folkore", 2020): "Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names". These are images of excess and luxury. Then, "champagne problems" ("evermore", 2020) takes the luxury of "Dom Pérignon" and makes it a problem of luxury. Finally, "Paris" ("Midnights", 2022) turns champagne into a fantasy of luxury in a new setting: "Cheap wine, make believe it's champagne [...] In an alleyway, drinking champagne." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 October 2024)

Arthur Fils and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, two young French players to watch from the Swiss Indoors quarterfinals in Basel on Friday, 25 October 2024

At the quarterfinals of the Swiss Indoors men's tennis tournament in Basel on Friday, 25 October 2024, the best match was a close three-setter: Ben Shelton (22, USA, ATP 23) beat Andrei Rublev (27, Russia, 7), with Rublev converting zero of six break points and Shelton winning two of two. But the two most impressive players were Arthur Fils (20, France, 20), who beat Stefanos Tsitsipas (26, Greece, 11), and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (21, France, 50), who beat Denis Shapovalov (25, Canada, 95). Both these Frenchmen, who faced no break points in their matches, will surely be in the Top Ten soon, and today, Mpetshi Perricard defeated Shelton in the final. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 October 2024)

Phil Lesh (1940-2024) leads The Grateful Dead into “Gimme Some Lovin’”, Berkeley Community Theater, 2 November 1984

On 2 November 1984, at the fifth of six Grateful Dead concerts at the Berkeley Community Theater around Halloween, the band played a conventional second-set opener with "Help On The Way / Slipknot! / Franklin's Tower" and "Lost Sailor / Saint Of Circumstance". Then, instead of going to "Drums" and "Space",  Jerry Garcia went into "Wharf Rat". As that song's final jam began to merge into "Drums", bassist Phil Lesh (1940-2024), with a huge grin on his face, broke into the band's debut performance of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" (1966) and, in a duet with Brent Mydland, sang on stage for the first time in over a decade. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 October 2024) 

Listening to “Box of Rain”, “Unbroken Chain”, and “Eyes of the World” on hearing of the death of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh (1940-2024)

On hearing that Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh died today, I first listened to his "Box of Rain" ("American Beauty", 1970), with Robert Hunter's lyrics: "Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there." I followed that with his "Unbroken Chain" ("From the Mars Hotel", 1974), with Bobby Petersen's lyrics: "Listening for the secret, searching for the sound." And finally, I turned to Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's "Eyes of the World" from "Dick's Picks, volume 31", live at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 6 August 1974, with Lesh taking intro and outro leads in one of The Grateful Dead's finest performances. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 October 2024)

 

“Goils don’t know how to make speeches”: The comic strip “Nancy” and men’s silencing of women

A fan of Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Nancy" posted a strip from 23 October 1944, in which Sluggo tells Nancy that he wants to run for "president of d' neighborhood". He refuses Nancy's offer to make speeches for him because "goils don't know how to make speeches". So Nancy starts running for the office herself! – Just as Nancy decides to run for office when Sluggo chooses to silence her, men refusing to take women seriously or even refusing to let them speak catalyzed both the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848 and the second wave of feminism that began in the United States in the 1960s. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 October 2024)

“Narcotics in all of my songs”: Taylor Swift’s “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024)

Here's a line from Taylor Swift's song "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024): "[I] put narcotics into all of my songs / and that's why you're still singing along ..." Narcotics are painkillers, and in law-enforcement and popular usage, addictive drugs more generally. In medical settings, narcotics can be put into pills or intravenous solutions; in bars, they can be slipped into drinks to take advantage of people. Among other things, the "narcotics" that Swift slips into her songs are the rhetorical, poetic, and literary devices that keep people returning to her lyrics (along with some "Easter eggs"). So here, "narcotics" is a metaphor for metaphors. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 October 2024)

Stalled in the middle of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Mike Nichols’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966)

The other day, I watched the 1933 Disney cartoon "The Three Little Pigs" with the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" as preparation for a discussion of Taylor Swift's "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024) in today's first session of my eight-week-long Volkshochschule beider Basel course on Swift. I also started Mike Nichols's 1966 film of Edward Albee's 1962 play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (an Oscar-winning role for her). I stalled fifty minutes in, as a drunk couple yelling at each other gradually grows tiresome. But the superb acting still makes me want to finish it soon. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 October 2024)

A marginal note I wrote in my e-book of Virginia Woolf’s “Night and Day” (1919)

Back in 2019-2020, I read e-books of all of Virginia Woolf's novels in chronological order. I highlighted occasional passages, but generally did not write notes. Now, re-reading four of Woolf's novels for a student's MA exam, I've begun with the earliest, "Night and Day" (1919), and the other day, I came across a note I had written when suffragette organizer Sally Seal mentions her frustration with how long the movement has been taking: "I'm fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by the time we get it—if we ever do." My note was not about the suffrage but about that age: "Read on my 55th birthday." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 October 2024)

“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” (Churchill and Ronell) and the 1948 revision of Disney’s 1933 short “The Three Little Pigs"

The song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" appeared in the 1933 Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film, "The Three Little Pigs", one of Disney's "Silly Symphonies". An immediate hit, it was written by Frank Churchill (1901-1942) and Ann Ronell (1905-1993; she had also composed the eventual standard "Willow Weep for Me" in 1932). When the Big Bad Wolf disguises himself to try to blow down the third house, the one made of brick, he dresses like a Jewish stereotype, which was criticized at the time. Later, in 1948, Walt Disney had animator Jack Hannah revise the scene to eliminate the wolf's stereotypical voice and part of his disguise. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 October 2024)

Breaking my record for concerts attended in one year (which I set last year)

In 2023, I went to 73 concerts. By the end of August 2024, I'd gone to seventy concerts, and I assumed I'd break my record in September. However, I only went to three concerts the whole month. At the end of September, I was planning to attend four concerts in three days, and two more at the beginning of October, but I came down with a bad cold that flattened me for ten days, and I haven't made it to any concerts since, as I've been catching up with everything. Tonight at the Bird's Eye in Basel, though, I'll be at my record-breaking seventy-fourth concert this year, the Matthias Spillman Trio. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 October 2024)

“Sense was breaking through”: Andrew Bird’s musical setting for Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (Fr340)

On 26 October 2022, singer-songwriter Andrew Bird released a recording of his setting of Emily Dickinson's poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" (Fr340), featuring singer Phoebe Bridgers. The arrangement begins with just Bird on guitar and vocals for the first the three lines, at the end of which bassist Tony Berg enters and Bridgers harmonizes the fourth line: "That Sense was breaking through". It's as if the bass and the second voice are that "sense" that "breaks through". And at the end of the song, when Bird repeats the poem's opening stanza, the spare instrumentation returns, but then he sings that line unaccompanied, and the sense breaks through again. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 October 2024)

 

Performing “Apparently with no surprise” (Fr1661): The theatricality of Emily Dickinson

In an essay I discussed with my students last week, Brenda Wineapple characterizes Emily Dickinson as "original, difficult, theatrical, perceptive, witty". We found the idea of Dickinson's theatricality especially helpful in discussing the late poem "Apparently with no surprise" (Fr1661, 1884), which we even performed with three students and me playing the roles of the "happy Flower", the "Frost", the "Sun", and the "Approving God":  "Apparently with no surprise / To any happy Flower / The Frost beheads it at it's play - / In accidental power - / The blonde Assassin passes on - / The Sun proceeds unmoved / To measure off another Day / For an Approving God." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 October 2024) 

Donald Trump demonizing “illegal immigrants”, all immigrants, naturalized citizens, and all citizens who oppose him

Ever since he began campaigning for President in June 2015, Donald Trump has demonized immigrants to the United States – mostly those he considers "illegal", but sometimes also those who enter the country legally. On Friday, 11 October, though, Trump's advisor Stephen Miller called for "denaturalization" of immigrants who have successfully applied for and received United States citizenship. And yesterday, on Fox News, Trump even called for the National Guard or the military to be used against those citizens he sees as "radical left lunatics." As I noted after a burst of similar rhetoric from Trump last November, anyone who opposes him can become an object of the violence he calls for. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 October 2024)

 

• I take the recent points from this post by Heather Cox Richardson.
• My post from 14 November 2023.

Metrical variation in Terrance Hayes's poem "How To Fold" ("So To Speak", 2023)

Terrance Hayes's poem "How To Fold" ("So To Speak", 2023) begins with dactyls: "Seated alone at the edge of the bed". The poem is in couplets, so the second line could balance that tetrameter with dactylic trimeter, but it turns to troches instead: "grasp the finest fabric first". That could establish a pattern for the poem: alternating lines of dactylic and trochaic tetrameter. But Hayes's third line shifts to iambs: "the shrunken sock or silk softest to touch". "Softest" is a trochaic substitution, but that's not unknown in iambic pentameter lines. The continuous movement between several meters in Hayes's poem models how "free verse" can make use of variable metrical effects. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 October 2024)

 

  

Terrance Hayes’s poem "Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm”, PechaKucha, proper names, and Isamu Noguchi

Terrance Hayes calls his poem "Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm" (from "So To Speak", 2023) "an analogue PechaKucha", a Japanese presentation form that involves making twenty-second statements about twenty slides. In my Contemporary Poetry seminar, we discussed the proper names in Hayes's poem: Kafka, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Matisse, Picasso, Hitchcock, and Isamu Noguchi. As none of us had heard of Noguchi before, I gave the students two minutes to prepare a twenty-second statement about what the poem says about him, and then called on students at random to make their statements. Afterwards, we looked him up: Noguchi (1904-1988) was an Usonian artist, furniture designer, and landscape architect. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 October 2024)

[Hayes’s poem is online, but he revised it considerably for book publication, so here’s the poem as it appears in “So To Speak”]

Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm

Terrance Hayes, "So To Speak", 33-36

 

An Analogue PechaKucha, 2020

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

It appears I will never be remembered

as a great singer nor extravagant eater.

Either I am standing or I am dreaming.

Or I am standing near the mouth of a theater.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

One early & deeply progressive symptom

of the Kafka Virus: a stream of movies seeps

into the shell of the infected individual's sleeping.

Dream factors greatly in the disease.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

I accept I may never get over the ways my mother

loved me poorly. She is close to god in me.

On a planet without surefire

gods & mythologies, there is family.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Inside the stream of Whitney Houston's

voice, Dionne Warwick warns,

"You're gonna need me one

day. You're gonna want me back in your arms."

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

There are no ugly people, only expressions

of uglinessm when the mouth is set

this way or that. It's best to think of time

the way a miser thinks of money.

 

¯\_(' ')_/¯

Matisse liked to have the nude near to see her,

but Picasso liked to close his eyes upon her.

What I remember of 1987, is mostly what I remember

of '88 except with different deaths & births.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

If you watch Hitchcock's Vertigo

the other way round, you may notice 

inside the movie is a whole other movie

told from the point of view of the young lady.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Each new pair of glasses assures things

never look the same, but several glasses

of liquor can create the same feeling.

Balance the morass & the molasses of jackasses.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

Even where I doubt the presence of God 

I am awed by the scale of creation. 

Any science suggesting all that happens

is coincidence, is nonsense.

 

\_('.')_/¯

"Intrepidation." "Misfortunate." "Ya-licious."

"Holy smoked turkey." "Attack of the third dimension."

I continue to half believe a fourth s

resides somewhere inside the word obsession.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Clap for a low back country road 

like a tree talking below a constellation.

A low back river talking twilight 

with the leaves clapping below a constellation.

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

Often right after taking a photo you immediately

crop or color the image so it seems

the doctored thing is the memory.

I'm not saying you have to lie to dream.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

I stream the sequel to a terrible disaster

movie where the protagonist searches for a lover

with the support of characters who meet catastrophe

helping the main character.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

The gun is lowered but then a toe

or two in the boot is shot & when the shoe

comes off, there's a hole a grandchild or two

a generation or two later can put a finger through.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Before the sleeping dream,

we are told to keep nickels in the glasses

of wine by our beds. The virus seems

to have some relationship to cash.

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

Clap for Tetris, the video game

that teaches you the most geometry for life.

Stacks of boxes of books, closets of hangers

and monster angels and historical fabrics.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

I was struck by the sky of my South

Carolina. It made my mouth ache.

I was old by the time I heard the prophet

Isaiah used to preach naked.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Ghost, the loss that broke you was so

ubiquitous, I failed to see it lingering in the ether

like the misspelled affections that go

undetected by both letter writer & letter reader.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Often I confuse Vivamus, moriendum est,

which means "Let us live, for we must die,"

with Bibamus, moriendum est which means "Let

us drink, for we must die."

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Isamu Noguchi sculpted the marrow

of a black stone into bamboo & planted husks

of live bamboo shoots to guard it. I know

this ragged clock waits to be clogged with dust.

 

The magnificent career of Rafael Nadal

Early on, Rafael Nadal made this Roger Federer fan suffer by beating him at the French Open four years running (2005 in the semifinal; 2006 to 2008 in the final). But I learned to appreciate Nadal's compelling style, especially on the clay courts at Roland Garros, with his fourteen titles, 112 wins, and only four losses. Even though his clay-court style had been around for seventeen years by the time he last won it in 2022, only three players ever figured how to beat him there: Robin Söderling (2009), Novak Djokovic (2015 and 2021), and Alexander Zverev (2023, when Nadal was suffering from the injuries that have now ended his career). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 October 2024)

Finding Coover’s "The Universal Baseball Association” on a library shelf at Stanford in the 1980s

Regarding Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968), I remember now that I did not read it in school when I played tabletop baseball games, but in college a few years later. I worked at Stanford's Meyer Library shelving books, and when I shelved one by Coover, I recognized him as the author of a novel about such games, so I checked it out and read it. By then, I had already begun reading literary criticism, so I dug up an article about the novel. To my amusement, the scholar did not know those games actually exist, but thought that Coover had completely made them up. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 October 2024)

SwissPass, the Swiss Federal Railways, and the “enshittification” of customer service on the internet

The internet's "enshittification" (Cory Doctorow) includes how companies make it hard to contact them. I received a suspicious-looking email from SwissPass, a service of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). Although it wasn't phishing, I replied to mention that it looked like it was. It was a no-reply account. The SwissPass website has no email address or contact form. I found an SBB Customer Service email address. An auto-reply said it's no longer used. That reply mentioned a "help and contact" page – which has no email address or contact form. Both sites offer phone numbers to call – but not toll-free. I finally wrote them using a form for complaining about train personnel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 October 2024)

“The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968), by Robert Coover (1932-2024)

When I recently had the idea of writing about mechanical pencils, I put it on my list of possible topics for daily prose. But only yesterday did I not come up with an issue to write about (films and politics having grabbed my attention for most of the past week). While I was writing about my life with mechanical pencils, which began with tabletop baseball games in the 1970s, I thought of a novel I read back then about a man playing such games: Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968). So it was uncanny to learn this morning that Coover died on Saturday at 92. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 October 2024)

Mechanical pencils

In the mid-1970s, I began playing tabletop baseball games like Strat-O-Matic, though my favorite was eventually one called Extra Innings. I stopped playing them around 1980 or so, but one thing remains from my years playing such games: mechanical pencils. Back then, when I needed a new pencil or new lead, I would walk the mile or so from our house in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, to the University of Toledo bookstore, which had a great collection of Pentel pencils. I still prefer their P205 pencils with 0.5 mm lead. Back then, such pencils were only available in black, but these days I have several of them in a range of colors. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 October 2024)

Anti-smoking rhetoric in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017) and Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” (2010)

About eight minutes into "Get Out" (Jordan Peele, 2017), Rose (Allison Williams), a young white woman, takes a cigarette from her boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young Black man, and throws it out the window of the car she is driving. Her opposition to his smoking, which her parents turn out to share, runs through the film. This time around, it reminded me of the guardians at the boarding school in "Never Let Me Go" (Mark Romanek, 2010, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel), who insist that their "students" should never smoke. In both cases, the anti-smoking people want to keep the bodies they want to exploit as healthy as possible. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 October 2024)

A petition against Basel’s staging of the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2025

Today in my mailbox was a petition from the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland to start a referendum against the staging of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel next May: "35 Million [Swiss Francs] in tax money for a propaganda show?" Given what I know about this small, "national-conservative" Swiss political party, which is against homosexuals, trans people, and abortion, I assumed they were against the "propaganda" of a "gender ideology" they would claim was bering spread by Nemo, the non-binary winner of the 2024 ESC. But to my surprise, they dislike the ESC for the "occultism and Satanism" that they claim some of the contest's performers have been spreading. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 October 2024)

"When the defendant [Donald J. Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office"

In the "Government’s motion for immunity determinations" filed yesterday, 2 October 2024, by Special Counsel Jack Smith in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, the "Factual Proffer" that "provides a detailed statement of the case that the Government intends to prove at trial" begins with a straightforward claim: "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" (3). This is not actually disputed by former President Trump's legal team. After all, they did not defend him by saying that he did not commit crimes; they defended him by arguing that, as President, he was immune from prosecution for those crimes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 October 2024) 

“Such stuff as dreams are made of” at the end of John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1941)

At the end of "The Maltese Falcon", John Huston's 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, Detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) picks up the titular falcon, asks Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) what it is, and is puzzled by Spade's response: "Such stuff as dreams are made of." The quotation comes from a speech by Prospero in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (1610-11): "We are such stuff / as dreams are made on." In the film, Spade knows his Shakespeare, while Polhaus apparently does not. Yet as actors, both Bogart and Bond surely knew the line. Actors, after all, are immersed in cultural history in ways the characters they play are usually not. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 October 2024)

Ward Bond and Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon"

Elisha Cook, Jr., in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “The Big Sleep” (1946) – and in a 1949 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby"

Today, when I saw a man tailing Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in John Huston's 1941 film of Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", I was reminded that I have always liked Elisha Cook, Jr., who plays that henchman of Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Cook also appears in another Bogart film, "The Big Sleep" (Howard Hawks, 1946). Otherwise, I know hardly anything he made, but Cook also played Klipspringer in Richard Maibaum's 1949 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", a film I had never heard of before. In "The Maltese Falcon", Cook is on the receiving end of Bogart's memorable line, "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 October 2024) 

Watching “The Lady in the Van”, “Nobody Wants This”, and “Un cuento perfecto” while down with a cold

I've been down with a bad cold since Thursday, so I've been watching things. After honoring Maggie Smith (1934-2024) with Nicholas Hytner's "The Lady in the Van" (2015), I turned to the new Netflix series "Nobody Wants This", because I like Kristen Bell from "The Good Place". After that, I wanted something in Spanish, and I found a 2023 Netflix series "Un cuento perfecto", with Anna Castillo, whose work I knew from Salvador Calvo's "Adú" (2020). Castillo, like Bell, has such an expressive face. – And this "perfect story" is the first film or series I have ever seen that has a sex scene interrupted because the woman is having her period. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 September 2024)

The case of Lionel Tate in Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004) – and on the internet today

While re-reading Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004), I was struck by her mention of Lionel Tate. In 2001, Tate was convicted of murder as an adult for a death he caused at 12. In 2004, when his conviction was overturned, he accepted a plea deal including ten years' probation, so when charged with armed robbery in 2005, he was sentenced to ten years for the robbbery and thirty years for violating probation. Since all the reports on this were at least ten years old, I limited my search to the past year – and the results about Tate's case were mostly essays for students to plagiarize. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 September 2024) 

From Claudia Rankine to Aimé Césaire and César Vallejo

Between April 2016 and March 2017, I read Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004) four times (in part because I taught a course on Rankine's work – and Anthony Vahni Capildeo's – in the Spring Semester of 2017 at the University of Basel English Department). The epigraph to Rankine's book is from Aimé Césaire's "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal", so I read that in French back in 2017, too. Now, rereading Rankine for a student's MA exam, I notice again her references to César Vallejo's "Considerando en frío" – but now, having been learning Spanish since November 2020, I went to read that poem in the original, too. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 September 2024)

Not remembering Maggie Smith in “As You Like It” at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario in Spring 1977

In spring 1977, presumably during our spring break from school, my family went from in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, to Stratford, Ontario, for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. My father was especially excited about the trip, because he wanted to see Maggie Smith as Rosalind in the festival's production of William Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It". I wish I remembered something about her performance, but all I remember about that trip was that a dog bit me on what an online map suggests was Tom Patterson Island in Lake Victoria in central Stratford. Still, Maggie Smith (1934-2024) always reminded me of that trip, even if I all I remembered was that dog. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 September 2024)

Explaining the form of sonnets with Ernst Jandl’s “sonett"

In a class today on two sonnets by William Shakespeare (18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", and 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), I began by discussing the form of a sonnet. I hadn't planned to use it, but I suddenly remembered the wonderful example of Ernst Jandl's "sonett", all of whose lines are variations on the first line: "das a das e das i das o das u". With the clear unstressed articles and the stressed names of the vowels, the meter is easy to describe. The rhyme scheme is also clear, and the fourteen lines and their organization (Petrarchan) are also straightforward. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 September 2024)

 

sonett

Ernst Jandl

 

das a das e das i das o das u

das u das a das e das i das o

das u das a das e das i das o

das a das e das i das o das u

 

das a das e das i das o das u

das u das a das e das i das o

das u das a das e das i das o

das a das e das i das o das u

 

das o das u das a das e das i

das i das o das u das a das e

das e das i das o das u das a

 

das o das u das a das e das i

das i das o das u das a das e

das e das i das o das u das a

Re-reading four novels by Virginia Woolf for a student’s Master’s exam this fall

In 2019 and 2020, I went through Virginia Woolf's nine novels from "The Voyage Out" (1915) to "Between the Acts" (1941), as well as her unusual 1933 book "Flush", a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from the perspective of her dog Flush. Many years before that project, when I was still at university, I had read "Jacob's Room" (1922), "Mrs. Dalloway" (1925), "To the Lighthouse" (1927), "Orlando" (1928), and "The Waves" (1931). Now a student will be doing her Master's exam with me, and one of her topics is London in four Woolf novels, so I'll get to reread "Night and Day" (1919), "Jacob's Room", "Mrs. Dalloway", and "The Years" (1937). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 September 2024) 

Epanalepsis (or epanodiplosis) in Emily Dickinson’s "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -" (Fr591)

While preparing Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -" (Fr591) for discussion on Wednesday, I noticed the structure of the penultimate line: "And then the Windows failed - and then." It begins and ends with the same phrase. In the past, I've described such lines as "framed" by the repeated phrase. But recently, I've been discovering the many old rhetorical terms for types of repetition (with "epistrophe" being my favorite, because of Thelonious Monk's composition "Epistrophy"). So now I've been able to find "epanalepsis" or "epanadiplosis" for such repetition at the beginning and end of a sentence (or, in this case, of a line of poetry). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 September 2024)

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591)

Emily Dickinson

 

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

 

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

 

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

 

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

 

 

A Michigan absentee voter since 1992

Late Friday, I received my absentee ballot from Michigan. When I first voted from abroad in 1992, I registered at my mother's address in Michigan, and I have been a regular absentee voter there ever since. In my first Presidential election in the United States in 1984, I lived in California, where I was going to university; in my second in 1988, I lived in Pennsylvania, where I had just started graduate school. I sometimes wonder if I was supposed to have applied for my 1992 absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. But at the time, I was using my mother's address as my US address, so Michigan made more sense to me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 September 2024)