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)