Sunday, June 26, 2022

Trump's "What do I have to lose" on 3 Janaury 2021 as an admission that he knew he had lost the 2020 Presidential election

In April 2020, I wrote about President Donald Trump saying "what do you have to lose?" in two contexts: addressing African-Americans in 2016 and discussing hydroxychloroquine early in the coronavirus pandemic. In both cases, he addressed people in what he saw as a bad situation. Recently, the January 6 Committee revealed his use of the same question with respect to himself in the meeting on 3 January 2021 at which he tried to make Jeffrey Clark Acting Attorney General: "What do I have to lose?" Given his earlier uses of the phrase, this is tantamount to an admission that he knew very well that he had lost the 2020 Presidential election. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 June 2022)

 




Saturday, June 25, 2022

The inconsistency is the point: On the Supreme Court's gun and abortion rulings

Yesterday, after the publication of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted that "[t]he implausible inconsistency of the guns and abortion rulings is both sickening and revealing." I would add that, to paraphrase Adam Serwer, the inconsistency is the point. The contradiction between governmental intervention in the case of abortion and the denial of governmental intervention in the case of guns makes clear that the point is not to provide a consistent ideological position but rather to assert power without any need for justification. The contradictions between (and even within) the rulings further the straightforward seizure of unlimited power by white, male, heterosexual, Christian, cisgender supremacy. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 June 2022)


Friday, June 24, 2022

Justice Thomas calls for what Justices Alito and Kavanagh deny: The overturning of contraception rights, consensual homosexuality, and marriage equality

In their opinions on the Dobbs case that overturns Roe v. Wade, both Justice Alito and Justice Kavanagh dismiss the point in the dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan that overturning Roe "calls into question Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell" (the first two are on contraception, the third on consensual homosexuality, the fourth on marriage equality). But in his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas actually does call for those very cases to be reconsidered: "[I]n future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Alito and Kavanagh both allude to Loving as well (mixed-race marriage), which is noticeably absent from Thomas's list. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 June 2022)


Thursday, June 23, 2022

Deplorable decisions by the United States Supreme Court in Vega v. Tekoh and in Bruen

While we await the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US Supreme Court's forthcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, we can deplore today's decisions from the court. In Vega v. Tekoh, the court ruled by 6-3 (with all the Republican appointees in the majority) that if you're not read your Miranda rights (such as the right to remain silent), you cannot sue the government for using what you say against you. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the court ruled by 6-3 (guess who) that New York's century-old-law controlling firearm possession is unconstitutional. As Elie Mystal tweeted, this "turns every state into Texas." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 June 2022)


Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The "copoll" and the "pinker sister" in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"

In the passage we discussed from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" in this evening's reading group, a conversation takes place on a carriage ride "while daisy winks at her pinker sister among the tussocks and the copoll between the shafts mocks the couple on the car" (53.9-11). At first, we thought there were two couples here, but "copoll" is a Joycean variation on the Irish "capall", which means "horse", so the horse is making fun of the couple in the carriage as they pass the daisies by the side of the road. We didn't pin down the daisy's "pinker sister" as a particular flower (and no resources I've checked have mentioned it). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 June 2022)


Tuesday, June 21, 2022

"The most simple surrealist act" seen from 2022

In his "Second Manifeste du Surréalisme" (1929), André Breton writes that surrealism "n'attend encore rien que de la violence". This appeal to violence could be taken abstractly, but a more concrete image follows: "L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule." While it might be possible to read even this image as a metaphor, it's quite hard to do so today, especially in the United States, when Breton's "most simple surrealist act" of shooting a gun into a crowd has not only become a regular event but even comes with manifestoes of its own. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 June 2022)

 


Monday, June 20, 2022

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, General Order No. 3 of 19 June 1865, and constraints on freedom

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which went into effect on 18 December 1865, abolished slavery and "involuntary servitude", but not completely – "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." General Order No. 3, which was issued by General Gordon Granger on 19 July 1865 and is the origin of the Juneteenth celebration, contains no such exception, but it does provide that "former masters and slaves" should become "employer and hired labor" and that "the freedmen" should "work for wages" and "will not be supported in idleness." In one case, freedom is constrained by punishment, in the other, by submission to "wage slavery." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 June 2022)

 




Sunday, June 19, 2022

Images, history, and Link Williams's understanding of his abduction in Ann Petry's "The Narrows"

Near the end of Ann Petry's "The Narrows" (1953), Link Williams, a young Black man who is "working on a history of slavery in the United States", is abducted by the husband of his white ex-mistress Camilla. He sees "one quarter of the explanation" for the abduction in two photographs associated with that affair (one of Camilla; one of a Black escaped convict), while "[t]he other three-quarters reaches back to that Dutch man of warre that landed in Jamestown in 1619." For Link, then, his experiences as a Black man in the mid-twentieth-century United States are determined by images (those photographs) and history (the American story that began with that ship). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 June 2022)

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Playing a few songs by Paul McCartney for his birthday

At the end of the semester, I took a break from writing my daily prose and was planning to start again on Monday, 20 June, but my daughter Sara played part of "Yesterday" on the piano about fifteen minutes ago, and I was reminded that it's Paul McCartney's 80th birthday today. So I asked her to play the whole song, and after she did, I grabbed my guitar and ran through three of my favorite McCartney songs: "Things We Said Today", "I've Just Seen a Face", and "With a Little Help from My Friends". (The latter, I just learned, actually was co-written with John Lennon.) So Happy 80th Birthday to Paul! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 June 2022)

Friday, June 10, 2022

An editorial emendation written to fit the meter in Emily Dickinson

In R. W. Franklin's edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, number 1591 from 1882 consists of a single line and an editorial emendation: "If I should see a single bird / [remaining text unknown]". When I read this yesterday, I had just read two-and-a-half pages of Dickinson, so I was once again under the spell of her metrical genius and variations. Without even thinking about it, then, I read the phrase in brackets as part of the poem, and it worked metrically as the second line of one of Dickinson's poems in alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter. I like to imagine Franklin chuckling to himself as he wrote the phrase. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 June 2022)

Thursday, June 09, 2022

A thought about a poem by Adrienne Rich, and her response to it

In Adrienne Rich's "Collected Poems 1950-2012", I have been tracking images of indoor scenes, especially bedrooms, kitchens, tables, and windows: such interiors run through Rich's poems as sites of conversation and work. Just now, while reading "Revolution in Permanence (1953, 1993)" from Rich's "Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1951-1995", I found the opening image of a poster of Ethel Rosenberg seen "through a barn window" vivid, but the rest of the poem blunt. Then the motto of the next section, "Then or Now", seemed to respond to that thought: "Is it necessary for me to write obliquely / about the situation? Is that what / you would have me do?"  (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 June 2022)


Wednesday, June 08, 2022

Catching up with "The History of Africana Philosophy"

Today, I caught up with the "The History of Africana Philosophy" series of "The History of Philosophy without any Gaps", with episode 101 on "Crossing Paths: The Last Years of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr." I particularly enjoyed episodes 8-10 on early Ethiopian philosophy; episode 56 on the fascinating and influential Edward Blyden (1832-1912), who was born in St. Thomas, lived for a long time in Liberia, and died in Sierra Leone; and episode 92 on the equally peripatetic Claudia Jones (1915-1964), who was born in Trinidad, grew up in the United States, and was later deported, before dying in London as "the mother of the Notting Hill Festival". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 June 2022)

 



Tuesday, June 07, 2022

Defeating four Top Ten players to win a men's singles title at a Grand Slam: Borg, Wilander, Federer, Nadal

Much has been made the past few days of how Rafael Nadal beat four Top Ten players to win the French Open this year, a rare achievement in tennis history. Seeded number one at the 1978 French Open, Björn Borg beat four players seeded nine and higher to win the title. Four years later at the same tournament, unseeded Mats Wilander beat players seeded second, fifth, fourth, and third in order to win the tournament. And at the 2017 Australian Open, seventeenth seed Roger Federer beat four players seeded ten and higher on his way to the title (and he defeated ninth seed Rafael Nadal in five sets in the final). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 June 2022)


Monday, June 06, 2022

On reading Wedekind instead of watching tennis

On Sunday, 11 September 1988, during my first semester of graduate school, I had to finish Frank Wedekind's "Erdgeist" for the Modern German Drama seminar the next day, and it was slow going because my German was not yet completely fluent. But instead of doing my reading, I spent the afternoon watching NFL games with my housemates, and then was tempted to continue with sports when the US Open men's singles tennis final between Mats Wilander and Ivan Lendl started. So I went to the library to finish my reading, but when I got home, I was able to watch the last few games of Wilander's marathon five-set win over Lendl. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 June 2022)


Sunday, June 05, 2022

Rafael Nadal's fourteen Roland Garros titles and twenty-two Grand Slam titles

With his win at the French Open today, Rafael Nadal has won the tournament as many times as Pete Sampras won Grand Slam singles titles in his career: fourteen. Sampras's erstwhile record for men's singles titles was first passed by Roger Federer, then by Nadal, and then by Novak Djokovic. With twenty-two Grand Slam singles titles, Nadal is now tied with Steffi Graf and is close to the top two women, Margaret Court (24) and Serena Williams (23). And although he has no doubles titles, with two more singles titles Nadal would be in third place among the men for most titles overall, behind Roy Emerson (28) and John Newcombe (26). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 June 2022)

Friday, June 03, 2022

Bill Frisell at Willisau in 2012, playing John Lennon – and Paul Motian

When Bill Frisell played John Lennon tunes with Greg Leisz, Tony Scherr, and Kenny Wollesen at the 2012 Willisau Jazz Festival, the set started with a melody that was not by Lennon. Afterwards, I had a chance to ask Leisz if I had correctly recognized the opener, and he confirmed that it was Paul Motian’s “It Should’ve Happened a Long Time Ago”, the title track of the first Motian Trio album with Frisell and Joe Lovano. Leisz added that Frisell had started the set in memory of Motian because the first time he ever played Willisau was with Motian, and it was his first appearance there since Motian’s death in 2011. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 June 2022)


Thursday, June 02, 2022

Excellent Toni Morrison criticism by Timothy Aubry and Martha J. Cutter

The best literary criticism offers ideas that go beyond the works or authors being studied. In my seminar this term on Toni Morrison's Middle Novels, we kept returning to two studies of Morrison. Timothy Aubry's "Why is Beloved So Universally Beloved? Uncovering Our Hidden Aesthetic Criteria" (2016) drew our attention to aesthetic issues we might have otherwise missed. And we took Martha J. Cutter's use of Tzetan Todorov's concept of the "fantastic" in "The Story Must Go on and on: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and 'Jazz'" (2000) to see how Morrison's novels "hesitate" between the realistic and the supernatural – and between other conceptual pairs as well. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 June 2022)

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

"I am a space as much as I am a voice": A poetry installation with quotations from poems by Sumita Chakraborty, Mary Jean Chan, Natalie Diaz, Ilya Kaminsky, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Vidyan Ravinthiran

In this afternoon's final session of my Contemporary Poety seminar (in which we discussed collections by Sumita Chakraborty, Mary Jean Chan, Natalie Diaz, Ilya Kaminsky, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Vidyan Ravinthiran), the students made posters with one quotation from one of the poets, and with the help of several students, I made six posters with one quotation from each poet. We hung the posters on the classroom walls, and each student and I explained our chosen quotations, and in the discussion, we linked the quotations to each other. For me, one quotation from Chakraborty came to stand for this installation: "I am a space as much as I am a voice". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 June 2022)

 

Quotations from Chan, Phillips, and Chakraborty.

Quotations from Kaminsky and Phillips.

Quotations from Kaminsky and Diaz.

Quotations from Chakraborty, Diaz, and Ravinthiran.

Quotations from Diaz, Kaminsky, and Ravinthiran.

 

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

A cactus on a concert stage in Budapest

In late 1991, I was living in Berlin, and as my father was in Budapest collaborating with mathematicians and dancing Hungarian folk dances, I went to visit him. He took me to a concert by the Amadinda Percussion Group, a classical ensemble he had already heard several times. Before the concert, we noticed a small cactus at the front of the stage, with a microphone next to it. Referring to the program, I said, "You know there's going to be a piece by John Cage when there's a miked cactus on stage!" During the concert, then, we heard how plucking the hard spines of the cactus made a cool percussion sound. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 31 May 2022)

Monday, May 30, 2022

An evening in the 1980s at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance at Stanford

One evening during the two years when my sister True and I were both at Stanford, she was working on a paper in the office of GLAS (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance at Stanford), and to keep her company, I sat in the corner reading. Later, Gerard Koskovich of GLAS came in and passionately talked to True about all the ways in which the "straights" didn't understand something. Eventually, I said I was sorry that my fellow "straights" were such a pain. Gerard turned to me and said, "Look at you, Andrew, with your tie-dye T-shirt, your scraggly beard, and your sandals! You may be a heterosexual, but you're not straight!" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 May 2022)


Sunday, May 29, 2022

"What are you going through?" and "Quel est ton tourment?" in Adrienne Rich and Simone Weil

This morning, I read Adrienne Rich's poem "For a Friend in Travail" and was struck by her note for the phrase "what are you going through", which appears twice in the poem. It comes from Emma Crauford's translation of Simone Weil's "Attente de Dieu": "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, 'What are you going through?'" I found Weil's original French (which took quite a while): "La plénitude de l'amour du prochain, c'est simplement d'être capable de lui demander: 'Quel est ton tourment?'" I can imagine asking someone what they're "going through", but would you ask someone what their "torment" is? (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 May 2022)

 


Saturday, May 28, 2022

How I became an XTC fan at Palo Alto High School in Spring 1982

One afternoon each week during the spring of my senior year at Palo Alto High School in 1982, a group of students met at school to discuss whatever we thought of to discuss. I don't remember the group's name or most of our topics, but one week, we all shared songs that were special to us. I chose Peter Gabriel's "Family Snapshot", from his 1980 album Peter Gabriel. I don't listen to Gabriel much anymore, but one young woman played "Knuckle Down" from XTC's "English Settlement" – a song I liked so much I bought the album as soon as I could. And now I've been listening to XTC for forty years. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 May 2022)


Friday, May 27, 2022

The 2013 Senate vote on expanding background checks was 54-46, but Senator Joe Manchin's legislation was filibustered

As Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her "Letter from an American" for 26 May 2022, the United States Senate responded to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on 14 December 2012 with a bipartisan bill to expand background checks. The vote was on 17 April 2013, with 54 Senators supporting it. Yet it did not pass because the filibuster requires 60 votes for contested legislation. It was opposed by 40 Republicans and 6 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The failed bill is known as the Manchin-Toomey amendment, yet now, in 2022, the Senator primarily responsible for it, Democrat Joe Manchin, continues to resist calls to eliminate the filibuster. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 May 2022)

 




Thursday, May 26, 2022

A movie about an unbelievable true story that I read about as a child: "Operation Mincemeat"

When I was a child, I had a book of unbelievable true stories. I don't remember its title, and I only remember one story I read several times, on a successful World War Two British plot to deceive the Germans and the Italians into thinking the Allies were going to attack Greece rather than Sicily. The macabre twist was that fake documents were planted on a corpse. I had long since forgotten the details, so I was pleased tonight to see John Madden's 2021 film on that very story, "Operation Mincemeat" – and also amused to learn that Ian Fleming, world-famous author of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", was part of the plot. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 May 2022)


Wednesday, May 25, 2022

On listening to XTC for several days, but not to one song today

On Sunday, I started listening to my XTC albums in alphabetical order. I got through "Apple Venus" and all but one song of "The Big Express", which I listened to on Monday, along with all of "Black Sea," "Drums and Wires", and the beginning of "English Settlement." I didn't get far yesterday, when I listened to only two songs. I listened to two more about an hour ago, but then I paused while preparing poems to discuss in class today. When I decided to put on music again, I couldn't listen to "Melt the Guns", not today: "If you listen very quietly, you can hear them shooting from grave to grave." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 May 2022)


Tuesday, May 24, 2022

The Bandung Conference and the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty in 1955

The 1955 Bandung Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, brought together representatives of 29 African and Asian countries to discuss cooperation and oppose colonialism. China's Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai attended the conference, but while he was in Indonesia he also met with Indonesian Foreign Minister Soenario to negotiate a Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, which aimed to resolve the status of over one million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia after its recent independence from the Netherlands. As I am the father of children with dual nationality, the idea of that treaty sounded good to me – until I found out it was a treaty to force dual nationals to choose one or the other. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 May 2022)


Monday, May 23, 2022

"Why will you not speak?": Mourning in Denise Levertov and Denise Riley

Denise Levertov's poem "The Mourners" (from her 1984 collection "Oblique Prayers") concludes with an appeal to the mourned person whose body the speaker has been carrying through the poem: "Why will you not speak?" This same figure of asking the lost one to speak runs through Denise Riley's 2016 collection "Say Something Back", written after the death of her adult son. In "A Part Song", Riley attempts to "extort your reply" to her poems, while "Under the Answering Sky" speaks more generally for all mourners: "What do the dead make of us / that we’d flay ourselves trying / to hear them though they may / sigh at such close loneliness." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 May 2022)


Sunday, May 22, 2022

My laconic, graceful friend answers the phone and speaks his mother tongue

It was dark in the hallway in my friend's house, but when the phone rang and he turned to answer it with the slow grace that mirrored his laconic speech, a stripe of sunlight came in behind him through a window. On the phone, he began speaking his mother tongue, which he'd said was a northern Italian dialect, and while his gestures retained their grace, his body language became more lively and words poured out of him in a flood I had never experienced with him before. After a long conversation, he hung up, turned back to me with that slow grace, and quietly apologized: "That was my uncle from Italy." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 May 2022)


Saturday, May 21, 2022

Time zones are "not rooted in our nation's history" and should be banned

What do we even have time zones for? Time zones are the kind of government over-regulation the Supreme Court has determined is unconstitutional and "not rooted in our nation's history." They were imposed upon us in the late nineteenth century by the railroads – who even takes the train anywhere anymore except for socialist Europeans? Every town should have the right to use its own time based on when it's actually noon in that town – you just have to see when the sun is high in the sky! And if the railroads don't like it, well, in the age of the GPS, they can easily determine their location and the local time. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 May 2022)


Friday, May 20, 2022

Vangelis at a piano recital, and then the news of his death

Yesterday, Sara and several other students of her piano teacher (who is retiring) gave a recital at the Music Academy in Basel. Among the pieces the students played was "Conquest of Paradise", by Vangelis, which was part of his score for the 1992 Ridley Scott movie "1492: Conquest of Paradise". I never saw that one or heard the music, but of course it reminded me of the soundtrack to Hugh Hudson's 1981 movie "Chariots of Fire", as well as of my later discovery of Vangelis's earlier band Aphrodite's Child and the 1972 album "666": "Fallen fallen fallen is Babylon the Great". Later, we learned that Vangelis died at 79 on Tuesday. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 May 2022)


Thursday, May 19, 2022

Afternoon in Basel with trams and a cloudburst

Carrying my backpack and wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, I went out to do errands in the early afternoon on this hot day in Basel (with temperatures around 30° C). I planned a route with several tram trips, but just as I was about to get on the tram to do the last of my errands, there was a roll of thunder, and heavy rain began to fall. I only had two tram stops to go, but it was still raining when I arrived, so I just stayed on the tram until it stopped raining, then got off and went back to do that last errand and then go home. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 May 2022)


Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Staging two scenes from Jane Austen in class

In my Academic Writing Two classes this week, we worked with two scenes from Jane Austen in terms of the positions of the characters relative to each other. In the past, I had the students draw pictures or diagrams to show who was where in the scenes. But this time around, we stole a bench from the courtyard to represent the sofa on which Anne Elliot, Mrs. Musgrove, and Captain Wentworth sit in "Persuasion", and we cleared a space around a table for five characters from "Emma" to play an anagram game while Mr. Knightley observes them. Staging the scenes made for playful sessions full of insights into the two scenes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 May 2022)

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Remembering my first meetings in Basel with my longtime colleague Peter Burleigh on his 60th birthday

In October 1995, I arrived at Basel's English Department and met my fellow new hire Peter Burleigh, who's been my colleague here ever since. In one of our first meetings, we spoke with his predecessor, who was from New Zealand, and afterwards, I did something I can no longer do: I drew a vowel chart of my pronunciation, with arrows showing how the vowels shifted for New Zealand pronunciation. I showed it to Peter, who knew phonetics better than I did; he said I'd drawn it just right. That's a sign of how I immediately felt we were a team – and we have been ever since. Happy 60th birthday to Peter! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 May 2022)

 


Monday, May 16, 2022

Joe Lovano, Marilyn Crispell, and Carmen Castaldi at Don Bosco in Basel

Tonight's concert in Basel by Joe Lovano's Tapestry Trio, with Marilyn Crispell (piano) and Carmen Castaldi (drums), was the seventh or eighth time I've seen Lovano, so I was mostly anticipating seeing Crispell live for the first time, after several decades of enjoying excellent recordings by and with her. While Lovano and Crispell both delivered, Castadi’s drumming was unfortunately mostly uninspired. Except for a few passages when his use of toms offered effective accompaniment to the other two, his static ride cymbal and snare drum distracted from their playing rather than supporting it. I hope I get a chance to hear Crispell solo someday — or at least with a better drummer. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 May 2022)


Sunday, May 15, 2022

Two more weeks of daily writing for my students in "111 Words a Day"

The students in my course "111 Words a Day: A Writing Project" have two more weeks of daily texts to write this term; they'll finish the project the day before the class's final session. This is the third time I have taught the course (in Spring Semester 2020 and 2021), and for the first time we have met in person all semester (the 2020 group had three in-person sessions before lockdown started; the 2021 group met online all the way through). That certainly changes how the course goes, but beyond that, the mix of participants and the variety of texts they write have again given this class its own unique feel. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 May 2022)

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Not remembering the 1974 FA Cup Final

Watching today's FA Cup final, I realized I've never done so before. Even though I've had BBC on my television package for years, it just never crossed my mind to watch it. But then I realized that, although I have no memory of it, I probably watched the 1974 FA Cup final near the end of my family's year in Leamington Spa. I looked it up: Liverpool defeated Newcastle United 3-0, with two goals by Kevin Keegan. The clubs had only one substitute on the bench in those days, and if there'd been extra time and a draw, there would have been a replay, not penalty kicks, to decide the title. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 May 2022)


Friday, May 13, 2022

My poem and song "Pale Horse" from 1987 to today

In Winter 1987, "Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton" covered my English-major requirement for pre-eighteenth-century literature. In Book X of Milton's "Paradise Lost", a footnote to "his pale Horse" (590) sent me to Revelation 6:8: "[...] there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death [...]". The image sent me to my band's practice room, and soon I had written "Pale Horse". The poem is in my collection "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong"; the song is on my band Human Shields's album "Somebody's Hometown" – and tonight at 9:30, The Literati (Frank Wenzel, Axel Rüst, and I) will play it at Nadelberg 6 in Basel as one of our literary songs. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 May 2022)