The fifth of our recurring opportunities — currently, every other Thursday — to learn what your fellow subscribers are reading and writing and thinking about
I'm still reading Kristin Lavransdatter. Almost to the end. Oh it's even better the second time.
I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, which I hadn't read since I was in school. Was it junior high or high school? I no longer remember.
I've been dipping into the Seamus Heaney collection 100 Poems, which is an anthology of favorites gathered by his wife and children. I really like the selections. Also I've been revisiting some favorite A.E. Stallings from her recent collection This Afterlife. She's delightful.
With the children I've been doing some read alouds of fairy tales, Andersen and Grimm, since we finished The Iliad and I realized we haven't done fairytales in years. It's fun to get the 16 year old talking about story structure and critiquing the plots of some of the Grimm stories. She's quite passionate.
16 year old and I are also reading Jane Eyre, which she was initially unsure about as we'd just finished a long run of Austen and it was quite a shift. Mr Rochester's bed has been set on fire and my daughter still has no idea about the identity of the woman in the attic. I'm enjoying watching the book through her eyes on this first read.
As far as subscribing, I know the workman is worth his wages, but there are SO MANY literary substacks I'd like to subscribe to and I've only got a limited budget for books, journals, and online subscriptions to draw from. It was already hard to choose just one or two literary journals to subscribe to. Especially since I seldom read them from cover to cover. For now I'm subscribing to a few for a while, but I might have to cancel subscriptions in order to rotate through the various substacks which have restricted content. I think my ideal price point is about $10-15 a year, which I know is too low for most content providers, but I also wonder if the volume of subscribers at a lower price point might make up the difference of charging more but getting fewer patrons?
As for writing, this week my husband and I took a serious look at our budget and decided that we were paying too much to keep our 20+ year old blogs online especially as writing has become more and more occasional. I am mourning the coming expiration of blog which he made for me when we were just dating.
And I've been wondering about whether I should start a substack of my own. Would a new venue inspire me to write more?
This week I found myself writing quite a bit about an Eavan Boland poem, Mother Ireland, in a series of comments on Facebook and had a brief notion that it could become an essay with a little tweaking; but I don't have time to do much polishing, and if I no longer have a blog where would I publish?
What is the price for inspiration, a breath of beauty before one's eyes, or a joy to remember.
Most subtracks seem to be $50/yr or $5/month. On the other hand, you do need to cover the expenses and keep food on the table. So, is it worth an extra $10/yr, for me yes, for another, only they can answer that.
To find out, maybe have a two week window, where it can be followed by subscribers for $50/yr. If you get enough new subscribers, that would be a signal to keep it there, if not, there is no need to lower it.
What are enough new subscribers, only you two can say.
Perhaps so. After a while, one forgets where one learns things, or whether he learned them at all. In any case, I like the definition.
I was recently discussing poetry with a friend whose first language is Russian. I mentioned to him that I'll never be able to appreciate the work of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. I pronounced her name with the stress on the penult--AkhmaTOva--but he corrected me. The correct pronunciation is AkhMAtova. That's how far I am from being able to appreciate her work: I couldn't even properly pronounce her name.
Yes --- I was just rereading her not long ago (in Stanley Kunitz's translation, which is the one I had in grad school) and feeling very much that I was seeing through a glass darkly. Really that's true any time you read something in translation---though as somebody with no facility at all for it ,I admire the whole endeavor of translation. And it does seem to me that some poetry must get through, because even through a glass darkly, I'm not just reading the translation for the ideas!
I subscribed when you ran a sale so I paid closer to the $50 price point. Carla commented about the price being close to the cost of a print publication, and while I agree, I will add that generally you get more content for that cost in print (and a bunch of ads). Most of the substacks I have encountered are in the $60-$80 range to subscribe, which adds up very quickly if you have several you wish to support. I paid to subscribe to this one because I have found that it adds something to my day that I didn't even know I was missing, and I want you to keep writing it. :-) I have others that I have paid for with the intent of getting all of the content since there were limited free posts. My suggestion to get some conversion of free to paid subscribers would be to use a combination of some subscriber exclusive content combined with a lower price point. I'm sure there is a sweet spot in there -- where there is just enough free content to entice the reader to pay just a bit more to get everything. I don't know the demographics of your subscribers, and that could make a big difference in how you structure things. You could possibly experiment a bit with slightly restricted content (maybe MWF are free and TTh are restricted) combined with a limited sale price to see if that makes a difference in the conversion rate.
In terms of reading... reading is my television. Sometimes an intense documentary suits the mood and other times you just want to watch a WKRP in Cincinnati rerun. So, my WKRP right now is something from the Escape to New Zealand series by Rosalind James. You could categorize them as contemporary sports romance with a strong sense of place. The New Zealand setting (and rugby!) are an integral part of the story. I'm also listening to The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley while I do needlework. That one has strong archaeology themes. Lastly, I'm reading The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel which I am finding very interesting and engaging.
Thanks. These are things to try. Never been a Postrel fan—when she was editing the libertarian magazine Reason, I had some clashes with her—but this book on fabric sounds fun. Don't know James or Kearsley. Enjoyable?
Quite. The Kearsley reads like a mystery with great atmosphere due to the paranormal element. It is almost gothic. The narrator does a fantastic job.
Rosalind James writes romances with a nice bit of plot besides the usual girl meets boy, and she writes characters you want to see be successful.
I'm finding the Postrel to be very interesting. Her juxtaposition of the rise of textiles and the necessary technical developments for them with the technologies we more commonly think of as essential in historical change is quite interesting.
And you are a paid subscriber—for which Sally and I thank you. I haven't seen you in ages. Drop me a note, if you get a chance, and assure me all is well.
Irwin continues to wrote his weekly American Account for the (London) Sunday Times. And my third book on Churchill was recently published. We are well and happily working!
All best wishes in this venture (and others too of course).
In poetry, I've been reading "The Liquid Pour in which My Hear has Run" by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (Rhina Espaillat's translation) and "Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart" by Jay Parini.
So the question is , what does it cost to read a poem. What I must ask does it cost to write a poem? And what is the relationship between the cost and the value of the production?
Currently (a bit of a slog, I'm afraid), Janet Herrin's history "Ravenna."
Don't know if it matters, but Houston Baker (former president of the MLA) spent his whole career trying to eliminate the notion that any one piece of literature was better than any other. No need to guess where he stood in the theory wars.
I'd like to know what Hill you pick up. I've been reading The Orchards of Syon off and on --- which is how I read anything, apparently --- for a while. And last year I read The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy. I welcome other recommendations.
I was at a nearby Barnes & Noble looking at children’s picture books and came across a book I loved as a child and read many times but, oddly enough, remembered nothing about that is not revealed in the title, “The Boxcar Children.” I bought it and reread it. I’m not surprised I liked the depiction of the children fending for themselves like Robinson Crusoe. One of the features of the landscape that helps them is the unofficial dump, where they find plates, flat ware, cups, and wheels for a cart. The book is rather moralistic, but it’s amusing to consider the excesses of moral zeal a modern writer would bring to the dump.
I suppose the current equivalent would be the dumpster. I’ve known three people who used dumpsters to support themselves. One, the grad school father of small children, foraged the dumpster behind a grocery store in Durham NC for fruits and vegetables. Another, an older widow, found most of her clothes in the dumpsters around Chapel Hill. The third, a scrapper and hoarder, found all kinds of treasures in Raleigh dumpsters—some he sold, and some he kept, so that his large storage unit was always crammed full. At times, he’d have 7 or 8 upright vacuum cleaners and 5 or 6 microwaves, dozens of remotes. Why don’t you scrap them, I’d ask, and he’d respond, Some of them work.
Mostly, I've been madly revising and submitting poems, but I’ve been reading and enjoying Alan Moorehead's trilogy, “The Desert War,” on the North African campaigns in World War 2. I had a general understanding of the campaigns, but they were a lot more complicated, with a lot more back-and-forth, than I realized. It’s pleasant to be reminded of the gritty glamor of the war correspondent.
I’m afraid I’ve little to shed on the prices and features that would attract more readers. I’m deeply gratified by the generosity of our hosts in posting poems and analyses five days a week and in responding to comments. To me, that’s worth every penny, but my current situation makes that possible. It might not always be so.
Yes, it started a little slow, I thought. I really became engaged when he traveled by the Nile to south Sudan and then into Ethiopia to cover the fall of Addis Ababa. It's interesting historically (many encounters with generals and statesmen), a ripping adventure yarn (I don't know where I picked up that cliché!), and a fine travelogue, with moments of pathos and comedy.
That WWII book sounds really good. One of my sons amassed something of a library of books like that --- war and geopolitics, essentially --- and then left it all here, so periodically I do the equivalent of dumpster diving in the upstairs hall for something like that to read. I spent a good year reading (off and on) a history of the British MI5: Christopher Andrews's Defend the Realm, which bills itself as the AUTHORIZED history of MI5, which kind of makes me want to read the unauthorized ones, but this was very interesting.
I also think a lot about that whole Robinson Crusoe genre of children's books --- My Side of the Mountain, for example. And From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which captivated me utterly at 9 or 10. And then there are the Swallows and Amazons books, which are mostly about children PRETENDING to be Robinson Crusoes, though in some instances they're called on to be really that resourceful and brave: We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, in which the sailboat they're on drags its anchor in a fog while the adult supposedly in charge has gone off and been hit by car, so the children have to sail safely across the North Sea before they can get home again. That installment in the series has always struck me as a particularly brilliant move, because it shows how the things they've done in safety, as games, sailing on relatively tame waters, are real and bear real fruit in their characters and capabilities when an adult situation demands something more of them.
We just finished the audiobook of We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea on our family road trip to Lake George last month. I've read the whole series aloud to the children, of course, but the audiobooks, with the delightful narration by Alison Larkin, have been my husband's first exposure. He loves the series as much as we do and it's been so fun to have him enter into this imaginative world the children and I have been sharing for years. They'll probably all be grown by the time we finish the whole audiobook set since we don't seem to all be in the car together nearly as often as we used to be.
We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea might be my favorite installment, though. I do love the very real stakes. Highlighted by the delight of the Dutch pilot when they finally spill the beans on their secret. And I love that this is the moment in the series when we first meet Daddy, the famous Captain Walker of the "better drowned than duffers" telegram.
Oh, yes, I love that Dutch pilot! In Bergen, Norway, last week, we went to a maritime museum that had a model of a ship's quarters --- chart room, etc. The pilot's cabin made me think of that book and that pilot.
The Coral Island (R.M. Ballantyne's original, which prompted Golding to invert the tale for Lord of the Flies). Swiss Family Robinson. Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. The list of Robinsonades is endless.
Thanks for the many recommendations. I have several nieces and nephews who live far away. I never know what to buy for them. This list will be very helpful--and of course, for quality control purposes, I will read them before mailing them.
Oh, absolutely. You can't be too careful. Must pre-read.
Depending on ages, I am full of recommendations for children's books! Not too long ago I reread Rosemary Sutcliff's The Shining Company, which is a retelling of the Welsh epic Y Gododdin, and is beautiful and devastating. It was about the last book my youngest children suffered me to read aloud to them (in their early teens), but we all loved it. I need to cycle in some more rereading of books like that, because they're genuinely so good, and you don't have to be a child to think so.
In poetry I'm reading Charles Simic's Night Poems. Otherwise, I just finished Brague's Legend of the Middle Ages (some good essays there) and am reading Gzella's Aramaic and Alter's William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language. Houston Baker's Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance was on sale a couple of days ago for a fraction of a bagatelle, so I'll probably start that one next, though I also have two Cambridge red books lined up to reread from grad school. We'll see how much I finish any time soon though, because my editing work might be picking up again.
As for paid subscriptions, I have no strong opinions.
Currently finishing up four recently-purchased collections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips - had to count the other evening, and there are now 11 of his books on my shelves.
Currently writing through memories of late summer evening drives home from a college girlfriend’s house. Almost 40 years gone, but the sights, sounds (a lot of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, it seems), and even smells (farm country) keep coming back to me.
Would I pay? Sorry, no. While I read every post of Ancient and Modern and often include the poem and your commentary in my digital journals, there are plenty of websites which I can visit and read though both old and modern verse to stimulate my poetry mind and thinking. To me, $60 would be better spent at a small, local bookstore or to get a box of 7 or 8 new collections from an online book outlet to fill up bookshelves (which already have no room).
Plus there’s still that box of books in the storage room from my London studies after that summer of the evening drives - an entire class on Metaphysical writers like Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Manley Hopkins, and even Heaney.
Enjoying your poem-a-day! It strikes me that $60 is the same cost as a yearly sub for a high-quality print publication. (The ones that I noodle with subscribing to on and off and that catch my mind are The Lamp and Verily; Plough may even be less?) WRMom for a year membership is $50; includes many audio materials and various hard copy items.
In spite of the fact that your content is so high quality and *daily* I would venture that a lower price point combined with restricted content part of the time AND bonus privileges would likely be more convincing. Possibly $30?
For me, the most convincing bonus material that always ALMOST pulls me in is the opportunity to participate in live ZOOM content discussions of a particular work.
Like if you are a paid member, you get to come talk to Sally this month about ____ poem or poet for an hour. (Keep it low key so not too much work for you both- the live appeal does enough!)
I love the idea of live Zooms! I pay for a Close Reads membership and there are bonus podcasts AND live poetry Zooms where we analyze a poem for an hour. That happens once a month. You and Sally could easily do that.
Oooh yes! I love the monthly Close Reads poetry Zoom and that is one of the things that keeps me subscribing. Along with the bonus content like the Kristin Lavransdatter read-along podcasts. A poetry zoom with Sally would be a delight.
I will address the paid content question first. I am a poor grad student with 5 kids and 3 part-time job. I absolutely adore this Substack, but I don’t have the funds. Also, inflation is hitting me and people like me extremely hard. There is so much good writing out there that is absolutely worth paying for. Many of us don’t have the funds, but we appreciate the generosity of writers like you and Sally. We have this dying literary culture that is being replaced with shallow, fast-food content. True leisure is being replaced by vapid entertainment, and if we make places like this inaccessible then I fear that we, as a society, are worse off. I am constantly reading Joseph Pieper and his definition of “the liberal arts” as I struggle with this issue (as someone who also makes her writing free). It is a conundrum, and perhaps we poets can discuss this at Frost Farm next month?
As to what I am reading… I began my Catherine Project course on Geoffrey Hill, and it really is helpful to read him in community. It looks like we will be going over two poems from each book per class which is a nice pace. We discussed “Genesis” and “For the (Supposed) Patron” from his first book To the Unfallen. I also reread the absolutely masterful To Kill a Mockingbird. I have been reading De Anima for another course and The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardener (quirky book that has a 5⭐️ concept but written with 3⭐️ execution IMHO). A better book but written for art novices than experts… Rembrandt Is in the Wind, which references the Gardener heist in one very good chapter. Finished that book very quickly. Mostly delightful except the very weak chapter on the one obscure female painter. Also, currently reading The Gift which paired nicely with Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act (which everyone seems to rave about—I thought it was very good but not 5⭐️). Starting to read Sing Unburied Sing for Close Reads podcast.
Yeah, sorry, that link was kind of an unadorned response. I haven't done this myself, but it's Zena Hitz's program of free Great Books-type reading and discussion, with a bunch of different courses. Zina (the Zina responding above, as opposed to Zena Hitz) has done a number of them and could say more about how it all works.
I have taken Homer’s The Iliad and Odyssey, Augustine’s Confessions, Virgil’s Aeneid, Aristotle’s Politics, and Latin languages studies. This is all for free. I am currently studying Geoffrey Hill’s Broken Hierarchies and Aristotle’s De Anima this summer as well. All of this has been prep and supplement to my MFA at UST-Houston.
I'm in a similar spot of knowing the need to materially support actual, mature literary culture but not quite having the means for it. One thing: which part of Pieper's work gives you the conundrum? (I mostly know of his writings on realist vision.)
Thank you, Kevin. Just realized there is a typo in the title. Was supposed to be The Death of Leisure. Anyway, glad I posted it do I could see the title that needed correction. But I am also glad the the essay itself still seems relevant.
I'm still reading Kristin Lavransdatter. Almost to the end. Oh it's even better the second time.
I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, which I hadn't read since I was in school. Was it junior high or high school? I no longer remember.
I've been dipping into the Seamus Heaney collection 100 Poems, which is an anthology of favorites gathered by his wife and children. I really like the selections. Also I've been revisiting some favorite A.E. Stallings from her recent collection This Afterlife. She's delightful.
With the children I've been doing some read alouds of fairy tales, Andersen and Grimm, since we finished The Iliad and I realized we haven't done fairytales in years. It's fun to get the 16 year old talking about story structure and critiquing the plots of some of the Grimm stories. She's quite passionate.
16 year old and I are also reading Jane Eyre, which she was initially unsure about as we'd just finished a long run of Austen and it was quite a shift. Mr Rochester's bed has been set on fire and my daughter still has no idea about the identity of the woman in the attic. I'm enjoying watching the book through her eyes on this first read.
As far as subscribing, I know the workman is worth his wages, but there are SO MANY literary substacks I'd like to subscribe to and I've only got a limited budget for books, journals, and online subscriptions to draw from. It was already hard to choose just one or two literary journals to subscribe to. Especially since I seldom read them from cover to cover. For now I'm subscribing to a few for a while, but I might have to cancel subscriptions in order to rotate through the various substacks which have restricted content. I think my ideal price point is about $10-15 a year, which I know is too low for most content providers, but I also wonder if the volume of subscribers at a lower price point might make up the difference of charging more but getting fewer patrons?
As for writing, this week my husband and I took a serious look at our budget and decided that we were paying too much to keep our 20+ year old blogs online especially as writing has become more and more occasional. I am mourning the coming expiration of blog which he made for me when we were just dating.
And I've been wondering about whether I should start a substack of my own. Would a new venue inspire me to write more?
This week I found myself writing quite a bit about an Eavan Boland poem, Mother Ireland, in a series of comments on Facebook and had a brief notion that it could become an essay with a little tweaking; but I don't have time to do much polishing, and if I no longer have a blog where would I publish?
What is the price for inspiration, a breath of beauty before one's eyes, or a joy to remember.
Most subtracks seem to be $50/yr or $5/month. On the other hand, you do need to cover the expenses and keep food on the table. So, is it worth an extra $10/yr, for me yes, for another, only they can answer that.
To find out, maybe have a two week window, where it can be followed by subscribers for $50/yr. If you get enough new subscribers, that would be a signal to keep it there, if not, there is no need to lower it.
What are enough new subscribers, only you two can say.
I proffer this definition: Poetry is that which is lost in translation.
Frost, wasn't it?
Perhaps so. After a while, one forgets where one learns things, or whether he learned them at all. In any case, I like the definition.
I was recently discussing poetry with a friend whose first language is Russian. I mentioned to him that I'll never be able to appreciate the work of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. I pronounced her name with the stress on the penult--AkhmaTOva--but he corrected me. The correct pronunciation is AkhMAtova. That's how far I am from being able to appreciate her work: I couldn't even properly pronounce her name.
Yes --- I was just rereading her not long ago (in Stanley Kunitz's translation, which is the one I had in grad school) and feeling very much that I was seeing through a glass darkly. Really that's true any time you read something in translation---though as somebody with no facility at all for it ,I admire the whole endeavor of translation. And it does seem to me that some poetry must get through, because even through a glass darkly, I'm not just reading the translation for the ideas!
I subscribed when you ran a sale so I paid closer to the $50 price point. Carla commented about the price being close to the cost of a print publication, and while I agree, I will add that generally you get more content for that cost in print (and a bunch of ads). Most of the substacks I have encountered are in the $60-$80 range to subscribe, which adds up very quickly if you have several you wish to support. I paid to subscribe to this one because I have found that it adds something to my day that I didn't even know I was missing, and I want you to keep writing it. :-) I have others that I have paid for with the intent of getting all of the content since there were limited free posts. My suggestion to get some conversion of free to paid subscribers would be to use a combination of some subscriber exclusive content combined with a lower price point. I'm sure there is a sweet spot in there -- where there is just enough free content to entice the reader to pay just a bit more to get everything. I don't know the demographics of your subscribers, and that could make a big difference in how you structure things. You could possibly experiment a bit with slightly restricted content (maybe MWF are free and TTh are restricted) combined with a limited sale price to see if that makes a difference in the conversion rate.
In terms of reading... reading is my television. Sometimes an intense documentary suits the mood and other times you just want to watch a WKRP in Cincinnati rerun. So, my WKRP right now is something from the Escape to New Zealand series by Rosalind James. You could categorize them as contemporary sports romance with a strong sense of place. The New Zealand setting (and rugby!) are an integral part of the story. I'm also listening to The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley while I do needlework. That one has strong archaeology themes. Lastly, I'm reading The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel which I am finding very interesting and engaging.
Thanks. These are things to try. Never been a Postrel fan—when she was editing the libertarian magazine Reason, I had some clashes with her—but this book on fabric sounds fun. Don't know James or Kearsley. Enjoyable?
Quite. The Kearsley reads like a mystery with great atmosphere due to the paranormal element. It is almost gothic. The narrator does a fantastic job.
Rosalind James writes romances with a nice bit of plot besides the usual girl meets boy, and she writes characters you want to see be successful.
I'm finding the Postrel to be very interesting. Her juxtaposition of the rise of textiles and the necessary technical developments for them with the technologies we more commonly think of as essential in historical change is quite interesting.
These all sound really interesting. Thanks for the recommendations!
(also, now that you have mentioned WKRP, I'm going to be waiting in every analogous book I read for the "turkeys don't fly" moment)
Am happy to pay the $60.00 for once-a-day pleasures -- most unexpected.
And you are a paid subscriber—for which Sally and I thank you. I haven't seen you in ages. Drop me a note, if you get a chance, and assure me all is well.
Irwin continues to wrote his weekly American Account for the (London) Sunday Times. And my third book on Churchill was recently published. We are well and happily working!
All best wishes in this venture (and others too of course).
Cita
https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-American-Network-Churchill-Relationship/dp/1639364854//?tag=josebott-20
In poetry, I've been reading "The Liquid Pour in which My Hear has Run" by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (Rhina Espaillat's translation) and "Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart" by Jay Parini.
Is the Parini any good?
I really enjoyed it. He has very succinct analyses of each poem.
How can I tell if I am a paid subscriber or not? I'd happily pay $60! At least.....
I checked, Stephanie, and you are already a paid subscriber. Thanks! (PS—I had dinner with Claudia in DC this spring. Just wonderful to see her.)
So the question is , what does it cost to read a poem. What I must ask does it cost to write a poem? And what is the relationship between the cost and the value of the production?
Yeah. Not a clue what the answer is.
I am pretty sure every other one of my half dozen or so paid subscriptions is $50 per year. I would use that apparent sweet spot.
Thanks!
Currently (a bit of a slog, I'm afraid), Janet Herrin's history "Ravenna."
Don't know if it matters, but Houston Baker (former president of the MLA) spent his whole career trying to eliminate the notion that any one piece of literature was better than any other. No need to guess where he stood in the theory wars.
Baker won't be remembered long enough to receive the opprobrium he is due.
I too loved Ravenna. And just finishing Journeys of the Mind, Peter Brown's memoir.
Reading too little poetry. Part of what you do is assure that some passes under my nose every weekday. I'll probably pick up Geoffrey Hill again soon.
$60 seems fair to me — roughly $.25 per day — but I understand that case that it may be more than the market will bear.
If you do return to Hill, let us know what you think.
I'd like to know what Hill you pick up. I've been reading The Orchards of Syon off and on --- which is how I read anything, apparently --- for a while. And last year I read The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy. I welcome other recommendations.
I was at a nearby Barnes & Noble looking at children’s picture books and came across a book I loved as a child and read many times but, oddly enough, remembered nothing about that is not revealed in the title, “The Boxcar Children.” I bought it and reread it. I’m not surprised I liked the depiction of the children fending for themselves like Robinson Crusoe. One of the features of the landscape that helps them is the unofficial dump, where they find plates, flat ware, cups, and wheels for a cart. The book is rather moralistic, but it’s amusing to consider the excesses of moral zeal a modern writer would bring to the dump.
I suppose the current equivalent would be the dumpster. I’ve known three people who used dumpsters to support themselves. One, the grad school father of small children, foraged the dumpster behind a grocery store in Durham NC for fruits and vegetables. Another, an older widow, found most of her clothes in the dumpsters around Chapel Hill. The third, a scrapper and hoarder, found all kinds of treasures in Raleigh dumpsters—some he sold, and some he kept, so that his large storage unit was always crammed full. At times, he’d have 7 or 8 upright vacuum cleaners and 5 or 6 microwaves, dozens of remotes. Why don’t you scrap them, I’d ask, and he’d respond, Some of them work.
Mostly, I've been madly revising and submitting poems, but I’ve been reading and enjoying Alan Moorehead's trilogy, “The Desert War,” on the North African campaigns in World War 2. I had a general understanding of the campaigns, but they were a lot more complicated, with a lot more back-and-forth, than I realized. It’s pleasant to be reminded of the gritty glamor of the war correspondent.
I’m afraid I’ve little to shed on the prices and features that would attract more readers. I’m deeply gratified by the generosity of our hosts in posting poems and analyses five days a week and in responding to comments. To me, that’s worth every penny, but my current situation makes that possible. It might not always be so.
Great scene of your Boxcar Adult acquaintances. Is the Moorehead history worth reading?
Yes, it started a little slow, I thought. I really became engaged when he traveled by the Nile to south Sudan and then into Ethiopia to cover the fall of Addis Ababa. It's interesting historically (many encounters with generals and statesmen), a ripping adventure yarn (I don't know where I picked up that cliché!), and a fine travelogue, with moments of pathos and comedy.
That WWII book sounds really good. One of my sons amassed something of a library of books like that --- war and geopolitics, essentially --- and then left it all here, so periodically I do the equivalent of dumpster diving in the upstairs hall for something like that to read. I spent a good year reading (off and on) a history of the British MI5: Christopher Andrews's Defend the Realm, which bills itself as the AUTHORIZED history of MI5, which kind of makes me want to read the unauthorized ones, but this was very interesting.
I also think a lot about that whole Robinson Crusoe genre of children's books --- My Side of the Mountain, for example. And From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which captivated me utterly at 9 or 10. And then there are the Swallows and Amazons books, which are mostly about children PRETENDING to be Robinson Crusoes, though in some instances they're called on to be really that resourceful and brave: We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, in which the sailboat they're on drags its anchor in a fog while the adult supposedly in charge has gone off and been hit by car, so the children have to sail safely across the North Sea before they can get home again. That installment in the series has always struck me as a particularly brilliant move, because it shows how the things they've done in safety, as games, sailing on relatively tame waters, are real and bear real fruit in their characters and capabilities when an adult situation demands something more of them.
We just finished the audiobook of We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea on our family road trip to Lake George last month. I've read the whole series aloud to the children, of course, but the audiobooks, with the delightful narration by Alison Larkin, have been my husband's first exposure. He loves the series as much as we do and it's been so fun to have him enter into this imaginative world the children and I have been sharing for years. They'll probably all be grown by the time we finish the whole audiobook set since we don't seem to all be in the car together nearly as often as we used to be.
We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea might be my favorite installment, though. I do love the very real stakes. Highlighted by the delight of the Dutch pilot when they finally spill the beans on their secret. And I love that this is the moment in the series when we first meet Daddy, the famous Captain Walker of the "better drowned than duffers" telegram.
Oh, yes, I love that Dutch pilot! In Bergen, Norway, last week, we went to a maritime museum that had a model of a ship's quarters --- chart room, etc. The pilot's cabin made me think of that book and that pilot.
The Coral Island (R.M. Ballantyne's original, which prompted Golding to invert the tale for Lord of the Flies). Swiss Family Robinson. Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. The list of Robinsonades is endless.
Thanks for the many recommendations. I have several nieces and nephews who live far away. I never know what to buy for them. This list will be very helpful--and of course, for quality control purposes, I will read them before mailing them.
Oh, absolutely. You can't be too careful. Must pre-read.
Depending on ages, I am full of recommendations for children's books! Not too long ago I reread Rosemary Sutcliff's The Shining Company, which is a retelling of the Welsh epic Y Gododdin, and is beautiful and devastating. It was about the last book my youngest children suffered me to read aloud to them (in their early teens), but we all loved it. I need to cycle in some more rereading of books like that, because they're genuinely so good, and you don't have to be a child to think so.
I started The Shining Company on a plane ride some years ago and never finished it. I really should dust it off and get to the end.
In poetry I'm reading Charles Simic's Night Poems. Otherwise, I just finished Brague's Legend of the Middle Ages (some good essays there) and am reading Gzella's Aramaic and Alter's William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language. Houston Baker's Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance was on sale a couple of days ago for a fraction of a bagatelle, so I'll probably start that one next, though I also have two Cambridge red books lined up to reread from grad school. We'll see how much I finish any time soon though, because my editing work might be picking up again.
As for paid subscriptions, I have no strong opinions.
Good morning Sally and Joseph.
Currently finishing up four recently-purchased collections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips - had to count the other evening, and there are now 11 of his books on my shelves.
Currently writing through memories of late summer evening drives home from a college girlfriend’s house. Almost 40 years gone, but the sights, sounds (a lot of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, it seems), and even smells (farm country) keep coming back to me.
Would I pay? Sorry, no. While I read every post of Ancient and Modern and often include the poem and your commentary in my digital journals, there are plenty of websites which I can visit and read though both old and modern verse to stimulate my poetry mind and thinking. To me, $60 would be better spent at a small, local bookstore or to get a box of 7 or 8 new collections from an online book outlet to fill up bookshelves (which already have no room).
Plus there’s still that box of books in the storage room from my London studies after that summer of the evening drives - an entire class on Metaphysical writers like Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Manley Hopkins, and even Heaney.
Happy Thursday. Time for a second cup of coffee.
Enjoying your poem-a-day! It strikes me that $60 is the same cost as a yearly sub for a high-quality print publication. (The ones that I noodle with subscribing to on and off and that catch my mind are The Lamp and Verily; Plough may even be less?) WRMom for a year membership is $50; includes many audio materials and various hard copy items.
In spite of the fact that your content is so high quality and *daily* I would venture that a lower price point combined with restricted content part of the time AND bonus privileges would likely be more convincing. Possibly $30?
For me, the most convincing bonus material that always ALMOST pulls me in is the opportunity to participate in live ZOOM content discussions of a particular work.
Like if you are a paid member, you get to come talk to Sally this month about ____ poem or poet for an hour. (Keep it low key so not too much work for you both- the live appeal does enough!)
My two cents :)
Thanks. I like your idea of putting Sally to work.
I love the idea of live Zooms! I pay for a Close Reads membership and there are bonus podcasts AND live poetry Zooms where we analyze a poem for an hour. That happens once a month. You and Sally could easily do that.
Oooh yes! I love the monthly Close Reads poetry Zoom and that is one of the things that keeps me subscribing. Along with the bonus content like the Kristin Lavransdatter read-along podcasts. A poetry zoom with Sally would be a delight.
I will address the paid content question first. I am a poor grad student with 5 kids and 3 part-time job. I absolutely adore this Substack, but I don’t have the funds. Also, inflation is hitting me and people like me extremely hard. There is so much good writing out there that is absolutely worth paying for. Many of us don’t have the funds, but we appreciate the generosity of writers like you and Sally. We have this dying literary culture that is being replaced with shallow, fast-food content. True leisure is being replaced by vapid entertainment, and if we make places like this inaccessible then I fear that we, as a society, are worse off. I am constantly reading Joseph Pieper and his definition of “the liberal arts” as I struggle with this issue (as someone who also makes her writing free). It is a conundrum, and perhaps we poets can discuss this at Frost Farm next month?
As to what I am reading… I began my Catherine Project course on Geoffrey Hill, and it really is helpful to read him in community. It looks like we will be going over two poems from each book per class which is a nice pace. We discussed “Genesis” and “For the (Supposed) Patron” from his first book To the Unfallen. I also reread the absolutely masterful To Kill a Mockingbird. I have been reading De Anima for another course and The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardener (quirky book that has a 5⭐️ concept but written with 3⭐️ execution IMHO). A better book but written for art novices than experts… Rembrandt Is in the Wind, which references the Gardener heist in one very good chapter. Finished that book very quickly. Mostly delightful except the very weak chapter on the one obscure female painter. Also, currently reading The Gift which paired nicely with Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act (which everyone seems to rave about—I thought it was very good but not 5⭐️). Starting to read Sing Unburied Sing for Close Reads podcast.
What's the Catherine Project?
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/tell-us-about-the-person-who-inspires?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Ted Gioia mentions the Catherine Project at the bottom. Oh, gosh. Now it will be even harder to get into classes!
https://catherineproject.org/
So, a literature course?
Yeah, sorry, that link was kind of an unadorned response. I haven't done this myself, but it's Zena Hitz's program of free Great Books-type reading and discussion, with a bunch of different courses. Zina (the Zina responding above, as opposed to Zena Hitz) has done a number of them and could say more about how it all works.
I have taken Homer’s The Iliad and Odyssey, Augustine’s Confessions, Virgil’s Aeneid, Aristotle’s Politics, and Latin languages studies. This is all for free. I am currently studying Geoffrey Hill’s Broken Hierarchies and Aristotle’s De Anima this summer as well. All of this has been prep and supplement to my MFA at UST-Houston.
I write a bit about it here I think: https://open.substack.com/pub/zinagomezliss/p/finding-achilles-in-new-york?r=fjyz7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I'm in a similar spot of knowing the need to materially support actual, mature literary culture but not quite having the means for it. One thing: which part of Pieper's work gives you the conundrum? (I mostly know of his writings on realist vision.)
Have you read Leisure: The Basis of Culture?
T.S. Eliot wrote an introduction for it.
I haven't, no. What has it taught you on this question?
I wrote a little about it on my Substack and a writer’s collaborative (I have the version of the book with the Eliot introduction that Jody is referring to): https://open.substack.com/pub/innerlifecollaborative/p/the-death-leisure?r=fjyz7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That sums it up nicely: leisure as indispensible for culture but ever-more pressured by productivity and commodification. Well written, Zina!
Thank you, Kevin. Just realized there is a typo in the title. Was supposed to be The Death of Leisure. Anyway, glad I posted it do I could see the title that needed correction. But I am also glad the the essay itself still seems relevant.