Chekhov’s Mistess

Good Things Happen Slowly

Some time ago I bought truffles at The Chocolate Room. There was one left, forgotten, until I happened upon it today in my backpack. Better than found money. Really.

I should be back to blogging (very) soon on a more regular basis. This place in my world comes after all those things that come before it and those things have kept me busy enough for two of me of late. Of course, then there was the vacation – family style, ie. no lingering on the beach or traipsing through exotic countries, but the kiddie pool, the kiddie forest, the kiddie… But it is nice to slow down, put on the brakes once in a while, because your kid doesn’t know what “quality time” is, only lots and lots of quantity time.

Reading too has been slow of late. After finishing Against the Day earlier in the year, I had an appetite for short works by solid story tellers. I turned to Graham Green and V.S. Pritchett first. Then I veered into Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping, which, if not necessarily straightforward is some wonderfully lyrical storytelling. More on those later. Now I’m reading Stefan Themerson’s The Mystery of the Sardine – can’t help myself – Themerson’s work is philosophical of a sort, allusive, engaged and hysterical. I’m sure there’s some critical/theoretical category for it, but I don’t know what that is. I do find myself forever trading between traditional and alternative literature. I think that tension is positive.

While I was away I spent some time reading Seamus Heaney’s District and Circle. This will sound embarrassingly silly, but I read it aloud and with the slight lilt of a brogue. The brogue seems natural to me, perhaps because I have a latent (Kentucky borne) southern accent of my own. Brogue, by the way, etymologically may come from the Irish Gaelic word for grip or wrestling hold; “from the idea that features of pronunciation noticeably different from one’s own must be the result of a physical impediment to the freedom of motion of the speaker’s tongue.” Perhaps that’s why reading this way slows me down a bit, concentrating on the words as they come out of my mouth.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (far more elegant sounding than FSG Books). They are blogging this month (only) about poetry (only). My guess is that if enough people visit their site, they might keep it up past poetry month and I for one like it when publishers blog.

My own take on poetry month is something like the way a barfly feels about St. Paddy’s day – when all the amateurs come out to drink – we tend to avoid it except for the fact that we’d probably be doing something anyway. Even a barfly won’t miss a day of drink. But instead, I think Poetry Month will mean something else for me. Instead of showering you with links to places poetic, how about if we concentrate on something that poetry does best if your lucky – it slows you down to pay attention to the details.

First stop is this video on the letterpress, which I found at Jerome Weeks’s blog. If you’re in NYC and want to see this embodiment of slowness up close, then visit Bowne & Co. at South Street Seaport or The Center for Book Arts.

If I find the time, I’ll see if I can think of some more good slow things to savor this month. Of course slow food is often on my mind, more often in concept than reality, but it is something I like to think about. And of course, slowness also can mean timeless, and there’s nothing more timeless than the music of Bach and his descendent creators. So there’s plenty to talk about this National Slowetry Month.

comments

Thanks for the tip on Heaney’s new book. I’m visiting Ireland next month, and I may have to take the book along to supplement my travel guide.

Keep it slow.

    – Nate (04/04  at  11:55 AM)

Can’t say that I’m not envious, Nate. I’ve been to England and Scotland, and despite my great affinity for Irish literature, Irish suds, and a wee bit of Irish music, I’ve not been there.

    – Bud Parr (04/04  at  08:00 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: April 02, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

Tags: National Slowetry Month

• Comments:2
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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