First Line Friday! William Least Heat Moon

Today’s first lines comes to you courtesy of my bedside table, where sits William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways  at the moment. Take a look:

“Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren’t turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources. Take the idea of February 17, a day of canceled expectations, the day I learned my job teaching English was finished because of declining enrollment at the college, the day I called my wife from whom I’d been separated for nine months to give her the news, the day she let slip about her “friend” Rick or Dick Chick. Something like that.”

The opening sentence, and the one that follows it, don’t so much launch into a story, as they simply share some words to the wise. And any time we recognize the voice of experience talking to us, we do a very human thing, we start calculating whether or not we should trust the source and heed the warning, or whether we should dismiss it out of hand. We become eager to hear the tale behind the advice. Curiosity overtakes us, and we read on.

Here’s a guy on the edge. His marriage is on the rocks, he’s anxious about his job, and then boom- things go from bad to worse. He gets canned, his wife has replaced him and he’s pushed right over the precipice. Now he’s susceptible to all sorts of crazy whims. And we want to know just how crazy it gets. All in all, I think it’s a great opening. Worked for me, anyway.

The movie was good, but the poem was better...

So here’s an interesting topic: Movies based on poems.

Yes, they exist. It seems they are few and far between, but a little digging reveals a few prime examples. Of course most that spring to mind live in the epic poem category, but I’m going to go ahead and disqualify those right at the outset. An epic poem is, for all intents and purposes, basically a book. And a book-length work, regardless of its rhyme and meter, ought to contain more than enough plot to fill out a feature film. 

So, while they may be great movies, don’t give me your Troy (the Iliad), your Beowulf (Beowulf), your El Cid (Cantar de Mio Cid) or your Braveheart (The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace). Neither McKayla nor I am impressed.

Also, spare me the modern retellings like “O, Brother Where Art Thou” (the Oddysey) and the biopics like “Howl” (“Howl.”)- both of which are already disqualified based on length above.

No, I’m talking about relatively short poems, that spin complete yarns, and that have inspired some hungry screenwriter to create movie magic. Here are a few that fit the bill:

“The Man From Snowy River,” based on the 1890 poem of the same name, by Australian poet Banjo Paterson. The climax of the poem became the climax of the film- Jim Craig’s lunatic plunge down that impossibly steep gorge on horseback was seared into my five-year-old brain like few movie moments have been before or since.

“Gunga Din,” based on the 1892 poem of the same name, by Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling. This one’s a “loosely-based,” but the theme of the brave and decent native as compared to the craven British soldiers is true to the original.

“The Raven,” based on the 1845 poem of the same name, by drunkard and all-around wierdo Edgar Allen Poe. I haven’t seen this one, so I don’t know how loyal it is to Poe, but it’s a B movie horror-comedy. What more could you really want?

“Mulan,” based on “The Ballad of Mulan” a Chinese poem transcribed in the 6th century. I haven’t read this one, and haven’t seen the movie. But I did read the Chick-Fil-A kids meal version to my kids a year or so ago. Does that count?

Which ones did I leave out, readers and movie buffs? What other short poems have made their way to the silver screen?

The Quote Board: Books

Got any of your own to add? Throw them in the comments.

Haiku-ption Contest #9

Mine is below. Throw yours in the comments. Go!

Performing Fam’ly

‘Oh! Like the Von Trapps?’ they ask

Uh, kind of… I guess.

See India! Read a Novel!

The summer travel season may be drawing to a close, but the literary  travel season doesn’t have to . Here are three books that will transport you to the subcontinent of India, a place I’ve always wanted to visit.

For the intrigue and excitement of The Great Game, you’ve always got  Kim,  by Rudyard Kipling.

 “The hot and crowded bazaars blazed with light as they made their way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the lama mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first experience of a large city, and the sight of the crowded tram-car with its continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half pushed, half towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir Serai: that huge open square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Here were all manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water for the evening meal at the creaking well windlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying off camel drivers; taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry steps, made a  haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of them were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous native padlocks. Locked doors showed the owner was far away, and a few rude-sometimes very rude- chalk or paint scratches told where he had gone. Thus: ‘Lutuf Allah is gone to Kurdistan.’ Below, in coarse verse: ‘O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to live so long?’

For the era of Independence, there’s always Midnight’s Children,  by Salmon Rushdie

 “He made his living as a simple ferryman, despite all the rumors of wealth, taking hay and goats and vegetables and wood across the lakes for cash; people, too. When he was running his taxi-service he erected a pavilion in the center of the shikara, a gay affair of flower-patterned curtains and canopy, with cushions to match; and deodorized his boat with incense. The sight of Tai’s shikara approaching, curtains flying, had always been for Doctor Aziz one of the defining images of the coming of spring. Soon the English sahibs would arrive and Tai would ferry them to Shalimar Gardens and the King’s Spring, chattering and pointy and stooped. He was the living antithesis of Oskar-Ilse-Ingrid’s belief in the inevitability of change … a quirky, enduring familiar spirit of the valley. A watery Caliban, rather too fond of cheap Kashmiri brandy.”

 And for the turmoil of the Emergency, how about A Fine Balance,  by Rohinton Mistry

 “The morning Express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed. The train’s brief deception jolted its riders. The bulge of humans hanging out of the doorway distended perilously, like a soap bubble at its limit…

 “The southbound express slowed again. With a pneumatic hiss, the bogies clanked to a halt. The train was between stations. Its air brakes continued to exhale wheezily for a few moments before dying out.

 “Omprakash looked through the window to determine where they had stopped. Rough shacks stood beyond the railroad fence, alongside a ditch running with raw sewage. Children were playing a game with sticks and stones. An excited puppy danced around them, trying to join in. Nearby, a shirtless man was milking a cow. They could have been anywhere.”

Another Month in the Can

We’ve seen our traffic take a slight dip in the past month. We can only hope it’s evidence that people are enjoying their summer instead of burning their eyes out surfing the information superhighway. To the rest of you, why don’t you go out and have some fun while the weather holds? Don’t worry, we’ll be here when you get back.

As usual, here are our five most popular posts from this past month:

An Inside Look at Shelf Actualization HQ

At the Bindary

What is Oulipo?

Bookish Nerd Bait Vol. 5

Bookish Nerd Bait Vol. 7

And the many-splendored search terms that led readers here:

Phillis Diller really big hair  >>>>  We've mentioned her once

John updike on the sidewalk  >>>>  I disagree with Updike here

Topless hemingway  >>>>  ...And Twain, Ginsberg and London

How does midnight in paris portray paris  >>>>  See here

To have and have not book  >>>>  The only Hemingway/Faulkner collaboration

Little Lizzy Mann  >>>>  Covered it here

Knut Jensen cyclist  >>>>  Our only cycling post so far

Guy frozen on dance floor  >>>>  This awesome post

The bee gees Saturday night fever album cover  >>>>  The same post again

From the first clang of the rail  >>>>  First Line Friday, Solzhenitsyn style

First Line Friday!

Today’s first line is one that absolutely grabs you by the ears and demands you pay attention. Have a look:

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

Excuse me? You were what?  So begins Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel Middlesex.  

I love how the author delivers the crux of the plot in the very first line. He’s still going to take us through the twists and turns of a novel-length work, the slow burn of details, the crescendo of backstories and present action. But right there in the first line, he stabs his finger at the map and shows us our destination. It has the effect of making you wonder ‘how the devil are we going to get from here to there?’ And I, for one, was sold on the story.

Here’s how the next couple lines continue fleshing out the novel’s destination. I think it’s brilliant.

"Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce’s study, “Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites,” published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology  in 1975. Or maybe you’ve seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity.  That’s me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."

Agree? Disagree? Fire away!

Poet's Corner: "Tamed" by George Bilgere

As summer draws to a close (school starts next week here in Georgia- good grief!) I thought it would be good to pass along this poem I stumbled on a while back.

Because of the subject matter, it may remind you of this Ray Bradbury post, but while I think it certainly speaks to “summertime,” I think it also celebrates boyhood, rites of passage, and our relationship to the earth around us. A poem for the common man. Have a look:

Tamed

By George Bilgere

This summer my nephew
is old enough for his first job:
mowing the lawn.

I watch him lean his skinny chest
to the bar of the pushmower,
put his weight into it, and become,

for the first time, a beast in harness,
a laborer on the face of the earth,
somehow withering and expanding at the same time

into something worn and ancient, but still
a kid withal. And I remember
how bitterly I went into the traces,

hating that Saturday ritual
for a while, then growing inexplicably
into it, gradually mastering

the topography of the yard,
sometimes using the back and forth technique,
sometimes going for the checkerboard effect,
or my favorite, the ever-diminishing square
that left, at the lawn's center, one
last uncut stand of grass, a wild fortress

I annihilated with a strange thrill,
then stood back to take a look—
to survey the field. To cast

a critical eye on my work.
Just as this kid is doing, standing
at the edge of the mowed clearance.

Taking his own measure. And liking it.

Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I mentioned my vacation reading material the other day, and thought I’d chime in with a slightly heftier review.

The Night Circus is a pretty captivating book, and one I’d generally recommend to other readers who are looking to escape into another world for a time. As I’ve said before, it won’t soon find its way onto university syllabi, but it’s pretty well-written and full of spell-binding imagery.

At the center of the story are two apprentice magicians who study real magic and pass it off to the world as mere prestidigitation. They are pitted against one another in a sort of competition- a game whose sinister rules are only hinted at, but are never really explained. In the beginning, this vague premise lends a good deal of mystery to the book, but by the end it becomes a drag on the believability of the story. More on that in a moment.

Nevertheless, it’s a book filled with interesting characters. And the most interesting character of all happens to be the circus itself. You discover it through the eyes of both lay circus goers and those on the inside. Momentum builds as you see it develop from a mere idea to a tangible enterprise that attracts its own traveling fan-base. You’re enchanted in the same ways you were first oohed-and-aahed by Hogwarts, or Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

But here’s the problem I encountered. I had no problem suspending my disbelief about the magic and mystery of the circus, but I was completely unable to swallow the central premise on which it all rested, not to mention the motivations of the characters as they played out “the game.” That the two main characters could be compelling, strong-willed actors in their own stories, and yet be such naive and hapless pawns in a game they never understood just… didn’t ring true to me.

And on top of that, the resolution of the book’s main crisis seems to break the very rules that created the crisis in the first place. And here’s where the story really rubbed me the wrong way (spoilers follow): there is a desperate need to find a new steward for the circus, lest it and its creators start crumbling out of existence. The action crescendos to this point, and then… wait for it!… a complete nobody is chosen to step in and save the day. Nothing destined, nothing special about him, nothing that even remotely suggests that he could continue where the two magicians had left off, just a force-fed resolution that didn’t really satisfy.

Aggravating. But hey, it was a vacation read, so I lowered the bar just a bit. Anyone else read it? Anyone disagree?

The Writer's Voice: Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling. Fount of manly fiction. Bearer of burly eyebrows. Speaker of… a surprisingly effeminate, mousy little voice. Have a listen:

Could that be the voice of a retirng bank clerk? Sure. Or a sniveling apothecary? Absolutely.  But a spinner of adventure tales? Voice of British Imperialism? And author of “If,” that ultimate poem of manhood?

Whodathunkit? 

(But man, those eyebrows are amazing!)