Ellen Degeneres

[image copied from Wikipedia]

This article is a companion piece to the poem "MC", which I posted yesterday, in wordcurrents.

Ellen Degeneres' type of humour really appeals to me. While it is self-deprecating and seemingly self-conscious and even seemingly naive, it appears to come from a genuine joy. We all need that joy in our lives. While there is occasionally a bit of an edge to it, Degeneres offers the edge as a kind of devil-girl dare, like sticking out your tongue — for a moment, she shows her inner brat, and we like that. (Like her Oscar show cracks about the absent Dame Judi Dench's surgery.)
I used to like the "Ellen" show, and was sad to see how the industry dropped Ellen and her show so quickly when she perhaps naively declared her personal sexual preference, and it was not acceptable to the silly "moral majority"; it was as if she had been caught in a giant very public act of bigotry. Brava, Ellen, for overcoming such massive institutional cowardice and prejudice so completely and so bravely.
I genuinely liked Degeneres' hosting of the 79th Oscars, which I viewed with the sound off, for the most part, except when Degeneres and a few others were on camera. The erst of the time, I was writing, casting occasional glances at the TV.
I was pleased to see Ryan Gosling's sister, Mandi, on his arm at the awards. Mandi was a very talented student in the Program for the Arts Drama course I ran at CCVS in the last years of the teaching career. Ryan would have been in the program, but he became a member of the revived Mouseketeers before that could happen.

[Ryan and Mandi Gosling]

So, the Oscar held two pleasures for me: enjoying Ellen Degeneres and spotting Mandi on the red carpet. Cheers, Mandi!

SCUBA

There I am, in SCUBA gear in the Caribbean, at the place I wrote about in the poem. The photo was taken with my underwater disposable camera, by our instructor, who is pictured below, feeding kibble to the fish that swim in the bay we were in. This was 1999, during a loop down the so-called eastern cruise route; the ship was SS Norway, the remade France, which was commissioned just as trans-Atlantic jet flights were coming into vogue. It was mothballed soon after, until it was purchased by the Norway Cruise Line, and rebuilt. It is a real classic ship, in the trans-Atlantic mode. For details, see the link.

400 poems

It is hard to believe I have posted 400 of my own new poems in just 375 days. I am printing them each day, and have filled one binder and started a new one January 1. (see photo below)

The new result has been that even if I sit down to write with no idea what is going to come out, I can usually start and finish a fairly serviceable poem in a few minutes. Today's poem, "I started to write a Saturday poem", was one of those: I typed what I thought was the first line, then looked up at the screen, and realized I had typed it in the subject slot. I left it as the title, and continued, realizing it was giving me the poem's theme, and the changes would provide the poem's arc.

When it comes right down to it, I often find the process of discovering the poem as rich as I hope is the reader's experience reading it.

shovelling out

I wrote this piece early in the morning, prior to facing the foot or so of snow in our driveway. I had an appointment for an interview later in the morning: Kathleen Hay, the arts reported for the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, was coming over to do a piece on the anniversary of wordcurrents, and I wanted her to be able to access the house. As well, Flora had to get out for her curling in the afternoon.

I was surprised that the shoveling did not completely crush me, leave me aching and breathless as I expected it to. I was shoveling for close to an hour in a pretty stiff wind, moving snow that was about ten inches deep except where it swirled around the house in a two foot deep drift. (Interesting: we say "two foot" instead of "two feet". I wonder why that is?) When I went to the door to let Kathleen in, I noted that the plow had passed and left a foot-deep bank across the driveway. It never fails.



The snow really was aniu. It chopped into blocks easily, nut was hard to scoop, as large sections broke away, too big for the scoop, and would tend to tumble off inconveniently. So I guess I don't feel quite as much like the old guy approaching the particular multiple of ten anniversary that I am approaching; I feel more like that number minus ten or so.

Alexandrine lines

Alexandrine lines appear in the brilliant poetry of Alexander Pope, who is quoted daily by people who have no idea he is their source. Pope often used Alexandrine lines, that is, lines of six metrical feet rather than the usual five. Pope was known for his towering intellect, often displayed with devastating effect in his poetry. One example I like was written for engraving on a jewelled silver collar intended as a gift for the King, to be worn by His Majesty's dog, which frequented Kew Gardens: "I am His Majesty's dog at Kew; pray tell me sir: whose dog are you?" Perhaps less well known is that Pope was virtually a dwarf (4'6" tall) as a result of a childhood battle with tuberculosis. Another well known Popism: "A little learning is a dangerous thing . . . ."

"Italian Restaurent", which I posted on February 9, 2007, is written using Alexandrine lines. I used that approach to give the poem a slower, more relaxed rhythm than iambic pentameter would achieve. I also used alternating rhyme with that intent in mind.

Sonnets

I like to experiment with the sonnet form. My most recent to date (February 6, 2007) is "Hearth". In it, I use a rhyme scheme in which there is a single repetition of one word as an alternating rhyme for each stanza, as abcb, defe, ghih. The final couplet is the only true rhyme in the piece. I am hoping this approach gives the piece a primal sensibility to go with the primal subject matter. Maybe the sensibility is more primative. I noted, when checking the sonnet category, that I have 24 sonnets to date in wordcurrents.

bread and salt

The title of this poem come from a scene that intrigued me in a thoughtful sci-fi movie, The Final Cut, starring Robin Williams. Williams plays a despised man who works as a cutter, editing the film of people's lives. The film he edits is garnered from an implant placed in a baby and harvested after death. In a very poignant scene, the cutter tells of the legend: after a death, the loved ones would place on the dead coins on the eyes, bread and salt on the chest; the sin eater would eat a dead person's sins to ensure he would be received into heaven, then take the bread and salt and coins as payment. I believe I have heard of a sin eater somewhere else; it seems very primitive and necessary, but as the response in the movie puts it: what happens to the sin eater?

Bread and salt have always appealed to me as primal elements of life, just as for some religions, bread and wine are primal elements of their religious observance. When I have made bread, I always liked my bread better than store bread, partly because it was doughier, but also because I made it saltier.

In "bread and salt", I dig into primal elements of wresting life from the earth, and celebrating with bread and salt.

Feb 3: I have added another poem called "bread and salt and copper — the sin eater", about the death of an imaginary Italian merchant.