Swinburne and bad start to a good day. The cop who got his man. What did Zeno say? Henry James, reporter. Tristram Shandy. Stephen King. God bless Keats!
Not tired yet . . . Began my day (ages ago) in disappointing fashion, reading Hugh Kenner on The Art of Poetry, where he considered an Algernon Swinburne poem which I liked, “Ballad of Burdens,” which has this about “long living”:
The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear
Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;
And say at night "Would God the day were here,"
And say at dawn "Would God the day were dead."
With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,
And wear remorse of heart for thine attire,
Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;
This is the end of every man's desire.
On which Kenner: “Probably everyone should read enough of Swinburne to get tired of him.”
Flushed with pride at his achievement . . . A Sun-Times head caught my attention, for a story about the third-ranked Chicago cop who chased guys who copped flush handles off urinals at Kennedy-King College: “Copper thief flushed out by police brass.” Sort of thing makes a copy editor's life more than ordinarily worthwhile.
Writing, how to: Zeno, the third-century B.C. Greek, cited five qualities of good (more or less formal) speech and writing:
* Language faultless in grammar and free from "careless" vulgarity
* Lucidity - presenting thought so it's easily understood
* Conciseness - using no more words than necessary
* Appropriateness - using a style akin to the subject
* At least semi-formality, avoiding colloquialism.
As "vices of style" he cited barbarism, violation of good usage (by Greeks of good standing), and solecism, which produces "incongruous" construction. In other words, follow rules and respect tradition.
Reporting as art form: Henry James said it took imagination "of a very high order" to "extract importance" from events while remaining faithful to them, "free only to select and never to modify or add."
Writing as medicinal: 18th-century cleric Laurence Sterne wrote in a "constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health," he said in the dedication of his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. He wanted to "beguile (the reader) of one moment's pain," since "every time a man smiles . . . it adds something to this Fragment of Life."
Cutting: The first of Stephen King's ten ways to better writing is to write less in revision. Yours becomes the incredible shrinking essay. It's better that way.
Hanging in there: In "To Charles Cowden Clark," Keats, feeling uninspired and "not oversmitten" by what he has just written, adds,
Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought I’d better
Trust to my feelings, and write you a letter.
He goes with the flow, trusting his warm (hot?) hand. Like the three-point-shooter, basketball's unique practitioner of confidence and skill: make half your shots, you lead the league. You have to be good and trust yourself.
What friends are for: Keats wrote poetry after social outings, flushed with the joy of them, as in "On leaving some friends at an early hour":
For what a height my spirit is contending!
'Tis not content so soon to be alone.
Or leaving his friend Leigh Hunt's cottage, walking five miles at night to his own lodgings: "I have many miles on foot to fare./ Yet feel I little of the cool, bleak air."
Or in "To my brothers," where Keats and his brother Tom, 17, sit at night in their lodgings, one composing, the other studying:
And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fix d, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.
Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world s true joys, ere the great voice,
From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly.
Hear, hear.