Author Susan Hill on Dickens

I read this passage this week describing Dickens and thought it was perfect. It was in a library book, so I'm saving it here.

I could spend my year of reading from home with Dickens alone — well, almost. In the silly game of which authors to throw overboard from the lifeboat and which one — just one — to save, I would always save Dickens. He is mighty. His flaws are huge but magnificent — and all of a piece with the whole. A perfect, flawless Dickens would somehow be a shrunken, impoverished one. Yes, he is sentimental, yes, he has purple passages, yes, his plots sometimes have dropped stitches, yes, some of his characters are quite tiresome. But his literary imagination was the greatest ever, his world of teeming life is as real as has ever been invented, his conscience, his passion for the underdog, the poor, the cheated, the humiliated are god-like. He created an array of varied, vibrant, living, breathing men and women and children that is breathtaking in its scope. His scenes are painted like those of an Old Master, in vivid colour and richness on huge canvases. His prose is spacious, symphonic, infinitely flexible... He is macabre, grotesque, moralistic, thunderous, funny, ridiculous, heartfelt.  (Susan Hill, Howards End is on the Landing, p. 32-33)

 

The Dog Body of My Soul by Katherine Williams

Some days I feel
like a retriever
racing
back and forth
fetching the tired
old balls
the universe
tosses me.

Some days
I'm on a leash
following
someone else's 
route, 
sensing
I'm supposed
to be grateful.

Some days
I'm waiting
in a darkened
house 
bladder insistent 
not knowing 
when my people
will return.

But some days
I hurl myself
into the sweet
singing surf,
race wildly back
and roll 
in the sand's 
warm welcome.

Goldfinches by Danusha Laméris

Good luck, they say,
to see one,
its face and breast
pure citrus
against the grey sky.

And today,
I am twice blessed
because two such birds
grace the low boughs
of the persimmon,
eating the soft heart
of winter's fruit—

though they will also
feast on thistles 
pulled from the dry flowers 
and so are said
to eat the thorns 
of Christ's crown, 
to lift some small measure 
of his suffering.

Whatever your grief,
however long you've carried it—
may something
come to you,
quick and unexpected,
whisk away
the bristled edge 
in its sharp
and tender beak.

If I Carry My Father by Marjorie Saiser

I hope it is a little more
than color of hair
or the dimple or cheekbones
if he's ever here in the space I inhabit
the room I walk in
the boundaries and peripheries
I hope it's some kindness he believed in
living on in cell or bone
maybe some word or action
will float close to the surface
within my reach
some good will rise when I need it
a hard dense insoluble shard
will show up
and carry on.

Word of the Day

Even though I am now 40 years old, I still am educated on my English pronunciation on a regular basis—at least a few words a year! Here is my latest:

interlocutor

I have read this in 19th century literature usually, and understand, from context, that it is a person speaking a conversation. I assumed the pronunciation was in - ter - lo - cu - tor, but I was listening to an audiobook last night and heard it read (and afterwards confirmed online) as

in - ter - loc - u - tor

loc with a short o sound!

I'm still not going to use it in my conversation, ahem, interlocutions, but it's good to know all the same :)

Listening for Your Name by David Graham

As a father steals into his child's half-lit bedroom
slowly, quietly, standing long and long
counting the breaths before finally slipping

back out, taking care not to wake her,

and as that night-lit child is fully awake the whole

time, with closed eyes, measured breathing,

savoring a delicious blessing she couldn't

name but will remember her whole life,

how often we feel we're being watched over,

or that we're secretly looking in on the ones

we love, even when they are far away, or even as they are lost in the sleep

no one wakes from—what we know

and what we feel can fully coincide, like love

and worry, like taking care in full silence

and secrecy, like darkness and light together.