I reluctantly returned my "Oxford Book of English Poets" edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch to the library because I was half tempted to keep it forever. I would simply pick it up at night, even with the creaky binding, and open to a random page and read. Of course I'd heard of the most well known poets like William Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot but for the most part, I'd never read over half of the poets featured in the book.

The other night I came across a name "Rupert Brooke." There was a poem about war that seemed sentimental but sincere:

"IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England." -- from "The Soldier"

So of course I scribbled his name down and went to sleep. The very next morning I looked him up and was instantly fascinated. He's not very popular today, especially not in America. Most people know him from his attachments to the Bloomsbury set. Most people were impressed with his talent but he was also quite lucky to be good looking and a bit idealistic. I was tickled to read that Brooke was part of a group of (for lack of better phrase than the website gives)neo-pagans (proto-hippies) that slept outdoors and bathed naked. Virginia Woolf was rumoured to be one of those who bathed with Brooke. The quote that is given with this description is attributed to Brooke and is splendid:

"We don't copulate without marriage, but we do meet in cafes, talk on buses, go on unchaperoned walks, stay with each other, give each other books, without marriage."

Brooke died at the age of 27 in 1915 from Septicema. He was enlisted in the British Royal Navy and was off the coast of Skyros on a Naval ship.

I like Brooke's poetry. I find it not so terribly complicated with a touch of high language. There is a decorative posing I suppose, an abject sentimentality that is induced by lines that rhyme but I don't mind that one bit. I find it an absolutely refreshing respite from some of the poetry that I've read lately that lacks soul.

9. One Day

TODAY I have been happy. All the day
I held the memory of you, and wove
Its laughter with the dancing light o’ the spray,
And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,
And sent you following the white waves of sea,
And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,
Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.

So lightly I played with those dark memories,
Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,
Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,
For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,
And love has been betrayed, and murder done,
And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.



For further reading of Brooke's poems please click here

The Immortals

Years ago she told me,
before his death had settled,
They’d gone to a motion picture
“Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire”
and sat in the darkened theater
watching them dance.

I see their two faces now
Untouched by age
Young, Only half shaded
by the dimmed lights
of cinematic glow.
Forever trimmed in celluloid.
Captured, but never fading
from the screen.

M. Evans

My Hat Collection

This is the chatty cashmere beret that was given to me by my sister for Christmas. I love this look,sort of french and a bit classic; a fantastic hat.



Ever had something call to you from the rack? Well this little beauty did a few days ago. I quickly picked it up and placed it on my head and realized that it was 30% off and so I took it home. I love it in a sort of Djuna Barnes Nightwood sort of way.


And this little darling is the peacock hat that I love with all my heart and soul.

A letter to Vita Sackville-West from Virginia Woolf

Friday [20 May]

To Vita Sackville-West

All right, dearest donkey. I will be outside the place where one buys tickets at Paddington at 4:35 on Wednesday, carrying a neat bag, otherwise slightly shabby, but distinguished...

Berg

Vita Sackville-West

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"

"The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.”

"I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong."

- Vita Sackville-West



I've been too flighty lately to concentrate on reading a full length book. The hours of sitting with my father are broken up with bursts of pure strength to do what I need for him around the house. It took all I had to wrestle a kerosene heater outside to fill it up with kerosene and drag it back in. My father has large hoses that I had to drag in because the temperature has been below freezing. Wood that I've had to bring up constantly, the dog wouldn't come in for the night and so I grab her collar and pull her in with all that I have inside of me. I have been pushing and pulling and carrying until I'm sore.

When your attention span only goes as far as the end of your nose, its best to settle in with something brief.

So, I picked up The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

And I'm so glad that I did.

I know I've written about this book before and about their unusual friendship. Yes, they were lovers but even after their affair ended they still wrote to one another. How many friendships actually work after the romantic part is over? I can think of a very few. I like to see Woolf pleading to West, I like to see her high cerebral self reduced to fervent admiration. You get to see a side of Woolf that is reserved only for her close friends, a playful almost flirtatious voice. I prefer West's letters to Woolf's simply because they are full of descriptions of the fantastic places that West visited.

Of course I love Virginia Woolf but I've taken quite an interest in Vita Sackville-West. She was married to British diplomat Harold Nicolson. Both were obviously bisexual and enjoyed relationships outside of the marriage but managed to stay very close and married. West was an accomplished gardener and writer but also a willing and hearty traveler. I'm interested in the sort of life she had, in the books she wrote, in her passion for gardening and so I have pledged myself to read some of her works this year. I like her sense of style too:

Where I've Been...

I had some great plans for New Year. A coworker had asked me if I wanted to go to a little gather at a brewery (no not the same coworker with the Bee hive guy) and I was going to visit a friend on New Years Day.


Of course you know what they say about the best laid plans right?

On Tuesday my dad went in for a fairly routine surgery that turned out to be much more than what the doctor originally thought-a deeper wider incision. Everything turned out just fine but he was in a great deal of pain and couldn't do a thing for himself. So, I missed two days of work sitting by his side, not moving an inch except to sleep lightly.

My father and I have had a touchy relationship, one that has certainly not been easy. I've had to forgive a lot, cut him a few breaks, constantly remind myself that he is just a human, and ignore his remarks. As he's gotten old though I think he has mellowed out.

The day of the surgery he and I are in his room waiting for the nurse to come and push his bed to the operating room. I try to keep him calm but he's nervous and silent. When the nurse comes she says "last call for hugs and kisses." I lean over the bed, I touch his arm and I say "I love you Dad, I'll be out here waiting for you." And they wheel him away. I'm alone, I go to the bathroom and stare at the mirror and calm my panicky self.

I've had to do things I never thought I'd do; help my father get up, give him medication, ease his pain, help him get dressed. I haven't really ever thought about it until now; I feel different; changed.

On New Years eve I fall asleep at 11:00. No parties, no glasses of champagne, no kisses. I start the New Year caring for someone other than myself. Before I fall asleep I remember what I said last year at this time "I won't be spending another New Year in this house."

And I just laugh.

Rumble Bumble, Ramble Bamble...

I have been plugging away at Hamlet for two nights. I don't mind saying that I've been marking up my Shakespeare box set with question marks and "Ha!" and "Wha?" and any pretty little passages that catch my fancy. I had a nightmare last night that a giant was wondering my work and eating people and I had somehow escaped the library and had made it into the parking lot when I could feel his hands wrap around my waist. I blame it on the sleepytime tea but it may have something to do with the horrorific landscape of Hamlet.

I've read Hamlet twice in my life and this being the third time, I can very happily say that I don't care all that much for it. It is too dark, too dreamy. I can't make head or tails of it and with Hamlet's madness I don't know who to trust. Everyone goes about saying Hamlet is mad but he isn't..we knoww he has truly seen the ghost of his father. Really Hamlet is about what we know and don't know for sure, it is about doubt and truth.

In happier news I've bought a hat. This hat is the begininng of something beautiful for me in the New Year. This hat demands that I go to the Symphony, when I bought it the other night the hat sighed a bit and said "I'll come to you but you must promise to take me only to fabulous places and have a wonderful time, there will be no awful times while I am perched upon your head." I agreed naturally and now I eagerly wait for the little darling to appear on my doorstep. I blame the cashmere beret my sister bought me for Christmas that is quite chatty and wanted company.I will post pictures of my hats soon, for anyone that is curious about my insanity.

I am in possession of a day off and so I have a few bills to post and then it is off to a used bookstore that I love in Asheville. I have a sack of books that I want to trade for new ones. Keep your fingers crossed that I find something marvelous and worthy of my bed side table. It would be a near miracle if I could find a decent copy of The Letters of John Keats but that will probably be impossible.

Ah well, I will have my hat soon and a pretty frock to wear to the Symphony...what more could a person ask for?

Well...maybe Spring so that I can start my walks again..yes I'm wishing for Spring.