Glad news of David Ferry

    Mr Ferry has won the

    National Book Award

    for the collection

    cited last month.

    
    It was indeed an-
    other occasion of
    happiness and risk.

    
    It would be unnatur-

    al to suppress the

    impulse to award 

    such prizes, but 

    it is almost unnat-
    ural to do so by
    extreme selection.

    Does such a gesture
    compromise intention
    to commemorate?

    What is saved by
    sharp discernment?
    Who is entitled to
    his simple answer?

    Do we love our
    playing fields be-
    cause their out-
    comes can be fair, 
    and give us broad
    elation in the game?
    Or do we love them
    because they thrust
    up heroes on demand?

    There is a cast of
    mind which has a
    blue state, a cast
    of mind of red. It
    never was more clear
    than just this year.
    It amounts to a dis-
    tinction in what a
    a treasuring is.

    Mr Ferry writes poet-
    ry of structure, bal-
    ance, endurance and
    grace. Our playing
    fields teach us to
    love these qualities
    not as ornaments: as
    features of obliga-
    tion, of readiness 
    for honest play. We
    love Ferry's poetry,
    it shines of rapture
    in the game.

    
    






David Ferry
Bewilderment
  New Poems and Translations
op. cit.

Please, no jests at a time like this!

Quite right, Mr Hakluyt.
We shall brook no mer-
riment on the pitfalls
of romance in treacher-
ous South Asia. Efface
The Road to Oxiana and
be strict with Louis
Mayer, when faced with
spy arcana, and behav-
iour militaire. Not a
breath of ribald glee,
not a single slap of
knee, may compromise
security of gloom, as
twice imperious effigy
unravels from its loom.

Robert Byron

The Road to Oxiana

1937

Oxford University Press, 2007©

Reading with Mies

Dr Farnsworth's house

in Plano is a moon

viewing platform from

the Katsura Villa in

a field in Illinois,

to conjure some day

a gallery in Texas

where a Raeburn can-

vas gains texture by
reflection.

i     Collection Kimbell Museum of Art

ii    Residence Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

       1945-51

iii  Louis Kahn

      Kimbell Museum of Art

     1972

Whit, willingly at play

Early this morning, under a clear

Autumn sun, I took a happy walk in 

an expansive meadow on a neighbor's

farm, where my English Cocker, Whit

had run as a puppy with his uncle, 

Geordie; and as I went on with them 

in spirit, I let go the ashes of his

remains to mark again those sweet 

and antic paths the two had charted

in their play.

In a year of unusual domestic sur-

prises this English dog and I did

participate more closely in each

other's lives, than ever before. In

many weeks of recuperation from one

surgery, and then another; in end-

ing some customs and beginning new

and wiser ones; and in endless for-

tunate hours together to observe

the subtle changes of them all, he

gave every companionship a radiant

and innocent and beautiful being

can contribute to the acceptance

of complication and novelty.

I accept that these cannot prac-

tically be a writer's purposes.

What interests me is the bench-

mark they set for pride in what

one does. I do not think a dog's

unfaltering pride is simply in-

herent or bred. I think, like

ours, it is in part responsive.

I think he knew he was a kindly

dog; and I admire that he was

willingly this way.

Camille Pissaro
Near Sydenham Hill,
  Looking towards Lower Norwood
1871
Kimbell Museum of Art

I dressed as the man who dressed for the man who dressed James Bond

      Do not be self-conscious.

      It is better to be affected.

Villiers David

1908 - 1985

Advice to my Godchildren

Juan Saumarez Smith, editor

  [Heywood Hill]

Maggs Brothers

Estate of Villiers David, 2012©

Who was that lawless roads pedestrian?

I was amazed at daybreak, yesterday, to find proclamations of a new alignment being offered on the strength of an admittedly amusing night. I was advised that it had been, if not especially good, then at least historically enormous; but then as I set about scrutinising its definition, I found recurrences of effect being misconstrued as cause, and coincidence as stable remedy. These sentimentalised deceptions were as innocent as the sensations that designed them, I allowed, and might well subside as such things do, innocuously enough. But then, at evening, there was more.

Ross Douthat's invention of an emergent coalition from an undifferentiated flight of commonsensible refugees of every condi-tion and occupation, from attack by Republican contempt, was dwarfed by Andrew Sullivan's com-pulsion to announce the greatest conjugal upheaval of all time.


Were the news not, in these parameters, benign enough to warrant such huzzahs, we'd have to reacquaint our mentors with society's assimilative powers all over again, that genius for absorption which allows abrupt deflection its novel but not much altering flight.

Yet here we were: pursuing innumerable, unremarked wars without the approbation or oversight of our institutions, but by one authority, stripped constitutionally of the power to do so. This was to have been the not George Bush presidency: the not war criminal presidency, the not civil liberties violating presidency, the not arbitrary presidency. 

The late campaign illustrates that triumph of history over political change which renders its morning-after raptures bitter precedents. Mr Obama sought office to fix an institution, and got away with neglecting to, by saying the economy ate his homework.

It was good to get past the Republicans, but I very much doubt that our culture can count forever on such a purified embodiment of the barbarian. Who can be sure that reason will not be resumed as their guide, as fast as it was abandoned, precipitating a pluralist outpouring from this coincidental coalition, as sweets from a piñata? The election held promise of a wiser pursuit of criminal justice in California, while nevertheless exposing the profound hazard of populist intervention in due process which rallied harsh misrule in the first place. But it is no exaggeration to say, the trends of the evening were framed as a flight from cruelty. It is not popular, against so many.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog

   And please, Daddy.

   No more airplane food.

The New York Times

November 7, 2012©

I note, some readers revived a posting from March

   Refreshing of them.