Bookstores I'd love to visit

This is an even better list.

Movies in 2008

This is a good list.

Gravity and love

Last week, I spoke to my students about using fresh metaphors in modern songs and poems. We'd spoken before about tired metaphors and symbols like roses for love, doves for peace, but it hadn't occurred to me to refer to contemporary writing to show them how new images can startle and affect a reader. When I read online versions of the Guardian's booklets on Greek legends, I thought of a song that cleverly uses a scientific law to represent attraction. The class was thrilled about the song, though I suspect much of their excitement came from getting to listen to music instead of having to read or write.

It was Germaine Greer's foreword for "The power of love," that mentioned the comparison of love to gravity, or rather, she reminds us that gravity is just another word that means the force of attraction. Immediately, I thought of Sara Bareilles's interpretation of gravity, which had initially struck me as a conceit - something I used to encounter often enough in metaphysical poetry (John Donne, Andrew Marvell). Despite my initial resistance to the idea, it eventually grew on me and transcended the level of fanciful-metaphor-by-writer-trying-to-be-clever. Given Bareilles's genuine emotion when she sings, the haunting words and phrasing, the song easily made my list of top 25 most played songs. It's a song about falling in love, being unable to resist the force of it. The speaker wants to escape the pull, but says she can't, or perhaps she doesn't wish to.

dimsumdolly likes the song too. She writes a poignant entry about it.

Here is Sara Bareilles's "Gravity."

Here too is the a cappella version that she recorded with her former group from UCLA, Awaken.

Bonus: Awaken does a beautiful version of Billy Joel's "And so it goes," a song about keeping silent.

To complete the circle, here's another Sara (Gazarek) with a version of "And so it goes."

Frost's "Desert Places"

For someone who owns The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged, it's a tragedy I missed this one.

"Desert Places" by Robert Frost (from "The Writer's Almanac)

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs,
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Music at the start of 2008

Since it's the first day of a brand new year, I figured it'd be good to listen to songs that cheer and inspire the spirit. I can't think of a better song than Feist's (one of last year's "it" female singers) contribution to the film "Paris, je t'aime."

Here are the English and French versions:

"We're all in the dance"

"La meme histoire"

(dancing dragon, if you're reading this, know that I still think of you whenever I listen to the song. Hope you're doing well.)

Another song that gets plenty of airtime in my study is Peter Mayer's "Now Touch the Air Softly," which manages to sound traditional and romantic and timeless all at once. It's a song I like listening to late at night when it gets quiet and I sit by an open window dreaming of distant worlds and other lives. I love how the lyrics conjure up images that start from the small spaces of a home - a country house - then widen to rivers, mountains, and an open sky awash with stars.

However, Mayer didn't write the lyrics; William Jay Smith, a poet, did. In 2004, he wrote -

"As a lyric poet I have been pleased also to find that my poems have for many years attracted the attention of composers, jazz musicians, and folk singers. Recent concerts in Rome at the American Academy and in Paris at the Atelier de la Main d'Or by Ned Rorem, Liz Peterson, Donna Kelly Eastman, and Stephen Berg have presented prominent singers in settings of my poetry for both adults and children. This development has given me particular pleasure since I like to think of myself as part of the Southern oral tradition. One of the poems that has been a favorite with composers and is frequently sung at weddings is the following:

Now Touch the Air Softly

Now touch the air softly,
Step gently. One, two …
I'll love you till roses
Are robin's-egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red.

Now touch the air softly,
Swing gently the broom.
I'll love you till windows
Are all of a room;
And the table is laid,
And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes
On bottomless air.

I'll love you till Heaven
Rips the stars from his coat,
And the Moon rows away in
A glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down
Like a diver below,
And Earth is ablaze,
And Ocean aglow.

So touch the air softly,
And swing the broom high.
We will dust the gray mountains,
And sweep the blue sky;
And I'll love you as long
As the furrow the plow,
As However is Ever,
And Ever is Now.

Gaiman's Cabal and new year wishes

Last year, I very much enjoyed reading the entries by Amazon's guest blogger, Neil Gaiman. I especially liked the pictures of his dog Cabal, who manages to look noble and playful at the same time. See here, here, here, here, and here.

And if anyone wants new year greetings that aren't the usual tired phrases, look no further than his last post for 2007. Here it is -

"I wrote this in 2004, quoting myself in 2001. And it feels like a good time to repeat myself one more time. Every three years...

I know it's bad form to repeat yourself, but I was about to list all the things I hope for the readers of this blog in 2005, and I realised I'd already written it back in 2001, when I said...

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And I really still do."