In the periphery I was secret gong

In spare online moments over the last few months I've been reading poetry (and interviews etc) by Catherine Wagner. I'm not sure what started it, her name just popped into my head. I've known it for twenty years but that was all, I knew she wrote the kind of US poetry I liked; I still haven't read or seen any of her books. On the other hand, there's plenty about her books online, mostly from across the Atlantic. Of Course, her fifth collection, was published in 2020 after an eight year hiatus.

Here's a short poem, or part of a poem, from Of Course -- one of three in the Old Pal ezine. 

“In the periphery”

In the periphery I was secret gong
hanging the hammock thinking CALL MY MOM
not doing that or any other task ha
HA I'll do my job of 

putting head outdoors    the garden ringing  
unfocused my eyes allowed 
  moving shadows on the lawn       
                        like baby whales playing 20 feet underwater
   to shift their noons  

                             
Sun on green leaves brings out their yellow 
      My eye drags tree to sky, prints violet margin.

[Poem source: https://www.oldpalmag.com/issue-3/2019/9/27/catherine-wagner-three-poems .]

In the periphery, not on the periphery. 

The story continues in the next two poems. She goes out of the garden to the "trash thicket" on the border of the neighbouring golf-course -- that is where the "course" in the title comes from -- we learn there's a problem with one of her contact lenses, hence the unfocused aspect, which combines with a enhanced awareness of sound -- it's a messy, vibrant, sense-evading nature . . . we see a dead ash tree, the poet curses the Emerald Ash Borer.

In the poem sound comes from unseen sources, blurs remind of other blurs, even what is seen (green leaves) turn out to be not just green and not just leaves. Nature is squeezable i.e. reduced to this periphery ("wildlife corridor") that exploits a legal border (privacy, ownership, segregation), but nature remains ungraspable, we're in it and it's in us.

*

(Emerald Ash Borer, Agrilus planipennis, a NE Asian beetle that does not kill the ash trees of its native range but is destructive elsewhere. This is the scourge affecting ash tree species in the USA; there's plenty of it in the Cincinnati area where Catherine Wagner lives. It's also approaching Europe from the east, but hasn't reached us yet. However, European ash species are already being hard hit by ash dieback caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus first noticed in Poland in 1992 -- which is possibly identical to the Japanese species Lambertella albida (again, harmless to its native flora).) 

*

Re the first line, there might be more specific reference but the spiritual tradition of the gong is doubtless relevant, e.g. 

Masters of the Gong Tone of Life recognize that ‘Now’ exists suspended in the ocean of the gonging experience ...

Because the gong feeds the non-linear mind or the mind behind the mind, it is a consciousness supportive tool that fosters spiritual wholeness.

The gong is not an enemy of the linear mind, but a................

friend to all in all dimensions. Hence, the name of Maitreya or Mithra is associated with it.

The concept of the mysterious alchemist stone that the ancients sought and which is able to transfer its powers of transmutation to the beholder can also be understood to be the secret Gong Effect caused by universal resultant tones channeled through its remarkable alloy pulled by the Source, the mysterious attractor we call 1.618033989, and which is the frequency of 207.1 Hz. G#, or approximately, the orbital tone of the Uranus Gong, ruler astrologically of the new present Aquarian Age.

(Source .)

Some more extracts from  Of Course :

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/05/poetry/three-wagner

Maybe these poems come from it too. Anyway, I just liked them:

"The city has sex with Megan": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149690/from-the-city-has-sex-with-everything

"English is 99% buckled to a rock": https://580split.org/issue/breach/#editors_letter

"Thanksgiving is over":   https://www.benningtonreview.org/catherine-wagner

*

I walked in the house

on the flat aspect of the wood

I took rectangular instruction of the wood

...

                                                             Something electric charged into our account

and zinged out of it, pre-instructed

 

and paid for the house. I felt

house on my heel then instep and toe.

I had a bad foot and I paid

to get it fixed so I could walk here.

I paid for the house and I paid for the

foot that touches it. I paid to be

directed rectangularly and down a hall.

I curved my body to direct

my waste through a hole. I am helped

and paying for it.

 

all of me exchanged,

housing exchange.

                                   I saw us standing

   up in the world.

And we sank into

   exchange

  vibrating transparency

                 like a sea nettle

              afloat in the night sea

 

the edges of the sea-veil

      tensed slapping above, visible

when the wind crevassed and doilied

...

Just a taste of another favourite poem, "I walked in the house", from Macular Hole (2004). You should definitely read all of it -- it's only about twice as long as what I've quoted, but for some reason I got cold feet about pasting the whole lot. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54526/i-walked-in-the-house 

I love that her two chosen examples of capitalism in action are housing and healthcare, not fluff like fancy clothes and sports cars. 

The poem bangs up against not doing this: letting the house fall apart, sitting at the broken window keeping the pain of your broken arm to yourself. 

What's maybe not so clear from the poem in isolation is that there's more at stake here for the protagonist: there's a baby (the overarching theme of the poems in Macular Hole). A roof over your head, healthy and fit ... these things matter, or they seem to. (Hence the subsequent reference to dirty bathwater, as in, throwing out with...)

More flowers of the Torrevieja coast

I've been in Torrevieja, near Alicante, for a week at the beginning of March, and of course I've taken a few snaps of the common early flowers. 

I don't promise to identify them all. My guide over here is Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean by Marjorie Blamey and Christopher Grey-Wilson (1988), a book I don't often have much joy with.

The yellow plant above is a case in point. It must be the commonest wild flower round here, but I still don't know what it is. Here's some more pics of it.

It's a scrambly sort of plant. The leaves are pinnate with narrow, backward-pointing lobes. Some have clasping leaf-bases, flamboyantly pointed. The stems are fairly slender, solid and the ones I examined were basically hairless.

Hairless, that is, except for this distinctive white felty stuff at the base of the involucre and at stem-nodes.

The backs of the ray-florets are sometimes reddish, sometimes just a bit dingy.

Anyway, with the help of online image searches I've nailed it. It's Slender Sow-thistle (Sonchus tenerrimus). I think I was put off by Grey-Wilson describing the species as "often local". I'm sure that's true, from a pan-Mediterranean perspective. But round here it grows just about everywhere.

A smallish broom-like plant, flowers just starting on 2 March. Maybe Dyer's Greenweed (Genista tinctoria), a plant I last saw in a Sussex meadow 35 years ago.

A Stork's-bill. I'll have a guess at Erodium chium. (Other leaves I've seen are more distinctly lobed than the ones in this pic.)

Well this one's easy at least. It's the ridiculously pretty blue form of Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), with hairy margins to petals.

Blue-leaved Wattle (Acacia cyanophylla), native to W. Australia. A major part of the coastal scenery at this time of year.

Pretty confident this is Euphorbia segetalis, though I wish Grey-Wilson had been more specific about the height than "short". Anyway, it's a common spurge round here.

[I should say, I was pretty confident. These plants must be about 50cm, taller than most heights quoted online for E. segetalis (though they're a mixed bag). Also these plants don't look like annuals to me.]

The vicious fruits of Small Caltrops aka Maltese Cross (Tribulus terrestris). I picked them out of my hand after steadying myself to photograph the spurge.

More about caltrops:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/01/thomas-middleton-women-beware-women.html

Unopened male flowers of the local pine (Aleppo Pine, Pinus halepensis).

More about it here:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/11/aleppo-pine.html

Bermuda Buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae). Introduced from South Africa to Malta in c. 1806, and soon a common sight around most of the Med, spreading vegetatively to form dense patches.

Yellow Sea Aster (Asteriscus maritimus), growing on a cliff wall.

It has other names. More about it here:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/03/asteriscus-maritimus.html

Don't know. It's very common, though. Every time I flick through Marjorie Blamey's pictures I hover over Urospermum dalechampii but that's supposed to be sulphur yellow and have backward-pointing leaf lobes, so no.

(Oh, I'd forgotten, I went through all this before. It's Reichardia tingitana.)

Purple Viper's Bugloss (Echium plantagineum)... I think. One of the commonest plants round here. You can find it at almost all times of year, but March is when it looks prettiest.

(It's also in the pic at the top of the post.)

Growing on the close-mown promenade at Mar Azul. A medick, maybe Medicago littoralis.

 

I was on my own this time, so there was a relative flood of reading.  I dived into a Spanish book that I'd bought the last time I was over, the Penguin Clásicos edition of El sí de las niñas by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, a comedy from 1806. I wrote about it in a separate post: 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/03/el-si-de-las-ninas.html

When I'd mopped up all possible entertainment value from Moratín's play I switched over to Swedish, a genre novel I picked up in a charity shop, Klar Himmel by Kristin Fägerskjöld. This was her first novel (2020); I think she's up to her fourth now. It's a saga, multiple times and narrators, revolving around three women during WW2 and a dark secret, set partly in Sweden and partly in England, just the thing for expanding my vocabulary. My Swedish is now at about the same level as my French: I relish an easy novel, but literary novels remain forbidding. I read more slowly and hence with more interest than if I was reading the same kind of book in English. (Consequently, I'm learning quite a bit about what life was like in Sweden and England in 1941.)

Reading Swedish being hard work for me, needing regular breathers, I spent more time than usual looking at the cover. It's a collage, bombers flying overhead while a girl in a summer dress walks her bike idyllically. That seems to allude to Léonie's bike rides in Lincolnshire, and it's her dress (red with white spots), but she would have been in uniform. I think the girl must represent all the female leads at once, and above all the reader, entering and delighting in the world of the novel. (The leads themselves are keen readers, always looking for a quiet corner.)

I spent a bit of time wondering about the leaves, too. I don't recognize them; not a European tree, I'm thinking. Shutterstock creates strange new worlds. 

Mind you, when Léonie arrives on her bike at the old ruin in the spring of 1944, "the daffodils and goldenrods competed to see which were the most numerous..." That feels a bit like a collage, too.

*

Meanwhile, I finally managed to finish off a post that's taken me forever, about Scott's inexhaustible novel The Heart of Midlothian. 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/02/sir-walter-scott-heart-of-midlothian.html

Torrevieja is a multi-lingual sort of place, and you hear a lot of Nordic languages being spoken. The first euros I made, I was singing Den första gång jag såg dig ... I was delighted to finally add a new currency to my income history, to go with sterling and kronor. I've been trying when in Europe the last couple of years, but never found the right place and time. Superficially, conditions didn't seem ideal here either, down on the seafront, which was windy all week (I don't use any amplification, so wind, crashing waves and traffic are major considerations). Nevertheless, something unlocked in the cosmos and people started coming over, the coins came and even one note. 

I cycled and ran but never felt like getting into the chilly sea. I made a batch of vegetable soup and mostly ate dinner in. But who could come here and resist tostada-tomate for breakfast, the occasional napolitana, the occasional krakauer...? My diary summarizes: Went to Bar El Botijo a few times, Elite a couple of times, Marco Polo (the one on C/ Scorpiones, handy for after shopping at Consum), El Carmen once, LaZia upstairs twice while using the launderette, Zenia Boulevard Bombon Boss twice, Miño (Av/ Desiderio Rodriguez) three times when heading Torrev direction. Andrea's bratwurst stall and our favoured restaurant whose name I think is Gelateria Italiana, though it's somewhat vague. (It's really a food place, with a German flavour to the menu; they stopped selling ice cream altogether when the electricity prices went mad, though I think it's back on now.)

Some other posts from visits to Torrevieja,  including some of the same plants...

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/03/spanish-reveries.html

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/03/more-march-flowers-from-torrevieja-coast.html

El sí de las niñas (Leandro Fernández de Moratín)

Don Diego (Pablo Sanz)

[Images clipped from this 1970 Radiotelevisión Española presentation of El sí de las niñas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCaebQoFFpc . ]

La escena es en una posada de Alcalá de Henares.

The scene is a guest-house in Alcalá de Henares.

El teatro representa una sala de paso con cuatro puertas de habitaciones para huéspedes, numeradas todas. Una más grande en el foro, con escalera que conduce al piso bajo de la casa. Ventana de antepecho a un lado. Una mesa en medio, con banco, sillas, etc. 

The stage represents a public room with four doors to guest bedrooms, all numbered. A larger doorway leads to the hallway, with a staircase descending to the ground floor. A chest-high window to one side. A table in the middle, with a bench, chairs, etc.

La acción empieza a las siete de la tarde y acaba a las cinco de la mañana siguiente.

The action starts at seven in the evening and ends at five the following morning. 

Acto I, Escena I

Sale DON DIEGO de su cuarto, SIMÓN, que está sentado en una silla, se levanta.

DON DIEGO comes out of his room and SIMÓN, who is sitting in a chair, gets up.

DON DIEGO.-   ¿No han venido todavía?

So they still aren't back?

SIMÓN.-   No, señor.

No, sir.

DON DIEGO.-   Despacio lo han tomado, por cierto.

They're taking a damned long time.

SIMÓN.-   Como su tía la quiere tanto, según parece, y no la ha visto desde que la llevaron a Guadalajara...

Since her aunt loves her so much, it seems, and hasn't seen her since they took her to Guadalajara ...

DON DIEGO.-   Sí. Yo no digo que no la viese; pero con media hora de visita y cuatro lágrimas estaba concluido.

Yes. I'm not saying she shouldn't see her, but a visit of half an hour, four tears and it's over.

SIMÓN.-   Ello también ha sido extraña determinación la de estarse usted dos días enteros sin salir de la posada. Cansa el leer, cansa el dormir... Y, sobre todo, cansa la mugre del cuarto, las sillas desvencijadas, las estampas del hijo pródigo, el ruido de campanillas y cascabeles, y la conversación ronca de carromateros y patanes, que no permiten un instante de quietud.

Strange decision of yours, to go two whole days without setting foot outside the guest-house. Reading gets boring, sleeping gets boring... and what's most boring of all is the dirty room, the rickety chairs, the prints of the Prodigal Son, the sound of church bells and service bells, the shouted conversations of wagoners and peasants so you never get a minute's peace.

DON DIEGO.-   Ha sido conveniente el hacerlo así. Aquí me conocen todos: el Corregidor, el señor Abad, el Visitador, el Rector de Málaga... ¡Qué sé yo! Todos. Y ha sido preciso estarme quieto y no exponerme a que me hallasen por ahí.

It suited me to do it this way. Everyone knows me round here: the judge, the abbot, the auditor, the rector of Málaga, and God knows who else... Everyone. And that's just why I chose to stay quietly here and not to reveal myself to whoever might run into me.

SIMÓN.-   Yo no alcanzo la causa de tanto retiro. Pues ¿hay más en esto que haber acompañado usted a Doña Irene hasta Guadalajara para sacar del convento a la niña y volvernos con ellas a Madrid?

I don't get why you're keeping such a low profile. Is there something more to this than you escorting Doña Irene to Guadalajara to pick up her little girl from the convent, then going back with them to Madrid?

DON DIEGO.-   Sí, hombre; algo más hay de lo que has visto.

Yes, my lad; something more than what you have seen.

SIMÓN.-   Adelante.

Go on.

DON DIEGO.-   Algo, algo... Ello tú al cabo lo has de saber, y no puede tardarse mucho... Mira, Simón, por Dios te encargo que no lo digas... Tú eres hombre de bien, y me has servido muchos años con fidelidad... Ya ves que hemos sacado a esa niña del convento y nos la llevamos a Madrid.

Something, something... You'll have to know about it eventually, and it can't be delayed much longer... Look here, Simón, for God's sake don't go spreading this around... You're a good man, and you've served me faithfully for many years ... so you see we've collected this child from the convent and we are taking her to Madrid.

SIMÓN.-   Sí, señor.

Yes, sir.

DON DIEGO.-   Pues bien... Pero te vuelvo a encargar que a nadie lo descubras.

Well, then ... But I repeat, you absolutely must not tell this to anyone. 

SIMÓN.-   Bien está, señor. Jamás he gustado de chismes.

It's all right, sir. I've never been fond of gossip.

DON DIEGO.-   Ya lo sé. Por eso quiero fiarme de ti. Yo, la verdad, nunca había visto a la tal Doña Paquita. Pero, mediante la amistad con su madre, he tenido frecuentes noticias de ella; he leído muchas de las cartas que escribía; he visto algunas de su tía la monja, con quien ha vivido en Guadalajara; en suma, he tenido cuantos informes pudiera desear acerca de sus inclinaciones y su conducta. Ya he logrado verla; he procurado observarla en estos pocos días y, a decir verdad, cuantos elogios hicieron de ella me parecen escasos.

I know that. That's why I want to trust you. I, this is the truth, have never seen Doña Paquita before. But, through my friendship with her mother, I've often heard about her; I've read many of the letters she wrote; I've seen some more from her aunt the nun, who she's been living with in Guadalajara; in short, I've had all the information I could ask for, concerning her inclinations and her conduct. I've managed to see her, I've taken the opportunity to observe her these past few days, and to be frank, all the eulogies they make about her seem to me to fall far short.

SIMÓN.-   Sí, por cierto... Es muy linda y...

Yes indeed... She's very pretty and....

DON DIEGO.-   Es muy linda, muy graciosa, muy humilde... Y, sobre todo, ¡aquel candor, aquella inocencia! Vamos, es de lo que no se encuentra por ahí... Y talento... Sí señor, mucho talento... Conque, para acabar de informarte, lo que yo he pensado es...

She's very pretty, very gracious, very modest ... And above all, what candour, what innocence! Come on, that's something you just don't find these days... And talented ... Yessir, very talented... And so, to come to the point, what I have been thinking is...

SIMÓN.-   No hay que decírmelo.

You don't need to tell me.

DON DIEGO.-   ¿No? ¿Por qué?

No? Why not?

SIMÓN.-   Porque ya lo adivino. Y me parece excelente idea.

Because I've already worked it out. And it seems to me an excellent idea.

DON DIEGO.-   ¿Qué dices?

What are you saying?

SIMÓN.-   Excelente.

Excellent. 

DON DIEGO.-   ¿Conque al instante has conocido?...

And so you knew instantly? ...

SIMÓN.-   ¿Pues no es claro?... ¡Vaya!... Dígole a usted que me parece muy buena boda. Buena, buena.

Well, isn't it obvious?... Wow! ... I'm telling you it seems to me a great match. Great, great.

Simón, Don Diego's servant (Alfonso Gallardo)

*

I've been reading Leandro Fernández de Moratín's* most admired comedy El sí de las niñas, published in 1806 (written a few years earlier).

Complete text of El sí de las niñas in Spanish:

https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/el-si-de-las-ninas--0/html/ff188e30-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html

(This is the original version of the text. The book I've been reading is based on Moratín's final revision: which cuts, e.g., the bit about the Corregidor, the Rector de Málaga, etc.)

*

As they go on talking, it becomes apparent that they're at cross purposes. Simón assumes that Don Diego intends the sixteen-year-old Doña Paquita for his nephew (a much more suitable match in terms of age). Don Diego, who is 59, has to spell out that he is actually intending to marry the girl himself.  Embarassment all round. 

At this stage you might anticipate a story where a lecherous old fool gets his deserved comeuppance, like January in the Merchant's Tale. But it doesn't work like that here. Don Diego isn't much of a lecher and he isn't even, except in this opening scene, much of a fool. As the play proceeds he becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the bland assurances of the loquacious mother and the almost equally maddening compliance of a daughter who seems to be just going through the motions. 

(The title means literally "The Yes of the girls" and is usually translated as something like "The Maiden's Consent".)

Doña Irene, the mother (Carmen Bernardos)

He begins to see that there's something radically amiss with an educational system that trains girls to comply absolutely with their elders' wishes and hence to conceal all their real feelings. When he discovers that the supposedly closeted Doña Paquita is in fact in love with the aforementioned nephew, he generously stands aside, to the happiness of everyone (even Doña Irene, once she's got over wanting to scratch her daughter's eyes out).

Doña Paquita [= Francisca], the daughter (Isabel María Pérez)

*

Antonio Calvo Maturano's lively 2012 essay introduces El sí de las niñas to readers of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, usefully bringing out the differences between the literature of absolutist Spain and democratic England, the different questions being asked; the progressivism isn't all on one side, both works treading a path between conservatism and reformism. 

https://jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no2/calvo.html

An interesting point he makes is that Moratín's attack on unequal marriages was in line with the thinking of the absolutist regime, alarmed by an upper-class culture in which marital infidelity was becoming the norm. They thought it led to social instability (as well as a lot of young, unmaintained widows).

Rita, the ladies' maid (María Silva)

*

A chat with Doña Paquita (in Spanish), along with some fabulous pictures, by María Ángeles Merino:

https://aranitacampena.blogspot.com/2014/05/el-si-de-las-ninas-y-enamorado-mas-que.html

Don Carlos, the nephew (Carlos Larrañaga)

El sí de las niñas has been translated into English a few times over the years. I couldn't find any of the older translations online, but what I did find was a 2007 version by Christopher O. Kidder (for his Masters degree) that's a whole lot of fun:

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/628/

It's part way between a translation and an adaptation (the sort of halfway house that was the norm in most earlier eras of drama, until copyright started to get in the way): overall, it gives a pretty faithful idea of the original play, but it slims down some of the more historical detail, turns Doña Irene's thrush into a parrot, and sprinkles the play with a bunch of new wisecracks and gags. (The idea of attaching Don Carlos' love-letter to a brick is absolutely inspired.)

Calamocha, Don Carlos' servant (Tomás Zorí)

Moratín was a firm believer in the dramatic unities, the gospel promulgated in Spain by Luzán. El sí de las niñas is set in a single location over a period of less than twelve hours, and it has just seven roles, all of them good opportunities for the actors to show their chops. (After all, it's not enough for a play to just please the public. If it pleases the actors too, it will get performed.)

You can see the good and not so good in this. In drama things happen and characters change as a result, but there's something artificial about character changes that occur within such a constrained timescale. It highlights the performance aspect of drama rather than the mimetic aspect; it unfolds like an intricate dance. But when we see Hamlet change, or Horatio, we believe it; we recognise the characteristic flow of a personality through time. Because in Shakespeare's double-time dramas, it isn't possible to say exactly how much time passes between Act I and Act V.

And lot gets excluded from such unity. Only afterwards do we wonder about the past and the future; for instance, how such an eligible gent as Don Diego happened to be still single at 59, or how a professional soldier like Don Carlos is going to square career with marriage. 

But at the same time, there's a pleasure to such a well-engineered mechanism. It feels like it can never go stale, like every time we set the play going we'll want to see it through to the end, the dramatic impetus never flagging, each new scene accompanied by fresh anticipation, and our applause at the final curtain just as assured as all the rest.

*

* That is his short name. His full name was Don Leandro Antonio Eulogio Melitón Fernández de Moratín y Cabo. He was born in Madrid in 1760 and died in Paris in 1828.