Monday, September 26, 2011

Eating peaches on T.S. Eliot's birthday

Today is T.S. Eliot's birthday. He was born in St. Louis in 1888.

A serious reader could feed off "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Wasteland," or "The Four Quartets" for a long time and still leave plenty of meaning on the bones for the next reading.

But today I want to celebrate his birthday with a bit of wonderful description of a cat,
Macavity: The Mystery Cat in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats:

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

We are already following this cat, just from these few lines, because he's a thinker, alert even when he looks asleep. Yet he's thin, neglected, a loner.

We can learn a lot about describing characters from the practical cats. In fact, just reading this poem makes me want to read the whole book and then try to describe a neighborhood cat or a remembered dog.

Of course we could learn from Eliot's more serious poems, too. But that's a huge topic, for another birthday--or a year's worth of birthdays. Still, I can't leave without saying thanks to T.S. Eliot for these lines from "Little Gidding" the fourth of The Four Quartets--

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Let's eat a peach for T.S. Eliot and not cease from our exploring and, as Gertrude Stein must have said (because I wrote it down in January, 2010, at our residency): "Write bravely."

ur exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

4 comments:

  1. You know, I did eat a peach that day: a late-season, nostalgic-for-summer peach. It was delicious.

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  2. "Write bravely..." such wise and encouraging words, Jackie. And, often easier to remember while drafting. Though, much, much, more difficult to remember during revision--a time when (at least I) don't feel much of anything. Yet, the bravery's there because how else do any of us step near the edge, with our drafts in hand, and jump?

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  3. Animals are so fun to project characteristics onto because they have personality, but yet still relatively blank slates. I used to have a large cat named Yakko who always flopped down as if his back legs were giving out from the weight. I always imagined him as a comedian who started his act by flopping on a chair and announcing to the audience, "Goddamn, my ass is tired."

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