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“But still, you’ll live there beside the ocean”

Even though I’ve said to you that she hardly ever wrote a full-page poem, I know of one that I think relates to writing. And I’d like to read that if I could. I happen to have a copy of it. As far as I know it’s never been published, but I’ve kept Ursula’s poems from our group and I remember this one very well. And I think it relates to our discussion about writing.

It’s called The Practice.

That was writer Molly Gloss introducing and reading one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s unpublished poems that she kept from when they were in a small poetry writing group together. This was in conversation with David Naimon on his podcast Between the Covers in the 10 February 2022 episode “Crafting with Ursula: Molly Gloss on Writing the Clear, Clean Line”, at 42:04.

Check out the podcast to listen to the poem in full.

GC shared this podcast episode with impeccable timing, as always.

Edit 29 Jan 2023: The original version of this post had a transcribed version of Le Guin’s poem. But it was pretty presumptive of me to publish it here considering Le Guin had decided not to publish it in her lifetime. Finally got round to removing it today.

I really recommend listening to the podcast in general, but also of course to hear the poem. If for some reason you can’t listen to the podcast but still want to hear it, just email me. I do still have it written down privately.

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“I feel like my lounge is going to tip over”

Really need to make a habit of reading something that makes me giggle before bed. It sort of sets the day straight.

I’m reading He Used Thought As A Wife, Tim Key’s first lockdown book. It’s perfect. Funny, poignant, captures so many of the absurdities of the first lockdown in the UK. Also the title is perfection, though I didn’t really get it until I got going.

This is the part that made me giggle last night. It’s the middle of a vignette titled “Book Arrangements”, the designer of this book speaking with him about his progress on said book.

JUNIPER: Get anything down today?

KEY: Huh?

Key approaches the SodaStream, strokes its shoulders and smashes a flask up it. Bubbles and a honk. Infinitesimal animated prisms are released into the air, kissing themselves to death and falling to the counter. Key pours the magic into his Simpsons mug.

JUNIPER: Tim?

KEY: I’ve placed my books in order of how many pages they’ve got in them.

Key nods at what he has said.

JUNIPER: You should be writing.

KEY: Well, I did that in the end.

JUNIPER: How does it look?

KEY: Unbalanced, I feel like my lounge is going to tip over.

JUNIPER: Richard E. Grant has his arranged by spine colour.

KEY: Classy.

JUNIPER: So you’ve not made a start then?

KEY: You listen to Five Live enough, you start to believe it’s fine to do fuck all.

JUNIPER: It is Tim.

Ugh, kind of regretting writing that down here because reading back through it, the humor is gone without the context. Leaving it in since it took a few minutes to format.

Just read the book, it’s great.

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“the mystic mouth / leaves me so defted” 

sweet love, sweet love
love

my throat is gurgling
the mystic mouth
leaves me so defted
defted

my throat is gurgling
the mystic mouth
leaves me so defted

and the deep black nightingale
turned willowy

and the deep black nightingale
turned willowy

by love’s tossed treatment
berefted

The lyrics to John Cage’s “Four Walls: Act I, Scene VII”. I couldn’t find the lyrics many places online, so here they are.

Been listening to Symbol by Susumu Yokota a lot recently, finally took the time to look up a few of the songs he sampled. The voice in “music from the lake surface” is particularly haunting and weird, turns out it’s this piece.

“Four Walls” premiered in Steamboat Springs, CO in 1944, and this particular piece was originally sung by Julie Harris. The lyrics are a poem by Merce Cunningham.

I wonder which recording he sampled… It’s my favorite that I’ve heard so far, am not that in to many of others I’ve heard. Though I do think that the version from the 1989 album by Richard Bunger and Jay Clayton is pretty good (Apple Music, Spotify).

Related: I purchased John Cage: A Mycological Foray published by Atelier Editions a while back and it’s gorgeous. I really should send the postcards inside, but I’ll probably hang on to them. Need more pleasurable things to look at during the day-to-day right now.

Related to related: Listen to Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence (1972/69) on UbuWeb. Browse the rest of Ubu’s John Cage artefacts.