For a couple of years I have hung around the edges of other blogs, piping up now and then with my own take on the topics of the day, either in comments or, now and then, as a guest blogger. But there are things I'd enjoy talking about which don't fit in my home blogs, Angry Bear and the Galloping Beaver.
It's a blessing to be able to post whatever I like, but whoooo-eee, it's a curse too. No editor and no brakes makes for a sloppy blog, and no fellow bloggers (at the moment) makes for a single voice, which not every writer can sustain over time.
But I'll try. I thank my friends elsewhere for their encouragement, and hope for their company here at the haus.
By the way, you might wonder why "Tunnel Under Snow"? In this part of the world, when winter sets in and the snow falls, that's the time that field mice settle in for a drowsy, peaceful life under the snow in grass-lined tunnels which seldom get colder than freezing, no matter what the air temperature. They still maintain their underground tunnels, true, but the snow tunnels become their "winter kitchen", just as suburban decks become summer kitchens for human barbecuers in summer. Perhaps the little house of Mole, with its entranceway and bunk beds and bottles of stout laid down by his grandfather, played a part also.
With this in mind, you are welcome to shake the snow off your coat, pull on carpet slippers and come sit by the fire. Bring your Van Nostrand's, your Strong's Concordance (it's not called "exhaustive" for nothing), your Times' (NY and London), and an armload of your other favorites. (Mine include Walker's Mammals of the World, Sayer's The Mind of the Maker, and anything by Terry Pratchett.) The keg is tapped, your mug's on the sideboard.
Noni
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2 comments:
Hi from Halifax!
I saw your comment at OSO and followed the bread crumbs. Looking forward to any poetry (I'm a fellow sufferer).
Watching the financial world start it's final collapse since July 7th has been unnerving, but the lack of effect (so far) on real life has been surreal.
Cheers, John McLeod
Hi John,
Thanks for visiting, and I do intend to poetize now and then. I consider poetry to be highly distilled knowledge, and it is a real pity that nobody reads it much these days. I'm sure regular engagement with poetry changes how people think, and what we can think too.
Ever read Orwell's Essays (Penguin)? Wonderful writing, like a bucket of cool water on a sticky day. There's a bunch of them here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html.
In one essay, "Poetry and the Microphone" (1943) he accurately says:
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It will be seen that I have been speaking as though the whole subject of poetry were embarrassing, almost indecent, as though popularising poetry were essentially a strategic manoeuvre, like getting a dose of medicine down a child’s throat or establishing tolerance for a persecuted sect. But unfortunately that or something like it is the case. There can be no doubt that in our civilisation poetry is by far the most discredited of the arts, the only art, indeed, in which the average man refuses to discern any value. Arnold Bennett was hardly exaggerating when he said that in the English-speaking countries the word “poetry” would disperse a crowd quicker than a fire-hose.
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Frankly, I don't know what to do about this, though, considering poetry becomes powerful and well thought of in totalitarian nations, perhaps we are on our way. /irony
Noni
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