Blog Archives

On the disposition of book readers ...

10/28/2014

According to Joseph Addison, the English essayist, poet, playwright, politician, and etcetera, who lived, and wrote, between 1672 and 1719, "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

I had not equated "lying in tall grass while reading a good book on a lazy, sunny day" with exertion, but all manner of scientific research into reading, specifically printed books or magazine articles, agree.

Reading tangible books has been credited with: improving our comprehension skills, staving off Alzheimer's, reducing stress, making us more empathetic, and improving our sleep. Really?

Many of us tend to read books on e-readers, but several studies have come out decrying this behavior. "For one thing," they argue, "what about the tactile sense you get from holding the book in your book?"

I must admit that, even though my e-reader is so very handy at storing and displaying loads of books, and so easy to carry wherever I go, I had already begun to read tangible books again ... and I like it.

I grew up reading "real books" in a room filled with books, and over the years my mind has accomplished all sorts of mental gymnastics while it steeped in the comfy, singular aroma of paper and binding.

My Kindle can't do that. I still value it for all of the other things it can do, but it is no longer my literary medium of choice. When I want to tuck into a good book now, I leave my kindle on the table.

And, if the research rings true, I look forward to reporting that the journeys I undertake in these books in hand are a bit more engaging, and that my comprehension and memory have somewhat improved.

So, here's to Joseph Addison, who also said, "Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn” Would that I could quote so well as he.

Image: www.theguardian.com (Corbis)

2 Comments

Searching for old friends in the attic.

10/19/2014

0 Comments

Over the past several years, I have spent untold intermittent hours in search of my long lost early poems. Very often, I feared that they had been carelessly discarded as trash during a move to a new residence.

When I finally ran out of boxes and book cases and nooks to look through. I came to the depressing conclusion that they had to be utterly and unequivocally lost ... and yet, I searched some more.

Then, one recent afternoon, the folder containing those precious verses stared up at me out of a cardboard coffer I felt remonstrated, as if I should have known that it was there, waiting for me, all along.

I found myself recalling a quote that is commonly, though possibly mistakenly, attributed to Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Yep.

So, how is it possible to overlook one particular box, in a stack of boxes, repeatedly? It all comes down to an assumption that had staunchly embedded itself in my desperately impatient brain.

But, there I stood, at long last, holding that file in my eager hands, only to stare at the cover warily, wondering whether the poems therein were actually up to the caliber that I had ascribed to them.

As I gingerly opened the folder and read the first poem, a great sigh rippled through my being. "Cancer Dancers" had held it's own over time! It is still the articulate and consummate poem I once knew.

Many of the subsequent poems in that file also held to the standard that I cling to, though some will need a bit of reworking. I do so love editing my work, but my fear of finding crude, lazy work was abated.

Memories are prone to being greatly gilded beyond their original form, and the notions my mind had retained of past poems were mere scraps of occasional lines and initial intent. I'd had doubts.

As it turns out, losing those poems, for a time, has proved them. Had I actually rifled through each and every box and found them early, I might already have attempted to needlessly amend them.

This keenly reinforces my earlier post about keeping the originals. Sometimes, a piece as it was meant to be, but how can one really gauge this when the originals have been, sadly, thrown away.

Due to my recent writers drought, I had assumed that I lacked sufficient material to produce a third book in my Echoes series, but no! As I read through these rediscovered poems, I now have a stronger impetus to that end, and I am enormously encouraged.

"Welcome back, old friends!

Cancer Dancers

Where smokestack fumes
Melt into rain cloud skies,
Where life between the
Toxic layer dies,
Where man’s cacophony
Goes unabated,
To hound the ear
With hummed vibrations dated,
Where minds lie steeped
In phosphorescent tubes,
Where plastic proteins
Pose as staple foods,
Where spirits break
Beneath an axe of taxes,
Where rules of conduct
Vie for vulgar maxims,
Where people as an
Acrid cancer spread
All virtues of this Earth
Are rendered dead.

Image: notjustclutter.com

0 Comments

Tightening the work = work.

10/12/2014

2 Comments

Sloppy writing is distracting! There, I said it. It is painfully obvious when writers suffer their readers to smash against the boulders of an unkempt field of words, ideas, and intention ... and it is rude.

Mark Twain, always good for a clever quip, once said, "It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." You may laugh, but this quote brings up a curious point:

Why do some writers allow lesser work to stand in for what could be so much more? Why aren't their wrenches, rulers, and hammers ... the instruments of the writer's toolbox ... painstakingly applied?

There is a great deal of trust between authors and their readers that can be easily destroyed by careless writing. Most readers will not endure this sort of abuse for very long. They don't have to.

There are libraries and bookshops replete with excellent writing that never settled for, "Its good enough," composed by writers who strove ardently, warranting the readership they aspired to, and achieved.

I cringe when I notice my own laziness, and especially so when someone else points it out to me. It offends my stance on diligence, and my ego, and rightly so. I have cheated my reader and myself.

Had I deliberated over the perfect word, the most poignant phrase, with which to elucidate the vagaries my thoughts, rather than allow the work to slide by, that poem would have come into its own.

Is this why some books languish, unread, for years in bookshops, in libraries, and on the ever expansive internet? Does unpolished writing lead automatically to obscurity? I'm of a mind that it does.

In the literary atmosphere of today, everyone is a poet: prose and free verse have deemed it so. Where lackluster novels abound, anyone can be an author. The scepter is now available to all comers.

However ...

A brilliantly faceted diamond will always catch the eye when it sits in a field of haphazardly strewn, unrefined coal. Is it the gleam of the gem that causes notice, or its dull surroundings? Perhaps it's both.

2 Comments

Goodreads giveaway...

10/3/2014

0 Comments

I am very pleased to announce that I have initiated a book giveaway on Goodreads! I will be giving away three copies of Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry. This offer is good through October 31, 2014!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry

by JaniceT

Giveaway ends October 31, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

If you haven't yet visited Goodreads, this is your opportunity to peruse a vast cornucopia of authors. Goodreads is a readers delight, so come on in and have a look, and enter my Echoes giveaway.

0 Comments

Research, then and now ...

10/2/2014

0 Comments

Jules Verne was an extensive researcher, and he spent a great deal of time in the tomes of the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library).
No mere armchair adventurer, he did quite a lot of traveling, too.

Having home-schooled our daughter in the 80's, I can tell you that my available resources ran very thin back then, compared with what is available now. One does what one can with what one has.

Many of my poems require me to explore such things as airships,
medieval pirates, and the like. For my "Airship" poem, I watched Eye of the Storm, (http://vimeo.com/19659763), over and over.

I watched the videos of various multi-player crews playing Guns of Icarus, my favorite being: http://youtu.be/Og9XUbrpHY4. And I happily got to read Clockwork Twist, Waking, by Emily Thompson.

For this poem I also had fortunate access to the movie, The Three Musketeers (2011), which features a rather vivid airship. It was a delight, while watching this film to declare, "I'm doing research!"

The point of all of this was to get a personal perspective of what a real airship might feel like and look like. A writer generally knows something about a subject, and these were as close as I could get.

Without the internet, or film, my imagination would have carried the full load, which is usually quite fine, but the details I needed were a mystery to me, since I knew next to nothing about any sort of ship.

And, while I'm at it, I must admit that I really, really wanted to be on an airship. Thus this poem became an excuse to delve deeper into my research, and to find some way to, more than less, "be there."

I imagine that Mr Verne might have found himself a bit obsessed with the wish to be on Nemo's Nautilus. When one writes as thoroughly and visually as he did, I think that one could sense that.

So, whether it was through to his personal travels or his trips to the library, Jules Verne gleaned a wealth of information about his world. Just imagine if he had had access to today's internet, back then.

Image: buyessay.org

0 Comments

On the disposition of book readers ...

Searching for old friends in the attic.

Tightening the work = work.

Goodreads giveaway...

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry

by JaniceT

Research, then and now ...

About the author:

Archives

Categories