Kee-kee, Mark Doty

So I was looking around for a definition of "kee-kee," famously used in Paris is Burning, and it seems like the generally accepted meaning is something like "kibitzing." Among a spreading group of my friends, though, we've been using it to mean something more along the lines of bonding, or feeling an affinity, with someone. For example: remember that scene in Sense and Sensibility when Marianne says her favorite Shakespearean sonnet is 116, and Willoughby begins to recite it? And then Marianne joins in? They totally just kee-kee-ed.

Anyway, that long explanation is to set up what happened the other day. It was lunchtime at the library, and I found myself with nothing to read while I sat outside and ate. So I went upstairs to browse the late PS call number range, looking for some poetry I hadn't read. I finally settled on School of the Arts by Mark Doty, a volume I'm pretty sure I ordered for the library based on reviews of it. I read two poems in a row, and had a kee-kee moment.

The first, "Oncoming Train," is about the irrational, visceral urge to step in front of a moving subway train:

Not that I want to be dead, exactly, and certainly not
that I want to suffer, I have a great deal to live for--

But the idea of simply stepping out of forwardness
--that moment is the clearest invitation and opportunity

to strike against time, to refuse to accede, to win some power
over what no one controls....
(30)


The only thing that seems real and guaranteed, at times, is the forward motion of time - which, as Doty points out, has total control over all of us.

The next poem, "Heaven for Paul," can be found in its entirety at another blog, Bud Bloom Poetry. It describes something I'm mortally afraid of - a plane crash. Well, it actually describes being on a plane that probably will crash (but of course, doesn't, because Doty lived to write the poem). I have to admit, the first time I read the poem through I sort of missed its point, because I was imagining being in that position, and freaking out. What would it feel like to know you were about to die? In the poem, he finds himself somewhat at a loss (I think):

...I had no internal composure,

and any ideas I'd ever entertained about dying
seemed merely that, speculations flown now
while my mind spiraled in a hopeless sorrowful motion....
(33)

Anyway. I had heard the name Mark Doty a lot, but never actually read any of his poems, and I'm glad I've started, because not only are they good poems, but they speak many of my own thoughts and neuroses about time and death back to me. The Poetry Foundation has a nice profile of him, if you're interested.

All quotations from Doty, Mark. School of the Arts. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Pray get the stuff

Well, I've been rather silent here lately. The good thing, though, is that I've been reading a lot (and watching shows and films) since the semester ended.

The 2007 summer reading adventure (now I sound like a public library campaign - not that there's anything wrong with that) started with a whimper rather than a bang, with Jane Hamilton's latest novel When Madeline Was Young. I've read her other four books, and thought they had varying degrees of quality - the best being The Short History of a Prince, which is really one of my favorite books. This one, however, felt as if it was written while she was on the phone with someone else. It jumped around in time in a way that wasn't effective, and I didn't really understand what she was trying to say at the end. I did finish it, but I wouldn't recommend starting it.

But then came Ken Jennings' Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs. Admittedly, I am in the target audience for this book. I love trivia, and yes, I'd like to be on Jeopardy! some day. (So I appreciated the tips that were scattered throughout.) Jennings is really a very funny writer, and he talks about the good points of trivia, like the camaraderie of a team (about which I still wax nostalgic from high school), and the connections one makes in other parts of life.

There's another thing I've thoroughly enjoyed the past few days. I got Sense & Sensibility (the film) out of the library because my taped-off-of-HBO VHS copy is at my mother's house. I was poking around the special features because it's one of my favorite movies (if not my very favorite), and decided to put on the commentary of Emma Thompson (star and screenwriter) and Lindsey Doran (producer), and I'm so glad I did. Of course Ang Lee looked at Vermeers before directing; almost every close-up shot of Kate Winslet is like that. (At those shots, Emma Thompson often said, "Kate's so gorgeous," with which I concur.) Emma Thompson also has this wonderful dry and somewhat morbid humor, especially about herself - and even though she sometimes debunks the emotion of a scene (for instance, when a horse kept farting while Colonel Brandon tried to speak about Eliza), she and Lindsey Doran are really enamored of this story and talk about the characters with real passion. They also talk about roles of women (then, and now in film), and the difficulties of getting people to improvise in 19th-century dialogue. My favorite is when Greg Wise (Willoughby) apparently tried to toss off the line, "Pray get the stuff." Anyway, connections were made for me, and basically, some of the reasons I love this film, and reasons for plot and motivations in it, were articulated for me. I think I knew these things on some level - at least, hopefully - but it was good to have them say it for me.