I’ll still catching up on posts. I had to concentrate on writing something for a James Joyce Conference that made me separate myself from many other things sir quite a few days and nights. This entry moved me so deeply. Beautiful words, memories that clearly affected you. No wonder you stumbled - that was touching in itself. The explanation you gave about the fevers that plagued AIDS sufferers at the time may have taught some of the younger ones something they didn’t know. Maybe. And the image you conveyed of Robert feverish was so gentle and so real.
Patti, your words are each one a poem, or a painting, . The Coral Sea is mesmerizing— thank you for reading it to us. Your voice is a cello and your words ride on the chords — soothing and sweet. As I remember what you spoke, I find myself lingering and returning to the pieces of M that you reveal to us. A beautiful soul, beloved by the poet.
Thank you so much for this and all your postings Patti. I started subscribing to your Substack account a few years ago, and I am so very glad that I did. I don't do any social media other than this, it is my belief that most of the other ones seem to promote ideals that I do not wish to support. Your musings, thoughts, and readings always make my day better. And you have introduced me to many authors that I would not have read otherwise!
I have the 2012 edition of "The Coral Sea" published by Norton that has that photo booth picture of Robert on the cover. I have read it a few times before, but I follow it along with your narration and it seems so much more meaningful to me....
I love the steak story, so sweet. Reminds me of similar treats growing up, which can break my heart now knowing what my mom had to sacrifice for our treats.
Thank you, Patti, for another wonderful moving reading. The comments on taxes are spot on. Love the jacket, you wear it well whether inside or out, whether freezing within or thawing without, a soothing color threaded with resilience.
Dear Patti, your gentle smile brings contentedness!
It’s true, there are times when feeling content may seem strange or even out of context, but I always try to remind myself that when it happens, I simply have to live it.
The final image of “A young girl’s mantle composed of ribbon of black crepe that disintegrated in a reign (or rain) of tears” is so powerful. And your suspicion regarding her identity so touching. Instinctively, we would like to warm her in a hug. However, we have to respect her grief, and I guess that’s why the poet doesn’t add anything else. I’m always fascinated by the way you feel what you are reading, even when you say that you don’t remember. Thank you.
It’s very warm here in Italy too, it looks like mid-June. By the way, your shirt looks lovely! 💚
Patti, with each section your writing is transformed into moving visuals - the movie playing in my head.
With this one, the movie plays, but along with the images, the emotional jolt for me comes from
his approaching denouement, and the impact of memory.
Memories surface and surrender is postponed - he grasps the pearl. Memories of a loved curiosity - loved "more than the spirit that had given it life", which leads him to wish for a chance, once more to
"engulf himself in the rapture of it's play". Is it regret, or is he just thinking in his waning moments about all he didn't do when he had the chance to? Chances come, are gone again, and life slips by.
As we get closer to the finale, I see that I don't want the end to come.
80+ degrees in the holler today under a Carolina blue sky. Redbud trees and white dogwoods splash color amidst the spring green woods - so many shades of green. Wishing you, and all here, a beautiful
Dear Patti, Thank you. Feeling very content right now as I listen to you reading monkeyshines and look out my window to see a beautiful cardinal at my bird feeder. "The diary of his thoughts spun as fine as veins of carnival glass". Wow. just beautiful!
Your silk jacket is such a beautiful color, and wears so well. Hopefully the next few days will move along easily for you. The stories about your mother are always lovely to listen to. I remember this piece from The Coral Sea that you read to us today. At the time I read it, I wasn't feeling well, taking cough medicine, and remembered again how your words paint such powerful images in your characters. Thank you, Patti.
Thank you for this beautiful reading of Monkeyshines, really thrilling piece. I’ve been up with it all night, am exhausted, and have to try to sleep, but couldn’t turn away without saying how powerful it is. I have just yesterday lost a friend who was too young to go so reading this cut even closer to the bone than usual.
One is immediately drawn in to the canto, riveted by the encounter of M’s “being at odds with his being.” His quest for “the thing that would make him whole,” the perpetual reversing itself process wherein he is “freezing within and thawing without” is brilliant. The state you depict reminds me of Dickinson:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
#372
What is striking is that you don’t end in that state - it’s a starting point. With M intermittently febrile in a close to the end state the narrative voice takes him away — into reverie, memories, imaginings. There is, as we’ve seen throughout “The Coral Sea,” a kind of swooning into other states of being, as when (in “An Auctioned Heart”) he feels ill and then “fell into a series of stills . . . “ Here, the pearl occasions the slide into nostalgia, “dipping into the very pool he sought to escape.”The piece is charged with an inner - often opposing - energy that enables these time traveling dips and shape shifts.
The engine of mental, imaginative movement, one thought opening into another like walls loosening into doors is stunning, as in: “He saw in her movements the movements of another” (I was glad when you said that the girl with the eyelet lace was you, because I have imagined it to be) and that leading into the memory of “the exotic little fellow his uncle smuggled from India.”
It is shocking that when the monkey dies M reacts with “curiosity and boils the head clean in an earthenware pot.” It seems such a cold thing to do, underscored by your use of a word as detached as “curiosity.” But then there is another turn because he comes to “cherish the small skull.” The allusion to Hamlet, the youthful soliloquies to a skull is wonderful.
His remorse over loving the skull more than “the spirit that had given it life” seems to me to be about M being above all an artist, driven to be a maker and therein to be faithful, so compelled that he allows himself to believe that collecting the specimen and tacking it to his person using the dotted pins will enable him to escape his mortal fate.
To me this book is in many ways about being an artist, and thinking of it that way seems fitting because later, in “Just Kids” you tell the story of becoming and being artists straight. The Coral Sea is your inscape wherein you shift realities to keep pace with the disintegration in a reign of tears of ribbons of black crepe.
Thank you for sending this piece out yesterday, Patti. It was manna in a wilderness of sadness.
Having been a little under the weather this weekend I finally got around to reading Woolgathering and am near the end of The Coral Sea. This page, and these readings put a whole new perspective on Coral Sea and I was able to drift into its contents with a greater understanding. And yes, I was horrified initially when I read about the monkey in 'Mapplethorpe' but you put it in perspective.
In my youth I used to give the birds in our aviary rather odd, to say the least, burials. I would take pictures of them and then wrap them in aluminum foil and place in coffee jars (all done to avoid bugs getting to them) and bury them in our garden. There were a considerable amount of jars by the time we left that house. I wonder what the new owners thought when they encountered my burial jars?
And that little tale beautifully illustrates the point of 'Who am I to judge".
I’ll still catching up on posts. I had to concentrate on writing something for a James Joyce Conference that made me separate myself from many other things sir quite a few days and nights. This entry moved me so deeply. Beautiful words, memories that clearly affected you. No wonder you stumbled - that was touching in itself. The explanation you gave about the fevers that plagued AIDS sufferers at the time may have taught some of the younger ones something they didn’t know. Maybe. And the image you conveyed of Robert feverish was so gentle and so real.
Much love. 💜
Patti - I hate to say it - but your starting to sound like a Republican.
🦋✨
Patti, your words are each one a poem, or a painting, . The Coral Sea is mesmerizing— thank you for reading it to us. Your voice is a cello and your words ride on the chords — soothing and sweet. As I remember what you spoke, I find myself lingering and returning to the pieces of M that you reveal to us. A beautiful soul, beloved by the poet.
Thank you so much for this and all your postings Patti. I started subscribing to your Substack account a few years ago, and I am so very glad that I did. I don't do any social media other than this, it is my belief that most of the other ones seem to promote ideals that I do not wish to support. Your musings, thoughts, and readings always make my day better. And you have introduced me to many authors that I would not have read otherwise!
I have the 2012 edition of "The Coral Sea" published by Norton that has that photo booth picture of Robert on the cover. I have read it a few times before, but I follow it along with your narration and it seems so much more meaningful to me....
Thanks again Patti, and peace to all.
Chris
Thank you, Patti for the 13 minutes of contentment . It means so much to so many.
I love the steak story, so sweet. Reminds me of similar treats growing up, which can break my heart now knowing what my mom had to sacrifice for our treats.
I am content planting a fig tree in my garden...with my love....
Your words draw a scene that is quiet, serious, and brimmed with emotion- i saw and felt the angular moves of the girl.
Thank you, Patti, for another wonderful moving reading. The comments on taxes are spot on. Love the jacket, you wear it well whether inside or out, whether freezing within or thawing without, a soothing color threaded with resilience.
Dear Patti, your gentle smile brings contentedness!
It’s true, there are times when feeling content may seem strange or even out of context, but I always try to remind myself that when it happens, I simply have to live it.
The final image of “A young girl’s mantle composed of ribbon of black crepe that disintegrated in a reign (or rain) of tears” is so powerful. And your suspicion regarding her identity so touching. Instinctively, we would like to warm her in a hug. However, we have to respect her grief, and I guess that’s why the poet doesn’t add anything else. I’m always fascinated by the way you feel what you are reading, even when you say that you don’t remember. Thank you.
It’s very warm here in Italy too, it looks like mid-June. By the way, your shirt looks lovely! 💚
Have a good afternoon, dear Patti.
Patti, with each section your writing is transformed into moving visuals - the movie playing in my head.
With this one, the movie plays, but along with the images, the emotional jolt for me comes from
his approaching denouement, and the impact of memory.
Memories surface and surrender is postponed - he grasps the pearl. Memories of a loved curiosity - loved "more than the spirit that had given it life", which leads him to wish for a chance, once more to
"engulf himself in the rapture of it's play". Is it regret, or is he just thinking in his waning moments about all he didn't do when he had the chance to? Chances come, are gone again, and life slips by.
As we get closer to the finale, I see that I don't want the end to come.
80+ degrees in the holler today under a Carolina blue sky. Redbud trees and white dogwoods splash color amidst the spring green woods - so many shades of green. Wishing you, and all here, a beautiful
Monday.
Dear Patti, Thank you. Feeling very content right now as I listen to you reading monkeyshines and look out my window to see a beautiful cardinal at my bird feeder. "The diary of his thoughts spun as fine as veins of carnival glass". Wow. just beautiful!
Love the silk jacket. The color is so pretty.
Enjoy the sun today! XO.
Your silk jacket is such a beautiful color, and wears so well. Hopefully the next few days will move along easily for you. The stories about your mother are always lovely to listen to. I remember this piece from The Coral Sea that you read to us today. At the time I read it, I wasn't feeling well, taking cough medicine, and remembered again how your words paint such powerful images in your characters. Thank you, Patti.
Thank you for this beautiful reading of Monkeyshines, really thrilling piece. I’ve been up with it all night, am exhausted, and have to try to sleep, but couldn’t turn away without saying how powerful it is. I have just yesterday lost a friend who was too young to go so reading this cut even closer to the bone than usual.
One is immediately drawn in to the canto, riveted by the encounter of M’s “being at odds with his being.” His quest for “the thing that would make him whole,” the perpetual reversing itself process wherein he is “freezing within and thawing without” is brilliant. The state you depict reminds me of Dickinson:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
#372
What is striking is that you don’t end in that state - it’s a starting point. With M intermittently febrile in a close to the end state the narrative voice takes him away — into reverie, memories, imaginings. There is, as we’ve seen throughout “The Coral Sea,” a kind of swooning into other states of being, as when (in “An Auctioned Heart”) he feels ill and then “fell into a series of stills . . . “ Here, the pearl occasions the slide into nostalgia, “dipping into the very pool he sought to escape.”The piece is charged with an inner - often opposing - energy that enables these time traveling dips and shape shifts.
The engine of mental, imaginative movement, one thought opening into another like walls loosening into doors is stunning, as in: “He saw in her movements the movements of another” (I was glad when you said that the girl with the eyelet lace was you, because I have imagined it to be) and that leading into the memory of “the exotic little fellow his uncle smuggled from India.”
It is shocking that when the monkey dies M reacts with “curiosity and boils the head clean in an earthenware pot.” It seems such a cold thing to do, underscored by your use of a word as detached as “curiosity.” But then there is another turn because he comes to “cherish the small skull.” The allusion to Hamlet, the youthful soliloquies to a skull is wonderful.
His remorse over loving the skull more than “the spirit that had given it life” seems to me to be about M being above all an artist, driven to be a maker and therein to be faithful, so compelled that he allows himself to believe that collecting the specimen and tacking it to his person using the dotted pins will enable him to escape his mortal fate.
To me this book is in many ways about being an artist, and thinking of it that way seems fitting because later, in “Just Kids” you tell the story of becoming and being artists straight. The Coral Sea is your inscape wherein you shift realities to keep pace with the disintegration in a reign of tears of ribbons of black crepe.
Thank you for sending this piece out yesterday, Patti. It was manna in a wilderness of sadness.
With warmth and gratitude to all,
Robin
Having been a little under the weather this weekend I finally got around to reading Woolgathering and am near the end of The Coral Sea. This page, and these readings put a whole new perspective on Coral Sea and I was able to drift into its contents with a greater understanding. And yes, I was horrified initially when I read about the monkey in 'Mapplethorpe' but you put it in perspective.
In my youth I used to give the birds in our aviary rather odd, to say the least, burials. I would take pictures of them and then wrap them in aluminum foil and place in coffee jars (all done to avoid bugs getting to them) and bury them in our garden. There were a considerable amount of jars by the time we left that house. I wonder what the new owners thought when they encountered my burial jars?
And that little tale beautifully illustrates the point of 'Who am I to judge".
Thanks again Patti for being here:)