I've just read Tolstoy, What is Art? or parts of it, found on line, probably a crumb from a seminar somewhere, with large sections X-ed out. The meat: art is a shaped sharing of the artist's feelings about something in the form of music, painting or writing. It is written with the intention of sharing the feelings. Its primary purpose is not pleasure. Sincerity is important. I suppose some of us would more or less agree with this, although I feeling it may have been written as a reaction to the art for art's sake movement of the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th centuries.

And before that I went to pick up my backpack at the Bon Marche where I left it to be repaired, having purchased it there 10 years ago. The top zipper, the one for the pocket in which I carry my computer and my library books was broken, really broken, fixed-many-times-and-broken-for good. I used a safety pin for a while, but finally I could only use it by clenching it in my fist to keep the zipper together, sort of. Well, I have to report that the baggage department at the BM was utterly charming and helpful and the bag was returned to me after three-four weeks with a brand new zipper and key holder (also broken) and free of charge. My thrifty Scottish-Canadian soul is glad.

And night is falling in Paris. The street is quiet, though muffled traffic sounds are audible in the background, and the sound of giggling children below my window. The church across the street is crumbling: they were up there on a crane yesterday, tapping, tapping. They say they will have to wrap it in nets so no one is killed by a piece of stone dropping from a corniche. Just like the hillside in La Roque Alric, which has also been covered in nets. 

Poetry Daily 14 November 2016

My Poetry Magazine review, of Reginald Gibbons' book How Poems Thing is Poetry Daily's prose piece today: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_brahic_gibbons.php

Yesterday

morning early I went to Hélène Cixous's first fall seminar at the Maison Heine at the Cité universitaire. I met a friend at the Luxembourg metro stop, and to get there I cut through the Luxembourg Garden. It had just opened. The morning was crisp and sunny and the sun was shining through the yellow leaves still on the trees and shining on the brown leaves puddled on the ground. The Medici Fountain glimmered, chairs were already set at tables outside the café on the Latin Quarter side of the Garden--not my usual side--where the style is formal and French (my usual side, the western side, is dotted with lawns in the "English," more "natural" style. There were joggers...

The seminar, with a text from a letter Kafka wrote to one of his sisters, focussed on the "Familyanimal" (Familientier) and the US election and the archaic, mythological character of the Trump persona.  "He comes from under the earth," HC said, "terrifying, but fascinating."

Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the NYReview of Books on the Chilcot Report on Blair and the Iraq War: if Gore had been declared--as he should have been--winner of the election in 2000, no Bush, no Iraq War, no Syria...

The chaos that can be brought about by incompetent--or worse--leadership is criminal.

I, Daniel Blake

Just back from seeing the last 2/3 of Ken Loach's new film, I, Daniel Blake. A really good movie, with terrific actors, though perhaps the social service workers, with the exception of one, and the Food Bank people, are too patently the villains...but I don't know, because I don't have a lot to do with social service workers. And I think I trust Loach. I'd like to see the movie again, including the first third of it. I also started to watch his Irish movie (Wind in the Barley) on Netflix the other night, but the humiliation of the small Irish folks by the British soldiers was unbearable and I turned it off.

A small movie house, only one film, near the Place de la Sorbonne. The ticket seller tried to discourage me from going in because the movie had started half an hour earlier, but I'm glad I went.

The end of the afternoon comes early these days, now that the time has changed. Yesterday I went out around four, walked through the Luxembourg Garden, partly to see if anyone had turned in my glasses to the Lost and Found. A guardian in their kiosque, behind the merry-go-round and tennis courts, pulled out a large black ledger and ran his finger down the entries...finding two pairs of glasses turned in in the last week or so, but both had been forwarded to the Police Station next to the town hall on the Place St Sulpice. Come back next week, the guardian said, sometimes the gardeners discover glasses in the leaves they sweep up.

I'll check at the police station next week, too, since I also have to arrange for a procuration for next year's presidential elections.

I had a couple errands to run, so I walked down the Rue d'Assas towards the Rue du Cherche-Midi, and the river. Night was falling, it was drizzling, but not enough to get out my umbrella, lights were coming on in apartments and shops, people were settling onto sidewalk terraces for a drink... 

Manchester Lit Festival + Bolton

A wonderful reading at the Manchester Lit Festival, on October 10th with Jeffrey Wainwright and Matthew Welton, moderated by John McAuliffe. This was my second trip to Manchester, where I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting these Northern poets and hearing them read from their new books.

The next night it was over to Bolton with Canadian poet Evan Jones, who teaches at the university there. Evan's most recent book is Paralogues. Evan is also the editor (with Todd Swift) of Modern Canadian Poets: an Anthology, also from Carcanet.

I had a day to explore Manchester, and ended up at the Art Museum, where there was a room full of drawings and paintings by British WW1 artists, commemorating the Battle of the Somme which was, of course, a hundred  years ago, in the summer of 1916. I visited the battlefields of the Somme, north of Paris, some years ago, on a school trip, and I remember very clearly the various sites, including some of the Canadian trenches. Last summer I also read some of Pat Barker's grippingly human novels about the artists commissioned to record Britain's side of both world wars. Here's an image from the Manchester Art Museum's show: http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/exhibition/goodbyetoallthat/

Away

We're off to the Vaucluse this morning--catching a train at noon, for a journey that will take a couple of hours, plus a shortish drive at the other end. Trying to get everything into one suitcase, including the books, music and my husband's biking shoes. He will wear the Irish sweater, I have moved the extra books to my backpack, whose zipper is shot and won't be helped by a heavy load (books, laptop, lipstick) in the large pocket. My daughter offered me a kilt safety pin the other day, but I forgot to take it.

No internet down there, so here are a couple photos from the 27th September reading at Shakespeare and Company, here in Paris, with the readers and the London trios' wonderful B&B host, Yann Barouch, who lives next door to Shakespeare & Company, came to the reading, took the pictures, bought books.

The Broadway Book Shop, Hackney

And for good measure, here is a photo of the window, this week, of the Broadway Book Shop, on Broadway Market. That's my book, possibly the first time it--I?--has been in a bookshop window, and you can also see Patrick's, to the right. This is a delightful, small book shop, and the first time I went in, several years ago, I was surprised and delighted to find two of my books in stock, another first for me,