Larry was getting ready last night to get up at 5:30 am and head out for his weekend softball tournament. Now that he’s turned 70, he’s moved up from the over-65 to the over-70 tournament team, and as one of the youngest players, he’s in demand. He mentioned that he had to lay out all his gear, and I quoted “gear and tackle and trim,” referencing Hopkins’ Pied Beauty. It turns out Larry doesn’t care for Hopkins, and though I brought up The Northon Anthology of English Literature, Volume II, and did my best, he was unmoved. Nonetheless, the echoes of memorized lines enrich my encounter with the world in a delicious way.
And in the process, I realized how rare it is now to take down a doorstop of a volume, look through an index, and find a poem. Mostly, it’s just Google. But having the anthology open on the kitchen table led to my reading a snippet from Beckett’s Molloy: Continue reading “Musing on Hopkins, Beckett and Louis C. K.”