Anne Frank's 90th birthday

This afternoon while I was reading parts of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, I surprised myself that I started to cry in the middle of her July 15, 1944, entry. The first tears came from the sadness of what was done to her, especially because the secret annex was discovered the following month, but a lot also came from the pain I felt on how she was writing about her inner self and opening up to others. For me, it's a lot from wishing someone in particular would be willing to open up to me. 

On a more positive note, I liked being reminded that she kept a Book of Beautiful Sentences, which was made up of passages she liked from what she was reading. I sometimes do that but want to be more organized and regular about it. 

One of the people I follow on Facebook,  Rebecca Solnit, posted today about research indicating that using paper maps can be better for our minds. She quoted T.S. Eliot:

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time." 

From "Little Gidding," last of the Four Quartets (short interpretation of those poems: "Four Quartets: TS Eliot’s struggle to make the real world right in a spiritual realm" by  Roz Kaveney in The Guardian, May 19, 2014) These lines remind me of my post about labyrinths in Baltimore.

According to the Poetry Foundation biography of T.S.Eliot, "He himself thought Four Quartets his greatest achievement and Little Gidding his best poem."

It goes on: "Whereas his early poems had been centered on the isolated individual, Four Quartets is centered on the isolated moment, the fragment of time that takes its meaning from and gives its meaning to a pattern, a pattern at once in time, continuously changing until the supreme moment of death completes it, and also out of time. Since the individual lives and exists only in fragments, he can never quite know the whole pattern; but in certain moments, he can experience the pattern in miniature."

Starting last night, I was re-reading Anne Frank because today, June 12, would have been her 90th birthday.

Some interesting links to explore:

1. Anne Frank House in Amsterdam: 

https://www.annefrank.org/en/

A. "The complete works of Anne Frank" (about them--not the full actual texts)

This page has a lot of interesting information, such as on her "Book of Beautiful Sentences" (passages she liked from what she was reading) and her starting to write "The Secret Annex" (a book that drew from her diary and she intended for people to read after the war)

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/complete-works-anne-frank/

B. Visual tour of the secret annex

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/secret-annex/

2. US Holocaust Memorial Museum

A. Anne Frank biography in the Holocaust Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anne-frank-biography

B. "Anne Frank: The Writer"

(exhibit hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/anne-frank/htmlsite/index.html

Hillside in Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence Ferlinghetti--born March 24, 1919--still alive
From ending of "The Astonished Heart":

"There is a great crowded bluff
 in Lawrence Kansas
 that looks a long way
 into the astonished heart
of America."

Published in "Open Eye, Open Heart" (1973) and "These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems 1955-1993" (1993)

The picture is during a graduation ceremony at the University of Kansas looking south from the football stadium to the side of Mount Oread. When I lived in the J. R. Pearson dorm, I often liked to walk across this area from the Union and nearby classroom buildings. Later on, I sometimes would buy a submarine sandwich from the Yellow Sub and sit on this hillside to look north at the valley where the Kansas River runs. This was especially great when someone was playing the carillon in the campanile. But I don't think I ever took a picture of that view. Most of the time I rarely I saw anyone else there.

There aren't many places in Lawrence that could be called a bluff. I think he meant somewhere on this large hill on which the heart of the campus sits or by the riverbanks. But I don't think the latter are high enough to be bluffs. I now wish I'd contacted him when he was younger to see if a specific site influenced him, maybe to place a small monument to poetry with this line or the entire poem inscribed on it.

"Grasshoppers" at this year's Wisconsin Book Festival, Sept. 29-Oct. 3
My favorite part of the Wisconsin Book Festival this year was when I saw two women on each side of a little girl, maybe just under kindergarten age, as they walked on the sidewalk and then the bicycle path in the Atwood neighborhood. While holding her hands, they sometimes ran and raised her about a foot or two off the ground to fly through the air a short distance. She was so happy.

I'd gone to the Barrymore Theatre for the Friday Night Festival of Fiction readings to pick up my free ticket. With about an hour to go, I was walking to nearby sites taking part in the Fall Gallery Night, which was scheduled that same evening. What was also nice about the art night was that I was able to tell one photographer how much I liked her photo of a beach with some interesting cloud formations, and she was able to tell me about the location and the way she took it.

This year's festival wasn't as interesting for me as previous years'. That evening, the reading I liked most was by Lan Samantha Chang, the director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, using a selection from a novel about a poetry class. At one point, the teacher in the story tells a student that her poem is one reason why people don't read poetry these days. Later on, I thought about this cruel statement, and maybe I'd have to agree that a lot of today's poetry in the US fails to grab me--the long, T. S. Eliot-ish poems can especially test my patience. An exception that's a very good idea are short poems by students posted in some Madison buses above seats along with the ads.

I've been thinking about authors I'd like to hear at next year's festival. Of course, a lot depends on what has just come out, but many authors at the festivals are invited because of their established work. I'd enjoy hearing Billy Collins again; he read at the Union Theater a few years ago. And I think that Mary Oliver would be interesting. Earlier this year, Anne Strainchamps on WPR quoted from one of Oliver's poems, leading me to borrow a couple of her books from the library. I was reminded of Oliver while recently listening to a zencast.org talk, so I decided to read her again. [Some of her poems are posted at this site: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm ]

"The Summer Day," probably a favorite of many, describes her meeting a grasshopper in the fields and ends with this question: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" That's why seeing those two women and the girl made an impression on me.

Recalling an Anne Waldman Reading in Lawrence, Kansas
My LiveJournal entry on Arlene Sardine, March 10, 2006, includes an Amazon criticism of the book--that it is as if someone were to write a book for children on Elmer and the embalming process. http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/ This reminds me of what the poet Anne Waldman said at a reading in Lawrence, Kansas. She had once read a comment by a male critic that women poets are really just writing about their periods. This ticked her off, but then Waldman thought about it and decided that it was actually a good idea, that she would write her own poem on having a period. She read "Crack in the World," which was hilarious.

Burroughs, Ginsburg, Codrescu, and others also gave readings that evening; I think that Waldman was second best to Burroughs. Here's a link to "Crack in the World"--it's the first four minutes of the first file. Hearing the poem live was much, much better, though:
Internet Archive--Naropa University, Waldman reading

For a couple of years, I lived just a few blocks from Burroughs. We even shopped at the same grocery store. But I never tried to talk to him because I wanted to respect his privacy. The free Internet Archive includes some readings, talks, and interviews by Burroughs.