AS IT'S SPOKE(N)

AS IT’S SPOKE(N)

Name a famously ‘tony’ poet who you’re sure never wrote in dialect. Nope, Alfred Lord Tennyson did once (in his “Northern Farmer” written in broad-Yorks. dialect.) But dialect can sometimes be very fashionable, cf. American regional – Yahnky (James Russell Lowell, Robert Frost) , Suthrun (Faulkner), Westurrn (Cormac McCarthy) , or city-specific – Boston (Bahs'tin) , Brooklyn (Brukl'n), Bronx (Bronucks), etc., or be very un-fashionable: e.g., Southerners Thomas & later Tom Wolfe [no relation] never use it.

Tennyson's single Yorkshire-dialect poem "Northern Farmer" is a telling example in itself. Most poets choose to write dialect/mainstream, unless to them, poetry's always/only written in dialect (cf. Aberdeen's regional poets.) Few aspiring poets seem to want 2B forever sidelined as just regional dialecticists, while some (it appears) can't help writing otherwise. It may depend on whether one feels safe/legit. in retaining one's regional dialect even as/once a formally-schooled & published writer. If so, equally perfectly valid poetry can easily be written in both speeches, but can it be widely published anywhere in deep dialect? It won't be very widely read, unless it's somewhere on the internet, fully accessible from anywhere on the planet.

I’m now realizing that my own vestigial 'greater'-Boston dialect is occasionally noticed by people here in Norcal, but what counts here (as I write this), is whether you can somehow read it when I write this, even when I’m not deliberately using it; Rule: 'greater'-Bostonians (micro-regionally, & northern New Englanders, generally) noticeably apocopate: they eliminate words or letters (infamously the letter r), w/out even knowing (it or) why (they do it.) Have I just proven it – or have I overdone it? You tell me, according to your own internal parser-meter.

[flashback:] When I was an undergraduate at Jesuit-run Boston College, (1959-63) I recall a Lyons-cafeteria conversation with Boston novelist George V.Higgins in which he denounced dialect-writing; ironically, later, after a Stanford MFA in Creative Writing, he came back East to Prov RI to become a court reporter for the PROVIDENCE Journal (at the courts in Worcester MA), while on the side, finally (after a few false starts, one of which was a novel I was in byname as a grad-student at Boston College) got around to writing THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, THE DIGGER’S GAME, COGAN’S TRADE and other Boston-dialect novels that made him famous (COYLE became a film starring Robert Mitchum, who depricated George’s behavior on the set.) West Coast academia and Hollywood apparently didn’t suit George, but East Coast (Boston) crime did, so he wrote it as it’s spoke. (He died on Nov., 6, 1999 of a heart-attack.)

I write as best (as) I can (write), but I also talk as I do (talk), & sometimes they’re (a spurious apocopation) indistinguishable. If so, (what) does it matter (to you)? If you can read it, you can read it; I’m not going to put anything over on you.

[flashback] Standing in (Dr.) Tom Hubbard (PhD)’s kitchen in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, his local-hotelier father suddenly turned to me & said “D’ye ken the braid Scots?” I instantly answered, “I ought to, after all, my dad was a Glaswegian!” He never bothered not to speak braid-(broad) Scots when I was in the room thereafter. Later, Tom showed me a letter from a woman in Aberdeen written in the curious (even to Scots!) Aberdonian-dialect, insisting “This is not an act. She really writes & speaks like this” to which I replied: “I believe you.” (He’d already edited an anthology of northeastern-Scottish poetry published by Aberdeen University, where he’d gotten his doctorate.)

Have I made my [obvious] point (yet)? Applying some mental-grease can lubricate most fractured-looking demi-dialects. Or would you like to read obviously fabricated sentences (like the preceding) endlessly? a'Courst not! (as we say in MA Bay-coastal Lynn MA, where I grew up.)

Way Booked-uP

I was one of the staff of the last small B&Ns (in Boston's western suburbs: Wellesley Square MA), closed in '86 so that the B&N superstore (in Framingham MA, 2 towns west) could be the micro-regional magnet while competing with a Borders directly across the street from it in a much bigger mall in a battle of booky riches. I wonder which of them has survived? .

People in Wellesley MA (a famous college-town) really loved what we did with that small B&N in Wellesley Sq, but to no corporate avail.

My next B&N store was an even smaller one in dead-center Copley Sq. Boston, also closed down in favor of the surviving downtown superstore just a few long city-blocks away, just beyond Boston Common.

My next store was a B. Dalton (Borders subsidiary, since renamed Borders Express) in Needham Heights MA, as beloved by their almost upscale suburban community as we were in posh nearby Wellesley Square MA;

It so-happened that I then moved cross-country to Santa Clara CA, & found myself working in a Borders in San Jose's ultra-posh Santana Row mall that absorbed the staff of the B. Dalton in the nearby Valley Fair Westfield Mall when it closed. (I live only a short bike-ride away.)

Same fatal phenom (on either coast): favor super as a strategy to survive, but (eventually) have to close anyway. Why? Amazon.com; if even I buy some obscure 2ndary-supplier books from them w/out guilt, why shouldn't you buy best-sellers? Besides, who can stop you?

If Amazon's hollowing-out the retail-staffed bookstore biz., imagine what e-books sold on the web can/will do! Nontheless, general used-book stores will still out-survive best-seller superstores: 'homey'-feeling stores have a unique appeal, esp.if they have a resident-cat & well-tended plant. cf. San Jose's Recycle Books west suburban branch in downtown Campbell CA, that I recently gave a large, healthy jade-plant to after shopping there for the (3) current South Beach Diet books (because my interventional-cardiologist says I should try it; I am.) Recycle Books got my very-specific diet-book biz., but they also may even buy some of your own used books to re-stock specific topical shelves, an habitual parsimony well-suited to a Recession.

Currently, I try to make the 2nd-Fri. 9am-9pm half-price sale at the large Salvation Army store in nearby West San Jose on S. Winchester Blvd. almost opp. EL TITANIC carneceria y groceria (I live on N. Winchester in bordering Santa Clara); because on that day only, $4 hardbound books sell for $2; I've gotten amazing (unusual, rare) cookbooks for myself & my friend Dr. Ginny, & I also U.S.P.S.-mail them to ex-speciality cake-baker Anne Buchanan up in Cole Valley S.F. I'm now way-cookbooked-up, so feel free to go look & buy at the Salvation Army in West San Jose. You won't often run into me there in the book-section on Half-price 2nd Fri.: I have too many books now, thanks to The Salvation Army...all my life.

HOSPIT@LS

in grief

Valley-med Hospital.
What could sound simpler?
Perfect Valley? Pure Valley?
Deep? Hope? Hospitals of
Deepest Hope, Inc. “Have
Hope, Ye who enter Here. “
But we had to abandon it.

(20 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Anya gets a Wolf

Recently, Anne Buchanan [ex-Idaho], the ex-caterer-baker who made lemon bundt cakes sold in 1970 as "Aunt Rachel's* Lemon Poundcake" by Lucien Simon's Deli on California Street, S.F.CA (next to where Eliza's chinese rest. is now) finally replaced her big home-kitchen 6-burner Tappan gas range with a nifty little 4-burner Wolf. She got the hot little Wolf off Craig's List for USD$350, delivery incl.

My son Alex, (visiting S.F. from upper Manhattan) & I were there to watch it being corkscrewed up 3-floors from the garage via an internal stairwell by her son Dave & her ex-, Stan, & connected to the gas-line (it's a 1914 house) by Stan, a master-plumber at nearby Cole Hardware, just down the hill into Cole Valley.

*Anne recollects: Lucien Simon didn't believe "Anne of Carmel" (St., Cole Valley) was quite Jewish enough for his clientele, so he chose: "Aunt Rachel*", even after I'd suggested "Raquel", which didn't work for Lucien - who ran a very old-school deli.

POP. n~

POP. {n~}

It really comes down to this:
How large a world population
will particular politics support?
Will all politics feed? Or will
some politics slyly eliminate some
under false pretenses, by famine,
tribal, or regional wars? Admit it:
this is the most pressing problem
on this fast-degrading 3rd-planet.
This degradation is yours, ours.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v3

FREEDUMB

FREEDUMB

One, after another,
they’re following each other,
into a duplicitous future of No

government or common solutions
for what ails us. Call them fools,
& they'll rise up against you.
Call them anarchists & they'll

call you a communist, a fascist,
an obaman, a muslim, a killer
of The American Dream. Freedom

for them is not having to say: Sorry,
but some things're better done together,
convinced they can all B done alone

privately, personally, w/out any help,
thinking they're no public solutions,
denying they’re re-members of society.

Everything just written means nothing
to them, statistics're only lying numbers.
They’ve been convinced they’re Free

& willn’t give up !llusions of Freedumb,
spelt howlefer they wil: T /Tea, Pardy.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Dime-Store Memories

Dime-store memories:

Can corporate names last after dime-store mergers?

Ginny & I reminisce about J.J. Newbury's dime-store chain
that her uncle bought-out, merging it with their family's
H(arold) L(eavenworth) Green competitor. Before he died,
he couldn't interest Junior Leavenworth in running it because
Yalie Junior was academically-inclined, rather becoming
instead a small-college president, then CEO of Sylvania.

Praising J.J. Newbury's. I tell her how on Friday evenings,
walking home from the West Lynn MA River Works GE plant
where he was a naval-parts QC-inspector, my father got me
a tiny toy to stimulate my mind when I held it in my hands.

In Santa Clara's Mariposa Gardens mall, a Dollar Store,
its marquee price $1.39 & UP, recently closed, soon after
the Vietnamese manager/owner replaced my watch battery
with a cheaper Swiss one; I'd warmly commended him,
but now he's gone. Santa Clara's surviving competitor is
99c BAY; its price-points from 99c to $1.99 & UP....

(17 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v7

Bill Costley
Valley Village Bldg.4 apt.4-D
390 N. Winchester Blvd. Santa Clara CA
95050-6541
(408) 247-1943
http://www.costleybill7.blogspot.com/