Sunday June 9

It’s been a busy couple of weeks: the European elections, the Brexit mess, keeping up with the kids, the Fete de la Poesie, Place St Sulpice, with its hundreds of booths and poetry books and crowds easing through the lanes between the close-packed stands. There is a venue for readings on the south side of the Place; other readings take place in nearby cafes, like the Cafe de la Mairie, where I was one of a group of readers (the Netherlands, UK, Italy and myself, the unofficial Canadian representative. The Festival ends today.

Meanwhile, in part I imagine because of the Notre Dame fire, there has been an unusual amount of activity around St Sulpice Church—or does it just seem so because windows are open now to the warmer weather (which comes and goes, this morning the sky is shades of grey, rain threatens)? Still, there must have been all kinds of events (in addition to church services) scheduled for both Notre Dame and St Sulpice, and the former have had to be relocated.

We were on a bus coming back from an errand to the Bastille neighbourhood a few days ago and coming along the quai on the Left Bank, it was clear that the bridge across to the cathedral was still closed to pedestrians. The roof has been covered with tarps, and apparently police are still sifting through the debris.

Yesterday was Helene Cixous’s last seminar for the season, and it was celebrated with a small colloquium at the Cite Universitaire, celebrating the Seminars themselves and the ongoing work of publishing them, ending with a drole film by Laurent Dubreuil (Cornell) and Laurent Ferre about ‘My First Seminars,’ in lieu of the more traditional lecture. Lots of notable Cixous-eans and Derrideans in attendance in addition to the faithful, long friends of the Seminar. Flashbacks to May 68 and its attempts to change the university system with the establishment of some more experimental campuses, such as Paris 8 at Vincennes.

And now the first church service of the day is beginning: organ music. And I’m going to dress and get to ‘work.’

European Election Day

We caught a train back to Paris from the Vaucluse yesterday afternoon, arrived in a downpour. Caught a bus home, sunny again. Unpacked, grocery-shopped, tried to adjust to city from country. I miss the country, the repetitive few things you do each day. In the city I already feel guilty about all the things on offer that I don’t do, as I observe my few routines: the view out the bedroom window to the church roof (bells ringing noon right now), the view out the kitchen window over the tiny mop-and-bucket balcony, a few plants, to a jigsaw puzzle of roofs.

The European elections are today in France, and I gather the results for all of Europe will be published tomorrow. It seemed funny that different countries voted on different days, but it was a relief to discover that the results for the early-voting-countries would not be made public until everyone had voted, as one country’s results might easily affect the vote elsewhere. It is an important election, given the rise of the far right across Europe and the unresolved problems of social media interference in the process.

Meanwhile it is a summeryish day. I am putting my books away (Marilyn Hacker, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Bernard O’Donoghue), and will go and vote, and then think about getting some exericse, outdoors.

Hot and Cold

The weather of course. We had a few days of summer heat, calling for a change in wardrobe: skirts and sandals, instead of scarves and coats and umbrellas, but now we are back to cold and blue sky with big rolling clouds and sudden downpours. Right now it is pale sun, making—oops no, back to clouds over the sun and no shadows.

They were repairing the dome of the church across the street, but the workers have all gone, perhaps over to Notre Dame for the emergency work there. Crossing a bridge upstream from Notre Dame on a bus this week, it seemed to me that they had covered some of the walls (and presumably the holes in the roof) with sheets of plastic, against the rain, which duly fell. A week ago it was almost impossible to get onto the Ile de la Cite, but now they seem to be allowing people, if not in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, at least closer. After all there is a major hospital across the street, courts of law, and shopkeepers losing business.

Yesterday afternoon I walked over to the Orangerie, one of the museums in the Tuileries, to see the Marc and Macke exhibit, which is, as several friends had said, extremely interesting. But perhaps what moved me most of all was a square of garden behind the Orangerie, which has been turned into a patch of forest undergrowth, with a life (if that’s the word)-size bronze sculpture of a fallen tree trunk, roots in the air, long trunk, branches broken over, under several ‘real’ trees and undergrowth of ferns, heliobore, and ground cover. The sun shone through the leaves, it was very peaceful, and somehow very un-French: most of the other garden-rooms are lawn with masses of colour-coordinated flowers, beautiful but very formal.

We are going to the Vaucluse tomorrow for a month.

Now the rain is pelting down again.

'Apple Thieves' in the New Yorker this week

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/apple-thieves

4 a.m.

Wakened from a sound sleep at 4 a.m. this morning by the roar of big long trucks parking (as I discovered when I dragged myself out of bed to see what the h— was going on) on both sides of the rather narrow street under our windows. And then doors banging, men shouting, trucks idling, generators roaring. We had been warned by the arrondissement city hall that someone was making a fashion film on the Place, but nobody mentioned that they were starting in the middle of the night and would have generators going all day. I haven’t been out to see what it going on, because I am consigned to residence with bronchitis—a cough and cold etc I’ve been staving off for a couple of weeks but which finally got me. Well, at least I have an excuse for not being out and about seeing and doing all the things I should be seeing and doing.

I mentioned I’d seen the Bonnard show at the Tate Modern; I found it a little disappointing. All the paintings I know and love were there plus rooms of paintings I hadn’t ever seen, but which didn’t add much—indeed subtracted somewhat—from the ones I love, because they made me conscious of a narrowness in his technique and vision. The panoramic landscapes struck me as uninteresting, almost amateur; and then, of course, he repeats his structural tricks (the windows, the doorways). But the colours were still beautiful as were the interiors and gardens, along with his portraits of both himself and Marthe, his companion.

I remember feeling a similar letdown at a big retrospective of Braque at the Grand Palais some years ago—there was too much, and much of it was not first-rate, and perhaps I would rather not have known that. Which, I suppose, only goes to show how great the greatest painters are, and what some of the differences are. I imagine that goes for poems as well.

It’s a crisp, sunny morning—no, afternoon now and the walls are vibrating along with the generators. Perhaps the fashion shoot will pay for the fire damage to St Sulpice, which we’ve learned with cost $1m to repair; the fire was, it seems, criminal in original, set among the belongings one of the homeless folks who sleep in the church doorway, and which he stored during the day behind the big oak outer doors.

Almost forgot to mention that my new poem ‘Apple Thieves’ will appear in next week’s New Yorker.

Another April morning in Paris

Had to be up and out earlyish this morning for Hélène Cixous’s seminar at the Cité Universitaire, Maison Heinrich Heine, her second-to-last seminar for this academic year. It is a sunny day and I cut through the Luxembourg Garden on my way to the Metro. Most of the other people were joggers, including a squad of firemen. The leaves are all coming out, the flowering trees are in flower or done flowering (for some) and a number of the entry gates are locked against the gilets jaunes demonstrations for today. Coming home after the seminar at 2 pm I thought, for the first time in a long time, how special the shade of chestnut trees is, deep, sheltering and, at the moment, a very tender green. Coming home the Garden was already packed with people of all ages: chess players, boulistes, tennis players, kids kicking balls (the playground is closed because it is being refurbished), strollers , sunbathers, readers, talkers…

Pesky business—a tax extension to request, but which requires payment of the estimated final bill (ouch!), Eurostar (my train to London last week was much delayed because of a Brexit demonstrator on the roof of St Pancras and a strike of French customs officers), healthcare…first world problems.

Reading: Heaney, Stepping Stones, again: I was reminded of it by someone last week and thought I should read it again; A Bergson lecture (1901) on Time, only now published in French; a book by the contemporary Italian, Tabbuchi (wonderful); Jack Robinson aka Charles Boyle, Good Morning Mr Crusoe (wonderful); and the usual poets I return to, plus a new one, the lovely Bernard O’Donaghue’s The Seasons of Cullen Church. Bernard O’Donaghue introduced us readers at Blackwell’s in Oxford in February, and I bought two of his books, which I am very much enjoying.

Oh, and yesterday afternoon, late, the Japanese bamboo show at the Quai Branly.

Later, a movie.

April Morning, Paris

I haven’t written anything here in a while, partly because if life seems to repeat itself perhaps blogs shouldn’t. But I’ve gone back to reading a few pages from Virginia Woolf’s Diary each night before I turn off the light, and she is infinitely inspiring and witty and wise and something she said in the part I was reading last night (1922) about reviewing and her editor’s nit-picking caused me to get out my pencil and put some lines in the margin.

Ultimately, what it led me to was a phone call I had with one of my literary (acquaintances, friends?) three days ago. We’d made an appointment to talk on the phone on Wednesday at 5 pm after I returned from London (Tuesday evening) where I spent four days. When I called she reprimanded me for not calling Tuesday, as we’d decided—no, no, I said, I couldn’t I was on the Eurostar on Tuesday afternoon, coming back. To make a long story short, she then told me I must have got mixed up and—irritated—I said maybe she’d got mixed up.

End of conversation, but it still rankles a little so I put it here, hoping to un-rankle it.

I’ve been off to readings—Oxford, at Blackwells, two in Paris, one at Phyllis Cohen’s lovely Berkeley Books in the 6th, the second a few days ago at Reid Hall, also in the 6th, also wonderful, because there were lots of old and new friends, and friends of the other two readers (Nina Bogin, Marilyn Hacker) and it was a beautiful reading so we sat outside in Reid Hall’s courtyard until the reading began. Then I went to London, to see my daughter and the Bonnard Show at the Tate Modern, and London seemed green and carpeted in spring flowers and full of bird song (in Hackney).

The Soup Kitchen

Back in Paris after a month in the country—beautiful weather, almond trees in bloom, scented, and covered with bees, humming with bees.

Not sure whether I’m happy to be back in the city. I liked our small country routine: work, biking or walking, running the odd errand to surrounding villages for food, or up to the village store. We bought me a new, much lighter bike, and explored longer roads than I was able to on my heavy, clunky ordinary bike. I experienced excercisers’ euphoria, loved climbing hills, stopping in a town for a pain au chocolat…like it best when the reward is a downhill glide at the end, which is hard when your village is perched on the top of a hill.

One of the things I missed was the soup kitchen gang: cooks, volunteers, eaters: 35 per serving, so usually about 150 a day, a majority of them, at the moment, eastern Europeans, Polish, Rumanian, the odd Russian, plus occasional others. Very few women and mostly they keep their heads down, though there are exceptions. Afterwards the volunteers eat while the cooks chat and clean up the kitchen. It’s a lovely place to volunteer, where the occasional fight breaks out, but not often, and a lot of laughing goes on. I’ve been in twice this week, replacing regulars and will be in again the week after next (next week I’m going to Edinburgh for a few days, for a reading at the Scottish Poetry Library).