Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Yesterday while walking home from campus after teaching an advanced personal essay writing class, I stopped in Logos Books and bought a small hardback selection of the poetry of Wallace Stevens, a number of them about peacocks. While typically during the walk home I will listen to an audio book, on this walk, I provided my own audiobook, reading out loud to my son Jukie more than a dozen poems by the modernist master.
As is the case with many high modernist poems, I found it difficult to tell exactly what the poems were “about,” but I did delight in their sounds and word choices. Typically when I am pouring over literary works, I will quickly look up unknown (or approximately-known) words as I read, but this time, I just listened as if enjoying a piece of classical music.
Just now I randomly chose a Stevens poem (“The Comedian as the Letter C”) and then randomly picked a selection of lines to give you a sense of what I mean:
Crispin,
The lutanist of fleas, the knave, the thane,
The ribboned stick, the bellowing breeches, cloak
Of China, cap of Spain, imperative haw
Of hum, inquisitorial botanist,
And general lexicographer of mute
And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld himself,
A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass.
This can be deciphered without a dictionary, certainly, but poems should not be seen as puzzles. Save your puzzling for my pub quizzes. Sometimes one gains the most satisfaction from a poem when the “meaning” is communicated only approximately.
This is how T.S. Eliot addressed this concern in his essay “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism”: “The chief use of the ‘meaning’ of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for here I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a nice bit of meat for the house-dog.”
Kate raised the topic of occasional inscrutability upon first hearing the tetrameter sonnet I composed as her 2024 valentine. It contains at least a couple words that might appear in a Wallace Stevens poem, but not in everyday conversation.
For context, our family tradition is for me to provide Kate two poems for each of the four love-poem holidays: Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, her birthday, and Christmas Day. Then she decides if one of the two compositions merits being shared more broadly via social media and, I suppose, in this newsletter. Gustave Flaubert once said, “It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.” I love using my poems to move into the universe where, for example, Kate is delighting crowds with her anecdotes. She is an excellent storyteller.
Here is my short 2024 valentine, about Kate’s recent trip to San Diego (which our family often visits in the summer) to tell the 150 people attending a corporate retreat about our son Jukie and about her outreach and family support work on behalf of the Smith Lemli Opitz Foundation. She said she was treated like a rock star, and that her stories made them laugh and cry, so I ran with that:
Kate’s Charisma Tour
Welcome home, our touring rock star!
Your February SoCal jaunt
Yielded plaudits rather than floods,
The spotlight rather than sunburn,
And high fives, not sandy sandals.
Yarn-spinner, anecdotalist,
When our charisma queen holds forth,
Lachrymose viewers hold their breath.
From each storytelling trip
You reappear in my arms with
Independent confirmation
Of my Beauty’s captivation
From the folks who get to see your
Incommensurability.
Happy Valentine’s Day to Kate, and to you. I hope this day surrounds you with love and that it is replete with welcomed displays of affection.
—
If you are in Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. With regard to tonight, recruit a team and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. Even though it is more work for me, we always have more fun with the bigger crowds and more voices. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”
This paragraph includes hints. In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on artificial intelligence, Grease, Playback.FM, silly donuts amid the Biden administration, people of color on TV, second acts, English professors, People, famous falls, cheese, bards, NATO countries, princes, knitting and programming, music genres, places that have not been visited by most Americans, love moves, accompanists, European countries, desserts, sacs, famous creeks, foreign aid bills, numbers of hearts, Native Americans, British actresses, amplifiers, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare.
Thanks to the new supporters Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Newspaper Headlines: Nearby Countries. Fill in the blank from this headline in a recent edition of The New York Times: “For First Time in Two Decades, U.S. Buys More From BLANK Than China.”
- Sports. According to CNN, “Fiona O’Keeffe produced a stunning performance at the US Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando on Saturday, [February 3], smashing the previous record by more than three minutes.” Where did Fiona O’Keeffe attend high school?
- Science. What are bromeliads: rare gemstones, flowering plants, tropical rodents or shooting stars?