On break at work I read a lot of magazines. Besides reading my reader’s copy of Brown’s Da Vinci Code every now-and-again (as I’m not really into the mystery genre, at this rate I’ll probably finish the book midsummer) I’ve recently been reading Zoetrope: All-Story and Adbusters. My e x-roomate’s ex-roomate used to subscribe to Adbusters and I’d read it every now-and-again. (The most recent issue informed me that the government stores chemical weapons in my fair city (but then again, one never knows just how much to trust the publication in the first place), and also launched a viscious visual assault on my senses by insidiously including a heretofore unpublished picture of an charred Iraqi soldier that was firebombed while on the retreat from Kuwait in 1991– I am not very happy about happening upon this picture. Granted the U.S. ought not to firebomb people, but I really don’t think Adbusters had any sense publishing the picture, either.) I’ve really been digging Zoetrope: All-Story, edited by one Francis Ford Coppola. The new issue, among other notable things, has a rather interesting and well-cited article on love, written by Leonard Michaels. It begins…

In a scary little poem about love, William Blake begins with a warning:

Never seek to tell thy love
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears?
Ah, she doth depart.

Soon as she was gone from me
A traveller came by
Silently, invisibly?
O, was no deny.

I confess immediately that I’m not sure what Blake means. The poem is chilling and sad. It seems to mean, if you’re in love, best keep it to yourself; or, maybe it means you can talk about love, but the moment you do you aren’t talking about love. Love is a mystery; otherwise it is nothing.

The poem suggests a good deal else, depending on what Blake means by love. Is it the kind that cannot speak its name? Whatever the poem means, it seems to intimate that there is something like an impulse, or a terrifying compulsion, to tell when one is in love, and that this impulse springs from a strange desire for the death of love, or maybe just for death.

[…]

Other recent gifts from publishers that wound up in my hands via the book store:

Dito’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. The copy I have (copy #189) says: THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED PROOF. PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY QUOTES USED FOR REVIEW MUST BE CHECKED AGAINST THE FINISHED BOOK. So, I guess once I get around to reading it…I won’t be able to make any comments on it lest I get sued again for 4983749837487378423 dollars. I shouldn’t say again, Dear Reader. Last time it was only for, as I recall, $270,000.00. The back of the book says that the novel is soon to be a motion picture directed by Robert Downey Jr. For some reason I picked his book over a DVD documentary on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Women’s Early American Historical Narratives. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Sharon M. Harris. I think Ms. Harris ought to have picked a less-awkward title for her anthology. Cover says Advanced Uncorrected Proof. Not For Sale! “This collection includes writings that employ a wide range of approaches, from straightforward reportage to poetical historical narratives, from travel writing to historical drama, and even accounts in textbook format.” I chose this book over the F. Scott Fitzgerald documentary and over a William Gibson book…figured I can always catch Gibson later, if I get around to it. Besides, cyberpunk novels are only so useful…