Like those hikers or ramblers who witness the luminous brocken spectre, readers sense in each of the collections under review a counter-presence, an apparition of sorts that unsettles the poet and drives thought forward. As in the case of the above excerpt from Tennyson’s great requiem, Rancourt, Gucciardi, and Lim are haunted by questions of perspective, self-projection, and the nature of imagination when met by loss. But more than surface encounters with cities or rural locales, what Brocken Spectre, West Portal, and The Curious Thing share is a deeper consideration of the tensions that arise from the collision of self with grief. The poems likewise recount pleasures and sorrows experienced on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and narrate histories that play out in countries including Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Korea. It’s true that Jacques Rancourt, Benjamin Gucciardi, and Sandra Lim render the bars and parks of San Francisco, Chicago’s trains and crowds, the Holy Land’s ancient gates. H., “He sees himself in all he sees.”įor this installment of “Split the Lark,” I initially intended to highlight collections that respond to and investigate the private experiences and particularities of place. Place-dependent, brocken spectres are encountered not only near cloud banks, over high peaks, across rolling dales and fog-locked moors, but also in literature: “He finds on misty mountain-ground / His own vast shadow glory-crown’d,” writes Tennyson in In Memoriam A. Regardless, the outline of self is both peculiar and familiar, supernatural and scientific its meaning left to the mercy of one’s own imagination. Sometimes, the ghostly shape is magnified to a disturbing scale sometimes, the mirage stays still. Water droplets and light intersect to give the impression of a dim figure, often haloed, who seems to approach from a distance. Christened brocken spectre in 1780 by a German pastor with ambitions in geology and hydraulic engineering, the optical effect is meteorological. Int J Climatol, 12, 317-342.With the proper elements and elevation, a shadow projected onto fog can manifest a mirrored self: an eerie, three-dimensional figure borne of sun and mist. Folland, 1992: A new daily Central England Temperature Series, 1772-1991. Quart J Roy Meteorolol Soc, 100, 389-405. 1974: Central England Temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973. Manley, G., 1953: The mean temperature of Central England, 1698 to 1952. The 1990s decade was nearly 0.6☌ warmer than the 1961-90 average. The graph shows the rise in the CET over the last three decades.
Since 1974 the data have been adjusted by 1-2 tenths ☌ to allow for urban warming.
#Brocken spectre 1990 series
The CET series was originally constructed by the late Professor Gordon Manley in 1973, and is now routinely updated by the Hadley Centre. The CET is the longest available instrumental record of temperature in the world. The monthly series began in 1659 and daily figures were added from 1772 to date. The Central England Temperature (CET) is a series of average temperatures representative of a triangular central area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Bristol, Manchester and London.
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