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Bishop, Picasso, Auden, Reading

Yesterday, I visited my good friend Chuck in Bloomington. It had been several years since I had last spoken with him, so it was a great pleasure. As usual, our conversation ranged widely across literature, the arts, history, and philosophy. Chuck has taken an interest in Elizabeth Bishop as of late, so we talked about her a bit. It has been a bit of time since I read her work, and I have always admired her poetry, so I think it is time for me to reacquaint myself with her complete poems.

Chuck and I also discussed reading, which is a passion for us both. He told me about Sven Birkets’ Reading Life: Books for the Ages. Chuck’s description of this book, which is now in my Amazon wish list, remind me of Michael Dirda’s An Open Book: Chapters from a Reader’s Life, a book that essentially charts Dirda’s engagement with the world through literature. I almost exactly remember to this day (I looked it up so my memory was not quite accurate–I thought there was an ice-boat on the cover) what my first book was: Hardy Boys, The Mystery of Cabin Island. My parents bought it for me. I remember also that my younger brother at one point in time took a brown crayon to a few of the pages.

One of the other topics we touched on was the role of literature in people’s lives. Dana Gioia’s essay, “‘All I Have Is a Voice’: September 11th and American Poetry,” touches significantly on this, I think. Gioia was scheduled to begin a speaking tour the next morning. After some hesitation and conversation with his sponsor, Gioia decided to proceed. “They [poets] represent one of the few clear, informed, and expressive voices outside the corporate marketplace or the State.”

On September 12th, Gioia had a large audience in attendance. Gioia decided to read Auden’s “September 1, 1939.” Not the only person to recall the poem after the September 11th attacks, Auden’s poem appeared on the Internet and on radio. Gioia:

The sudden celebrity of Auden’s once-suppressed and long-neglected masterpiece reminds me of the enduring human need for poetry. For years, I have received phone calls from polite strangers who, having ‘heard’ that I am a poet, ask me to recommend verses for them to read at weddings or funerals. At times of enormous joy or grief people instinctively long for great language to express and commemorate their emotions. … Amid the noisy slogans and the nervous news flashes, poetry went about its ancient task of teaching and consoling humanity.

***

Just finished watching Simon Schama’s episode in his series The Power of Art on Picasso. The episode focuses on the creation of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica (for those who do not know, Guernica was a Basque town bombed by Nazi and Italian planes during the Spanish Civil War – a town with no military significance). Schama relates the story (first time I had heard of it) of Colin Powell’s news conference after presenting the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN. The location of the conference had, as a backdrop, a tapestry reproduction of Guernica. Deemed too “distracting” for the news conference, it was covered with blue drapes. Schama is right in that is a backhanded compliment to a masterpiece. To paraphrase Schama, “We, the most powerful nation in the world can knock off dictators, but we cannot control the message of this masterpiece.” The US was about to unleash the horrors of war and having a graphic depiction of the horror of war (and thus antiwar) was simply too much for the handlers of the newS conference.

A Response to President Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University today. While I support his right to speak and Columbia’s right to invite him to speak, I am quite happy with the dialogue that has occurred. I find most reprehensible President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust revisionism. But how to respond? My chosen art is poetry. Though I do not have a poem with which to respond to President Ahmadinejad’s nutty assertions, here is a poem of Geoffrey Hill’s that is a masterpiece of literature and serves well enough as a response:

September Song

born 19.6.32 – deported 24.9.42

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.

As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.

(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)

September flattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless flies drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Miscellaneous, Part I

Last night I felt like reading a bit of poetry criticism, so I picked up my copy of
William Logan’s The Undiscovered Country and read the introduction, “Poetry in the Age of Tin.” I have always appreciated Logan’s criticism, if I have not always wholeheartedly agreed with it. I like his criticism because he is honest (I have read no living critics who will disregard the “feelings” of the poet by calling the work as he or she sees it), and he is consistent in his application of a standard (albeit, his). I find this type of criticism rare in a world of back scratching. Dana Gioia has commented similarly on how the proliferation of MFAs and MFA graduates has created a tight-knit community unwilling to really criticize a coworker’s work. Now, before anyone goes crazy at my seeming damnation of MFA and MFA graduates, please do not take it as such. First, my good friend and astonishingly good writer Christopher Coake proves that MFAs are not by definition mediocre or worse (I plan on some day commenting on Coake’s amazing set of stories We’re in Trouble). Logan himself refrains from seeing the inherent state of wide literary knowledge as the fault of MFAs.

MFA programs have often been blamed for the blind monotony that afflicts contemporary poetry, and no doubt they’re partly at fault – many poets leave workshops having learned to do no more than mimic the house style of the age.

…

MFA programs, despite their great flaws, allow young poets a period of apprenticeship within an informal society of other poets, as was once provided in large cities. It’s curious that people are more suspicious of writing workshops than of music schools (Iowa, bad; Juilliard, good); but anyone who thinks poetry would be better off without workshops is dreaming – Britain until recently had none, and poetry was no more diverse or less bland.

I think my problem with MFA programs (and it is, I believe, Gioia’s argument as well) is that is has created a large number of poets who have occupied positions on journals, committees, etc., and preclude (not intentionally) any poet unaffiliated with an MFA program. It’s easier to publish a colleague; it’s also more difficult not too.

Back to Logan’s essay. I found the general thrust of this essay pertinent and accurate. Principally, poetry is not a shared cultural reference point. Poetry has retreated to academic haunts unfamiliar with the day-to-day. Poets has abandoned tradition as a learning point, as a reference, as a model. Poets are too often concerned with expressing their self-centered point of view and assuming it is interesting. I have long thought that the focus on math, science, and sports in high school (and earlier, for that matter) has relegated English (by that I mean a study of both grammar and literature) to a tertiary study. Math and science are needed for the new economy. Sports provide school spirit. Who needs to be able to write a well-crafted sentence or wrestle with the art of “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”? The answer? To quote William Carlos Williams (apologies on the spacing on this…it is late and I’m having trouble getting to show up correctly; lines 2 and 5 should be indented once; lines 3 and 6 should be indented twice):

You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

***

I watched today Charlie Rose’s interview of Orhan Pamuk (link to the segment). I read Pamuk’s My Name Is Red earlier this year. I have been pushing this great novel on many a friend since I have read it. The interview is very interesting and discusses many Pamuk’s early inspirations, some of his history, his near-trial for insulting Turkey, and his view of East meeting the West.
***

My wife volunteered her time this past Thursday for Read for the Record at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. I couldn’t help but offer you this picture of my wife leading the cow up the ramp. Apparently, the poor cow couldn’t see his or her way up, so Gina offered a helping hand!(OK, I’m having some trouble uploading it. You can see it here.

Paul Eluard

I have been reading Paul Eluard’s A Moral Lesson. The book is composed mostly of poems that explore from the side of evil and from the side of good. These poems I need to spend more time with, for they are not so simplistic as the evil/good juxtaposition would suggest, which is a strength of the poems. There are some poems at the end of the book that do not use this dualistic methodology. A few lines from two of the poems struck me as quite interesting.

From “Lazarus”

Daylight on their hearts forever
Daylight on their bodies
Daylight on the works of their hands
Nothing more will be destructible.

From “On Animal Scale”

A bull like a wheel
Far from sand far from water
And in his bright red eye
The club takes root

A bull aiming at the ground
Like a bow like a sword
Splits the man down the middle
Constructing in blood

The foundations of the sun.

*******

I have been listening a lot to Osvaldo Golijov’s Oceana recently. Beautiful music, and – for those not aware – based on texts of Pablo Neruda. I also recently discovered Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber, which is the transcription for voices of his famous Adagio for Strings.

Why Write?

As any boy in elementary school, I had a great friend, Jimmy Geroulis (I think he goes by Jim or James now). I recall in particular a Greek name-day celebration I attended with him. Lots of food. Lots of music. Lots of drinks. Lots of dancing.

Anyways, I moved away and our correspondence lasted a little bit, but we drifted. We were just young lads. Years later, we met at a bar here in Indianapolis. We caught up. He was a doctor, which was not a surprise. I mentioned that I was writing, and he told me that he was not surprised, that I was always scribbling stories in a notebook or something. This comment surprised me, for my own memory suggested early high school (years after I had left). I realized then that the constant “urge” I had to write, the guilty feelings I had when I did not write, had long been present, if unknown. So I partially write out of an unconscious desire, which I have translated into communication with fellow humans, of writing art, etc. I think writing is as much of a way for me to communicate my biography, my state of mind as anything.

Poems are intensely and deeply personal to the poet, or they should be. I have found myself with tears in my eyes while working on some of my poems (not all, and may be that says something). However, as a poet I strive for the universal. What’s the point otherwise? “Universal” has a negative connotation. I could toss out objective correlative, but that might set off a firestorm too. And I am not against “confessional” poetry. Rather, I argue that confessional poetry that does not connect, does not speak, does not move the reader is but ego on the page. In our current culture, this is, perhaps, the assumed role of the artist, but I doubt its long-term vitality. The best poems of Robert Lowell may have confessional elements, may discuss his mother or his uncle, but they always connect.

I have been working on one poem recently. I just knew I was writing a poem that was intensely personal to me but was ruinous in some of its phrasing, its failure to rise above cliches. I tried to use repetition to break the cliches and the issues, but it was not working. I knew this. I knew it and I could not let it go. I shared it with a friend, Kelly Talbot, who set me right. He told me that it had issues and that it was not working. It is a cliche, but the best fellow writers are the ones that tell it like it is. Why? Because I had thought this poem would be consigned to the heap of poems I very much like but which have no resonance beyond me and the intended reader. But Kelly’s critique of the poem showed me a way beyond that, an out. He didn’t provide any lines, he didn’t provide any images. Rather, he pointed out the flaws. Flaws I knew were there but simply needed another voice to shock me into accepting it. I’ve been fortunate to have such good readers.

Burnt Norton

Here’s the first stanza of “Burnt Norton,” from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

You can read the full text here.

Bach: Cello Suite No. 1

This morning as I was bottling my latest batch of beer (yes, I am a homebrewer and it was an English Brown Ale that I bottled), I watched the DC United v. Chivas USA MLS game TiVo got for me last Thursday night (9/6). The game ended in a draw, but since TiVo kept recording for a live event, it captured the Indianapolis Colts tribute show that followed after. I do not watch football and I only left it on because I was in the middle of bottling and didn’t want to pull away. Anyways, they got to a part of it where they discussed Peyton Manning and the background music was Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, movement 1. I’m not sure who the cellist was, though it sounded much like my Maurice Gendron recording (but my ear is nowhere good enough to say for certainty that it was the Gendron recording).

It was an interesting choice, I thought. I normally listen to this piece and hear a melancholic theme, but the director of this tribute chose to use it in a tributary way. It worked. The piece is thoughtful and dignified, which really captured what they were trying to portray of Manning. Not sure why it struck me, but it did.

We’ll Miss You, Pavarotti

His obituary at The New York Times. I am listening to his wonderful voice today as my own remembrance of this legend.

A YouTube performance.

James Sanborn

This morning I was catching up on some of my TiVo recordings. I watched an episode of Nova’s “ScienceNow,” specifically, the episode featuring Kryptos, a sculpture by James Sanborn. Kryptos is installed at CIA headquarters and features four coded messages (three of which have been cracked). He has created several other cryptographic sculptures. In the Nova episode he mentions his interest in science, mathematics, and art and how they have merged in his art. The James Sanborn link above includes links and images of several of his other sculptures, particularly those related to magnetism and cryptography, but others as well.

Robert Frost on Poetry

“It is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget.”