The whole thing on Tuesday with Jesus is anti-climactic.

Happy Birthday, R. Bly.


My favorite Bly poem:




IN THE MONTH OF MAY



In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well all things
lean on each other, how the bees work,
the fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high; then I understand.
I love you with what in me is unfinished.

I love you with what in me is still
changing, what has no head or arms
or legs, what has not found its body.
And why shouldn't the miraculous,
caught on this earth, visit
the old man alone in his hut?

And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
whose holy bodies are not yet born.
Along the roads, I see so many places
I would like us to spend the night.

Vivre Libre!

I've just turned in my last paper of the semester! All my grading was done yesterday.

I'm free! I'm free!


I'm broke, but I'm still free!



Now that I'm finished with school for a few weeks, it's time to actually get some reading done.

Thought Is the Builder

Almost all of my Ph.D. program applications have gone out. I am guardedly optimistic. I think my recommendation letters are positive, and my GRE Verbal and Subject scores are very good. Also, I overhauled an essay on contemporary poetry that I wrote back in '06, so my critical writing sample is pretty good, too.

And, the opinions of the editors of every literary magazine in the universe notwithstanding, I've got some damned fine poems in there, as well.

So, now I would like to enter some sort of cryogenic hibernation for about two to three months, until the results are in. If that is not available, I will spend my time sending out telepathic signals to the admissions committees: Love me! Love me!

I think I should get some sort of certificate just for completing these applications.


Otherwise, I have 111 grading to finish, and a paper to write about Blake and Keats. Then, over the holiday break, I am going to hole up and read lots of nice things and supercharge my weary brain for all my poetic endeavors of 2008.

Reviewing the Reviewer

The main book review in The New Yorker a couple of issues ago was actually devoted to poetry! Dan Chiasson reviewed Mark Strand's New Selected Poems and Robert Hass's Time and Materials.

Despite the fact that Chiasson is, to me, that guy who thinks Buddhist meditation consists of "thought-gimmicks to rid ourselves of consciousness" (as he says in his Poetry review of Jane Hirshfield's After), I nevertheless had high hopes for this review. Even though Hass is sort of Buddhist, I figured Chiasson would be less confused here, since Hass is more thinky and self-doubting, and therefore gets closer to what Chiasson seems to mean by "consciousness." I want to better understand Hass's poetry, so this review looked promising.

Unfortunately, I'm left with the same level of bafflement regarding Hass. Chiasson starts off with a bang, making a very insightful comparision between the big American poets of the 1960s (Lowell, Plath, and Berryman) and their heirs, Strand and Hass. For those earlier poets, "the recipe for poetic power was misery mixed with braggadocio." In contrast, "Strand and Hass, more comfortable than despairing, write in [a "temperate middle"] zone." So far, so good.

I'm not familiar with Strand's work, so I'll ignore that part of the review, except to say that the poems Chiasson refers to don't exactly make me want to run out and devour Strand's new book.

On to Hass: Chiasson makes an interesting argument that Hass's project for the last few books has been "to ransack his own lyric gift." Hass, unsatisfied with the easy lyricism that comes easily to him, has sought to challenge and complicate that lyricism. A good point; so far, so good.

But Chiasson loses me when he claims that "Then Time," from the new book, is Hass's "best ever" poem. Chiasson explains that "'Then Time' shows how lyric poetry can do what novels do so well, if at excruciating length: track the paths of consciousness and counter-consciousness across plots and characters." Well, woo-freakin'-hoo. This is a good thing? My paraphrase: "Then Time" is a great poem because it's kind of like a novel, but a lot shorter.

Well, I ask more of poetry. My quest to understand why Hass is such a big deal continues. Tony Hoagland's essay "Three Tenors" (in the excellent Real Sofistikashun) has some excellent insights on Hass, and there was a good essay in a recent American Poetry Review that actually made me buy Time and Materials. (I'm about half-way through it; not ready to comment on it yet.) But I still feel I'm missing a big piece of the puzzle with Hass. I guess I just don't get the whole "I'm suspicious of language, but I'm still a poet, so I'll write poems but I'll be sure to question my own language all the time" aesthetic.

Chiasson has succeeded primarily in making Strand and Hass appear almost unbearably tedious (especially in comparison with Plath, Berryman, and Lowell). He makes a good argument about their occupying a temperate zone, but not a good argument about why they merit the description "two of our finest contemporary poets."

I Vote For Curvy Language

Here's the promotional copy for Li-Young Lee's forthcoming book, Behind My Eyes:

"Combining sensitivity and eloquence with a broad appeal, Li-Young Lee walks in the footsteps of Stanley Kunitz and Billy Collins as one of the United States' most beloved poets. Playful, erotic, at times mysterious, his work describes the immanent value of everyday experience. Straightforward language and simple narratives become gateways to the most powerful formulations of beauty, wisdom, and divine love."

This disturbs me. Lee walks in the footsteps of Billy Collins? Listen, I think Collins is enjoyable to read sometimes, but he's very different from Lee, to put it mildly. Maybe this means that, in the new book, Lee is moving closer to Collins's style? If so, given the work Lee was doing in Book of My Nights, such a shift has to be considered a huge step backward.

I'm hoping that this is simply the work of W.W. Norton's copy writers (Lee has moved from BOA to Norton). I'm hoping that this accounts for the emphasis on "straightforward language and simple narratives." Maybe Lee's usual mystical explanations of poetry don't make for effective advertising. And God forbid there should be complex narratives and -- whatever the opposite of straightforward language is. Crooked language? Curvy language?

I hope this is all on Norton; I hope Lee hasn't really moved in this direction. Though the title of the book makes me wonder.

The Hell You Say

Here's a revelation from a new report just released by the NEA: young people are not reading as much as they used to, and they are performing poorly on tests as a result.

I am glad precious arts money is being used to discover these things.

My source at the NEA has leaked the titles of their next two reports:
"What goes up must come down" and "Death is inevitable."

I know their hearts are in the right place, but did anyone not already understand this?

Note to NEA: fewer reports on the obvious, more grants.

Fortunately, I know my Jonson from my Johnson

So, yesterday I finally took the dreaded GRE subject test in Literature. I'm sure many others have analyzed this strange phenomenon, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents, anyway.

To show that I am qualified to study and teach literature at an advanced level, I showed up to a dreary little classroom at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Around me, there were about 14 or 15 other students, testing in a range of subjects, from Lit to Psychology to Biochemistry. We all had our sharpened #2 pencils, like a bunch of elementary school students, because mechanical pencils are not allowed. (Presumably, they fear that some ingenious young Sydney Bristow or Jack Bauer will smuggle in a set of test answers hidden in the mechanical pencil's inner compartment.) Then I took a 230-question multiple-choice test.

I think I did reasonably well. (Herman Melville wrote The Scarlet Letter, right?) So this is not sour grapes. (Though I may have some of them to offer in six weeks, when scores come out.)

It just depresses me how the study of Literature has been included in this bean-counting version of education. I can see how such tests would be useful for Biochemistry, but somewhere, even now in 2007, underneath many tons of dissertations and test scores, there is still a burning ember of soul left in Literature. I swear it's still in there!

I still have faith in Literature, with a big capital L. And I fear having that faith stolen by the academic mishandling of the subject.

Well, not to worry. I'll just reform the whole system from within. How hard can it be?

Thought For the Day

If I started a band, I would call it Spacetime Foam.






My brain is tired and that's all I have to say for now.

Damn it, I like Emerson

"Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, `It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, baulked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. All the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark, to come forth again to people a new world. This is like the stock of air for our respiration, or for the combustion of our fireplace, not a measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted."
Emerson, "The Poet"


Aside from the gender pronoun, which is easily corrected, this seems true to me. :)

The Cranky Old Man Speaketh (Againeth)

So last week I received in the mail four new books of poetry from the same publisher, as part of my subscription to their 2007 output.

One of them I found to be really brilliant, full of shimmery, crackling language and emotional life. Another, I found to be slightly less crackling, but still compellingly written and moving. Another, I found to be very well controlled but ultimately rather prosaic and even sometimes a bit tedious. Another, I found to be flat out boring and predictable, with uninteresting language and unsurprising "ideas."

If there's anything that links these poets, and their aesthetics, it is that they all seem to subscribe to the idea that poetry should stick close to the domestic and find its meaning in the emotion and experience of everyday personal life. This idea is so familiar that it's easy to take for granted. But is it an inevitable conclusion?

As far as I can tell, contemporary poets tend to fall into one of two aesthetic camps. They're either of the domestic/emotional/down-to-earth variety, or of the experimental-language/process-of-consciousness variety. Granted, some poets have dual citizenship in both these areas. But these are still the two main sensibilities.

I don't know where I'm going with this. It's not that both don't produce excellent poetry. Of the four books I mentioned, two are very strong, and even the third "prosaic" one is actually very well done. In fact, the first one I mentioned actually gave me a lot of pleasure.

But do we have to give up the old idea that poets are "comprehensive souls" who make connections between all areas and levels of reality and from those connections reveal larger visions? Why do we allow reality to be narrowed into such a limited humanistic container? Poetry can go anywhere; it can include anything; it must include everything.

I just want more. I'm not sure what I want or how to find it, but I want more.

Same ideas, different names

I'm taking a class in the American Renaissance. The professor has structured the class according to the following idea: Emerson and Hawthorne epitomize opposing views on life and art, and other American writers of this period tend to fall within one camp or another.

Emerson believed that humanity is essentially good, and therefore our first-hand spiritual intuitions about reality are to be trusted and affirmed. Our own souls must be our primary and final authority. Evil is ultimately illusory, not existing in itself but only as the absence of the good. If we look within, we find God.

Hawthorne evidently believed the opposite. (I say "evidently" because we haven't gotten to him yet in class, and my own experience reading his work is very limited.) Our intuitions are not to be trusted. Evil is real, and our own individual judgment is more likely to be evil than good. Societal restrictions upon our own individual souls are necessary and should not be removed. If we look within, we are more likely to find human weakness and evil.

This reminds me of a number of parallels. I am reminded of Jung and Freud, for instance. Freud was clearly of the Hawthornian strain. Jung didn't go as far as Emerson in trusting the individual soul, but in contrast to Freud, he is way further on the Emersonian side.

I am also reminded of Buddhism and Christianity. Christianity has the doctrine of Original Sin; Buddhism emphatically does not.

What all of this comes down to: What is the true nature of humanity, and of reality in general? Fallen or not-fallen?

Buddhist and Jungian that I am, I lean towards the Emersonian side. I think Freud and Hawthorne and Augustine are accurate about how people tend to be. Buddhism recognizes this; habitual ignorance and hatred are the main impediments toward enlightenment. The difference is that one philosophy sees this habit as the core of human nature, or at least as too strong to surpass. In the other view, evil is like clouds. Sometimes the sun is fully obscured, but the sun is still there.

Of course, this relates to my previous musings about vertical/horizontal and mystical/non-mystical. It seems clear to me that the academic literary world tends to be strongly Hawthornian, based on what seems to me a tragically inadequate view of what people really are, or can be. In my class, the majority definitely favors Hawthorne over Emerson. Our most recent discussion focused on Emerson's contention (also held by Buddhism and to some extent present even in Catholic theology) that evil is merely the absence of good, like cold is the absence of heat.

Some people can see only evil. Some thinkers look at art and see only the evils of bad capitalist people. Such an anemic vision of ourselves and of the world is killing English departments all over this country, and it is killing the literary culture in general. But despite this analysis I've just presented, I don't really understand the aversion to Emerson and the favoring of the Hawthornian attitude. I just don't get it, and I am thus excluded from the very area of the culture that I've worked rather hard to join. This troubles me. I'm tired of feeling like I'm behind enemy lines in the English departments and literary circles that should feel to me like home.

Bullsh*ts-With-Wolves

The other day, I heard a very repulsive commercial on the radio. (Actually, I find pretty much all of radio repulsive, but this especially.) The argument was essentially as follows:

1. When we play, we are returned to a state of simplicity and innocence that is closer to nature, and we are thus psychologically refreshed.

2. Native Americans are closer to nature.

3. Therefore, gambling -- or "playing" -- in Native-American-owned casinos in upper Michigan is the best way to return to this natural state.

I kid you not; this is a real commercial. Actual human beings think it is all right to say this.

If any of you poets out there are wondering why you should keep at it --- well, here's a reason: to put some true words out there in the world to counter this sh*t.

Keyword: Saturation Bombing

So yesterday I bought a huge box of envelopes for the fall poetry submission extravaganza. I also bought a little glue-moisturizing sponge-tipped water-bottle thingy for sealing the envelopes. I still have a buttload of DC Comics stamps and 2-cent stamps to bring them up the new postal rate. And I have two postal scales -- one electronic, one not -- to make sure my postage is correct. I am therefore prepared for that aspect of the process. It's a nice ritual.

Now I just need some poems that won't get rejected. Thus far, this has been the hard part. I am hoping that sending out in the early fall will help; usually, what happens is that when fall begins I am still waiting for the last of the summer rejections, and then it's December by the time I can send them out again. But this time I'm not waiting.

And I hope to finish a few new ones soon from a new series that I think definitely has legs. This should give me 4 or 5 batches of about 5 poems each.

And then I'm sending them out all over the bloody place.

And if that doesn't work, I quit.

Diane, I Think We Can All Agree This Is Long Overdue.

Finally.

Damn fine coffee.

But I Hope They Don't Publish Burroughs

The imminent publication of this book makes me happy. He belongs with the greats.

But Some Thunder

I'm still not finished thinking about the whole 'mystical/non-mystical' divide. (I guess I never will be.) In his book of interviews, Breaking the Alabaster Jar, Lee refers to this division as vertical/horizontal. (He didn't invent these terms, but he makes good use of them.) "Vertical" is associated with spiritual 'ascent' (or, I suppose, "descent"). "Horizontal" is associated with 'worldly' life.

Lee suggests that poetry is, or should be, more vertical that horizontal. I'm inclined to agree, but the question is, how vertical is too vertical? How horizontal is too horizontal? And is there any way to access the vertical except by means of the horizontal?

I think poetry must use worldly things to communicate even mystical truths. But I also think access to the vertical is essential in order for a poet to have any kind of vision and psychic presence. In general, what usually interests me about a poem, and a poet, is the vision behind the poetry. Or, more accurately, the degree to which a strong, vivid psyche animates the poetry, resulting in a compelling vision of the world. Much contemporary poetry seems to emanate from rather malnourished and emaciated psyches, and there's not much vision of anything, except maybe poetry itself. Most poems wheeze. But some thunder.

Interestingly, in the midst of all this deep thinking about poetry, my psychic pendulum has begun to swing a little bit over toward the fiction side again. A fiction writer with whom I am acquainted e-mailed me a revision of one of her stories, and that was enough to set off my inner fiction writer again. Honestly, my psyche is like a mine field that way; any mention of poetry or fiction or a variety of other perennial interests of mine is enough to get me all geeked up on that subject. These interests just lurk there, waiting to be provoked. And then I go buy stuff on Amazon. Time to put down Ariel and buy The Bell Jar!

(Semi-relevant side note: In Tibetan Buddhism, there's an idea that a really advanced meditation master has the ability to store teachings, for use in the distant future, in a sort of collective mental dimension. These teachings, called terma, can then be retrieved from this communal psychic space by later mystics who retrieve these texts in a kind of meditative trance state. So, a yogi from the 14th century can preserve a mental text in this psychic storage area with a kind of time-lock, so that it bubbles up in the 21st century and someone writes it down.

I don't know who put "poetry" and "fiction" in my unconscious, but they keep bubbling up nonetheless!)

Anyway, the goal, I suppose, is to write right at the point at which the vertical and the horizontal intersect. Wholeness! It's harder in fiction, I think, because fiction requires so much horizontal detail and event. But, as Lee notes, Faulkner and Melville (among others) achieve the vertical, or at least the poetic, by means of their language. So there's hope for poets who want to write fiction. (I don't know about Melville, but Faulkner began as a poet—influenced by Swinburne, no less!)

O, the writing life. At least it pays well.

Any Mention of "Universe Mind" Makes Me Happy

I'm still in the process of unpacking, but it's already clear that I have nowhere near enough room for all my books. So I have to decide which ones are beloved enough to bring to my current residence, and which ones are (temporarily) damned to the storage unit.

It's very frustrating, but it's also interesting because it forces me to determine what's most important to me right now. For one thing, after another of my periodic flirtations with fiction earlier this summer, I find that the pendulum has swung back over to poetry again. So I'm trying to bring in as many poetry-related books as space will allow.

Also, I seem to finally feel the need to really, truly dig into mythology. For a quasi-neo-Jungian such as myself, I really am not nearly as familiar with mythology as I should be. So all the myth books have to come out of storage. I believe that myth is the key for my current and future poetry — though in what way, I haven't quite figured out yet. So I've got to really delve into this stuff. (I must face the sobering truth that, sadly, renting old episodes of Hercules and Xena from Netflix will just not be enough anymore.)

In general, I'm feeling a need to get back to the things that are really important to me — all the mystical, mythopoeic visions and ideas which seem to me sadly neglected in the current literary climate. In my analysis, this is the most important difference or division affecting contemporary literary/aesthetic judgment — the "non-spiritual/spiritual" or "non-mystical/mystical" divide.

It seems to me that much of the academic literary world seems to fall overwhelmingly on the "non-spiritual" side. And so I am faced with the likelihood that, even if I were to succeed in writing the sort of poetry I have in mind, it might never find a receptive audience. On the other hand, I've been reading Li-Young Lee's recent book of interviews. All his references to "big mind" and "universe mind" make me feel somewhat more hopeful, because many people who read poetry these days seem to like Lee's work. You go, Li-Young! The question is, do people gravitate to Lee's work because they like his mystic sensibility, or do they merely tolerate all his crazy talk because they like his poems about childhood?

I guess it's good to have a sense of purpose, even if it damns me to cultural obscurity and obsolescence. There are ideas that truly matter to me and cast meaning upon my life, and that's more than a lot of people can say in this post-modern, post-structural, post-sanity culture.

May the Force be with you, and s**t.

(Slightly) Better Than Hemlock

And so begins what my future biographers (if everyone else dies and there is no one else left about whom to write biographies) will label "the lost year."

Socrates chose death rather than exile from Athens. I liked Bowling Green well enough, but I'm still choosing exile in Toledo over hemlock. (For now.)

I'll try to think positively. My Itty Bitty Booklight and I will accomplish great things in the next year!

In other news, let me say that I am extremely heartened by the degree of press coverage given to Ingmar Bergman recently. More specifically, I'm (pleasantly) surprised that so many people know -- and care -- who he is. (And, yes, I deliberately used the present tense "is.") A lot of people seem genuinely saddened by the loss. It is no wonder: Bergman's films cleanse and refresh the soul.

Antonioni, I don't care for so much.

Back to the real world, 2007-style: This pleases me. However, what the Thai authorities fail to realize is that there is an easy counter-measure to the shame-producing armbands. The shame could easily be neutralized if the officers were to wear Underoos under their uniforms. All life's problems are less weighty if one is wearing Batman underwear.

Take it from me.

All Good Things, Etc., Etc.

Well, this is my last night in my Bowling Green apartment, so even though I should be finishing my packing, I feel I should commemorate the evening with a post.
My first thought is, "It feels like only yesterday I rented this place, and now it's time to go." (It's a clichéd first thought, but there you have it.)
My next thought is, "Damn! I have a lot of books!" 23 boxes full of them so far, and the end is not yet near. I have to admit that, though it's true my bibliophile acquisitiveness has created quite a burden right now, the other 51 weeks of the year when I'm not moving are made more pleasant by all my treasures.
Some Buddhist I am.
I've spent the summer intensely resisting the awareness that all this is ending and it's time to go. But now I'm finally beginning to enter the "acceptance" stage.

Fear not (if, in fact, anyone is reading this): future posts will be much more pithy and high-minded. But now is my time to lament.

Blog Under Construction

In Progress!

(This is what I'm doing instead of packing and cleaning.)