You go, A.L.!

What am I thankful for?  Lots of things.  Here's Abe Lincoln explaining the merits of one of them:

"Writing -- the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye -- is the great invention of the world. Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it -- great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space; and great, not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions. . . . Its utility may be conceived, by the reflection, that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, and the Bible, all history, all science, all government, all commerce, and nearly all social intercourse go with it."


I knew I liked him. 


What a strange, intensely literate miracle Lincoln was.  I mean, there was actually a period in American history in which the president of the United States was actually one of the country's best writers—even with figures such as Emerson, Whitman, Melville, and Hawthorne writing at (more or less)
the same time! 

Probably this will never happen again, but it could be that our current president-elect is the closest thing, in terms of writerly potential, to Lincoln that we have ever had since.  But I doubt that the culture will allow him to shine as Lincoln did.  Obama knows how to milk any speech for the best effect, but underneath his speaking prowess, the language of his speeches has been very disappointingly bland.  Even his famous racism speech given shortly after the Wright debacle doesn't measure up to the least of Lincoln's texts.  Or even to the speeches on The West Wing, for that matter.  The language is just so denatured and dull, probably because it's thought that the
American people would react with suspicion to a perceived excess of eloquence from their commander-in-chief. 

There will never be another Gettysburg Address as long as this kind of oratorical timidity continues.  And that is a loss that saddens me. 

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Listen up!

You should buy this chapbook here. Excellent stuff.

(I'm told the acknowledgments page is especially good.)

I don't know who this guy is, but I guess I should find out

From this article in the New York Times:

"[Lewis] Hyde’s admirers often point out with awe (and his reviewers with frustration) that his books are all but impossible to summarize. Hyde doesn’t object to this assessment. He wrote The Gift because he could find no place where his own motivations for writing poetry were well articulated, but articulating them required a poet’s suggestiveness. “One thing I’ve always liked to read is the kind of literature you find in Jung and Freud, which combines personal anecdote, philosophy, mythology, dreams,” he told me in his Cambridge office last May. 'I like the way it jumps from one discursive realm to another.' His books exhibit this lively heterogeneity to an at-times dizzying extent; in the course of 12 pages in “The Gift,” Hyde hops from a discussion of a Pali Buddhist parable to Marx’s “Capital” to the Ford Pinto and then moves quickly on, in the next 3 pages, to Christmas, country-western music and the psychological fates of Vietnamese refugees in Southern California."

Yes! This is what I want to do in my poems, except without the country-western music and the Pinto.  (Or, maybe with the Pinto.  But definitely not the country-western music.) (Figuratively speaking.)  But with non-discursive realms included.

I know I've heard of Lewis Hyde, but until I read this article, I could not have told you, off the top of my head, who he is or what he writes.  Good article.  Time for another run to the library!

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Hope Keeps Happening

This reminds me of some stuff I said last week.  I call this good news.  Now I need to find some kind of self-help book that teaches me how to experience hope.  I don't know what to do with all of it!

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Better than just staying at home and watching cartoons

I don't usually use this blog for self-promotion (mainly, I suppose, because I've usually nothing to promote), and I don't think most of my readers can attend this, anyway, but I figure what the hell.

If you're going to Winter Wheat this year, I will be presenting this session in the 10:30-11:45 time slot:


D3: Stepping Off a Hundred-Foot Pole: Creative Writing and the Zen Koan
Michael Cherry
A Zen koan: "Atop a hundred-foot pole, how do you step forward?" The student must respond not with cleverness but with her/his whole being. Creative writing demands a similar wholehearted, intuitive engagement. In this workshop, participants will investigate how Zen koan practice can free and enliven the writing mind.



Now, I just have to figure out what I'm going to say!

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Dear "The South,"

Dear "The South,"


Well, you tried your best, but we (the rest of America, that is) have finally managed to wrest the presidency away from you.  (Perhaps because your hands were already full, clutching your guns in fear that Obama will soon take them away.)

It's been almost 50 years since a Democrat who was not one-of-you has been elected president.  (And look what happened to him -- and where.)  But finally we've gotten a genuinely good man elected. 

I know you did your best (except for Florida, but we know what kind of people live there).  After all, the electoral map down South is indeed one big block of angry red.  Sorry.  It's just that the rest of us have f***ing had enough of you. 

So here's my proposal.  You know that offer you made back in 1860?  Well, on second thought, you go right ahead and secede.  Please.  As in, get the f*** out of my country so we can get some real work done.  Important work.  Good work.

First, of course, you'll have to let all those fake Southerners out.  Everyone who voted blue is more than welcome to come on up here.  Fake Southerners:  the rest of America welcomes you.

As for the rest of you:  seriously, secede already.  You got a lot of good people killed in the Civil War and its aftermath, and you should be ashamed that the Civil Rights movement was ever necessary.  And, as stated, you make it really hard for the rest of us to elect a proper government.  Proper -- as in, not bat-sh*t insane.

I know, I'm supposed to be all "let's just get along," but right now Obama's only leading by a mere 4 points in the popular vote count, and that makes me sad.  So I've got to say this (with my real pretty mouth).  Let's face it, there are two Americas.  And you're the one that's dead weight.  So, (once the fake, blue Southerners have left) feel free to inbreed yourselves into oblivion.  I like The Dukes of Hazzard as much as the next guy, and thanks for Faulkner and O'Connor, but it's time for you to leave. 

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