Altarwise by Owl-Light

Me!

2010-07-19T20:44:00.007-04:00

I tend to feel somewhat reluctant about self-promotion. I don't have anything against it in principle; however, by nature, I am just averse to calling attention to myself.

That being said, this post is all about self-promotion. First, behold the latest issue of Gulf Coast, which features two of my poems. More importantly (for you), the issue also features a ton of wonderful writing by other writers. It is a hefty beast of literary wonderment.

Please note that if you subscribe to Gulf Coast, they will donate subscription proceeds to the Gulf Restoration Network.

***

Also, in the latest issue of Third Coast, you can find my review of Angela Shaw's The Beginning of the Fields. Both the journal and Shaw's book are highly recommended.

I don't know if anyone still reads this blog, but if anyone is out there, now you have a couple of good suggestions for excellent summer reading. I am honored to be included in these excellent journals, and I hope you will check them out.

Not a proper blog post, but . . .

2010-07-14T13:00:00.003-04:00

. . . this website is still kind of fun.

As a poet,

I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

As a fiction writer,

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

As an essayist,

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Ha!

You Light up My Like

2010-03-03T16:29:00.004-05:00

Well, my friend Gary just did one of these, and it looks cool, so I can't resist. Here is a Wordle of my poetry manuscript:

"Light" is to be expected, but I was also a little surprised by the prominence of "like." (I did a Tagcloud once for the same ms., but I can't remember the results.) I'm glad to see that "flesh" is fairly prominent, and that it is about the same size as "know."

Yes, this is my soul.

Some stuff to keep the blog god appeased

2010-02-04T22:30:00.013-05:00

As all three or four of my readers know, I don't do a very good job of updating this blog. The truth is, I usually don't have much on my mind that I deem worth sharing.

Still, there are a few things I've come across recently that I would like to share with you. The first is a link to a new Robert Bly ghazal from the latest issue of Poetry. I like this one a lot.

The second thing is another link, this time to the YouTube page for a musical duo named Pomplamoose. I enjoy them quite a bit. (My last musical discovery was The Swell Season. I wonder why I favor these duos. Hmmm . . . .) They make cool little videos for their songs. "If You Think You Need Some Lovin'" and "Always in the Season" are my favorites. I suggest watching/listening to them right now.

And the final thing (last and, in this case, definitely least) is a parody poem I found recently on my hard drive, in a file full of stuff I'd transferred from my old computer. It's not attributed, but I think I actually wrote this myself, even though I have no memory of writing it. It looks like the sort of shit I'd come up with. (If you recognize this from somewhere else, though, let me know!) Enjoy.

JORIE GRAHAM GUEST STARS ON SESAME STREET

C is for Cookie,

and [but] [there is more] [to say]

that's good [true][what is good?]
enough
for me. [hand on cookie] [absence]
[of cookie]

Cookie,
[inevitable]
Cookie,
[terrible][in its inevitability] [yes]
Cookie

starts with ________.

Sometimes it's good to be alive

2009-10-13T22:21:00.003-04:00

I recently discovered this band, The Swell Season, thanks to a Facebook friend. Maybe they are old news to everyone else, but they are new to me. Anyway, here they are performing one of their new songs on Czech t.v. (The singer's name is Markéta Irglová.) I'm glad I'm here on Earth at the same time so I can listen to this. I think this song is genuinely beautiful. It is pure. The gentle beauty of this music makes me feel ashamed of my own jaded literary efforts, and of the jaded literary world in general. I hope you enjoy it, whoever you are.

The Red Blog

2009-09-16T22:03:00.012-04:00

As I noted in my last entry, I am very interested in the immanent publication of Jung's famous Red Book. It appears I am not alone in this, as The New York Times has just published a long article about this very event.

I'm ambivalent about this publication, as well as a bit excited. I'm ambivalent because I don't want the Red Book to become just one more consumer product. Granted, the book is priced at about two-hundred dollars, so it's likely that only committed Jungians (and, perhaps, especially-committed anti-Jungians) would purchase it. I don't know to what extent libraries will make it available. So it's not likely to be seen at all by most people, even by most book-reading people.

Nevertheless, though I am excited to finally see it, in a way I kind of wish it were still a legend rather than an available commodity. Its former hiddenness somehow seems more . . . well, more Jungian. Enough has been said about it in the autobiography and in the various biographies, and enough images from it already published, that I already kind of feel I "get" what the book is all about.

Of course, I'm going to buy it when it comes out, anyway.

Being even quasi-neo-Jungian (as I am) in this culture is an uphill battle. The inner life is under attack from every direction. The right prefers that people surrender their souls to the tyrannies of "traditional values" and naive, projection-based militarism. The left suggests that there are no true individual selves, only "subjects" whose supposed inner lives are merely the inscriptions of a variety of state socio-economic and political agendas. And then there is capitalism, which looms above and seeps into everything, from all sides, luring people into a fixation with what they can put into their mouths instead of what they put into their souls.

Then there's the internet, which becomes more and more distracting every day. As a Buddhist, I have trained to let go of the minutiae of petty, confused thoughts that flutter through my mind throughout the day. As a participant in Twitter, on the other hand, I've evidently committed myself to not only holding onto such thoughts but also sharing them with others, so that a weird, collective jabbermind is birthed into cyber-being. I love the internet, and obviously I still find it worthwhile (hence, this blog), but I am very aware of how distanced I have become from my own deeper feelings and thoughts since I went online (or, perhaps more accurately, since I started spending way too much time online).

Worst of all is the everpresent, soul-crushing irony that pollutes every atom of our culture. Jung's work in general, and the Red Book in particular, is a sort of mega-dose of anti-irony. It's impossible to read something like this and get anything valuable from it unless one checks one's irony at the door. I know that literary people are always very proud of themselves for using irony, because it does demand a certain degree of intelligence. And it is possible to use it in such a way as to deepen one's emotional response. But that is not the way it is usually used in contemporary life. It's a way of achieving and maintaining distance, of not letting anything in, not feeling anything too deeply or acutely, or at all. At this point in my life, I tend to view it as the coward's way. And, of course, I say that as someone whose own daily discourse is fully saturated with irony.

Reading the above-mentioned NYT article makes me wonder if I should have become a Jungian analyst instead of entering this strange literary netherworld of mine. There was a time in my life I could have gone either way. Joseph Campbell said that Protestants who lose their religion become psychologists, and Catholics who lose their religion become poets. I guess he was right. For better or worse, I'm on the poet's road. (Damn you, Robert Bly, for presenting an example that suggested this dream is possible!) My job is to figure out how to write poems that say what I want while still somehow being relevant to people in this culture.

I suppose this blog entry makes me sound like a cranky old man. I admit, I do think the culture is going downhill in terms of its devotion to irony and materialism. (It's going uphill in other areas, such as progress being made against sexism, racism, etc.) However, really, I guess, I am just a fringe dweller, and probably would be no matter what era I lived in. Granted, I suspect I would have felt more at home in, say, 1840s New England, hobnobbing with people like Emerson and talking about the Soul (with the capital S, baby). But even they were more fringe in their own time than is commonly realized.

What all of this blather amounts to is the realization (which I have semi-frequently and then forget about again) that I really need to take my soul life--that is, my soul's life--more seriously. Living in the internet age is not an excuse. I buy and buy and buy the books, but I've already known what I need to know for about a decade and a half. I could at least keep a damned dream journal, or something. I have one life, and it's already almost half over. When, on my deathbed, I look back on my life, I hope I will be able to say "I did everything I could to find meaning," rather than, "I made fun of shit and said snarky things."

Please let me live as I know I need to, O my unconscious.

These Are My Dramas

2009-09-10T23:59:00.003-04:00

So, now and then I get into a Moleskine state of mind. Even though I already have a few blank ones, I feel a need to buy more. I write poem drafts in them, and if I were to keep a journal I would journal in them. This week was very eventful insofar as I bought a couple of ruled ones for the first time. Moleskine or not, all of my writing journals, for both home and out-and-about use, have always been unruled. Maybe you think this is unimportant. However, I must have spent an hour or two the other day trying to decide whether to make this switch.

Maybe it’s because, as a poet, I am very sensitive to white space on the page. Maybe it’s because my Zen training has made me especially sensitive to the use of white space in some varities of traditional Chinese and Japanese painting. Whatever the reason, I’ve always felt a strong, visceral preference for unruled paper. It feels spacious, open, vast. And I can draw on it, too.

But now the ruled paper has called to me. It feels more “literary,” in a 19^th-century sort of way. For instance, I’ve seen Whitman’s notebooks from the first drafts of what would become Leaves of Grass; his notebooks had ruled paper. And the resistance the lines provide—the anti-spaciousness, if you will—is kind of nice to work against. It just feels more writerly. Plus, I can draw on ruled paper, too, if I really want to.

(Of course, it could also be that the ruled paper just gives me a handy excuse to buy new Moleskines. Can’t use those unruled ones, no, no, no.)

Perhaps some of you may scoff at my disproportionate concern for such things. What can I say? I am a writer. These are my dramas. (Actually, I have other dramas, but this is not that kind of blog.)

On a related note, this book is being released next month, and it just makes me so f-ing happy. (Seriously.) C.G. Jung is probably my central intellectual/cultural influence. His ideas are fundamental for me (however much I may have strayed from them in my actual life. Damn you, grad school!). Finally, someone is publishing a facsimile of his famous Red Book. Many of Jung's central ideas derive from a period known as his “creative illness,” which sounds euphemistic but really isn't. He had a sort of mid-life near-schizophrenic crack-up, but he climbed out of it and forged this psychic raw material into ideas. He kept a journal (not a Moleskine, alas) of his “active imagination” dialogues with symbolic figures in his own psyche. He then reworked these journal entries into this beautiful Red Book, combining the dialogues and ideas with fascinating and often beautiful little paintings of his own. It is a modern holy book of the soul.

This book has always fascinated me. I consider it representative of what I’d like my body of poetic writing to be.

It's actually on exhibit in New York this fall. I’m sorely tempted to go, even though I can't really afford the trip. I mean, it’s the Red Book! For me, this is like seeing the True Cross, if there were a True Cross. At any rate, I’m damned well buying the facsimile, even if it is very pricey. His insights are like talismans than I can use to ward off the evil spirits of banality and nihilism that devour our culture so rapaciously. It is my hope that reading this book, and just looking at it, will propel me back into the Jungian waters that used to nourish me so well, and which gave birth to my sense of poetry vocation in the first place.

As far as that vocation is concerned, I guess I’ve once again accepted that it is just my fate, no matter how horrified I am by many of the trends in contemporary poetry. Maybe my work has a place here, or maybe not. (I did get a nice acceptance e-mail recently from a very fine journal, the subject line of which read “Your wonderful poems.” Maybe the ice is beginning to crack.)

One of my current projects is an essay/presentation called “That I was blessed and could bless”: Toward a Poetics of Joy. Let’s just say that I am very concerned about what poetry has become, especially since I’ve resigned myself to the job. It seems so narrow now. I was talking recently to a non-lit, non-creative-writing professor at a local university, and when I mentioned that I was a poet, she said, “I like Billy Collins. He gives me a chuckle.” Of course my first impulse was outrage at her (inwardly, anyway; outwardly, I just smiled and said, “He is very popular.”) But then I thought, can I really blame her? Why would any sane person who isn’t already fully embroiled in the poetry world submit to the grim, often-petty, hair-shirt “interrogations” of language that constitute a good chunk of contemporary poetry?

At any rate, I didn’t get into poetry to confess anything or to subvert the relationship between signifier and signified. So, currently I’m trying to develop a poetics that makes, or regains, some room in poetry for the sort of experiences I consider worth having as a human being. (This is not to say that I find there to be no room at all for such experiences in contemporary poetry. As with any polemic, I guess I’m focusing very strongly on the side I disagree with.)

I will continue to fuss with these thoughts—possibly in a Moleskine!

(This blog entry is not brought to you by The Moleskine Company, though it might as well be.)

A Victorian hallucinogen!

2009-06-05T19:13:00.002-04:00

My current favorite quote, by Adam Gopnik in his book Angels and Ages, about Darwin’s On the Origin of Species:

“It’s a Victorian hallucinogen, where the whole world suddenly comes alive and begins moving, so that the likeness between seagulls and sandpipers on the beach where you are reading suddenly becomes spookily animated, part of a single restless whole, with the birds’ giant lizard ancestors looming like ghosts above them. What looks like the fixed, unchanging solitude of the beach and ocean suddenly becomes alive to, vulnerable to, and endless chain of change and movement. It’s a book that makes the whole world vibrate.”

Spaced Out

2009-06-04T19:13:00.006-04:00

Now and then, someone or some circumstance will call my attention to some artist whose work had not been, prior to that moment, especially important to me. But for some reason I happen to be newly receptive, and suddenly that artist's work seems really essential as a clue to my own doomed, quixotic project.

So, currently I'm really interested in the Spanish/Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).

I remember seeing pictures of a couple of his buildings in an art history textbook I read many years ago, and I thought then that his work blew the doors off that of the other architects featured. Unfortunately, that's as far as I got. I've always tended to skip the architecture section of art history books, because I don't work in that medium; no medium save dance could be further from my two-dimensional writing and drawing activities.

My intention here is not to extol the virtues of Gaudi's work. Obviously, his buildings are absolutely extraordinary, marvelously dreamlike, almost erotically organic. And the man himself was also quite fascinating. But when I get interested in an artist's work, my primary response is to want to steal from it in some way. This has led me to the consideration of how exactly a poet might steal from an architect.

What would be the literary equivalent of one of Gaudi's buildings? For that matter, what would be the literary equivalent of any building? An architect controls the way a person experiences space; walking into a cathedral feels different than walking into a tiny residential space. What is the literary equivalent of the way a cathedral's interior raises a person's consciousness into its lofty expanse? What is the literary equivalent of the way a small room almost demands a sort of intimacy and humility? Do poems contain and complicate psychic space as buildings do physical space?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but they seem very promising as ways to re-conceptualize the way a writer leads a reader through a psychic space. Modeling poetry after painting is old hat by now, but I don't know of anyone who has tried to translate architectural ideas into poetry. I think I would like to try to do this.

First, I have to learn some architectural ideas. Another lacunae in my arts education that demands to be filled.

P.S. Yes, it has occurred to me to reread Bachelard with these questions in mind, though I'm really more interested in the literary equivalent of space than in actual reference to spacial elements.

I used to know a guy with a big tattoo of Baudelaire's face on his arm

2009-05-31T22:05:00.003-04:00

It actually looked more like Don Knotts.

I have no interest in getting a tattoo of Baudelaire, but I do share his dream of "the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without [formal] rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie . . . ."

Okay, I haven't actually written any prose poems yet, but I've had a sort of breakthrough in terms of how I want to write them. I think I may have stumbled across a strategy for writing these prose poems that could be for me what Berryman's basic Dream Song form was for him. Not that I think these will be even a tiny bit as good as Berryman's poems; I just feel that this strategy might allow me to finally say what I want to say in the same way that the Dream Songs allowed Berryman to finally write the poems he was born to write. Lots of them.

I don't want to say much else about them, because that may anger the gods, and they might tell the Muses to shut up. But I am sort of excited about writing these. I hope they turn out half as well as they promise to be in my imagination.

Mind you, I'm referring to how well they will satisfy me, not necessarily the reading public. It could be that what I really want to say is strangely irrelevant and even obsolete to the poetry community. But I don't care. Publishable or not, these may be my real work.

Oh, line breaks. We have had a love-hate relationship for so long. But I've got to let you go. I've met someone else.

2009, You Fickle Bitch

2009-05-21T16:57:00.003-04:00

So, it turns out that my optimism regarding 2009 was a bit misplaced. Once again, the masters of the PhD universe have foolishly denied my attempts to storm their castle. Well, one school admitted me without funding, which I thought might be do-able with loans and such (at least for one year), but that's looking dubious. Thus, I amback where I started. I'm still taking some classes toward high school teaching licensure, but I don't think I can do that much longer, either.

Anyway. I've also been thinking a lot about writing mi poemas, if not actually writing much. Or at all. But I feel things are looking up in this area, because this morning I had a brainstorm about how to solve my problem with finding a new form and a new voice. It is the kind of brainstorm that makes me think, "Duh, how retarded was I not to think of this sooner?" I am feeling a strong desire to write prose poems!

I used to be really into prose poems, but I haven't felt at all close to that form for the last few years. Now, suddenly, it seems like exactly the form I need to use. Instead of fussing with lineation--wondering whether I should stick with the traditional flush-left variety, or try Wright's drifty dropped line, or go full-on Graham-eque--I will go in the opposite direction.

I'd already decided that in my new poems, I want to use dream logic, and I also want to invite in many sub-voices, archetypal ones, mystical ones, psychoanalytic ones, lyrical ones, all sorts of different registers and cadences. So now I'm thinking how excellent it would be to let them all pool together in a thick yet spacious linguistic field, a.k.a. a prose poem. Plus, I have to admit that my prose is probably better than my verse. (I almost said "better than my poetry," but as Russell Edson said, the opposite of prose is verse, not poetry.)

At any rate, I'm feeling more excited about writing than I have in a while, so that's a good sign.

In related news, I have a poem in the excellent new issue of RHINO, so buy that. There's a link over on the right. And another of my poems will be presented online at Glass: A Journal of Poetry (also linked over on the right), but not until August. But what they have up now is also worth reading, so check them out.

Here comes the other hand!

2009-01-23T22:45:00.004-05:00

One thing I would like to do in 2009 is blog more regularly and substantially. So this is a step in that direction.

I am confident about 2009. Maybe it’s just because I’m so glad 2008 is over. For whatever reason, I have a good feeling about 2009. Especially creatively. I still haven’t quite managed to reinvent myself as a poet, but I think I’m moving in that direction.

As I wrote in my Facebook status: I feel like, as a poet, I've been like the North in the Civil War (according to Shelby Foote) --- fighting with one hand behind my back. 2009 is when the other hand comes out, baby! I really feel that I have not yet begun to write.

Returning to my Jungian roots is an element of my little scheme. About ten years ago, I had a moment of clarity, while browsing in Shaman Drum bookstore in Ann Arbor, as to my vocation. I would be a poet, and Robert Bly’s poetry (which I was buying at the time) and the work of C.G. Jung (especially his extraordinary “Red Book”) were to be my keys to the kingdom.

For some reason, I have never quite been able to achieve what I envisioned so many years ago. Maybe it’s because, like everyone else, I keep getting pulled down into the undertow of the manic extraversion that is our culture. Maybe I just wasn’t mature enough to pursue the inner life as seriously as I hoped to. Maybe I’m still not. But I’m feeling that 2009 might finally be the time for me to get my psychic shit together.

I’ve never been one of those poets who has to struggle to find a theme or an overall vision. Perhaps because I started writing poetry a bit later than most poets, I’ve always known what to write about in the larger sense. What I struggle with is the details: what to write about, specifically, in each individual poem, and how to handle that stylistically. As I’ve previously noted, Jorie Graham seems promising to me as a link between my past work and my future work, since she also writes about the interplay between mind and not-mind (I hesitate to say mind and world, because mind is part of the world, as I see it), as I do; she also lets her form bend and flurry in keeping with her thoughts, which I still aspire to do.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. (What the hell; it’s a blog.)

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I am confident my poetry is about to take a leap forward, or at least a hop forward, in 2009. I hope this will lead to more publications. I’ve got two poems coming out in journals this year (in RHINO and Lake Effect), and I really hope to have more. I must admit that, despite my being a Jungian introvert, my relative lack of publications thus far is really frustrating to me. I am not one of those writers who writes for himself; I want to participate in the culture. It’s not that I want to be famous; I just want to be read. (Okay, I wouldn't mind being a little famous. But that's not my primary motivation.)

I’m hoping there will be a big craze for poems about the ontological status of matter. Fingers crossed!

Also, I intend to finally start doing some cartooning again. I started out as a cartoonist, long before I was a poet, and for a couple of years now I’ve been feeling an itch to get back to that. Sometimes this is more important to me than the poetry. Sometimes not. I’m writing a graphic novel, and improving my drawing skills in the meantime. I hope to actually begin production (which means pencilling and inking the actual final for-print pages) by late spring or early summer. Until then, I hope to post scans of an old comic-book that I made and self-published when I was 19. But first I have to find a copy; I can’t remember where I put the damned things.

So, creatively, my life is full. Not so much otherwise, but that’s not unusual. It seems I’m to be one of those people who lives for his work (and for watching DVDs of Doctor Who; I love that show so much). Therefore, I’m pleased that the work seems to be taking off, published or not.

2009 will also likely decide my professional future: PhD/professor? High school English teacher? Bum? (I’m hoping for the first, not entirely horrified by the second, and wouldn’t be surprised by the third.)

In future posts, I’ll try to elucidate my various brainstorms in greater detail, probably related to the things I’m reading. Right now, I’m about to begin a big coffee-table book about Joseph Cornell. How he fits into the great project, I don’t know, but I have a clear feeling that he does. Then Simic’s book on Cornell, then some of Simic’s own work. Then I might delve into Rilke for a while; I’ve been feeling drawn to him again. And Jung/ian stuff on the side. And drawing practice. And watching Burn Notice and Battlestar Galactica and 24 online (damn you, mid-season-starting tv shows!). And the things I do for money. Honey.

Thanks for reading.

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Just a little something to watch

2009-01-17T21:18:00.001-05:00

Here's a bit of video related to my last post. I promise to have another real post soon.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08312007/watch.html

Happy 82, Old Man

2008-12-23T16:51:00.001-05:00

Today is Robert Bly's birthday. Bly is still my favorite poet; what he has done, and tried to do, is still my model of what poetry is for. Clouded by grad school and other po-biz pollutions, I've strayed from this model in many ways, most of them bad. The trick is to re-connect with the inspiration his oeuvre presents while not being daunted by it. (Check out this guy's bibliography on his Wikipedia page or here. Holy shit!) Mostly, when I compare my work to his, even just his early work, I see that I have failed rather thoroughly.

But this is a time for renewal. Winter solstice and all that. The birth of light from darkness. I'm going to take another shot at it, and to hell with publishing. (Unless editors wise up and decide they love my poems. But I won't go changing to try to please them.)

Anyway. Once again, in honor of his birthday, I present one of my favorite Bly poems. Enjoy.

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life

Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

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You go, A.L.!

2008-11-27T14:14:00.001-05:00

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!

2008-11-20T16:44:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-17T18:37:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-11T12:47:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-10T14:18:00.004-05:00

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,"

2008-11-05T02:19:00.001-05:00

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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I'm old enough to think this is cool.

2008-10-28T17:54:00.001-04:00

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

A few of my favorite things

2008-10-17T20:45:00.005-04:00

And by "things," I mean books.

Because it pleases me just to invoke their names, here is list of books that have been formative and which continue to catalyze:

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth

Campbell's "real" books, such as The Hero With a Thousand Faces, are indeed better, but this one opened my eyes to Campbell and Jung. It's a great shame that his work is out of vogue, at least in the nihilistic dungeon of academia.

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas

This is the best book on Western philosophy that I know of.

The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World by James Hillman

All of Hillman's books (prior to The Soul's Code, anyway) are so brilliant that they make me sick. (With envy.) Re-Visioning Psychology is his best book, but this one is my favorite, especially for its discussion of beauty.

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield

I don't know what to make of people who don't like this book. It's so good! In a poetry culture that can most charitably be described as "spiritually retarded," this is a very precious oasis.

Selected Poems by Robert Bly

I like this 1986 collection better than the 1999 Eating the Honey of Words, because Bly prefaces each section with amazing little essaylets. He's still my favorite poet, because more than anyone else, he writes engagingly about the things that interest me.

The Eight Gates of Zen by John Daido Loori

A classic introduction to Zen practice--especially that of the Mountains and Rivers Order.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

My favorite novel, and one of my favorite books in any category. If your electricity goes out, just open up this book; it emits light.

Of course, there are other books that I love. But these are at the top of the list. Read them, and you know my soul.

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Ephemera

2008-09-29T20:43:00.001-04:00

Just to prove (to myself, at least) that I'm still (relatively) alive, I'm posting a few brief notes.

***

For a while, the fiction bug got me again, and I was sure that I was done with poetry. However, though I am fussing with a couple of stories, poetry has once again ensnared me. At least, until the next round of rejections.

I'm still enamored of fiction, though. I love stories, and it's nice to just stretch out and write prose. The trouble is that I'm averse to drama and conflict, which is a drawback when attempting to write fiction.

***

I'm finally sending out the snail-mail component of my Big Fall Submission. I've got a number of online submissions out there already. All together, I will have about two dozen different poems out at a total of about two dozen different places. At least I feel like I'm actually doing something when I send them out.

***

I used to save my rejection slips. Now they just go in the trash immediately.

***

Maybe I will not give up on the PhD plan, after all. Running my mouth off about Emerson and Melville and Whitman, in addition to creative writing and poetry in general, would not be a bad career.

Though I feel embarrassed asking for another set of recommendation letters.

***

I finally had the nerve to get ahold of the student evaluations from the creative writing class I taught two years ago. I liked teaching that class, and I didn't want to ruin my memory of it by reading the students' comments!

The results are mixed: Overall, the responses were more favorable than I expected (though not as favorable as I would like). But I discovered that, as it turns out, my favorite student evidently didn't like me very much. Oh, well. She's wrong; that was a good class.

(Note to any students--not just of mine, but in general--who might happen to read this: Your teachers can recognize your handwriting--even after two years!)

***

I've got ideas for my next manuscript of poems and for my poetry-writing style overall, as well as two short stories and a graphic novel in progress, in addition to an idea for a good academic essay that might help with the next round of PhD windmill tilting, and the beginning of a book about creative writing as spiritual practice.

But on the other hand, I'm completely broke, unemployed with no prospects, and deeply in debt. I might never recover financially from this past summer and its legacy. So life could go either way at this point.

***

I haven't done shit to help the Obama campaign, though I've gotten lots of e-mails about the need for volunteers. I feel bad, but I just can't believe that making phone calls and knocking on doors can really sway anybody. At any rate, when it comes right down to it, I can't respect these "undecided" voters. How can you not know which side you're on? I don't think I could veil my contempt for these people long enough to talk to them.

***

I know what I want to do in life, but between that and where I am now, there's an enormous dark chasm of financial woe, and I just don't know how to make it over it, and sometimes I just don't think it's worth it.

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Ha

2008-09-08T18:58:00.001-04:00

This made me sort-of-smile a little, inwardly.

Maybe McCain's the one who's Kennedy-esque

2008-09-02T18:36:00.001-04:00

Embedded Video

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John McCain is even crazier than you think

2008-09-01T03:06:00.003-04:00

I know my blog is nothing but links lately, but at least they're good links.

This made me sort of smile a little, which is no mean feat these days.

(Thanks to Julie for posting this on Facebook.)

What a foolish and dangerous choice by McCain. If the Democrats can't take this display of horrifically poor judgment and turn it into victory, then they don't deserve to be in the White House.

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The wind, one brilliant day, . . .

2008-08-26T21:02:00.001-04:00

Here's a cool travel article that is also sort of about poetry--Antonio Machado's, to be specific.

Here's my favorite Machado poem:

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for this jasmine odor,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; I have no flowers left now
in my garden . . . All are dead."

"Then I'll take the waters of the fountains,
and the yellow leaves and the dried-up petals."

The wind left. . . . I wept. I said to my soul:
"What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?"

(trans. Robert Bly)

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Doing My Duty as a Member of the Poetry Community

2008-08-25T17:53:00.002-04:00

Probably anyone reading this blog has already heard about this, but it can't hurt to post this anyway, I figure.

I wonder what the runner-up (who got published) thinks, if he/she has heard about this. That would be an odd position to be in, I would imagine. I'd think it would take the bloom off the rose, a bit, knowing that his/her book got published only as a result of this villainy.

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Something Worth Reading

2008-08-25T15:28:00.002-04:00

This is pretty cool.

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Surprised by Nuanced Literalism

2008-08-21T23:33:00.001-04:00

There's a book out in which the author, N.T. Wright, a notable Christian scholar and thinker, posits that the traditional Christian idea of Heaven is all wrong. Heaven should not be imagined as the ultimate reward, an everlasting paradise in which one spends eternity with God. Rather, it's a temporary stop on the way to the actual physical resurrection of the body when Christ returns.

Or something like that. I haven't read the book, though I rather want to. (If my ramblings here are based on a misunderstanding of what this author really says, I apologize. But, even though I may not have time to get around to reading this for a while, it's on my mind right now.)

What fascinates me is that this author--a very intelligent, educated man--appears to actually believe that this is literally true.

it seems to me that the reason many such literalistic Christians are literalistic Christians is that they want to live inside a myth. That is, they want it to be true, and not "myth" at all. This author seems to be a grade well above the Left Behind crew, in terms of intelligence. And yet he thinks everyone will someday be physically resurrected.

I'm somewhat ambivalent as to how to respond to this. On the one hand, I find myself a lot more sympathetic to this sort of culture than are most of my literary/academic peers. I am convinced that spirituality and religion are essential parts of human life. I mean, truly essential, as in we really cannot live without them. On the other hand, it may be that such literalism, by projecting spiritual reality "out there" instead of realizing it within, is really not much better, spiritually, than the spiritually-denatured secular post-humanism that it supposedly opposes.

I mean, watch Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth already, people. Seriously. If you didn't get it the first time, watch it again.

Still, I guess I finally come down more on the pro side than on the con. Wright's is not the brutish, desperate literalism of mere fundamentalism. I understand the appeal of living in a myth, even if I think it's ultimately spiritually dessicating to remain inside it. "Hope" is all living inside a myth can offer, because one is forever hoping for the myth to be proven "true." Better to see through it, so as to realize its wisdom right here and now. Christianity remains a powerful symbol-system which can make possible powerful insights into one's own being and that of the universe, generally, if one takes a step outside of "belief."

But it can be lonely and cold outside of a myth, especially if one loses contact with myth and archetype entirely, which is dangerously easy once one ceases to "believe."

Then one gets a job in a university English department and rambles about the signifier and the signified, or something, I suppose.

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All the king's horses and all the king's men have not yet been able to put Michael back together again.

2008-08-05T23:17:00.003-04:00

Obviously, my posts have dwindled since the golden age of May. Let's just say that June and July were truly nightmarish (and August appears to be just as bad, so far). Actually, most of my regular readers have some idea what's been going on. But I don't want this to be "that" kind of blog, so I'll just move on.

One important development is that, due to personal setbacks this summer, the PhD plan is either postponed or dashed completely, depending in part upon whether I can get myself back together again. So, I won't be going to Chicago this fall, after all. This might be the end of my student life forever, for all I know right now.

Occupying this weird liminal space, in which I don't know what either the future or the immediate present hold for me, has made me look hard at my life plans, to the extent that I have any. For a while I had planned to quit poetry completely, since the PhD commitment was really all that was connecting me to poetry. I feel quite alienated by much of contemporary poetry, not to mention by my difficulty in getting anything published. But I've had an idea for my next manuscript, which will likely be even more unpalatable to publishers than is Thrown, my current manuscript. The gist of it is something like "Fifty Ways to Imagine God," in which each poem is a different variety of imaginative poetic theology, which I mean as loosely and openly as possible. So, in theory, this will include a huge variety of forms and voices. I'm hoping this will allow me to jump around between all the different styles of vision and discourse that fill my reading life. The title will likely be Godsmithing, for which I am indebted to Melissa in the Spring 06 poetry workshop.

Overall, my motivation for writing is generally to participate in the culture; I write to be read. I agree completely with Sartre that literature, to exist, must include both writer and reader. But now I'm leaning towards writing more in terms of some kind of personal spiritual exploration. I have not used poetry in that way thus far; usually I use poems to report, and to celebrate, what I have already learned by other means. So now I'm reading touchy-feely writing-as-therapy sort of books. I wanted a new direction, and this certainly is one!

Other recent inner developments include a recognition that I have largely lost my way spiritually, so the vacation from the academy may allow me to return to my old practices. If I didn't have so many debts to deal with, I would go live at Zen Mountain Monastery, which I consider my spiritual home base. Maybe in the coming year I will finally achieve my old dream of being a formal student of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism. There is a Toledo Zen group, which I have never gotten around to connecting with, that is loosely affiliated with the monastery. And I've already taken the refuge and bodhisattva vows in the Tibetan Karma Kagyu tradition, so I hope to re-connect with them as well. (My "problem" has robbed me of much of my control of my life, so hoping is the best I can do these days.)

Of course, I really have no idea what's going to happen to me. For the first time in many years, I have no economic security of any kind. No job lined up, no loans on the way. So far, no prospects at all. I'm hoping that having two master's degrees will let me get a job other than working at Wal-Mart. I wonder how I would look in the blue vest with the smiley face.

"O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." -- Thomas Wolfe

I don't usually post this sort of thing . . .

2008-07-27T02:07:00.004-04:00

. . . but this one sums up my feelings about the world right now.

Plus, I like kitties.

(The whole picture doesn't quite fit, but if you click on it, you can see the whole thing.)

more cat pictures

Michael rates the superhero movies . . .

2008-07-22T19:14:00.005-04:00

. . . with brief commentary.

(I'm not writing about poetry. Fuck poetry. I quit poetry. I'd rather make a list of superhero movies.)

(This list includes only those films released since 2000, so the older Superman and Batman films are not included. Also, I'm only including superheroes that existed when I was a little kid, because I don't care so much about the other ones. Though I like Hellboy.)

1. X-Men (2000)
This still holds up really well, I think. It's well cast, well acted, has a good story, is often aesthetically striking, and has soul. The reconceptualization of the Rogue character is still brilliant and moving, and this Wolverine is also an improvement over the comics version. Also: Rebecca Romijn wearing little besides blue paint! What more do you want in a movie?

2. Batman Begins (2005)
This movie saved Batman's cinematic life. Well cast, well acted, and often ingenious in its subtle reinvention of the Batman character. Goes just far enough in making Batman quasi-realistic while maintaining the mythic quality. Christian Bale is just right as Batman, and I still think Katie Holmes is a better Rachel than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Yes, I like this better than its successor.

3. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Much more satisfying than its predecessor. Excellent script, with the use of the web as metaphor for the connectedness Peter has to embrace. A nice balance of action and pathos. Again, casting is key; Maguire again proves he's just right for this character. Raimi's direction is still too broad and hamfisted, but the script compensates nicely.

4. X2 (2003)
A bit too much video-game-style action for my taste, and just a bit too busy in general, but this is still a really good film. The story is good, as are the performances. For me, this one doesn't quite have the same soul-quality as the first one, and I don't think the look of it is quite as sharp as its predecessor's.

5. The Dark Knight (2008)
A very impressive film, but I think it goes too far in the realism direction, losing the mythic aspect of the Batman. Ledger is indeed brilliant, but the movie is just too grim and bleak. Also, I find the first film's psychological theme more interesting than this one's moral theme. And I didn't like Gyllenhaal as Rachel; her Rachel is kind of mean. I wasn't too sorry to see her go. (Though I like Gyllenhaal otherwise.) All in all, I can't say I really want to ever see this one again, even though it's number 5 on the list.

6. Spider-Man (2008)
This one is flawed: the special effects are often poor, the action scenes disappointing. Dafoe's performance is hammy and grating. But Maguire is perfectly cast, as is Dunst, and Raimi gets the basic emotions right. It's a fun movie, though it is eclipsed by its successor. Mainly, this is the one that brought Spidey to the big screen, so you've gotta love it for that reason.

7. Superman Returns (2006)
Routh is no Reeve, but he's watchable, and Bosworth is a big improvement over Kidder (though who wouldn't be?). There are three main flaws with this often poetic reboot of the Superman franchise. One, there's not enough Superman in it. Two, Spacey is suprisingly sucky as Luthor. Three, and most important, this movie features possibly the worst idea ever in the history of screenwriting: Superman has a little moppet-headed sitcom kid. Bad, bad, bad idea. Did anyone actually think, "You know, I like Superman, but he'd be even cooler if he were a dad"? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. Still, I like the continuation of the Donner elements, and the part where Superman falls to earth after pushing the landmass into space is really good.

8. Hulk (2003)
Give Ang Lee a break. This is not nearly as bad as people say. It's actually an ingenious attempt to give the character some emotional weight, and it's often poetic. And it has Jennifer Connelly in it. To me, the big flaw is Nick Nolte. I guess I just don't like Nick Nolte.

9. X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006)
It still saddens me that Singer abandoned this to do Superman Returns. It saddens me more that they let Brett Ratner direct in spite of protests by the fans. The worst part about this is the ridiculously short running time; presumably, that was done in order to squeeze one more showing into the schedule at the theater. Way too short, and totally lacking the emotion and poetry of the Singer films, this is, nevertheless, still the same cast, so it's not all bad. But wtf were they thinking to kill Cyclops and Professor X?

10. Spider-Man 3
This is what happens when Raimi doesn't have a good script to balance his hamfisted directing. Mediocre all the way through. But it still has Spider-Man in it, not to mention Kirsten Dunst, so it's worth watching. Once.

11. Fantastic Four (2005)
Tim Story makes Sam Raimi look like Ingmar friggin Bergman. How do you fuck up the Fantastic Four? Watch and learn. Chiklis is good as the Thing, but the rest of the actors are sadly miscast. I like looking at Jessica Alba just as much as the next guy, but she's not Sue Storm Richards, and the British guy from Horatio Hornblower is really miscast as Reed Richards. Mostly, it's just a bad script and hack directing.

12. Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
As above, but more so.

I have not seen Iron Man or the new Hulk movie.

Now, if you want to see some genuinely pleasing filmmaking, here's an animated short called "The Cat Came Back." I used to really like this back in the day. Enjoy.

Good for me, good for you!

2008-06-29T23:04:00.002-04:00

This may seem apropos of nothing, but this is the kind of stuff that helps me remember who I used to be underneath all this academic soot that covers me currently. It may only be a clip from an old tv show, but it's still the kind of stuff that used to mean a lot to me (and still does). So I'm inflicting it on you! So, welcome to a glimpse of my heart of hearts.

Paradise Procrastinated

2008-05-30T16:28:00.003-04:00

I figure anyone reading this blog must be pretty desperate for something to read. So, even though I seem to have lost interest in my own thoughts recently, that's no reason you should go hungry. And since my own progress with Milton has been a little slow thus far, here's a link to a good article that just came out in The New Yorker. The very fact of such an article in 2008 kind of makes me happy. (Here's a sentence to whet your appetite: "The best-known portrait of his mature years makes Milton look like the dyspeptic brother of the man on the Quaker Oats box.")

This article comes along at a good time for me, because it helps me psych myself up for finishing (which is to say, reading about ¾ of it for the first time) Paradise Lost. I haven't even gotten to "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso". I'm just about to re-read Vendler's chapter on Milton from Coming of Age as a Poet, though.

I did, however, watch Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which is a poetic epic in its way. So I haven't been totally unproductive. (Plus, Nausicaä is way cooler than Adam.)

Also, I read a book about Freud and Einstein, so it may be that I'll be ranting about psychoanalytic theory instead of poetry when I get back on the blog-wagon. Can you feel the excitement?

Don't say you haven't been warned.

It turns out mystics really do still have a place in our culture

2008-05-26T17:30:00.006-04:00

Did you know that there is a "Joan of Arc" brand of canned goods? I'm trying to imagine the mental process of the marketing whiz who came up with that brand name. It must have been something like

Virgin saint + visions of God + France vs. England + heresy + martyrdom = Beans!

Burned at the stake = good cookin'?

Beauty, truth, blah blah blah: Part II

2008-05-26T01:31:00.001-04:00

In which the author resorts to the "undergrad term-paper interlude" that, in an earlier post, he promised to spare his readers.

***

So, since I don't really have any new thoughts today, I'm posting a more detailed version of my response to "Ode on a Grecian Urn" from last week. I guess I get a little pedantic when discussing this poem, but it's only because I care.

***

The ending to this poem is very famous, but these days the consensus seems to be that Keats dodges the questions he raises and is full of sh*t. This blows my mind. As far as I can see, Keats resolves his poem perfectly; he doesn't answer the original questions because they are quite simply the wrong questions. To put it oversimplistically (which is something I'm pretty good at), his "point" is that the truth conveyed by art, which may be the only truth that's really possible, is (at least experientially) nontemporal rather than temporal. Critics whose orientation is 100% social-historical miss this point, because they can't conceive of anything that doesn't exist in time.

The questions about what is happening in the urn's images cannot be answered. Such knowledge died with the urn's creators; such knowledge belongs to the mortal, temporal world, as does the plaintive speaker of the poem. Keats asks the questions in order to display the tragic fact of their unanswerability. He invites the reader to try to imagine these narrative, temporal details, so as to then pull the rug out from under the reader, forcing her/him to make the same shift the speaker makes. "We can't know those answers," he implies, "but maybe we can know something else." So the speaker turns to the kind of truth that art can and does communicate. Its "silent form . . . [teases] us out of thought," so that it is possible to apprehend something that has variously been called both beauty and truth. Art can't save us from death, but it can show us something that never dies.

Basically, this is just a variety of Platonism, which rubs some people the wrong way (or, perhaps, doesn't rub them at all). Some might say the ending is a false consolation; such critics would argue that the proper conclusion, once the speaker has realized the impossibility of truly knowing the temporal world, is to admit that there is no such thing as truth at all. For them, "heard melodies" are the only melodies there are. But Keats wants to redefine beauty and truth (or at least return them to a quasi-Platonic sense). This isn't the kind of beauty that has "ugly" (or anything else) as its opposite; this isn't the kind of truth that has "false" (or anything else) as its opposite. In other words, it's not about judging what is or isn't "beautiful" or "true"; the judging mind has no place here. It's about being struck between the eyes with a perception of reality so powerful and so fresh that it seems reality has been properly and genuinely communicated. It's a different order of experience. For Keats, art can provide this. An experience of seeming timelessness is available to consciousness, and Keats somewhat desperately seizes upon this option as a consolation for the pain of loss and time. But it's a legitimate consolation.

The great thing about Keats is that for him, beauty always resided smack dab in the midst of the most sensual experience. In his version of Platonism, one does not leave "this world" behind in favor of some de-sensualized intellectual dimension. Rather, one finds beauty here and now, and in so doing one somehow transcends temporality even while immersed within it. No ladder is necessary, because there's nowhere else to go—certainly nowhere better than here, as long as one has poetry to provide the unheard melodies.

I like to think of this poem in combination with a much more informal little poem called "This Living Hand":

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

I find this one especially haunting. It makes his search for timeless beauty and truth in "Grecian Urn" that much more poignant. The final truth of "Grecian Urn" is that one can partake of eternity through art, but one must be alive to do so. That beauty is truth is all we know and need to know on earth. For Keats, eternity is only for the living.

For God's sake, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.

2008-05-23T18:52:00.005-04:00

I love that line.

Okay, so instead of reading Milton and Coleridge and the like, I've been watching Woody Allen movies. But those are classics, too. (Some of them, anyway.)

What I like most about Allen's best films is that they present such an idiosyncratically complete version of reality. Films such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors feel as if Allen somehow transferred his soul directly onto celluloid. (Whether or not they really do express the "real" Woody Allen is irrelevant; more important is that they seem to.) The women, the doomed relationships, the jokes, the jazz, the New York intellectuals, and just New York generally: these things all combine so perfectly that I just envy the hell out of Allen for being able to make art that way.

This is what makes an artist great: s/he (re)creates a reality that reflects the essence of his/her personality. This is as true for poetry as for film: When I read Blake, for instance, I am allowed to live in the world as Blake saw it. This is appealing because it's the reflection not of the everyday, confused, ordinary personality, but of an intensified, essentialized personality; it's the reflection of how it feels to be fully aware, fully focused, and fully alive. No doubt William Blake shuffled about in an ordinary, confused state most of the time, as do we all. But sometimes his personality coalesced so as to make possible the reality that we find in his poems and paintings. All that he thought and felt and obsessed over came together in the work. This appeals, I think, because we all want to tap into the equivalent intensification of our own selves. Once we know what this feels like from experiencing great art, we have a better chance of coalescing this way ourselves. And then one's whole experience of reality changes, if only temporarily, because the world we see is the world we are.

Also, I like the specific milieu of Allen's films. I like the humor, and I like the intellectually pretentious characters. I think I may be a Woody Allen character, or maybe I aspire to be one. He has a brilliant short story called "The Whore of Mensa," about a call-girl service that provides beautiful women who, instead of having sex with their customers, have conversations with them about stuff like Dostoevsky or Hegel or the symbolism in Moby-Dick, etc. If such a service were real, I would use it.

I guess part of my interest in Allen's work is a sort of nostalgia for that sort of intellectual culture, in which literature majors actually talked about literature instead of just theory. I'm nostalgic for it, even though I never experienced it when it really existed. I want to think about symbolism and meaning, not all this gender and class crap. I feel kind of betrayed by the current English-dept. climate. But I digress.

I'm still planning to delve deeply into English lit., and as I do so I will try to focus on how the poets in question manage to transfer their essential souls into the writing.

You're Goddamned Right Beauty Is Truth

2008-05-21T22:23:00.003-04:00

I guess I missed yesterday's blog entry. Oh, well; calendars and schedules are for squares, anyway.

***

Today's blog entry is participatory! Here's a litmus test for your intellectual/spiritual orientation: What do you think of the ending to Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? More specifically, do you agree with the ending, or is Keats full of it? Does this ending resolve the poem, or is Keats dodging the questions he raises?

In case you haven't memorized the poem, it goes like this:

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
By John Keats

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I'm not going to drone on and on with my interpretation, because I don't want today's blog entry to degenerate into an undergrad term-paper interlude. Suffice to say, I can't believe everyone doesn't sigh with assent upon reading the ending of this poem. People usually either sigh with assent or scratch their heads, nonplussed. Which makes me scratch my head. While I'm sighing.

You make the call.

I Prefer Poems That Aren't Shaved Down There

2008-05-19T21:44:00.003-04:00

I hadn't planned to start off with thoughts on Shakespeare, but what the hell.

One of the reasons I read poetry is to steal from other poets. But how does one steal from Shakespeare? I do think he (whoever he was, Stratford or Oxford) was a bona fide genius, but part of his allure also results from his placement in history. He wrote at a time of unusual opportunity, when the modern English language, our English, was just being born.

Here's a partial list of words he coined: compromise, dwindle, madcap, tranquil, lonely, submerge, undress, cold-blooded, champion, torture, swagger, and bloodstained. A longer list can be found here. And then there's the way he used the words . . .

The English language is always changing, always alive. However, our language is still basically the same language that Shakespeare and his contemporaries originated. Poets can still mess with language a great deal, but is it even possible for anyone today to write as freshly as Shakespeare? Even if someone of equal genius appeared today, I think he or she would might not be able to achieve equal results. I fear the language is just not molten and protean enough anymore. Has it cooled and hardened? It seems to let less in, at least without a fight. An author who uses neologisms these days often seems merely eccentric or, at best, "experimental."

And yet that's still just so tempting. There's a lot of pressure on poets now to use what Eliot called "the language of the tribe." God forbid anyone uses language that isn't familiar and contemporary. But that limitation dulls the English language, it seems to me. Even "experimental" poets often use very limited diction. How can poets write poetry as lexically lively as Shakespeare's without seeming merely eccentric? How can poets preserve the richness of the language without seeming quaintly anachronistic?

The last major poet who tried to keep the English language thick with non-ordinary vocabulary was Hart Crane. His approach to Modernism was to drop Elizabethan and Romantic language directly atop the phenomena of the modern world, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, willing them to co-exist. If only he had (fully) succeeded. Think of the possibilities that would be available if his version of modernism had taken. Instead, we got W.C. Williams and his goddamned wheel barrow. (Nothing depends on that f***ing wheel barrow! Nothing, I say!)

In an earlier post, I announced my preference for curvy language. To that, let me add my allegiance to furry language. Let me further say that current diction is often the equivalent of a woman who's shaved down there, and that, in literature as in life, I prefer the forest to the plain.

I think I shall be among the English poets

2008-05-18T23:00:00.003-04:00

Unfortunately, in my case that means only that I hope to spend a good chunk of summer reading them. I mean the classics, baby.

Many, I am already familiar with; I'll be deepening my awareness of those poets. (You go, John Keats!) Others, I'm sad to admit, I have not read in sufficient depth. Usually, such poets are the ones I admire but don't exactly enjoy. (I'm looking at you, John Milton. I'll finish Paradise Lost this summer if it kills me. Though hopefully it won't kill me, seeing as that would interfere somewhat with my progress in the doctoral program. I do enjoy Milton in short bursts, actually, but I've never been able to get through that whole poem.)

I am one of those old fogeys who think poets should be very well read not only in contemporary poetry but in the canon, as well. Because I am not satisfied with my own experience in that area, I feel a need to dive head-first into the treasure house.

Strangely, some contemporary poets don't have much interest in the older stuff. I'm not just talking about the kids who say, "I don't read poetry; I just write it." I mean real, authentic, card-carrying poet-union members who never spend any time reading anything published before 1980. To each his/her own, but it's just strange to me. I would rather read "To Autumn" or "Tintern Abbey" or just about anything by Shakespeare than read about 90% of what gets published these days. (Not that the new stuff isn't good; it's just that some of the older stuff is even better.) At any rate, I like being aware of the history, however mythic, of my vocation.

(Also, the advantage of writing about older stuff is that I can say anything I want without the danger of running into the author at AWP or someplace!)

Since I've already pretty well spewed my whole kooky philosophy of everything here on the blog in the last 10 days or so, I have to come up with something else to write about. Thus, I'm hoping that blogging my thoughts on the elders will be both helpful to my project and at least a little bit interesting to any readers I might still have. Besides, if I promise to write about this stuff, I have to actually do the reading!

However, if I'm to maintain my interest, I'll probably have to abandon chronology and read whatever suits me at the moment. (Otherwise, I might never get past Shakespeare! I love Shakespeare, but there's just so much there.) Then again, I may get anal and proceed in strict chronological order.

(I am including the Americans, beginning with Whitman, whom I'll get to eventually. But I'll probably stick with the Brits at first.)

So, for a little while I shall speak of poetry instead of vague musings about gods and brains and the nature of matter. Delicious.

Doesn't This Guy Ever Think About Anything Else?

2008-05-17T14:45:00.002-04:00

I'm told obsessiveness is a good quality in artists.

***

Gods live in the psyche. Even if initially sparked by survival stress, fear of death, or childhood trauma, the figures and occurrences of myth have evidently become permanent inhabitants of our bodies and minds. These phantoms, far exceeding their possible origins as delusional responses to the hardships of life, animate our whole experience of the world. As some children exceed their parents (quick: name Einstein's mother and father, or Da Vinci's), these figures are the stars, in every sense, of the imagination. The gods now imagine us.

They may not always appear as persons. Like the Biblical God, they may appear as natural symbols: fire, a whirlwind, darkness. They may appear as habitual thought-constellations: Ares within road rage or political partisanship, or Aphrodite lurking inside flirtiness or the delight in the lovely shapes of things.

I could go on and on, but you're better off just reading Jung and James Hillman.

However, aside from featuring mythic personages (which in this case is what I mean by "gods," including figures such as Orpheus, Odysseus, etc.), myths display processes. In all myths, the gods act. They do stuff. The story shifts from one to another and back again, then on to still another.

Narrative theory tells us that such stories are the way humans order and make sense of the world, which is not wrong. But what especially intrigues me about myths is the way they mirror psychic process, the way one thought merges into another and another and another. (And by thought, I mean any content of mind, whether intellectual or emotional.) And not just stories; lyric poems also have a progressive logic that is equivalent to that of story.

I have tried in the past (unsuccessfully) to find a way of representing this in language, switching between registers of diction and of feeling in order to parallel the shifts within the myths. Every myth is an interaction of multiple mythic figures in narrative-temporal sequence. What interests me is not just which archetypes are present, but how they interact, in the way that chemicals interact with each other. Two otherwise harmless chemicals, when combined, make a big boom. The same is true for gods.

This still seems to me a good basis for what I want to do in poems. I like to shift between various registers, and I'd like to somehow use myth (however loosely) as my template for how to best arrange these shifts, how to place them in relation to each other, how to let the various tonal sub-voices move throughout the poem.

Music also seems a promising model, but I don't really understand it well enough to use it (yet).

The project of reconciling active involvement with these myths while paying attention to the findings of the scientists is not easy. Lately, it is kicking my ass. The conclusion I keep coming to is that the needs of the psyche must be honored, whether or not they are found to be reducible to brain mechanics. So, this is how I preserve the gods. They remain the way the universe likes to imagine itself. What is necessary is not to believe, but rather to care. Without this care, we cannot imagine intensely. The best answer I have to the question of what to do with these myths: just sit back and behold them, participating when invited.

What I Think About When I Wonder About Poetry

2008-05-17T01:43:00.002-04:00

I once read, in a book about postmodernism, a statement something like "Of course, we can no longer believe Romantic ideas about the imagination." (The "of course" is the worst part.) While it's true that imagination must now be understood as produced by the brain (and the body generally, I suppose) rather than just being some sort of airy mystery, I don't agree that the Romantic idea of imaginaton is otherwise so obsolete.

Shelley thought that poetry was essential for political change, because poetry activates and exercises the imagination. Without imagination, one can't imagine a better world. Without imagination, one can't imagine the suffering of others, and without that basis for empathy, there's no impetus for change. This idea has fallen out of vogue, but it seems to me rather irrefutable. Reading Marxist literary theory is not enough. Watching CNN is not enough.

To put it differently: Poetry makes psyche happen, and psyche makes everything else happen. At least in the human world. (Of course, psyche makes poetry happen, but I won't get into that whole chicken-egg problem.) It's no accident that the presidential candidate who's most associated with change is known for his pretty words and actually wrote some poetry in his college days.

So, when I wonder if poetry is really worth anything, I remember that this potential for psychic transformation is why I fell into poetry in the first place. Other arts can do it, but poetry almost cannot not do it. The scientists speak of "neuroplasticity," the ability of the brain to change its usual patterns of experience and response. This is a kind of liberation.

But what kind of poetry is best suited for this? Some poetry opens me up more than others. How can I write to best unclog those psychic pipes?

With Our Very Special Guest Star . . .

2008-05-15T14:29:00.003-04:00

I don't really have much on my mind today. I'm sick of the whole culture. I'm sick of earth. Blah.

So, I'm just going to link to a very cool article in The New York Times that is relevant to my discussion of the brain from a few days ago. This guy actually seems to know what he's talking about.

Enjoy!

Promises, promises

2008-05-14T16:17:00.002-04:00

What it all comes down to is that I want very much to write, but I have a very hard time figuring out what to write about. Even with all my thematic and formal ideas, still I struggle to find something concrete upon which to base individual poems.

I wish I could just write about my life situations. Unfortunately, my weird teflon karma prevents me from having normal human life situations. Nothing sticks. So, I'm left playing poet-philosopher. Or philosopher-poet. Or whatever. Don't get me wrong; I am genuinely interested in the themes I try to work with. But sometimes I wish I had more than themes to write about.

On the other hand, at least I'm not just one more soldier in the confessional-poetry army. The trouble is, many readers, even experienced official poetry experts, seem to equate poetry with some sort of personal emotional lyric utterance. Bah to that, I say. Being is a perfectly good subject to write about. Being and Psyche. Being and Psyche can be sexy. I promise!

God, Popeye, and the Ground of Being

2008-05-13T20:31:00.001-04:00

God: "I am who I am."
Popeye: "I yam what I yam."

One and the same? You be the judge.

***

Today I'm thinking about God. More precisely, I'm thinking about what to do with the idea of God. Jung has demonstrated fairly clearly (in case current events are not proof enough) that religious symbols, and religiosity itself, are integral to the human psyche. It's not as simple as whether or not one "believes." Archetypes don't go away because you don't believe in them.

The way our retarded culture usually presents the issue is "Sunday School vs. Atheism". According to this version, if you have outgrown the childish Sunday School version of God, also known as "supernatural theism," then the only alternative is flat-out atheism.

When Joseph Campbell was asked by a street-corner evangelist whether he believed in God, Campbell answered, "You don't have time for my answer." Indeed, it's not a simple question. It all depends on what one means by "God" and what one means by "believe."

If one means by "God" the transcendent/immanent sacred ground of being, and by "believe" one means "to orient one's mind toward the object in question," then I believe in God. (I try, anyway.)

Though I am a Buddhist (let's say a Reform Buddhist), I am also, technically, Catholic. I am very interested in engaging the symbols of Christianity, though I have no use for obedience to any particular church or authority. I think humans must be religious in order to feel fully alive, and religion must, primarily, connect people to what is sometimes called "the transcendent." It's not enough to worship potatoes or something; true religion has the effect of establishing a sense of connectedness to the sacred ground of being. Because the symbol tradition that most Westerners are comfortable with is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, those symbols must still be used, somehow.

So, that's yet another of my little sub-projects within the larger project of "poetry." How (and why) to figure God. Therefore, don't be surprised if little bits of myth stuff from the Bible and other, more apocryphal sources appear more frequently. The trick is to do it in such a way that I don't alienate all the heathens out there in the literary community. (Ha!) (Though I sense my mystical content may already turn off, or just baffle, a lot of readers.) I feel there is truly some cultural usefulness in working with these symbols. My underlying ontology may be quasi-Buddhist, but (more of) my symbols should be Judeo-Christian.

Besides, I can only talk generally about luminosity and numinosity so many freakin' times.

Why Michael Is Not a Novelist

2008-05-12T17:26:00.003-04:00

It may be that what I really need to do in future poems is simply include elements that I have previously left out. One such element is narrative.

A year ago today (in terms of day of the week, at least; technically, it was a year ago Wednesday) I began a summer fiction workshop. I look back on that class fondly. It's nice to just stretch out, creatively, and write page after page of narrative prose. Every now and then, I really think seriously about writing fiction instead of poetry. But I always end up coming back to poetry.

I've concluded that I really have no aptitude for fiction, at least for writing it regularly, because my orientation to life is too far away from the mindset necessary for a fiction writer. Here's the formulation I've come up with as an explanation: Fiction's concern is primarily social; Poetry's is primarily psychic. (This is probably not a new discovery, but I'm slow, so it's new to me.)

That is, most fiction is concerned with social situations, dilemmas, and institutions. Characters have problems with family or other loved ones, or they have class struggles, or whatever. Even if they are trying to determine their identities, they do it in social terms. There is psychological growth and all that, but it's usually expressed in terms of social occurrences. Just today, I spent some time on Amazon.com and the New York Times Books page investigating a contemporary fiction writer who's getting a lot of very good press right now. I really want to share in whatever her fans are experiencing, but she writes in a territory into which I cannot follow. Which is true of most fiction. I admire it, but I can't quite go there.

Poetry, on the other hand, is usually more concerned with the way an individual psyche transforms (or fails to transform) life experience. This experience can be social in origin, but the poem transmutes society into soul. When I read fiction, I often feel a powerful need to find some proof that there's more to life. That this can't be all there is; there must be something more. I guess uncovering that "something more" is why I write, and why I write poems in particular.

Of course, I'm grossly oversimplifying. In truth, there is a lot of overlap. Fiction writers often include some very lyrical passages that have nothing to do with the social world. My favorite fiction writers achieve a lyricism and psychic intensity that rivals that of my favorite poets. And poets regularly write about relationships and other social intrigues. And I'm probably projecting my own situation a bit, since for me the needle points somewhat farther toward the "psychic" side than is true for most people.

But the fact remains that poetry is likely to remain my literary home. So, the thing to do, when I feel the fiction itch, is to infuse my poems with some sort of narrative. Good for my poems, good for me. We'll see how that works.

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the brain!

2008-05-11T14:58:00.004-04:00

I don't know if anyone is reading these daily posts or getting anything from them besides me, but I'm going to keep on truckin' anyway. I'm learning some good stuff about what I think!

***

It's not just cosmological science that I eagerly misinterpret and/or oversimplify. I also find myself drawn to include findings from biological studies. About a year and half ago, I bought a big biology textbook to use as a sort of grand compendium of possible metaphors and/or symbols. (I haven't read it yet, but it was still a good idea.)

In particular, neuroscience interests me a great deal, at least in the popularized form that I can sort of understand. If I am interested in mind, I can't very well ignore what scientists are discovering about the brain, all of which overflows into the problem of soul and spirit. Currently, my position is that I accept (more or less) the proposition that reality, including consciousness, is founded upon a material basis, but I also keep in mind that (to my understanding) no one quite knows what matter is. So the statement that "all is material" actually points to a lot more mystery, even Mystery, than is commonly allowed.

At any rate, even if mystical experience is fully dependent on the brain, it's still a necessary and (at least sometimes) accurate mode of consciousness—maybe the brain at its peak functioning, in fact.

One thing neuroscience makes clear (at least in my version of it) is that the world we typically experience is like a little movie produced by our brains. It seems to derive from sense perceptions of what is presumably a "real" world, but the version we experience is smoothed out and altered according to our neuropsychic needs. A lot is left out. So, the idea that the world we experience isn't quite reality turns out to have some validity after all.

Anyway, I just like reading this brain stuff. For me, it is a way of resituating Tantric and Romantic ideas about the primacy of imagination in a more securely 21st-century context. What we get is our brain's imagining of life, which, because the brain is part of that life, is life re-imagining life. This makes me happy.

I do think, however, that poets (and other artists) must continue to tap into intuition and imagination directly. Artists should not be mere followers of science; they just should not ignore it. Psyche has its own rules, is its own system, and is more significant, even if not foundational.

And, to be honest, I do suspect there is some sort of energy (or whatever you want to call it) that is unmeasured (and perhaps unmeasurable) by science, which mystics (even if using their brains) can perceive.

Holy! Holy! Holy!

Let There Be Cosmology

2008-05-11T00:02:00.002-04:00

Another idea that interests me is that artists (poets included) should keep up with the cosmology (in the widest sense) of the times. Should poems reflect the world—or, more accurately, the idea of the world—that contemporary people actually live in?

This becomes an especially thorny question in 2008, because obviously not everyone agrees as to what the world is. Some people believe this world was created by, and is presided over by, God. Some think the world is nothing but matter. Some people are aware of the discoveries/hypotheses of quantum physics, such as string theory and M theory and etc. Some are not. And most people, no matter which of these other groups they fall into, also subscribe more than they think to a basic animal faith in the uncomplicated solidity of things. Is this relevant to poetry? Is it apparent in any given poem what version of the world the poet lives in? What should poets do with all this?

One very interesting angle on this is to, in some way, write about the clash of cosmologies that is occurring now, about the desire to reconcile string theory and religion and the ordinary common-sense, animal-faith reality we all experience everyday. This is something I want to explore in poems. Another way (which I have already tried to do, but which I hope I will do more successfully in the future) is to roll these all up into a single plump mega-cosmology.

To put it another way: if the poet's job is to re-imagine the world, must a poet in 2008 keep informed about what the sciences say, and what the religions say, and etc.? Must the scientific imagination be included in the poetic imagination, somehow? My vote is yes, though allowing for the fact that some poets (myself at the top of the list) will inevitably misunderstand the science.

Some will argue that no such awareness is necessary, but I'm not so sure. I very much disagree with the view that there are only a few basic subjects for poems: love, mortality, nature, etc. I think poems can be about anything, but even if one accepts the idea that there are only a few subjects to write about, it must be recognized that the poet's cosmology will color even those traditional topics. A poem about death written by a poet who believes in Heaven is very different from one written by a materialist atheist. A love poem written by someone who believes the whole "soul mate" thing from the Symposium will differ from one written by someone who thinks we are only dying animal products of the Big Bang. More subtly, a nature poem written by someone who simply takes sense perception for granted in an ordinary, animal-faith way will differ from one written by someone steeped in the frothy subatomic mysteries of particle physics.

It seems to me there are two basic ways to incorporate cosmology. The first, as noted, is to actually write about it, foregrounding cosmological ideas in the main content of the poem. The second is to let cosmology serve simply as backdrop. This happens whether the poet likes it or not, so my project is to keep aware of this as I modify my writing style (if in fact I manage to do so). I study Buddhism and other religious mysticism and stuff like string theory (in its popularized, de-mathed form), but do these things make it into my work?

I fear that the lazy, consumerist brand of materialism has crept so fully into this culture that, even though my head is filled with thoughts of Buddha Nature and dimensional membranes, I really live—and write—as just one more citizen of Cheap Plastic Strip-Mall America.

All this is to say that I really have to try harder, when I'm writing, to remember what world I mean to imagine.

Instead of brackets, gods

2008-05-09T20:45:00.004-04:00

I almost forgot to do today's daily post, which is not a good start to my daily posting regimen. But better late than never, I guess.

No funny pictures today. Just words.

***

Today I'll just try to focus my previous blog's topic a little better. So, if I'm going to use Graham as a template because I share her interest in mind's relationship with "world," then my task is to figure out how my own philosophical/intellectual orientation would play out differently.

• I am interested not in "mind" so much as in "psyche," as the term is used by C.G. Jung and James Hillman. That is to say, as the term bleeds right into its sister-word, "soul."
• Consequently, archetypes and myth are of great importance (though I haven't figured out in what way I should use these). Graham references myths sometimes, but I want myth to play more of a foundational role.
• Mysticism, particularly my version of the Buddhist non-dual variety, is the foundation of my view. Thus, while Graham seems to imply a certain dualism between mind and world, I view mind as an extension of world. (Or vice-versa, depending on my mood.) The human psyche, since it is the world, cannot truly be alienated from the world.
• Hence, human language cannot distort "reality," because it is fully part of reality. Nature makes brain makes language, so language=nature. How can nature distort nature? How can reality not know reality? Words are made of earth and sing the earth. Language can only complicate and (further) transform reality. So, the suspicion and skepticism of language that sometimes troubles Graham (as well as a lot of other contemporary poets) is not an affliction I have.
• (That last point may be the most important; I'm more inclined to celebrate consciousness than to be anxious about it.)
• To sum up, more Jung, Hillman, Bachelard, and Trungpa, less Heidegger and Wittgenstein and etc. (Though I do like Heidegger.)
• So, instead of phenomenological brackets, gods.
• Generally, as a Buddhist and a post-Catholic, and simply by temperament, I hew to a certain ontological and epistemological optimism.

I'm really just thinking out loud here, brainstorming. What all of this translates into in terms of actual poetry, I have no friggin' idea. I'm not even sure this does have any relation to poetry. And the bullet-pointed summary I just provided is so drastically oversimplified that it is of limited usefulness. But maybe you get the idea.

***

The instructor for one of the classes I'm taking at UIC in the fall has recommended that we read Kant and Hegel on aesthetics over the summer. The prospect of reading these two kind of makes me want to throw up—especially Kant, who is not known for being an engaging stylist. This quasi-assignment actually makes me want to review my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom are actually very readable. I am more partial to some Germans than to others. Inevitably, snooty bastard that I am, this shite will make it into my new poems. Especially Schopenhauer. He's not my Facebook profile stand-in for nothing. (And I would argue that his pessimism is actually inessential to his overall philosophy, but that's another discussion.)

***

Really my goal is to be a combination of William Blake and Susan Sontag. (Oh, Photoshop . . . )

Prayer to St. Jorie Yeats

2008-05-08T04:55:00.008-04:00

St. Jorie Yeats
Patron Saint of Meaningful Form

***

First, to anyone who might have stumbled across this blog while Googling "Dylan Thomas" or the title poem (or something else):

Welcome.

I know this isn't what you were really looking for, but I get at least half a dozen of you accidental readers every week, so I hope you keep reading and find something interesting. Especially since I have, like, three or four readers otherwise. (Welcome to you too, my intrepid three or four.)

***

So, last month some other poet-bloggers did the "poem-a-day" thing, where they wrote a new draft every day and posted it to their blogs.

I'm not going to do that; my poem-maker doesn't work on the "daily" setting, and I sure as hell wouldn't post my early drafts anyway—for your sake as well as mine.

However, the daily part does interest me, so I'm going to try posting little essay thingies every day, at least for the rest of May.

***

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I might change my poetry style a bit. I'm a little sick of the kind of poem I've been writing for a little while now. Even though I am a bit wary of the seemingly compulsive innovation—or faux-innovation, as it seems to me—that plagues a good chunk of contemporary poetry, I would like to arrive at a form that somehow better matches my content.

But how many viable ways are there, really, to handle poetic form? Back in the days when traditional metrics ruled the roost, it was easy to come up with flashy ways to disrupt the tradition. Now, what's left to disrupt? Bruce Lee once said something like, "All the different martial arts styles are conditioned by the basic limitations of human anatomy. A human being has two arms and two legs, and there are really just so many ways one can realistically and effectively use them in combat." Beyond a certain point, one might just be waving one's arms around.

What can I do to my sentences and lines and etc., to enliven my poems without lapsing into nonsense? My primary exemplar in this project is Jorie Graham. I admire the way she warped poetry to match her own intellectual and emotional preoccupations. The stylistic moves she's made are not at all arbitrary; they have everything to do with her philosophical investigations into the relationship between self and world. Like them or not, one must admit that her styles are perfect expressions of her personal cultural experience. (As far as I can tell from reading her biography, anyway.)

She started off writing much more conventionally, then took off in a new direction. How can I make that leap? What style fits my weird little blend of Eastern mysticism and philosophy and depth psychology and etc.? I feel like this should come naturally, but when I write, my thoughts dribble out in the same old form. Thus, I have to take the poetics bull by the horns and conceptualize a new style, at least to the point of having a working, provisional model to try out.

Another poet who interests me a great deal these days is W.B. Yeats. His way of including myth and esoteric religious material in poems about everyday life appeals to me, as does his attention to language. In some ways, I think my overall poetic project is very similar to his. At any rate, I love how densely packed his poems are, and how pleasing on every level—discursive, sonic, imagistic.

What I want is to come to some happy medium between the kinds of writing epitomized by these two poets. One problem with a lot of poets who open up their form (Graham included to a slight extent, though MUCH less so than her imitators) is that the language gets slack and the poem gets bland and boring. I want to keep my poems densely packed like Yeats's, but also formally inventive and fresh like Graham's. I want to be a perfect hybrid of Yeats and Graham—or, more accurately, of the different kinds of projects they symbolize for me. Hence, St. Jorie Yeats:

So my job is to study Graham and infuse her Jorie-consciousness into my own soul. But I don't want the new poems to be all about the new form. There's a lot of formal innovation out there these days, but much of it seems to me just as arbitrary and unrelated to the poem's content (and poet's psyche) as is any more conventional, traditional form. I don't want to be one of the "Look at me! I've abandoned left alignment!" type of poets, or a member of the "I'm confused, so you should be, too" school. Even Graham painted herself into somewhat of a corner by putting all her eggs in the "formal innovation" basket, so that with every book she had to find a new way to top herself. Perhaps because she hit the wall with Swarm, her books since then have been increasingly less "out there." I want to freshen my form without the form being the point.

And I want to enjoy the writing. There will be joy.

Easy to say, hard to do. I will pray to St. Jorie Yeats for a vision of my poems to be.

Nothin' But a Lot of Talk and an Unpublished Manuscript

2008-04-11T17:14:00.005-04:00

So, it's official: Beginning in August, I am going to attend the doctoral program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Now, I need to organize the fund-raising telethon . . .

You Know You're Really Not Catholic Anymore When . . .

2008-03-23T19:25:00.003-04:00

. . . you had absolutely no idea today was Easter until you saw it on someone else's blog!

Now God will never love me.

I never could understand that weird occult system that they use to figure out what date Easter is. Something about the cycles of the moon. (Which is actually kind of cool, except for the fact that I never have any freakin' idea when Easter is.)

Also, I have to admit that, even though I think the current pope (the real one, not the very cool one pictured above) is a hypocritical creep who speaks publicly against the Iraq war even though he was instrumental in getting Bush re-elected, I am nevertheless sort of pleased by the occurrence of the Easter mass at St. Peter's. It's clear to me that the reason Christianity is undergoing a boom in some parts of the world, among some people, is that the meager productions of the secular mind are absolutely inadequate. It is irrelevant whether or not one "believes" in the claims of religion; this symbolic/mythic way of imagining the world is absolutely necessary for the human psyche. The psyche needs these symbols to fully and properly experience life. The only "alternative" is the low-grade pop nihilism that suffuses most of the popular, secular culture.

(I use the term "secular" somewhat loosely, to describe the attitude that presumes "spiritual" consciousness is false or unavailable or of little interest. One may be unaffiliated with any formal religion without being secular. It's about consciousness, not creed. Some so-called "Christians" are secular. Some atheists are not.)

Anyway. Some people today are actively, joyfully engaging a symbol of spiritual rebirth. Others are . . . not. I wish I were in the former group, but it seems I'm in the latter.

At least I have poetry. Sort of.

Happy Easter!

That's Me, All Right!

2008-03-14T22:55:00.003-04:00

I must admit, I think these things are cool. This one is generated from my manuscript (and literary doppelgänger), Thrown.

created at TagCrowd.com

In other news, the Ph.D. application scoreboard reads as follows:

1 win--with funding
1 win--without funding (which isn't much of a win, really)
1 loss (I'm making a voodoo doll in the image of their school mascot, and I've got the pins all ready to go)
2 draws (which is to say, 2 wait-listings, which really should count as 2 losses, but my ego prefers to list them in this "sort-of-yes" category)
5 still unreported

I had expected news from all of them by this date, so the wait is a bit frustrating. This is almost as bad as the Democratic primaries! But I'm glad for the 1 win-with-funding; otherwise, I might be feeling a touch of anxiety right about now. Oh, well. The saga continues . . .

I knew I should have included "met Jorie Graham" on my c.v.!

Auuggh!

2008-03-05T23:05:00.003-05:00

Imagine making art that more than 20 people actually see, and which is capable of making people genuinely happy while at the same time providing genuine insight into contemporary life.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm in the wrong line of work.

He must be off his Thorazine again

2008-02-24T17:44:00.003-05:00

This blows my freakin' mind.

I know he had little effect in '04, but still . . .

How delusional can he be to take even the slightest chance at ruining things for the Democrats in November? He still won't admit that he is responsible for the existence of the Bush administration.

Tar and feathers, anyone?

Behind the Wheel

2008-02-17T00:17:00.003-05:00

In my unconscious, there is a kind of Wheel of Interests/Influences; now and then, new elements are added, but for the most part they remain the same. There's Buddhism (Zen and Tibetan), Jungian stuff, Joseph Campbell, Catholicism/Christianity, Sufism, Existentialism, a hodge podge of other philosophies, Poetry (which is subdivided into various categories), Fiction (ditto), Painting, Comics/Graphic Novels/Cartooning, and Ingmar Bergman . . . among others. I never know where the Wheel will stop on any given day. Some days, Rilke is soooo important; other days, not so much.

So, right now the Beats are back on my psychic stage, in particular Kerouac and (to a lesser extent) Ginsberg. These writers are among the oldest occupants of the Wheel; Kerouac is one of my earliest writerly influences, along with Henry Miller. (Don't get me started on Miller. He and Nin are prominent residents of the Wheel, as well.) I return to Kerouac and Ginsberg from time to time, because I don't feel I've ever quite assimilated whatever it is I need from that kind of writing: the openness, the generosity of spirit, the mystic Romanticism, and most of all the liveliness.

And I've also found Kerouac's missionary zeal to be an inspiration. Somehow, between road trips and drinking binges, he worked his ass off. I need to spend more time locked in the bathroom with Shakespeare and the Bible.

Anyway. There was a time when writers were still passionate and idealistic about writing. I like to stand by their fire, even if it is 50 years old. They are major writers, no matter what some critics say. Long may they haunt me.

***

In other news, I've only heard from one Ph.D. program so far, but I'm 1-for-1 ! So, at least now I know there's at least one option for me this fall.

You Know You're Regressing When . . .

2008-02-14T04:53:00.003-05:00

You rent The Greatest American Hero from Netflix.

And you like it.

In my defense, I also watched a French (or German or some kind of European) documentary about Lee Miller, and another documentary about Picasso and Rothko. So I am still sophisticated.

Now, I wonder if season 1 of The A-Team is available . . .

It's a Drag When . . .

2008-02-09T18:20:00.000-05:00

. . . you have a blog but you can't think of anything good to say.

I wanted to say some stuff about Hart Crane. How tragic it is that his version of modernism wasn't more successful. Instead, we got the William Carlos Williams version.

But my brain just isn't having anything to do with me today.

Blah.

Like a Dream of a World Made of Smoke

2008-02-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

It was so foggy while I drove home from Michigan tonight, it was like driving through a Chinese landscape painting.

Except, with paved roads and SUVs.

Change

2008-01-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

So, I've had to change my "John Edwards for President" link to a "Barack Obama for President" link. I'm still not thrilled with the whole "bringing red and blue Americans together" idea (I would rather just transport the red voters to a colony on the far side of the moon), but overall an Obama presidency could do much to heal the damage done to the country by the current occupier of the White House.

I think that what America needs right now is a leader, first and foremost. Americans need a leader who can inspire, as well as someone with the right policies.

I'd love to vote for a woman for president, but not this one. (Though I would gladly vote for her in November should she get the nomination.)

Anyway. That's all the politics for the time being. Now back to our regularly scheduled poetry and mystical sh*t.

Literary Theory: An Illustrated Introduction

2008-01-15T00:30:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me, while trapped yet again in a classroom listening to a discussion in which literature and religion are reduced to a display of mere power dynamics, that the Indian chakra system is a good way to analyze what's going on here.

Whatever else it is, this chakra system is a good model for understanding the human psyche. In the most common system, there are seven chakras, each pertaining to an aspect of the human psyche. The bottom one has to do with sheer survival instinct. Moving upward: the next one is related to sex, followed by power. The top three have to do with increasingly pure "spiritual" awareness. The middle one is the heart chakra, where the bottom three and the top three --- the instinctual and the spiritual --- meet. Everyone needs all the chakras working in order to live a complete life.

Here is a little diagram of the chakra system as it is thought to be arranged along the vertical axis of the human body.

Because contemporary literary theory focuses so obsessively on issues of sex and power, a person is left with this much of her/his humanity:

The yellow one is the power chakra. Good luck learning anything above this level in English classes these days. For some people, this seems to be all a human being is. Forget beauty, forget soul, forget meaning.

I for one am not satisfied with 3/7 of a life. Surely English departments, the custodians of so much great art that itself makes use of all 7 (or at least 5 or 6), can do better than this.

Now I Know What to Title My Memoirs

2008-01-13T03:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Gary for this pic. Awesome.

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

2007-12-23T02:03:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-12-19T15:23:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-14T14:18:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T17:19:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-19T15:08:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-04T20:59:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-18T15:23:00.000-04:00

"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)

2007-10-17T23:44:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-23T20:25:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-08-25T16:42:00.001-04:00

Finally.

Damn fine coffee.

But I Hope They Don't Publish Burroughs

2007-08-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

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

But Some Thunder

2007-08-22T12:12:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-12T22:27:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-08-02T23:05:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-01T16:02:00.001-04:00

In Progress!

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