The wind, one brilliant day, . . .

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

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

This is pretty cool.

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Surprised by Nuanced Literalism

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.

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