Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house The gentleman lay graveward with his furies; Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam, And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies, The atlas-eater with a jaw for news, Bit out the mandrake with to-morrow's scream. Then, penny-eyed, that gentleman of wounds, Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg, With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds, Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg, Scraped at my cradle in a walking word That night of time under the Christward shelter: I am the long world's gentleman, he said, And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.
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.
"[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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
