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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| BOOK Beer, Nicky, The Octopus Game, Carnegie University Press, Pittsburgh, 2015. Poetry Who would even think of writing an entire book of poetry about cephalopods? It seems this is nearly what Nicky Beer has done. When I picked up the book, I expected a poem or two about an octopus or a squid, but not half of the book! Ms. Beer describes them in the loveliest ways: "a heavy-lidded proprietress who is all raised hem and no flirt." Occasionally, she digresses into discussion of humans, as in "Please indicate the total number of sexual partners (male and/or female) ____." She imagines "them in her third-grade classroom." Then, a couple or so of poems about this or that but the talk of the octopus resumes, once as a showgirl in a side-show. The "game" seems to me to be about adaptation and resistance to adaptation. Her imagery is fresh and sometimes startling: In "Marlene Dietrich reads Rilke on the Lido, 1937," she writes "The latest La Stampa is crumpled at her feet like a cheap towel, a crab dozing on Stalin's mustache." She ends "Black Hole Itinerary" with "Today, love will be like starlight; when it arrives, whatever it comes from will have already collapsed." Her use of language is rich and substantial and luscious. I hope you will choose to read this delightful book. |
| I am reading William Carlos Williams’ book, Spring and All, published in 1923. At that time William Butler Yates, T.S.Elliot, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound were eminent. Hitler had just completed his first push and the “western” world was recovering from WWI and the Spanish flu. He was involved in a new movement in poetry, imagism. It focused on sensory, concrete images to communicate “universal” ideas. The publisher ran 300 copies of the book, most of which didn’t sell, according to the introduction by C.D. Wright. William Carlos Williams (WCW) begins with a response to critics who are concerned with the loss of rhyme and rhythm in poetry and who respond to his writing by saying: “I do not like your poems. You have no faith whatever. You seem neither to have suffered nor, in fact, to have felt anything very deeply. There is nothing appealing in what you say but on the contrary, the poems are positively repellant. They are heartless, cruel, they make fun of humanity. What in God’s name do you mean? Are you a pagan? Have you no tolerance for human frailty? Rhyme you may perhaps take away but rhythm! why there is none in your work whatever. Is this what you call poetry? It is the very antithesis of poetry. It is antipoetry. It is the annihilation of life upon which you are bent. Poetry that used to go hand in hand with life, poetry that interpreted our deepest promptings, poetry that inspired, that led us forward to new discoveries, new depths of tolerance, new heights of exaltation. You moderns! it is the death of poetry you are accomplishing. No. I cannot understand this work. You have not yet suffered a cruel blow from life. When you have suffered, you will write differently?” It seems to me this could be said almost exactly the same way substituting the word “religion” or even “Christianity” for “poetry.” Doing so, you would be joining the dropouts from religion and those who engage in “literal interpretation of scripture.” Or, you could substitute “democracy” for “poetry” and join the people who wear MAGA hats and t-shirts saying “the founding fathers would be shooting by now.” You would be joining the originalists who want to resurrect jim crow and put women back into the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. WCW responds by talking about “Imagination.” Among other things, he says “imagination is essential to freedom.” He says: “Lifeless in appearance, sluggish /dazed spring approaches. They enter the new world naked,/ cold, uncertain of all,/ save that they enter…” Why you might wonder, am I sharing this? I identify with WCW when I read the attack on his writing. I admire his resilient, determined response. It hurts when your creative response to life, your expression of your experience gets trashed, or even simply ignored. It hurts when you are ready to move forward but those around you fear change. It is hard to pull your own hope, your own energy, your own perspective out of the trash heap they have built for you and continue to smile and share and create. It takes courage, but more than simply courage, it takes a certain internal coherence, a depth of thought that is well organized and anchored to the substance of your life. It takes faith in your own ability to make sense out of experience and to build something substantial. It also takes an attachment to the past that is not an anchor but is instead a source of energy, of inspiration, and wisdom. This attachment builds confidence and trust in life itself. It builds a kind of faith that others cannot hurt. It is the fuel that, like coal and oil, has passed through time in a way that has concentrated its value, its usefulness but unlike hydrocarbon fuels, it does not pollute, but instead simply propels us into the renewal of spring, or as Christianity teaches, resurrection and life. May you enjoy this in your own life. |
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