Happy Thursday everyone — here are your news flashes so far.
* Richard Nash at SoftSkull / Counterpoint has announced on the SS blog that he will be stepping down in order to pursue some other, yet-clandestine publishing ventures. Levi at LitKicks has his guess; GalleyCat readers opine as well: my bet is he'll found a straight e-book publishing house, maybe the first fully reputable house of its kind. Just have a feeling, from following SoftSkull and Nash's public notes. It will be interesting to see this all develop.
* Haaretz has an interview with the literary agent who represents all those authors you read: Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Nora Ephron, etc. She rails agains Amazon, of all people, for breaking the book market with discounts, 'Amazon prices books at $9.99. Books in hardback cost $30.00, and the stores give a discount and the price goes down to $15.00. Amazon is not regulated the way retail outlets are, so they can do whatever they want.' I'm not sure retail outlets are price-regulated though. On the other hand, her author anecdotes are neat, especially about McCarthy doing the Oprah interview mainly for the sake of his publisher. Good man.
* Maybe relatedly, I was alerted to the existence of Ted Striphas' intruiging blog The Late Age of Print by Scott at Conversational Reading. He discusses the enormous positive effect that Oprah has had on the general reader in America, and mentions an instance of Ms. Winfrey giving a guided tour on her show of a big bookstore. Ted writes, 'Those who are already well ensconced in the world of letters easily forget how intimidating their world can be for outsiders looking in. If you want to excite people about books and reading, take the time to show them in, and don’t belittle them for not already knowing the way.' I completely agree: there is nothing a person wants to avoid more than feeling looked-down-upon, and bookstores are a minefield of condescention, from the employees to the customers. Maybe I'll start posting video tours of some local bookstores here.
* The Godine interns are totally blowing our cover . . .
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Knock on Wood
Over at The Elegant Variation, Mark Sarvas has posted the entirety of James Wood's list of Best-Written Books Since World War II. The surprises, at least I think they'll be surprises, for his many web-based detractors include: William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch; Toni Morrison, Sula & Beloved; Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 & V; and Don DeLillo, White Noise. There are also two authors in this list immediately adjacent that struck me as an interesting pair: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror & Selected Poems; Geoffrey Hill, Collected Poems. Interesting because where Hill is too little read, too little known, to easily dismissed for his subject matter, Ashbery is perhaps exactly the inverse.
This post mentions two of the great powder kegs of the internet literary rabble: James Wood and John Ashbery. I wonder if they'll be any notice. But while we're on the subject of James Wood, Scott at Conversational Reading (who recently interviewed my boss) shares his thoughts on Wood and on an article by Daniel Miller at Prospect that dethrones a king who never was one.
All this fuss about the man when all he wants is for us to talk about the books!
This post mentions two of the great powder kegs of the internet literary rabble: James Wood and John Ashbery. I wonder if they'll be any notice. But while we're on the subject of James Wood, Scott at Conversational Reading (who recently interviewed my boss) shares his thoughts on Wood and on an article by Daniel Miller at Prospect that dethrones a king who never was one.
All this fuss about the man when all he wants is for us to talk about the books!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Los Artilleros, a translation
'Los Artilleros', by Roberto Bolaño
a translation by Daniel E. Pritchard
'The Battery'
In this poem, the battery hang together.
Their faces blank, hands
with their bodies interlaced, or in pockets.
Some eyes are closed, some look at the ground.
The rest of them are reading you.
Vacant eyes, erased by time. They return
to meet each other now that this interlude is over.
The encounter only shores up
the certainty of their union.
I'd been reading over The Romantic Dogs, the collection of Bolaño's poetry from New Directions, translated by Laura Healy, and recently browsed some of Pound's translations — gave me the itch, so I decided to re-translate this shorter poem from the book just to see how different my English version could be while being fairly 'true' to the original poem. Enjoy!
a translation by Daniel E. Pritchard
'The Battery'
In this poem, the battery hang together.
Their faces blank, hands
with their bodies interlaced, or in pockets.
Some eyes are closed, some look at the ground.
The rest of them are reading you.
Vacant eyes, erased by time. They return
to meet each other now that this interlude is over.
The encounter only shores up
the certainty of their union.
I'd been reading over The Romantic Dogs, the collection of Bolaño's poetry from New Directions, translated by Laura Healy, and recently browsed some of Pound's translations — gave me the itch, so I decided to re-translate this shorter poem from the book just to see how different my English version could be while being fairly 'true' to the original poem. Enjoy!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Poetic Greatness
At The New York Times, David Orr discusses the hoary problem of poetic greatness. He wonders, 'What will we do when Ashbery and his generation are gone? Because for the first time since the early 19th century, American poetry may be about to run out of greatness.'
What indeed? What a wealth of anxiety! Orr discusses the mid-century shift away from grand rhetoric in poetry and the way that change problematized the idea of greatness; he cites a laughably worrisome sewing-circle discussion in Poetry; he compares the influence of Elizabeth Bishop (Ashbery's favorite poet, exhibiting wonderful taste) to that of Robert Lowell, her grandiose companion in letters; and he declares, 'greatness narrowly defined to mean a particular, windily dull type of writing is something we could all do without, and long may its advocates gag on their pipe smoke and languish in their tweeds.' It is dispiriting to see another critic fighting wars won at the turn of the 20th century — that country club of poetry has not existed for a lifetime now; the standard for entering that exclusive world today is vacant shilling, hand-shaking, empty compliments, and an ability to write grant applications.
In the end, Orr writes, 'Perhaps most disturbing, we stop making demands on the few artists capable of practicing the art at its highest levels. Instead, we cling to the ground in those artists’ shadows — John Ashbery’s is enormous at this point — and talk about how rich the darkness is and how lovely it is to be a mushroom. This doesn’t help anyone. What we should be doing is asking why a poet as gifted as Ashbery has written so many poems that are boring or repetitive (or both), because such questions will allow us to better understand the poems he has written that are moving and funny and beautiful. Such questions might even allow other poets — especially younger poets — to find their own ways of writing poems that are moving and funny and beautiful. Which for those of us who read them, for those of us who believe in them, would be a very great thing indeed.'
I agree on this completely. I believe that any reader who flatly worships a poet is not fit to be making judgments about poetic greatness: I've experienced the reactionary, almost McCarthy-esq backlash when questioning the quality of achievement of John Ashbery's work here, twice. For myself (not to make ridiculous-sounding claims), I have to have the feeling of being brow-beat by the work in order to finally, after enormous resistance, admit greatness. Greatness should be a word reserved, one used sparingly, and the standard ought to be simply the power of the verse — does it affect? is it masterful? will it last?
What indeed? What a wealth of anxiety! Orr discusses the mid-century shift away from grand rhetoric in poetry and the way that change problematized the idea of greatness; he cites a laughably worrisome sewing-circle discussion in Poetry; he compares the influence of Elizabeth Bishop (Ashbery's favorite poet, exhibiting wonderful taste) to that of Robert Lowell, her grandiose companion in letters; and he declares, 'greatness narrowly defined to mean a particular, windily dull type of writing is something we could all do without, and long may its advocates gag on their pipe smoke and languish in their tweeds.' It is dispiriting to see another critic fighting wars won at the turn of the 20th century — that country club of poetry has not existed for a lifetime now; the standard for entering that exclusive world today is vacant shilling, hand-shaking, empty compliments, and an ability to write grant applications.
In the end, Orr writes, 'Perhaps most disturbing, we stop making demands on the few artists capable of practicing the art at its highest levels. Instead, we cling to the ground in those artists’ shadows — John Ashbery’s is enormous at this point — and talk about how rich the darkness is and how lovely it is to be a mushroom. This doesn’t help anyone. What we should be doing is asking why a poet as gifted as Ashbery has written so many poems that are boring or repetitive (or both), because such questions will allow us to better understand the poems he has written that are moving and funny and beautiful. Such questions might even allow other poets — especially younger poets — to find their own ways of writing poems that are moving and funny and beautiful. Which for those of us who read them, for those of us who believe in them, would be a very great thing indeed.'
I agree on this completely. I believe that any reader who flatly worships a poet is not fit to be making judgments about poetic greatness: I've experienced the reactionary, almost McCarthy-esq backlash when questioning the quality of achievement of John Ashbery's work here, twice. For myself (not to make ridiculous-sounding claims), I have to have the feeling of being brow-beat by the work in order to finally, after enormous resistance, admit greatness. Greatness should be a word reserved, one used sparingly, and the standard ought to be simply the power of the verse — does it affect? is it masterful? will it last?
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
On Review Copies
As we're putting together the first few issues of The Critical Flame (website to launch very soon, contact me about advertising), I have been in "contact" with many publishing houses' publicity departments — all the major players, I think. While I understand that internet review sites are probably a dime per gigabyte, I also feel that in this age, with so many print review sections dying a pathetic death, every little bit must help. Even bad reviews are better then the great void.
But I've been shocked at the policies of several large houses, some of whom only accept review requests by fax (as if being backwards were a signifier of relevance) and some from whom I've received neither friendly (or unfriendly) word nor galley, not even the cheap & easy offer of a PDF. Young, enterprising, energetic, businesslike, engaged: why would they ever deign themselves to reply to me? It's almost as if they're keeping the new books a secret. The smaller houses, however — despite their staff being far busier, I imagine, than those at a house with vast resources — have been a pleasure; have emailed and exchanged kind comment; have sent books and catalogs rapidly; they have, in short, encouraged a relationship.
It baffles me. Reposed, awaiting review copies like Søren's knight of faith, I hope the books arrive soon. And I hope that they are good.
But I've been shocked at the policies of several large houses, some of whom only accept review requests by fax (as if being backwards were a signifier of relevance) and some from whom I've received neither friendly (or unfriendly) word nor galley, not even the cheap & easy offer of a PDF. Young, enterprising, energetic, businesslike, engaged: why would they ever deign themselves to reply to me? It's almost as if they're keeping the new books a secret. The smaller houses, however — despite their staff being far busier, I imagine, than those at a house with vast resources — have been a pleasure; have emailed and exchanged kind comment; have sent books and catalogs rapidly; they have, in short, encouraged a relationship.
It baffles me. Reposed, awaiting review copies like Søren's knight of faith, I hope the books arrive soon. And I hope that they are good.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Brief & Preliminary Notes on 2666, by Roberto Bolaño
2666 is the magnum opus of the narrator (but not of a narrative); it is “a dream breaking away from another dream like one drop of water breaking away from a bigger drop of water that we call a wave” (“The Part About Fate”). Dreams play a part as important in this novel as the actions of any character: they tell not only the reader but also the characters what they’re feeling, who they are, and what should be done when the veil is lifted. It is as if dreams were more potent than human will.
We can be reasonably certain that Bolaño’s goal was to add to the “great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown” (“The Part About Amalfitano”). He may have accomplished this feat, only because he had no claim to perfection; there is no perfection in this book, neither in any of the several styles nor in the evasive narrative. In this way, Bolaño’s work is tremendously unlike that of his stated literary forebear, Jorge Luis Borges, who built tiny comprehensible watchmaker worlds with a Modernist’s precision of language.
Contemporary readers are accustomed to the unreliable narrator, which brings the integrity of the story into question; but they have not acclimated themselves to the suspension of narrative in the face of a narrator, as Bolaño has done. The narrator is unobtrusive, it is an imagination at work — only occasionally aware of itself. The only major work such as this is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, the closest sister of 2666 in every way but its wordplay. They are novels of the night, of the dream over the will, where the set-piece world is all an inscape.
2666 may be intended as the dream that springs from our world: as Joyce's work was Modernist Europe, this is the Contemporary Americas. Overwhelming the spectacle of our mundane decisions and individual desires is this dream, defying our most powerful desire for certainty. “‘The little old drunk is laughing because he thinks he’s free, but he’s really in prison,’ says Óscar Amalfitano, ‘that’s what makes it funny, but in fact the prison is drawn on the other side of the disk, which means one could also say that the little old drunk is laughing because we think he’s in prison, not realizing that the prison is on one side and the little old drunk is on the other, and that’s reality, no matter how much we spin the disk and it looks to us as if the little old drunk is behind bars. In fact, we could even guess what the little old drunk is laughing about: he’s laughing at our credulity, you might even say at our eyes’” (“The Part About Amalfitano”).
The serial killer is the one who made the disk, is the mind behind every mystery of the novel, is the narrator himself; but that is beside the point. Defiance is the will of reality, reflected in the dream of the world. Like Reiter, we are all troubled by the dilemma of the little old drunk, by “the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance” (“The Part About Archimboldi”). Perhaps only in our dreams lies the assurance that semblance has any substance beyond will. This is why the narrator interjects occasionally, asking questions, seeking reassurance, to make us accomplices in his murders. We are, as readers, “accomplices in imposture until the end” (“The Part About Archimboldi”) by assuring ourselves that this is not real, only a book — that it is all just a terrible dream.
We can be reasonably certain that Bolaño’s goal was to add to the “great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown” (“The Part About Amalfitano”). He may have accomplished this feat, only because he had no claim to perfection; there is no perfection in this book, neither in any of the several styles nor in the evasive narrative. In this way, Bolaño’s work is tremendously unlike that of his stated literary forebear, Jorge Luis Borges, who built tiny comprehensible watchmaker worlds with a Modernist’s precision of language.
Contemporary readers are accustomed to the unreliable narrator, which brings the integrity of the story into question; but they have not acclimated themselves to the suspension of narrative in the face of a narrator, as Bolaño has done. The narrator is unobtrusive, it is an imagination at work — only occasionally aware of itself. The only major work such as this is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, the closest sister of 2666 in every way but its wordplay. They are novels of the night, of the dream over the will, where the set-piece world is all an inscape.
2666 may be intended as the dream that springs from our world: as Joyce's work was Modernist Europe, this is the Contemporary Americas. Overwhelming the spectacle of our mundane decisions and individual desires is this dream, defying our most powerful desire for certainty. “‘The little old drunk is laughing because he thinks he’s free, but he’s really in prison,’ says Óscar Amalfitano, ‘that’s what makes it funny, but in fact the prison is drawn on the other side of the disk, which means one could also say that the little old drunk is laughing because we think he’s in prison, not realizing that the prison is on one side and the little old drunk is on the other, and that’s reality, no matter how much we spin the disk and it looks to us as if the little old drunk is behind bars. In fact, we could even guess what the little old drunk is laughing about: he’s laughing at our credulity, you might even say at our eyes’” (“The Part About Amalfitano”).
The serial killer is the one who made the disk, is the mind behind every mystery of the novel, is the narrator himself; but that is beside the point. Defiance is the will of reality, reflected in the dream of the world. Like Reiter, we are all troubled by the dilemma of the little old drunk, by “the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance” (“The Part About Archimboldi”). Perhaps only in our dreams lies the assurance that semblance has any substance beyond will. This is why the narrator interjects occasionally, asking questions, seeking reassurance, to make us accomplices in his murders. We are, as readers, “accomplices in imposture until the end” (“The Part About Archimboldi”) by assuring ourselves that this is not real, only a book — that it is all just a terrible dream.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Bits of String
Nota Bene: The title of this post is inspired by the title of Donald Hall's memoir, String Too Short to Be Saved.
* Circa 1755, Samuel Johnson wrote, 'Language,is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived.' A brilliant mind to have insight enough to preempt a postmodern tenet; in some odd way, we still stand in the shadow of this semi-invented, dimly recalled scholar. At the Wilson Quarterly, Brooke Allen has a long essay on the life, importance, and thought of Johnson that is based on two new, freshly authentic and complete biographies. Allen writes, 'As a character, Johnson turns out to be not only funny and wildly eccentric — as we always knew he was — but deeply poignant. I was moved to tears by Martin’s biography, as I also was by his beautiful life of Boswell. But neither Martin’s book nor Meyers’s answers the fundamental question of just how important Johnson’s writing (as opposed to his famous witty remarks) will continue to be to 21st-century readers. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare and its introduction, as well as his Lives of the Poets, were turning points in literary criticism, vastly important to scholars but not much read nowadays, and the same applies even to the great Dictionary. His poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes live on under almost purely academic auspices.'
* Is censorship always unethical? The School Library Journal reports that a new, critically-acclaimed YA book, Boy Toy, is being specifically excluded by librarians across the country because it is 'about a 12-year-old who has sex with a beautiful teacher twice his age.' The librarians are, apparently, afraid of the community backlash. Is this socially-predetermined censorship 'lethal' as the article implies? I'm not sure — not for school libraries, where parents aren't available to make a decision children are not necessarily capable of making, where the institution has to act as a surrogate parent and takes responsibility. Without the guidance of a teacher or parent as the kids work through a difficult, potentially scarring issue, it might be less a case of censorship and more one of responsible decision-making.
* How can a book review reinforce imperial British assumptions? Find out at the Times Literary Supplement this week. [Paging E. Said; Mr. Said if you're here, please come to the concessions desk.] From the subtitle that condescendingly dubs Márquez 'Latin America's only truly global writer' (no Borges? no Neruda?), to the way One Hundred Years of Solitude is downplayed as simply 'one of the earliest great novels to derive from the Third World and find an international audience' instead of the overwhelming accomplishment of literature in any language that it is, I was annoyed all the way through this article. Acceptable language perhaps in the 1970s when Britain's impotence in the world was yet unrealized by its populace, it seems nothing short of childish now when compared with the influence and importance of Gabriel García Márquez.
* Circa 1755, Samuel Johnson wrote, 'Language,is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived.' A brilliant mind to have insight enough to preempt a postmodern tenet; in some odd way, we still stand in the shadow of this semi-invented, dimly recalled scholar. At the Wilson Quarterly, Brooke Allen has a long essay on the life, importance, and thought of Johnson that is based on two new, freshly authentic and complete biographies. Allen writes, 'As a character, Johnson turns out to be not only funny and wildly eccentric — as we always knew he was — but deeply poignant. I was moved to tears by Martin’s biography, as I also was by his beautiful life of Boswell. But neither Martin’s book nor Meyers’s answers the fundamental question of just how important Johnson’s writing (as opposed to his famous witty remarks) will continue to be to 21st-century readers. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare and its introduction, as well as his Lives of the Poets, were turning points in literary criticism, vastly important to scholars but not much read nowadays, and the same applies even to the great Dictionary. His poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes live on under almost purely academic auspices.'
* Is censorship always unethical? The School Library Journal reports that a new, critically-acclaimed YA book, Boy Toy, is being specifically excluded by librarians across the country because it is 'about a 12-year-old who has sex with a beautiful teacher twice his age.' The librarians are, apparently, afraid of the community backlash. Is this socially-predetermined censorship 'lethal' as the article implies? I'm not sure — not for school libraries, where parents aren't available to make a decision children are not necessarily capable of making, where the institution has to act as a surrogate parent and takes responsibility. Without the guidance of a teacher or parent as the kids work through a difficult, potentially scarring issue, it might be less a case of censorship and more one of responsible decision-making.
* How can a book review reinforce imperial British assumptions? Find out at the Times Literary Supplement this week. [Paging E. Said; Mr. Said if you're here, please come to the concessions desk.] From the subtitle that condescendingly dubs Márquez 'Latin America's only truly global writer' (no Borges? no Neruda?), to the way One Hundred Years of Solitude is downplayed as simply 'one of the earliest great novels to derive from the Third World and find an international audience' instead of the overwhelming accomplishment of literature in any language that it is, I was annoyed all the way through this article. Acceptable language perhaps in the 1970s when Britain's impotence in the world was yet unrealized by its populace, it seems nothing short of childish now when compared with the influence and importance of Gabriel García Márquez.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Frayed Ends
* At The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. asks, Was Lincoln a "racist"? The eminent scholar writes, 'the truth is that until very late in his presidency, Lincoln was deeply conflicted about whether to liberate the slaves, how to liberate the slaves and what to do with them once they had been liberated. Whereas abolition was a central aspect of Lincoln’s moral compass, racial equality was not. In fact, Lincoln wrestled with three distinct but sometimes overlapping discourses related to race: slavery, equality and colonization.'
* The New Yorker's book bench reports on an interesting exhibit at the Center for Book Arts in New York City that features the work of Jacqueline Rush Lee. 'Lee soaked old books in water until the pages warped, then manipulated them into geometric shapes, twisting several books together to create a cube or a solid wheel. Wrapped around each other, almost as if they were clinging for dear life, the books seem trapped, their drenched covers frozen. The pages are smoky white, reminiscent of dirty snow; whatever these books once had to say has been erased.'
* The New York Times will win, and they explain — Bond-villain–like — exactly how it's going to go down. Which is, they came in strong and tightened their belts. Not being dumb in the past sure does help the present. 'Newspaper industry analysts say that despite some published alarms to the contrary, the company has positioned itself well to ride out another year of recession, maybe two.' I don't know if the rest of us are ready for that 'maybe two' option though.
* At the New York Review of Books (it's an NY-moniker day here, isn't it?) Zadie Smith has an essay on voice, in the technical and personal sense. She begins with a familiar story: 'This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less the right place—this is not the voice of my childhood. I picked it up in college, along with the unabridged Clarissa and a taste for port. Maybe this fact is only what it seems to be—a case of bald social climbing—but at the time I genuinely thought this was the voice of lettered people, and that if I didn't have the voice of lettered people I would never truly be lettered. A braver person, perhaps, would have stood firm, teaching her peers a useful lesson by example: not all lettered people need be of the same class, nor speak identically. I went the other way. Partly out of cowardice and a constitutional eagerness to please, but also because I didn't quite see it as a straight swap, of this voice for that.'
I went through a very similar experience in college. Other students, especially young women, would make me repeat my phrases and words for their amusement. I learned that 'bubbler' and 'packie' were localisms, along with 'jimmies' and 'wicked', etc. — I was very much a stereotype. In my freshman Philosophy class I did very well and was given the nickname Good Will. It was then that I realized what the amusement of that film was for so much of the country, and around this time that I also began to hate that movie. By my junior year I think the accent was all but gone, unless I was drunk. I'd taken a job working the security desk of a bank and foreign bankers couldn't understand me unless I flattened my speech, which was an added piece of the puzzle. Since then, I've grown accustomed to my voice. Since I haven't left Boston yet the question isn't raised as often except by tourists and interns. It's still worst when I've been drinking, or when I go home to Quincy. The experience was also very much how I learned about the concept of voice, how I gained whatever instinct I have for patterns, rhythms, and tone.
* The New Yorker's book bench reports on an interesting exhibit at the Center for Book Arts in New York City that features the work of Jacqueline Rush Lee. 'Lee soaked old books in water until the pages warped, then manipulated them into geometric shapes, twisting several books together to create a cube or a solid wheel. Wrapped around each other, almost as if they were clinging for dear life, the books seem trapped, their drenched covers frozen. The pages are smoky white, reminiscent of dirty snow; whatever these books once had to say has been erased.'
* The New York Times will win, and they explain — Bond-villain–like — exactly how it's going to go down. Which is, they came in strong and tightened their belts. Not being dumb in the past sure does help the present. 'Newspaper industry analysts say that despite some published alarms to the contrary, the company has positioned itself well to ride out another year of recession, maybe two.' I don't know if the rest of us are ready for that 'maybe two' option though.
* At the New York Review of Books (it's an NY-moniker day here, isn't it?) Zadie Smith has an essay on voice, in the technical and personal sense. She begins with a familiar story: 'This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less the right place—this is not the voice of my childhood. I picked it up in college, along with the unabridged Clarissa and a taste for port. Maybe this fact is only what it seems to be—a case of bald social climbing—but at the time I genuinely thought this was the voice of lettered people, and that if I didn't have the voice of lettered people I would never truly be lettered. A braver person, perhaps, would have stood firm, teaching her peers a useful lesson by example: not all lettered people need be of the same class, nor speak identically. I went the other way. Partly out of cowardice and a constitutional eagerness to please, but also because I didn't quite see it as a straight swap, of this voice for that.'
I went through a very similar experience in college. Other students, especially young women, would make me repeat my phrases and words for their amusement. I learned that 'bubbler' and 'packie' were localisms, along with 'jimmies' and 'wicked', etc. — I was very much a stereotype. In my freshman Philosophy class I did very well and was given the nickname Good Will. It was then that I realized what the amusement of that film was for so much of the country, and around this time that I also began to hate that movie. By my junior year I think the accent was all but gone, unless I was drunk. I'd taken a job working the security desk of a bank and foreign bankers couldn't understand me unless I flattened my speech, which was an added piece of the puzzle. Since then, I've grown accustomed to my voice. Since I haven't left Boston yet the question isn't raised as often except by tourists and interns. It's still worst when I've been drinking, or when I go home to Quincy. The experience was also very much how I learned about the concept of voice, how I gained whatever instinct I have for patterns, rhythms, and tone.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Economic Simulus
I hate to get into this, but I'm really annoyed: CNN reports that the stimulus package is finally ready to pass through the Senate, after being cut down from 900 billion to 780 billion, with Republican lawmakers claiming that they 'trimmed the fat.' Fat is a metaphor for 'key programs' and / or 'effectiveness'.
Highlights from the list of cut programs include: funding for local and state law enforcement; funding for Homeland Security; funding for school buildings and other educational programs (including No Child Left Behind); funding to replace federal vehicles with US-manufactured hybrids (an attempt to help stimulate the auto industry and hasten the adaptation to hybrid manufacturing, thereby making hybrids cheaper to the public and the US more oil independent); funding for federal prisons; funding for low-income housing; and, all state economic stabilization packages.
The only victory that Republican senators will have achieved — if any — is the continued instability and weakness of our country and possibly the failure of this stimulus bill. Well done. Shows a real love for this nation.
Highlights from the list of cut programs include: funding for local and state law enforcement; funding for Homeland Security; funding for school buildings and other educational programs (including No Child Left Behind); funding to replace federal vehicles with US-manufactured hybrids (an attempt to help stimulate the auto industry and hasten the adaptation to hybrid manufacturing, thereby making hybrids cheaper to the public and the US more oil independent); funding for federal prisons; funding for low-income housing; and, all state economic stabilization packages.
The only victory that Republican senators will have achieved — if any — is the continued instability and weakness of our country and possibly the failure of this stimulus bill. Well done. Shows a real love for this nation.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Review: 'The Incentive of the Maggot' by Ron Slate
Shifty, and SeriousThe Incentive of the Maggot, by Ron Slate
It is difficult to write about home, or at least to write well about home. The difficulty is in vision, I think, which becomes goggled by a nostalgic or angst-ridden lens that both distorts and strengthens memory’s power over the eye. It becomes hard to get an honest picture of a place. Even with the distance of middle-age, it is almost impossibly difficult; unless you abscond, as Joyce famously did, or remain long enough to really become part of the place, as might be true of Frost. And yet — the degree to which poems about home succeed might be relative to how much the poem is not about home at all.
With that in mind — and with all the curiosity of a fellow product of Quincy, Massachusetts — I turned first to the middle of Ron Slate’s debut collection, to his piece on our mutual rearing-ground, “Granite City.” The poem begins with a montage-scene of impressions: “House of my parents, ambulances / sped by with three blocks to go,” the smokestack blinking “like a boy / agape at his first car crash.” Although the images don’t exactly detail a vivid landscape, they set the tone well enough to move with ease into a narrative too general not to be read as archetypal. The moment of transition from scene-setting to story is one of Slate’s poetic gifts,
“Terraces of granite rose from the sea.
On the heights each watery quarry had a name
and a legend, atomic creatures, gangland
graves, a kid who dived and disappeared in 1959
but died in Quang Tin from a Punji spike.
When we got to the quarry, our towels rolled, the police
were taking names. Someone was missing.”
The first image has a dangerous grandeur to it — one would think these quarries were the Cliffs
of Moher (they’re not). It is precise but vague, logical but not immediate. The following lines set the historical note; a common device in this collection, as we’ll see. The stanza is redeemed by Slate’s “kid who dived and disappeared,” which has a verbal quality that keeps these lines grounded in a real world, and tempers what could have been poem-killing melodrama. It brings those first lines under the shadow of suburban myth, revises them in retrospect, and by the last two lines we are back in the mundane tragedy narrated in the remainder of the poem. There are shades of Lowell here, in the history and myth-in-the-mundane of suburban New England life. The poem closes with the narrative of a missing girl, presumed drowned in the quarry, mixed with the local flavor of cultural stereotypes and historical fact — a fair poem, but labored, and never entirely successful.
But a topic such as home, whose focus remains squarely on just one area, is slightly unusual for Slate. The first section of his collection examines, loosely, the exchange between the personal, national, and international, with poems such as “Writing Off Argentina,” “Belgium,” “Small Talk in Munich,” and “Astride the Meridian.” Slate has a knack for the deadpan line, sometimes serious, sometimes not: “A spiteless city without consolation,” and “In the literature of the last days / there are many typos.” The first section of his collection makes the best use of a device, which, for its direct and factual presentation, could otherwise feel unnaturally grim, or conversely, hilarious. What is remarkable in this first set of poems, though, is the easy transitions between joke and anecdote, recollection, history, and reflection. The poems are never frantic, and nowhere do the shifts in tone seem arbitrary. They are carefully plotted, like an O Henry tale. Consider these stanzas from “Small Talk in Munich”:
“My father said find out
if his bombardier was any good.
The bombs tumbled to the spot
where I lay in a hotel bed in distress
with fever, nausea, indigestion.
Two bottles of water were delivered.
Leave them by the door.
But you must sign this receipt, sir.
Thus I signed, marking
the end of the twentieth century.”
Slate moves from bombardiers to food poisoning to the comic formality of the waiter with a swiftness that recalls Frank O’Hara in its dry humor. However, Slate’s poems are seriously and soberly engaged with their topics. His humor and easy transitions are qualities that emphasize this engagement, humanizing outsized concepts such as the destruction of a city, or nation-state and world peace, whereas O’Hara’s entertaining street-life poems rarely amount to more than amusement. These lines from “Writing Off Argentina” exhibit that same deadpan effect:
“Borges asked, What man has never felt
that he has lost something infinite?
When the economy falls apart, you feel that loss,
plus your pesos deflate to illustrate.”
There is none of this in his poem about Quincy, to its detriment. The collection’s second section — which includes “Granite City” — is concerned almost exclusively with identity and family, and feels overwhelmingly autobiographical at times. As in the first section, poems such as “They Called Me” and “When I Returned” have that balance of serious topic with wit and humor, but even in these the humor only emphasizes how personal the poems are already, providing an overabundance of introspection. The deadpan wit is less disarming here. However, certain poems invoke impersonal tones as a counterbalance to nostalgia or reflection. “Essential Tremor,” for example, deals with a resignation particular to those who have been slighted by the sweep of history. There is a reoccurring voice of fact and diagnosis.
“my grandfather stood in the crowd, in 1942,
watching Germans and gendarmes
lift his furniture into a truck and drive away.
For years he scoffed at their bad taste.”
It is the distance of the narrative voice that allows for the humor. In the poem, a tremor of the speaker’s hand symbolizes a link between the generations, and the narrative recalls the injustices of the Second World War, until “my grandfather, exasperated, conceded / ‘There’s no restitution. It’s finished.’” The resignation of the grandfather transforms later into the cynicism of the mother:
“My daughter examined her hands.
My cousin said, ‘We call it essential tremor.’
My mother’s medications made her shake.
When John Kennedy was killed,
she interrupted my whimpering to say,
‘Now you understand what they do to people.’”
Slate hits just the right tone here, between his whimpering and her gloating elder cynicism, drawing all kinds of unspoken commentary about the Kennedy generation. The medical note that precedes this stanza connects the shaking of the speaker to his daughter, and then to his mother, and then to that resignation that is particular to the bitter old. Because of the poem’s use of cliché historical detail, it is not among Slate’s best, but it shows how well he weaves the biographical and the impersonally historical.
The final section delves entirely into the moral life: the images here become analogies instead of metaphors; the narratives become fables instead of myths. The title poem, for example, considers the human tendency for self-destruction through lenses of alcoholism, torture, and war, by considering the maggots that stave off gangrene. The verse is workmanlike and static, staying in one register of awe although it moves through several short thematically-linked narratives. The poem exists in pure reflection, as “praise for this moment of pause,” but fails because Slate’s best are the poems that slip through tones and registers. His particular style does not lend itself to morbid intensity or pinpoint concentration.
In “One Firefly,” the image of a single firefly is used to consider the wonder of conjugal love, all its confusion and the risk of not finding it. It is a didactic poem, again, staid in that moral tone, until the last lines, when etymologists “ask us to reflect / that the firefly is not a true fly. It is a beetle.” It could be a punch line, not unlike the earlier grandfather scoffing at the Nazi’s bad taste, but the rest of the poem doesn’t lead into this humor and so it carries, instead, an air of affected wonderment.
In the introduction to the collection, Robert Pinsky calls these poems “muscular, ironic, informed,” and he is right to point out these traits. When Slate hits upon them in just the right balance and mixture, as he does in most of the early poems and the later ones mostly in parts, they are serious, intellectual, and memorable, if not exactly quotable. This isn’t a groundbreaking work in any sense, and the verse often lack what might be called musicality in favor of dramatic effects, but it is overall an accomplished collection of verse. It is also one of those rarest beasts: a book of serious poetry that is, often, also very enjoyable reading.
Midweek Etc.
* At The New Yorker, Claudia Roth Pierpoint details James Baldwin's flight from the United States, and what it meant to him as a person and an author. She writes, 'Baldwin wrote about the strictures of Harlem piety while living the bohemian life in Paris, hanging out in cafés and jazz clubs and gay bars; after having affairs with both men and women in New York, he had slowly come to accept that his desires were exclusively for men. His often frantic social schedule was one reason that the writing of Go Tell It on the Mountain dragged on and on. It also began to seem as though he somehow used places up and had to move to others, at least temporarily, in order to write.'
* At Conversations in the Book Trade, blogger Levi Asher is interviewed; he does less than well, I'd say. He claims that 'There is no decline in reading,' that electronic content 'will soon dominate the publishing field' and argues 'You can see a movie or download a record album for about ten bucks. That's the correct price point. New books come out with price tags between $24 and $30 — and then they wonder why the whole industry is suffering. Somebody's out of touch with the consumer here . . .' He's been banging this expensive drum for a while. Put the first assertion and the last together, and try to make some sense of it in the context of every reputable study being done that shows a decline in reading in America; Levi is either fooling himself or trying to will the world into the image of his choosing. Aside from that, the average price of a CD in 2008 was $12.95 so Britney Spears' album was that price; the equivalent of Ms. Spears would be, say, a Grisham novel, and The Innocent Man (2007) has a list price of $7.99 in softcover. Newer and less popular albums cost more, as it is with books. Hardcovers are pricey, and for a smaller market, but books are not generally too expensive. And as long as used books are $3.00 or so, and the library is free, digital readers are still a ways off.
* Interesting article by April Pierce at The Rover on Dutch artist Kees Van Dongen. 'Van Dongen is paradoxically polished and insane, masterful and childish. Like the great Impressionists, he is visibly decisive in his paintings, though altogether less precise. For some, this exhibition will undoubtedly seem errant and unpolished; for others, it will be a lesson in personality and artistic development.'
* At Conversations in the Book Trade, blogger Levi Asher is interviewed; he does less than well, I'd say. He claims that 'There is no decline in reading,' that electronic content 'will soon dominate the publishing field' and argues 'You can see a movie or download a record album for about ten bucks. That's the correct price point. New books come out with price tags between $24 and $30 — and then they wonder why the whole industry is suffering. Somebody's out of touch with the consumer here . . .' He's been banging this expensive drum for a while. Put the first assertion and the last together, and try to make some sense of it in the context of every reputable study being done that shows a decline in reading in America; Levi is either fooling himself or trying to will the world into the image of his choosing. Aside from that, the average price of a CD in 2008 was $12.95 so Britney Spears' album was that price; the equivalent of Ms. Spears would be, say, a Grisham novel, and The Innocent Man (2007) has a list price of $7.99 in softcover. Newer and less popular albums cost more, as it is with books. Hardcovers are pricey, and for a smaller market, but books are not generally too expensive. And as long as used books are $3.00 or so, and the library is free, digital readers are still a ways off.
* Interesting article by April Pierce at The Rover on Dutch artist Kees Van Dongen. 'Van Dongen is paradoxically polished and insane, masterful and childish. Like the great Impressionists, he is visibly decisive in his paintings, though altogether less precise. For some, this exhibition will undoubtedly seem errant and unpolished; for others, it will be a lesson in personality and artistic development.'
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
In School
At The Poetry Foundation website, D.A. Powell, one of the most gifted and original poets writing today, has this to say about literary schools:
'Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school. A monocultural fish farm. An orchestra in which everyone is trying to solo at the same time.'
I've never been what you might call a 'joiner'. Even the groups to which I do belong make me uneasy about the loss of my autonomy to someone else's vision. It baffles me whenever I come across a few people, or more than a few, who give themselves up completely to their little trench of society, who 'buy in' to a manifesto or aesthetic enough to forgo one's independent whims. It's like turning over our right to be idiosyncratic. How does one do that? It's an unteachable trait, probably: you either got it, or you don't.
The only thing more frustrating to me than someone giving up that right, is what Powell calls the mode du jour of today's schools / fish farms: innovation not for the sake of expressing something integral to the time, place, self, or culture, but out of boredom. If someone is that bored with poetry, perhaps they aren't a poet? I'm not sure of that either. More often than not, though, the best thing you can say about these types of work is that it has a neat idea behind it, or a certain playfulness. And beyond that . . . ?
Adherence to one school or another doesn't predicate better art, certainly not — but neither does adherence eliminate the possibility of good art. Talented artists will create quality art, and they don't need a school to do it. However, I think there may be a danger in the sort of groupthink that schools necessitate which could limit an artist. I suppose that danger is where my own reservations lie — call me a curmudgeon, but I'm with Powell: whatever it is that's being branded today, I am probably not buying.
'Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school. A monocultural fish farm. An orchestra in which everyone is trying to solo at the same time.'
I've never been what you might call a 'joiner'. Even the groups to which I do belong make me uneasy about the loss of my autonomy to someone else's vision. It baffles me whenever I come across a few people, or more than a few, who give themselves up completely to their little trench of society, who 'buy in' to a manifesto or aesthetic enough to forgo one's independent whims. It's like turning over our right to be idiosyncratic. How does one do that? It's an unteachable trait, probably: you either got it, or you don't.
The only thing more frustrating to me than someone giving up that right, is what Powell calls the mode du jour of today's schools / fish farms: innovation not for the sake of expressing something integral to the time, place, self, or culture, but out of boredom. If someone is that bored with poetry, perhaps they aren't a poet? I'm not sure of that either. More often than not, though, the best thing you can say about these types of work is that it has a neat idea behind it, or a certain playfulness. And beyond that . . . ?
Adherence to one school or another doesn't predicate better art, certainly not — but neither does adherence eliminate the possibility of good art. Talented artists will create quality art, and they don't need a school to do it. However, I think there may be a danger in the sort of groupthink that schools necessitate which could limit an artist. I suppose that danger is where my own reservations lie — call me a curmudgeon, but I'm with Powell: whatever it is that's being branded today, I am probably not buying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)