Hey Where Is EVERYBODY?

Tom Beckett ended his blog some while ago, a not uncommon event, and this time I never caught up to the phoenix that arose. Until now. The world is too much with us, late and soon. I have missed his missives, and the percolation of his art in process. I shall clean up my links soon, not now, to reflect Tom’s reappearance.

My own blog seems a-mould’ring, one because I do not update it often, and two because the interest from without has moved elsewhere. I can feel it, drifting on this ice floe as I do. My sense of writing seems to outrace the rigid complex that Poetry has become. Poetry as a canny formulation, a race to an identified end, is a loss for me. I think of Poetry as surprised language. Tactics are right out.

I mean, I also saw Jim Behrle’s famous blog again, and he’s a writer, he’s an energy. And that the same pointed instrument pokes at the same logy attempts works against my interest in this gizmo. I have been productive for years and years, and no longer need to prove that. I wrote Days Poem! I do not need to explain my grace.

A Note on Contemporary Poetry

Contemporary poetry started in the early 1950s. It began because a bunch of American poets got together and started to write in a contemporary vein. This continued strong until the late 1960s, when contemporary poetry ended. During its heyday, contemporary poetry was considered very popular.

Readers liked to read contemporary or hear it read by recognized contemporary poets. The appeal of contemporary poetry is simple to understand. It appeals to everyone’s enjoyment of the 1950s and 60s.

Robert Lowell is the greatest of contemporary poets. He wrote about Robert Lowell and what Robert Lowell felt. The great contemporary lady poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath also wrote about what they felt. Plath wrote about what Plath felt and Sexton wrote about what Sexton felt, respectively. Poems cannot be made about what Plath thinks about Lowell or Lowell  about Sexton. John Berryman tried but it did not work.

John Berryman was a contemporary poet even so. Like all contemporary poets, he went to college. College is where contemporary poets came from. Even though poets still go to college, they are no longer contemporary. Contemporary poets have disappeared just as mysteriously as the residents of the Roanoke colony.

Nowadays, poets just write poetry and that’s that. Today’s poets cannot be contemporary because they did not spend enough time in the 50s and 60s. It was okay to suddenly discover W. B Yeats in the 50s. Nowadays, if you suddenly discover W. B. Yeats, you are surprising no one. Even though Yeats was a weirdo and probably took opiates, reading him will surprise no one. Same goes for Rimbaud and a host of other strange foreign poets. Sadly, the day of the contemporary poem (and contemporary poet) is over.

There are those who wish to bring back contemporary poetry. These people live in universities and have their own issues. If you feel an urge to write contemporary poetry, read the works of the contemporary poets mentioned in this report. You will find that they have written all the contemporary poetry that anyone needs. Instead of writing contemporary poetry, try writing haiku. Haiku is a poetic form just as timeless as frogs, apple blossoms, and snowflakes. You cannot go wrong with haiku.

The Invention of Poetry

Poetry was invented in the early 18th Century, somewhere in England. It is not known who invented poetry, though it is known that John Milton did NOT. William Shakespeare cannot receive credit for inventing poetry either, even though his stuff looks like poetry. Remain cautious when trying to determine if certain literary productions are poetry. Sonneteers, poetasters, and the like will try to fool you every time.

Of course Poetry first developed in England—where else would it begin?—but other lands saw attempts—all failures—to create this means of transportation. England, though, had the right admixture of larks, dew, eternal rocks, skiey peaks, and such to propel the poetic mind into fevered scribbling. So England can claim the invention of poetry, which is great news for the English.

England’s poets futzed around for the first years, trying to make some awesome poetry. They made poetry all right—recent tests have proven this—but little of their production amounted to what you would call awesome. Not until the early 19th Century did writing pals John Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and a few nameless authors really started to kick out the jams, poetry-wise.

The greatest of these poets is Leigh Hunt. He wrote “Jenny Kissed Me” and spent time in jail. You will be disappointed to learn that the Jenny of the poem was a child, and the poem has nothing to with unrequited love, but it is still a great poem. The poem proves that a poet can write poems like this, if you have the requisite talent.

John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron were also great English poets. This is proven by how they all died young. Dying young is a dead giveaway. So to speak.

John Keats loved Grecian urns and nightingales. If you are reading a poem that mentions nightingales or Grecian urns, you are probably reading Keats. Usually the name of the author of a poem is included with the poem, if you really need to know the name. It is true that a poem authored by John Keats is sure to be a winner.

Percy Shelley was big into larks—he basically started the whole lark movement in poetry—and Lord Byron (real name: George) liked roving. As much as he liked roving, he apparently decided to give it up. These poets garnered great fame and whatnot in their unfortunately short careers.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the first lady poet. Although Keats and Shelley tended toward sickliness, it was Browning who successfully brought the full neurasthenic protocol to the life of poets. Elizabeth wrote the first mushy poem ever. You know: “How do I love thee? / Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth was married to a great poet in his own right, Robert Browning. Robert wrote these stirring lines that will live long in the minds of those people who remember them: “Riding along, fifty score strong / Great hearted gentlemen singing this song.”

Near the end of the 19th Century, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. This is a great poem. It begins “Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward”, and goes on from there.

Tennyson was pretty much it for poets in England at the time. If you wanted poetry, you had to look to America. American poetry did not start until the 19th Century,  there was zero poetry in the colonies before then. Then Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson came along, and really put America on the poetry map.

Whitman learned early that technique without inspiration means nothing. He proceeded to throw technique completely out the window and rely on inspiration. The result of this is that he wrote so many great poems that it is just not funny. A prime example is the one called “O Captain My Captain”. You’d figure that it would be about a sailor, but it is really about Abraham Lincoln! This poem really gets to you. See what I mean about it being just not funny?

Emily Dickinson was the first and undoubtedly best lady poet that America produced. She liked to look at normal things in a creepy way. It took a while for her to become famous, but when she did, it was something. Women need heroes too, you know.

There was a lady poet in England who was almost like Emily Dickinson. Her name was Christina Rossetti. She was born five days before Dickinson and wrote about goblins. England is still proud to have her as one of its lady poets.

A lot of great poetry got wrote in the 20th Century, mostly by Americans. T. S. Eliot is a great poet—you can hardly understand what he is on about!—but he just pretended to be English. He was from Missouri. He really got the movement going of making poetry that makes no sense. Ezra Pound is another poet who started doing that stuff.

Nowadays, everybody and his uncle writes poetry. We can actually thank Japan for this. A poetic form called the haiku developed in Japan. It was a great thing but no one in Japan knew how to make a poem using the form. It was not until public school students in America were introduced to the haiku form that it really took off. Now anyone can write a poem, no sweat.

System & Learning

Goals of Writing

· To Surprise

· To Entertain

· To Communicate

Writing is functional. We write toward goals (see above).

Poets (if anyone cares) write in the beguiling wonder and agitation of words—the surprise of discovery (or the discovery of surprise).

To entertain, one writes with oneself as the meter measuring the entertainment, i.e., if I laugh or feel thrilled then it succeeds.

In writing to communicate, one seeks strong, clear ways of saying.

All writing strives to solve a problem. The writer writes for a reader. The reader is imaginary, even when we know the audience (for instance, a personal letter).

		Two Circles

To bring the circles together, we must use the same language. To bring the circles even closer, intent must be understood on both sides.

A system assumption exists here, that the reader understands the writer, and the writer understands the reader.

The reader may “get something” from the writer’s work, but does not (cannot) share the endeavour of the writer’s intent.

The writer may sense the reader’s participation (albeit in a place outside the act of actual reading) but ultimately the writer writes to an imaginary friend.

Basic communication in the sense of imparting information and opinion demands the courage of one’s vocabulary.

The vocabulary of language is shared—we have dictionaries and grammars to self-police ourselves—but we must trust our own invention rather than the received broadcast (and ‘wisdom’) of inherited locutions.

Our ideas become muddled when we use other people’s words.

This sounds lofty but it is absolutely practical.

Our insight, our opinions, our ideas need our words. To speak or write well means reaching across the chasm with our hand, not someone else’s. The resulting touch is electric and personal.

Many of us haphazardly find our ‘style’, an effective way to ‘get across’. Many more of us, however, fail to perceive that the connection and communication of their attempts are thin and partial.

We all must realize the implicit contract in words. When we speak or write, we obey the strictures of meaning—or we do not, lazily settling for a simulation of the connection.

Vocal tone and body language supply speech with support that writing lacks. We must be resolute in writing, not trusting merely our intent but the exacting action of our communication.

The political hem and haw that we hear daily and continually drowns the pure savour of what we mean. We end up rifling thru worn phrases that have lost their charge, expecting others to receive the spark that we intended.

Writing well is an act of singular dignity. Humbly present your words to the latent reader.

Roadtrip and Graduation

Erin and his father spent Tuesday walking (slogging) the Freedom Trail in Bawston. Blistering hot day. We lack no humidity hereabouts. This comes as a shock to those used to drier heat, viz Erin’s father from Idaho and even 10 year New England vet Erin. To unwilt them, we made a day trip up the coast to Maine on Wednesday.

We got on Route 1 and hugged the coast. It was much cooler than Tuesday. We got up past Oguncuit and swung back home. I do not know the extent of Dunkin Donuts’ reach, but we saw a pantload along the way. It is a cultural signpost, taking cultural in its murkiest connotation. The inescapable commodity of gloppy pastry and water-flavoured caffeine.

We had a picnic lunch by the beach in York. Lots of people were on the beach, but those actually in the water were few. Surfers wearing rubber suits had good surf to play with, or is it vice versa?

We later wandered on another beach. Tide was just coming in. The water on the flats was warmed to a plausible survivability. Stepping into the surf left my feet numb. I think the bestest thing was seeing some life in the puddles on the flat. Snails, barnacles, hermit crabs, and a fingernail-sized crab scuttling sideways. I love and a half looking at this evidence of teeming. I do not want to catch fish or any of the critters—I do not regard fish as food, thank you—I just like seeing the bluster of life.

No traffic jams along the way but a good bit of ready up for Erin’s graduation.

Which happened today.

Erin has slept at the motel with his father, which made it easier to provide a bed for Beth’s mother (who drove up Monday). We conglomerated around 8am for the drive to the city of Lowell, just the next town o’er. Erin attended the Bedford campus of Middlesex Community College, but the ceremony was at the big city.

The city of Lowell possesses uncommon beauty in architecture, with vivid factories and fancied up whatnot. When you look upon the landscape it is really lovely, with the Merrimack River and the canals and the rolling hills. The place is also a worn out dump, despite federal money poured in to the brim (the city itself is a national park). Don’t take my word for this, come check it out.

I went in with Erin as the others parked the phaeton. Lowell Auditorium teemed with wildlife, lots of nervous excited people. Erin had to locate the group he would walk with (Liberal Arts and Sciences). Easier said than done. Oh yes, and he had to put that gown on.

We tramped thru the crowd until we came to the end of crowd, then worked our way back. Eventually, we found where Erin belonged. I left him properly in line and gowned to a fare-thee-well. Including the goofy hood thingie.

I hooked up with the family, and with invited friends. I went back to give Erin a last hand slap and get a few more of my patented poorly composed pictures. I did the normal  thing, scanned for the tallest person in the throng (Erin is 6’6”). I realized I went too far and came back. A grad caught my eye and pointed down. Erin was sitting cross-legged and meditative on the floor.

And then the ceremony. Not for high school, AA,  BA or MA did I walk. I’m not proud of that tho I guess I was at one time. The point is, I have not seen graduation before.

Most of the speeches were brisk enough. The highlight was Liz Murphy (I think  her name is). She was a homeless teenager who managed to not just graduate from high school, but Harvard too. It is an inspirational story, of course, but she was more interesting than that. She was lively and well-spoken, tho a trifle nervous.

I jumped ahead mentioning her.  First the processional. The familiar sounds of Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance Numbers 12 & 35 rose up. I know there are several P&Cs, and somehow, I associate the music with my father. After a few bars, some bagpipe music was delivered from the lobby. Three bagpipers, and three drummers marched in. The two musical forces tussled then P&C backed off until the pipers and the mysterious entity called The Student Marshalls had entered. Then the Elgar beat returned and the grads entered.

It was a slow process getting the grads into the auditorium and seated. Is Erin coming? Yes, finally. He bowed as he walked down the aisle.

Of course the big punchline of graduation is the doling of diplomas. This was a long process. The process was made worse by the obnoxious use of air horns, and several crying babies with heartlessly immovable parents. Erin tipped his cap when he got his diploma. The gestures are not typical of Erin, but that fact somehow is typical of him. Expect the unexpected.

Okay, this was just a community college, and only an AA, but I had tears in my eyes. The accomplishment is magnificent.

Erin is uniquely gifted, as are we all, but his gifts are balanced by difficulties. It has been wondered whether he has Asperger’s and finally doctors have said no, because his empathy places him outside the spectrum. The autistic spectrum, it is becoming clear, is extensive. It encompasses many more of us than was formerly thought.

Charles Olson’s words, I have had to learn the simplest things last, have been something of a motto for me. They seem even more apposite for Erin. He is a wonderful, creative person, innocent in the best way. He is also socially awkward, and faceblind (as is his grandmother): he does not easily recognize faces.

Erin was homeschooled because of his difficulties, plus growing up in Alaska where schools were not the best. He took some courses at the community college as part of his homeschooling. This enabled him to get into college without a high school degree or GED, but certainly well-educated. Fulfilling the 2-year degree allows him to enroll in the UMass system, which he has. Community college, then, was like prep school, except without the silly sweater tied around the neck.

This last semester was not pretty. He expected to have four courses, but he also had two incompletes to finish, and an advisor error meant he was a credit short unless he took one more course. It was a ragged run to the finish line, but he got there.

So I am proud of Erin. We understand education as a collection of information, a simple acquisition. In truth, education is a process of individuation, defining ourselves as joyful singularities. The university chime of diversity is fine in a promotional way, but it charges the barriers more than brings us together. Our singularities join us. Erin’s unique gifts, or yours, or mine, or Beth’s, are the chances to deliver light. Emboldening cultural distinctions will not. Erin’s uniqueness is not embraced in the campgrounds of normative education. Humanity’s progressive steps, however, will be made by those keyed to the individuation.

Dalai Lama Live

We spent the weekend with two foci: visit Beth’s mother and aunt, and see the Dalai Lama. Beth’s folks live in Brick,  NJ, on the Jersey shore. The plan was to have Beth’s mother join us in NYC, to see the Dalai Lama, but plans changed.

We left civilization around noon on Friday. We had a brisk run down the parkways, which clearly is the most pleasant way to reach NYC from Massachusetts. The traffic never seems bad, and the tree-lined roadways are beautiful.

We reached Lakewood and the Hilton Gardens Hotel at some dinnerish hour. Time to relax.

Oh wait, need a screw up! Beth’s mother offered to put us up in a hotel because there isn’t enough room where she is. Checking in, I was asked for a credit card. I thought the room was paid for. The clerk said it was for i.d. Yeah well, in sooth, somehow Beth’s mother’s attempt to reserve a room for us became thru the Hilton’s machinations simply a commitment to commit. The desk clerk ended up putting not just a charge but a hold  as well on our card, which was our debit card, which was our funding for this trip. I shan’t bore you with the details (go to my new blog: Bore You With The Details dot com). Suffice to say that fol-de-rol occurred, some ruction followed, a donnybrook was barely averted, and no one actually died tho imprecations were voiced. Buzz kill. AVOID HILTON GARDENS HOTEL.

We got together with Beth’s mother and aunt. Mother was under the weather, but we had a nice dinner. The next day we largely hung out. Beth went to a hair salon and I sat around there, wrote and doodled and wandered a bit in Point Pleasant. Tra la.

Saturday night we had another nice family dinner. Oh, we learned that the hotel had not quite gotten rid of the hold on our card. AVOID HILTON GARDENS HOTEL.

Sunday we learned for sure that Beth’s mother was not joining us in NYC. We fashioned a fancy itinerary or travelogue, an adventure, to wit:

• Drive up to Newark Airport
• Take the Air Train to Terminal B
• Take the train to Penn Station
• Take the Subway to 5th Ave
• Walk to Radio City Music Hall

You think the Donners had a rough go?

Really,  it all worked well, even tho it felt like Heart of Darkness. We would periodically stop people for directions and they were helpful, even those who did not know. At RCMH, I saw a woman and child holding a sign requesting a ticket. We had the extra. The woman explained they were part of a group. She couldn't pay for the ticket but we weren’t looking for that anyway. Beth asked if it was okay that they’d be spread out thru the theatre and the woman said yes. That was serendipitous.

The Hall is mid-size and plain. Our seats were mezzanine, I think, decent enough. Arriving to sit in the seat we gave away was a Tibetan monk. Who knows how that happened. Periodically he cupped his cellphone in his hand and conversed. Perhaps we just assumed that the tickets were for the boy.

The stage was busy with people. Monks either sat and chanted or wandered. Others helped wandering procedures. A flute played at times. Eventually the stage got full and Richard Gere came out.

Gere gave a brief, relaxed intro to the Dalai Lama, then an entourage entered the stage. It looked like standard issue celebrity entourage including, I surmise, the person in charge of regulating the color choice of M&Ms in the bowl in the dressing room. Amidst this milling group was the man himself. An armchair was brought for the DL, and a small one for his interpreter. One does not immediately remember that the Dalai Lama is a head of state. There were obvious, and I am sure not obvious, security onstage and around.

The DL has quite a presence. One gets the impression that he is more than 6’ tall but indeed he is well short of that. He was stately in a friendly, common way.

He sat in his chair, and resurrected Mr. Rogers by elaborately removing his shoes and cleaning his eyeglasses, which caused the crowd to laugh. His own laugh is infectious.

He spoke very good English, tho strongly accented, which I mean in two senses: his Tibetan accent is thick, and he emphasizes the wrong syllables at times.

This was a secular talk. He gave more spiritual talks previously in the weekend. Buddhism is a fine tool for understanding and proceeding, to my lights. I will not proselytize. I like the practicality of what he speaks, and his playful humour. Following the Buddha’s own advice, the DL said check it out and see if it works for you. If  it doesn’t work for you, he said, then fuck it. Did I hear aright? Yes, I did. He did not say the phrase for shock value, but used the most direct words. I respect that greatly.

The Nobel Peace Prize seems pretty shady with the likes of Obama (on the basis of what?), Kissinger, and Mother Theresa Incorporated winning, but the Dalai Lama seems absolutely appropriate. His open-minded stance towards science is a blessing in contradistinction to too many clerical views. I could go on. Check out my new blog I Could Go On dot com.

He had a number of straightforwardly chastening remarks about China, and a puckish comment about women’s makeup. He said, that blue around the eyes, not attractive. She won’t get a date from me.

The DL visited a local Buddhist center a few years ago. The person who wrote the report said that someone in the DL’s entourage came up to the writer and said in his ear, indicating the DL: Do not trust that guy! Only later did the writer learn that the person with the advice was the DL’s brother. Runs in the family.

The DL did some Q&A and then, basically, wandered off. He wanted to go into the audience, it looked like, but an efficient suit drew him towards backstage.

Afterwards, Erin and I made the grand journey to the bathroom downstairs, where the throng lined up then darted to an open facility. When we returned to the lobby, Beth decided to ready her bladder for the trip back to Newark, so she went to the bathroom. By now, ushers were ushering. They accosted everyone who was not moving briskly towards the door. We told them we were waiting for someone, and they said wait over there. Then en masse the ushers moved forward, pressing laggards ahead. We were removed from each place they told us to go to. I do not want to overplay this, but the impression was as of Tiananmen Square. The bully ushers heard nothing,  just pushed forward. Really, really out of key with the afternoon.

As I waited outside, I saw Marvin Hamlisch leave the building. I am sure other celebs could have been noted.

The trip back was fine until we reached the airport. Rt 95 barely moved. I think it took 3 hours to reach the George Washington Bridge. Add that we were low on gas. Cars shifted lanes in that relentlessly hopeful way, sure of certain gains tho actual visibility of the road ahead amounted to a couple of car lengths.

At Fort Lee, just before the GW toll, we simply had to duck off the highway and find gas. We asked a pedestrian, who said just over there, tho 4 blocks further the price was better. We opted for the close one. Expensive gas in NJ is what we gladly pay in MA.

The attendant, dressed in a spiffy clean uniform, would not take a card. Our cash had been whittled down and we still had tolls to pay, so we had to limit our purchase. Tank was nearly empty again the next day, because…

On 84 past Hartford, around 11pm, we found another lovely snag. Roadwork. That was another 90 minutes of life I will not get back.

Home to a happy cat.

This afternoon we drove in to Logan airport to pick up Erin’s father. He was flying in from Idaho for Erin’s upcoming graduation from community college (more about that anon). Holy cow! All major arteries out of Boston were choked with traffic. Had fun calling 511and getting reports of the traffic misery. Figured out an overland route.

The parking garage at Logan had a wide area of available parking inexplicably set off with temporary barriers, no way to get to them. Things these days are baffling. Accept the unacceptable. This traffic biz seems to be a lesson, keyed to the DL’s talk.

Robin Hood, Once More

Yet another version of Robin Hood, and possibly the most different. Robin Hood no kidding is an enduring character and story. Ridley Scott makes a real tangent from the usual Robin Hood arc. Might not work for everyone, but it worked for me.

Of course, I endure movies so I can enjoy the entertainment of the trailers. Not much to look forward to, according to this infallible expert. There’s a Steve Carel movie with Paul Rudd that looks like a two-wheeled trike. I hope I am wrong, but all I saw was Carel  mugging horribly. Angelina Jolie is doing a Matrix-y thing that may be well-served by her feral weirdness. There’s a movie in which nerd meets rock star (Jonah Hill and Russell Brand),  which I predict will offer negative zero surprises.

Finally, children, and deserving its own paragraph, there is another Sex and the City bloodbath. Well, I say another, but I never saw the first one. I saw the show when it was current, and it was okay. The idea of going cinematic with the franchise seems like some sort of illegal entrapment. Sequelling that entrapment is just a bludgeoning of excess, and the trailer proves my point. There seems to be a bit in which one or many of the quartet dress and perform as Liza Minnelli. Another scene shows them implausibly riding camels in the desert. Clearly the screenwriters must have severely pulled their creative muscles. The foursome look taut and worn out, inhumanly fit into magazine vision of everlasting youth. One of the great bad ideas of literary history that I can think of is in a letter from Mark Twain to William Dean Howells. Twain bethunk himself that a play in which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meet years later as outworn vagrants should exist. Baddest of ideas, and Carrie and crew cracking before our eyes seems nearly as bad. So anyway.

Russell Crowe plays Robin Hood. I knew from the trailer that this would be a different take on the classic. There’s no sense in trying to replicate the Errol Flynn model. That guy had such swashbucklitude, altho Flynn’s pampered coif takes the edge off, as did the slurpy Hollywood score. Costner’s version wasn’t bad, tho its early grit trailed off into prancing television heroics.

I am a fan of Gladiator. Have I seen other Ridley Scott movies? I never saw Alien in its entirety. I especially like the historical sense in Gladiator. The early battle scene gives what I believe is a decent evocation of Roman warfare. Robin Hood begins with similar bombast, with Richard Lionheart’s Crusaders overwhelming a French castle.

Russell Crowe, yclept Robin Longstride, is just another archer in the army. He’s palling around with Allan a Dale and Will Scarlet in very minor roles. Robin meets Little John without benefit of cudgel battle on a footbridge. Scott eschewed all the expected markers of Robin Hood.

In a hey wait a minute moment, Richard the Lionhearted dies during the attack on the castle. Robin and his friends skip away in the confusion. Meanwhile we have already met Richard’s brother John, who looks like Russell Brand. I missed who the actor is, but the role is similar to Joachim Phoenix’s Commodus in Gladiator, a flaked out king type. I don’t mean to demean either, I like both roles and actors.

Instead of the usurping Normans as bad guys it is the French. I think the Norman angle is more accurate historically, makes more sense as the seed for these tales, but it is not like the Anglo-French dismay isn’t resonant. The story comes across more like Braveheart than you might expect.

Robin and the boys come upon some duplicity in which Guy of Gisbourne attacks the King’s envoys, or something like that. The point is that Guy works for the French. One of the victims is Loxley who, in dying, asks Robin to bring his (Loxley’s) sword to his (Loxley’s) father. Having read the script, Robin decides to do so.

Robin meets Lady Marian, wife of the dead Loxley, and Loxley’s father. For much of the film I kept thinking that father Loxley looked like John Huston. Knowing that it is rough casting dead people, I was mildly puzzled. In sooth, it was Max von Sydow, taking a pretty good turn.

Cate Blanchett, possibly gimlet-eyed, played Lady Marian. She was believably sturdy as the wife of a Crusader trying to hold the estate together. Robin brings the sword to the father. The father decides that Robin should stay and pose as Marian’s husband, to help keep the estate together, to which Robin agrees. Luckily the plot does not dwell on the meet cute of this situation.

The movie then asserts its Braveheart heritage, and there are hints of Robin’s anarcho-syndalist foundation. Now, Monty Python has already cleaned up on Robin Hood’s political cartel (viz Dennis Moore), so we can move on from that. We have a bad guy, Guy de Gisbourne and stuff, the barons of England are all a-dither. Wait a sec, are we talking Magna Carta? Yes, indeed. Some fuzzy business from Robin’s past, in which Robin’s father is executed for insensitively suggesting a Runnymede sort of get together, comes from leftfield. Sorry, I was unprepared for this sort of historical intrusion.

The upshot was a battle of English versus French (including English caitiffs working for the French). It is a reverse D-Day. The English win, but King John aint so very nice. The movie ends with implication of Robin’s outlaw career. You know, the stuff we expected from the start.

Folks may not be satisfied that so few milestones on the Robin Hood path were seen. The Merrie Men of Sherwood are Peter Pannish orphans who hardly have anything to do with Robin. Tuck and Little John are barely exploited. Where’s the arrow splitting the arrow?????

The movie is fabulously lush in its pictorial presentation. It’s a little muddled in plot, with the Robin Hood arc and the Braveheart arc colliding. The visual plushness and the vigourous score put credit on the plus side. This one is a keeper for me.

Bill Knott Don’t Like Bloglaureates

Bill Knott posted the following in a comment on my previous post. I bring it forward here because he brings up points that I did not, plus he sounds a cranky note that I can only aspire to. Join me, fellow cranks!

the "blog poets" they nominate are alike in one way: they don't publish their poetry on their blogs or the web—

unlike them, I post/have posted ALL my poetry online for free open access and download . . .

which it seems makes me ineligible for any blogpo laureating—

surely to be the po-laur of the blogosphere, you should actually publish your poems there?

all or most of those laurpo nominees use their blogs chiefly to publicize and sell their deadtree books—

seriously: how can any deadtree poet be the laureatepo of the blogworld?

Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, rebate

Ron Silliman’s last minute electioneering for Sine Queyras as PL of the B was my 1st notice of this election/gameshow. Yes, I knew votes were gathered in previous years for such contest, but I thought you were supposed to regard it as a trivial internet meme and pass on to the next shiny object to come along. What this thing contains, this vote and contest, seems not just lacking in content, the notion of such playground play seems antagonistic to the value one might find in poetry. SO SAY I.

The winners of this untelevised event are Sine Queyras and Robert Lee Brewer. RLB is a Facebook friend who I know little about—this condition is probably mutual, but that is an assumption—and Sine Queyras is not a Facebook friend, who I know little about. My inability to keep up explains my ignorance of these writers. I have no prob with them and what I write here should not reflect critically on them.

But isn’t this election perfectly silly?

I mean, I feel stupid knocking it, it seems so lame to speak of. The concept of the blogosphere, by which I infer an interconnected and communicating machine of practicing poets and/or writers of such, strikes me as archaic. That dash of connectivity has dissipated.  2003 turned into 2010. I guess that memo has been delayed.

Poet Laureates were always established as part of a drinking game, so in that sense this contest works fine. Unfortunately, the mechanics of interest do not engage the depths of possibility. I know a dumbhead rule exists, that previous winners cannot win again. Which only means dilution: those winners are removed from the mix. Again, I have not read these blogs or much by way of these writers, I am just looking at the sitch.

Rae Armantrout, Sine Queyras, and Robert Lee Brewer are each single writing entities. So am I. So are everyone on Silliman’s thorough list. The evocation of hierarchy within this realm of Parnassian cloud is abject muck.

I believe Poetry has importance in itself, as the mode of transit in language. Blogosphereian Poet Laureateship is STONES IN THE PASSWAY. Come back when you have worked that out.

Sixth Sense

Watched Sixth Sense today. I like M Night Shyamalan’s Signs and am willing to pursue other of his films. I do not know how I managed to miss this one, tho I do flinch when Bruce Willis is mentioned. Smart ass Hollywood Republicans give me dyspepsia. I should get over it but his insouciant smirk irritates me. Also: he mumbles.

The movie featured a lot of atmosphere, the music signaling ominously. It took me a while to get into it. Starting in media res, the movie leaves one puzzling. The bit with the failed client of Willis (Donny Wahlberg overacting, if you ask me) startles in a quizzical way. Whoa! Then Willis gets shot! Fade to months ahead.

The very first scene, when Willis’ wife seems to react to something in the basement, is a mystery that remains explained till the end. Negative Capability calling. The movie does not really begin till after the shooting, when Willis meets Haley Joel Osment.

I am amazed by films in which the child actor carries the burden. HJO did the heavy lifting while Willis floated around him. Scenes end with soft fades. Not to say that Willis wasn’t good. That floating was appropriate, as we learn.

The pacing seemed oddly laconic, despite the suspensefulness. We are aware that ghosts are about before anyone except HJO. When we actually see the ghosts, they are ordinary, tho wounded (literally). The spooks are underplayed.

The movie resonates with the hypersensitive boy who does not fit in with other children. Willis shuffles thru the story, feeling distant from his wife. The story reaches a seeming crescendo when Willis discovers what the ghosts want. He listens to tapes of the patient who shot him, and realizes that he suffered what HJO suffers: visitations of the dead. Well, I swan to John!

Willis urges HJO to fight his fear and listen to the ghosts. This brings HJO to the funeral of a girl. The girl as ghost gives the boy a VCR tape. VCRs used to be the only way people could entertain themselves. HJO delivers the tape to the girl’s father. The tape reveals that the girl’s stepmother was poisoning her.

And there is the crux. The ghosts seek help. Movie over. Except…

I was unprepared for the real ending. Willis goes home to his wife. He talks to her. During this, she drops his wedding ring. He hasn’t been wearing it! He realizes that he did not survive the shooting. He remained here to help the boy and make amends for the patient that he lost.

This sent the mind back to earlier scenes where Willis appeared but never interacted with anyone but HJO. I want to see the movie again with that in mind. It brings to mind the movie Ghosts, but much less smarmy. More compelling, it also reminds me of Turn of the Screw. Sixth Sense is less mysterious but the hypersensitive child is consistent.

The gotcha at the end, when Willis realizes that he is a ghost, really hangs with me. The movie’s sadness is unrelenting but Shyamalan handles it well, with sensitivity. I mean, Ghost ends with a malarkey note while SS seems to comprehend something human. Haley Jo Osment was terrific and Willis was not a complete dick.

Tributary Communications

I have started (yet another) blog to ruminate and possibly divagate upon the ideas of marketing and communication. The blog is called Tributary Communications, and I wish you were there.

Rae Armantrout & Bestsellers

I am not all that psyched that Rae Armantrout won the Pulitzer Prize, not to impugn her work. I think all that this event proves is how random the prize is. It signals no freeing of sensibilities or whatnot. It simply shows that the gatekeepers on Parnassus can be whimsical.

The list of previous winners is pretty ad hoc, like any such prize. You figure that Wallace Stevens winning in 1955 is being given a lifetime achievement award, as are the many Collected Poems winners. And maybe just maybe Natasha Trethewey won because she was standing nearby when the prize was doled out. This is a contest, I am saying, where no contest belongs.

I also think, crank that I am, that Rae’s prize is more to her publisher Wesleyan than to her. Wesleyan is one of a handful of ‘okay’ poetry publishers, that sell their books and get them into libraries. It is not Rae of the small press that wins the prize. If a LANGUAGEy poet were to win the Pulitzer, I would think Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein, or Lyn Hejinian were more suitable choices, my terms being popularity and influence. I do not begrudge Armantrout, just do not believe that her selection is somehow good news.

But who knows?

The other day, 3 books fell into my hands, 3 romances. They interested me because all three were, apparently, bestsellers.

I had heard of one of the writers, Nora Roberts, and have seen her books around, probably in drugstore book racks. A boy I used to tutor was obsessed by Roberts because his mother would not let him read Roberts’ books. His mother feared that the books were too mature for him. My friend was a voracious reader and immensely curious, and this denial just fired his interest. Not that a book by Nora Roberts fit his taste, he was more like a budding Lovecraft.

Anyway, these 3 romance books. Years ago, while running, I came upon a box of free books that someone left to the world and/or trash pick up. Naturally, I took as many as I could handle, 4, and saluted my benefactor’s house. All 4 books, I found, had covers featuring tall, dark, and handsome in a pirate shirt, and spirited, wild-haired, and bodice-rippable in a flouncy gown: hottie meets hottie circa 18th century England. I read at least one of the books and it was not bad. It was a substantial story, not mere paint by numbers.

All these books declare being bestsellers of different sorts. It is a fuzzy declaration, because a Dan Brown or J K Rowling must have a different sense of bestseller than even does Nora Roberts. Such do I assume.

From what I can tell (stopping at actually reading these books, tho I will not say I won’t), the book that stretches the genre the most is by Debbie Macomber, “#1 New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author”, as declared on the cover. I have never studied such lists but you might surmise these lists to be very long to accommodate all the bestsellers roaming the empyrean. I do not know if Macomber is #1 on a romance list, or a general list. To me, that second option stretches plausibility, because she would be up against, say, Stephen King, Dan Brown, and whatever Oprah has signed aboard to.

Macomber’s book bears the title Angels at Christmas. It is in fact two stories, which are “destined to become Christmas classics.” That is not exactly shortlisting the book. The back cover reveals the crux: “Every Christmas, three lovable angels visit Earth.” Uh oh.

The presentation of angels in pop fiction and movies creeps me out. It seems so unexamined and tawdry. ”Once a year,” reads the back cover, “Shirley, Goodness and Mercy are allowed to intervene (or, more accurately, interfere!) in human affairs.” Well, that sounds cute enough, harvested, doubtlessly, from It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s a movie, to be honest, that I have never managed to see, tho of course sublime cultural osmosis has refused to leave me free of its effects.

The two stories in Macomber’s book tally just over 400 pages. A page lists myriad other books, segregated by series, of which there are eight, plus a cook book. Does Rae Armantrout boast a recipe book, hm? Macomber won the 2005 Quill Award for Best Romance, and has “appeared on every major bestseller list, including those of the New York Times, US TODAY,  Publisher’s Weekly and Entertainment Weekly.” Uh HUH!

The front cover of Windfall by Nora Roberts proclaims that it contains “the timeless classics Impulse and Temptation.” Ah yes, due novella, and oh so timeless. And quick reads,too. “The last decade has seen over 100 of Nora’s books become New York Times bestsellers—many of them reaching #1.” That’s impressive in a faux dizzying way. So what kind of sales does Rae Armantrout see? Well, you know that hers, Silliman’s Bernstein’s, Hejinian’s (etc etc) combined is the square root of forget about it. What sort of snigger can one hear when the Pulitzer importantos select a poet to honour? I am sure it was wonderful when the ghost of Ed McMahon knocked on Rae’s door to present her the Pulitzer, but Our team is still losing.

Oh, I forgot to mench that Debbie Macomber “has become a leading voice in women’s fiction worldwide.” In case you did not know, or feel the overwhelming effect.

Summer by the Sea by Susan Wiggs seems like the most substantial book, it being 410 pages for one story. It also boasts blurbs, including three from Publisher’s Weekly and one by New York Times #1 Bestselling author Debbie Macomber, as member of the Moliére Memorial Symbiotic Back Scratching Association. No big Quill Award win noted here, alas.

Our team is still losing.

Poems That Are Written for Beth

 

A night with frogs

Clanking their fang

Insistence promulgates

An endlessness situated

In the pastoral vocation

Of Boston

Massachusetts. You

Quiz the whistling

Of airplanes intent

On crashing into

Forsythia and

You scurry across the

Vengeful traffic

Including doctored

Street signs and

The credit union called

Beacon St. Marlborough St

Is a hayfield. There are

Ropes in the air

Include the

Westin Hotel at

Copley Square, prime retail

Dump that van Gogh would call

A dump. Copley Square

Is named for

A bottle of quick

Paint, loosely stampede

For the cheers of Robert

Lowell fans. Diamonds

Are in special

Store windows, like

Cro-Magnon in the

Dilettante section. Ducks

Gather where

They should. People

In the street are

Targeted for promotion,

Aspic for dinner.

Spring is better

Because of frogs.

Easter is a process

With fronds that include

Your Neighbor,

You are too busy.

William Blake

Was a trundle bed,

And that’s okay.

Freemason

I joined the Freemasons in January. I was looking for a social place, and Beth said that her stepfather, who died last summer, really enjoyed being a Mason (and a Shriner, which is affiliated). I know, cloudily, that my grandfather was also a Mason. He died, blind from diabetes, when I was 7, so I did not know him well.

Those 2 connections were strong in my deciding to check out Freemasonry. I have lost most of my family, and feel that loss.

Freemasonry, of course, is a lightning rod for controversy. In going thru the Masonic process, I have kept my eyes open. I have not joined a group since I was a Boy Scout. Well, coterminously, I also joined Toastmasters International, to improve my speaking ability. Did you know that Toastmasters perform human sacrifices? Oh yes,  and I can write an Internet article to prove it.

Well, the point of this post is to advert yet another Bramhall blog. I have detailed all my Masonic adventures so far. The Masonic rites are surprisingly compelling.

Robert Lowell in the Icon Position

Paul Mariani’s bio of Robert Lowell is workmanlike at best. His bio of William Carlos Williams somehow made WCW seem dull, which is outrageous. Lowell was crazier, giving Mariani more to work with. Even retailing Lowell’s many juicy indiscretions, as well as the glittery crowd to which Lowell belonged, Mariani manages to keep things on the dull side.

And really, that’s okay. I do not want to fuss over how creepy Lowell was. He was manic depressive, and a thorough drinker in a thorough drinking crowd, so one looks at that, the chemical humanity of the man. Behaviour-wise, he’s a patch on Scott and Zelda.

Getting into the biography of artists is a step into murky water. OBVIOUSLY, it is the artist’s work that counts, finally. With Lowell, that biography is a tool for the writer. The term Confessional Poet is yet another attempt to concentrate critical matter to a couple of words. It is apposite to a degree, but it is imperative to keep that degree in mind. Lowell confessed, I would say, but in a self-serving way. I would like to say that Lowell’s work is anathema to me, because it is built on many shaky assumptions. Assumptions, I daresay, I have carried and may carry still, but anathemas still.

I am not really deriding the confessional aspect of his work. There is trickery therein, however, as in (according to Mariani) not just using his ex-wife’s letters in his own work but both editing her words and attributing some to himself. He works within a framework in which everything is material. Okay, except that he must put his stamp on it all.

He was well read, and thoughtful about that reading. But that reading is more material. It forms the basis of allusion and reference. As such it becomes, in my view, claptrap. Milton was a thing to use, as was Shakespeare, etc. It all passes thru Lowell, and you know where that metaphor leads.

Jeff Harrison, in an installment I have not yet now put up now on Antic View, has written “… I try to follow the poem's unfolding as a poet while contributing little to nothing as a writer. The less writer and the more poet in a poem, the more that poem gestures toward purity.” Purity, I know, is a difficult word (I put the word to him), but the idea for me is to follow the poem’s imperative and not force it to match one’s writerly position. Lowell, and that whole crowd, were too damn busy being writers to succeed as poets. Berryman and Bishop seem to be the only ones I hold interest in from that crew.

Reading about Lowell, or reading Plath’s journal, and how the poet rewrites the bejesus out of poems, is dispiriting. It is not that rewriting is bad, it is that the skulking intellect has so many plans beyond the poem’s blossom. I mean poems to answer critics, to make careers, to settle emotional situations. These uses are straying actions. to allow the poem rather than the poet to succeed is what I mean by purity, not to channel Mallarmé too much.

Mariani describes Lowell in between the dual (or duel) mentors of Eliot and Williams. It is almost funny how WCW reacts to Eliot, regarding Eliot as retrograde motion. There is something to that sense, a feeling that Eliot is offering the peace of the past rather than the excitement of the present. Lowell seems to be beguiled by both directions. As far as I can see, tho, for Lowell, Eliot won.

To me, Lowell’s work creates a static patronage of official culture, which is just the oblivious serenity of Eliot’s acceptable hierarchy. Lowell’s prose work is less enforced, and he is allowed to simply enter the thinking a poem might have, without the distraction of rendered form, culture, and official allusion. There, in the calm of prose, did he do his best work.

Robert Grenier was mentioned in the book—how many books currently speak of him at all? Grenier is listed as one of Lowell’s many famous, or sort of famous, students, and does not rate a place in the index. I remember saying to Grenier that I liked a Plath poem a bit and he said—gently, really—that I should probably look elsewhere. That is, for what he understood of me as a writer, her work would not be of use (O’Hara, on the other hand, he recommended to me). This was said without proscription, more like prescription. Lowell simply never suited me, and I have said the reasons why.

Cat Moment

The resident cat had a face to face with our betta. Beth saw it all. Mowgli climbed onto the counter where the betta’s bowl sits. Bettas, for the uninformed, are aka Japanese Fighting Fish. Males cannot share a bowl, and as I understand, males and females aren’t too good together either.

The cat has shown interest in the fish but never intruded before. Today, he stuck his nose right into the bowl. The fish reacted by leaping completely out of the water and slapping the cat on the face with his tail. The cat lurched back. He pondered a reinvestigation of the fish situation then chose to beat a retreat.

The fish is a leaper. When I feed him, I hold the pellets over the water so that he knows they are there and the fish leaps at my fingers. He moves about excitedly whenever I near him.

Mowgli and I had a mouse moment years ago. He had cornered a mouse in the house. I got a glass with which to capture the mouse. I held Mowgli with one hand and reach with the glass with the other. The mouse reacted by lunging at us, which caused me and the cat both to flinch back, and the mouse escaped.

A similar anecdote occurred with a previous cat. Huck was a fighting guy, and an outdoors cat. I saw that he had captured a chipmunk. I grasped the cat to get him to let the chipmunk go. Huck released the chipmunk. Before the critter escaped, it swatted the immobilized cat on the nose then ran away. Huck was pissed.

The Thorn Rosary by Eileen R. Tabios

Eileen Tabios has produced a selected prose collection (with new poems), published by Marsh Hawk Press. It leads me to some divagations.

Eileen’s published oeuvre is prodigious, so selection seems like a devilish task. I see it more as a recontextualizing of previous work. Eileen’s work owes much to series. The serial urge is an urge to complete, at least in some sense. Complete and yet to invite furtherance. I mean, when a series ends, invisible threads continue to stretch, the process does not stop. That is how I see poems in series.

I have already read much of the work here, because I have a number of the representative books. I said her work owes to series, but I mean more like concatenation, linkage of poems to each other, series to each other. The familiar here from the books I have reads differently in this new context.

The stresses have changed, words echo in new ways.

Eileen’s work is planted in a critical context. Thomas Fink, who selected the work, provides an introduction, and Joi Barrios adds an afterword. This situation of her work within context is essential in Eileen’s practice. Her writing rises from relational situations, historical, cultural, familial, and critical. These contexts are fluid and overlapping.

This selection, as noted, is of her prose writing. One might clarify by saying her prose poetry, but then we sink into a morass of terminology that may be more confusing than useful to explore. Or I should say, it is interesting to explore, but such an exploration is not a necessity to the enjoyment of these works, and may be a distraction.

I mean, what is poetry and what is prose?

Some 11 years ago, I shook off my accrued sense of poetry. I studied under Robert Grenier who, despite his obvious preference towards a poetry that would be identified as LANGUAGE poetry (not that that lump sum term can really define any territory properly), was very supportive of the discovering writer. I performed a slow discovery, over years and years, of where my writing came from and burgeoned towards, until I finally realized that the sentence worked for me. That the metre of the sentence could preside over the words that I knew.

I began making poetry, then, in prose. It is poetry because it is not just guided by the mentor called Good English (or good whatever language, but English is what I use). I allow disjunction, and fragmentation, and linear discontinuity to make their reports. Poetry, I see, insists on timely subversions. I learned that from Emily Dickinson.

Eileen uses different insistencies to provoke the heart of language. Her sentences are largely straightforward in their report, yet she maintains a relentless twining. Themes are immediate and conjunctive. And adjunctive. That is how this book, that is sifted from other books, is a NEW book. The returns are instructive and spiral to new vantage.

Eileen’s subversions are headturning. The curious embrace of Ferdinand Marcos’ daughter, in the office of writing towards her late father, is a feat of telling surprise. Eileen is a cork bobbing in the meeting of streams.

The Thorn Rosary is a handsomely turned out affair. It’s a hefty handful sized something like 8”x10”. I like the design, especially (and surprisingly) the use of a calligraphic font for headers. The book looks fresh and inviting.

As always with Eileen’s books, there are notes and bibliography and that sort of Olsonian process brought directly into the work itself. I love that! The experiment that is Eileen Tabios is fascinating to witness.

Picture of Robert Lowell

The book Lost Puritan by Paul Mariani features a picture of Robert Lowell on the cover. It is a loaded picture, or I am willing to see it so.

I am only in progress with the book (the bibliography of my previous post lists books that I am reading as well as have read), but it seems better than Mariani’s bio of WC Williams. That thing was a stodgy, dry affair. It seemed to leech my interest away from Williams (like Williams was to blame!). But I am on about something else here, the image of Lowell.

It is a black and white photo. Lowell sits on the ground with his back against the trunk of a large tree, presumably oak. It looks like leaves are on the ground, so let us say that it is fall. Some houses are visible in the background. The scene could be some New England suburb, or Lowell could be situated in a more rural area. You know, somewhere where artists gather.

Lowell cuts a lanky figure with long legs. He is dressed darkly, maybe even in black. He faces stage right, not quite a full profile. He has a cigarette in upraised hand, either pre or post inhalation. Well, say pre, since no smoke cloud is evident. He stares super pensively.

The image is plausibly powerful, but really it is just silly. Roving photographer did not just happen upon genus poet, poet was posed. Robert, look over there and look serious. Is he really thinking of a way to translate the experience of this moment (whatever he is looking at) into pentametric iambs? Jeez, I hope so.

The picture is in the class Author Photo. It is not at the level of Truman Capote’s portraits. Capote’s author photos have all the spontaneity of Norma Desmond. There’s one (Music for Chameleons, maybe?) where he places his fingers with precision about his face. It looks like the 80s precursor of gang signs, yo.

The malarkey level of Lowell’s picture is about average. He is playing the game. Anyway, author photo will always be a contrivance, whether the photo is posed or an image caught off, but presented on, guard. Selected for a reason.

Maybe not always. This book by B. F. Skinner that I have offers an image of him on the back cover. It is a smudgy black and white shot of him seated paging thru a book. The pages were in motion at the shutter click. Some people can be blurrily seen in the background. It is not a posed picture, it does not even look chosen. It looks like the first picture to come to hand. Even so, it says something.

Lowell’s picture seems especially pregnant. I am not what you call interested in Lowell. His poems are way to intrigued for me. The craft of such poetry is craftiness. There is a sense of production to his work that probably could take a Marxist reading. Lowell translates experience into poems. In The Dolphin, and elsewhere, he famously quotes letters from his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick. Those italicized passages of Hardwick overwhelm Lowell’s ratty poetics because Hardwick’s words are free of the elabouration that Lowell extrudes.

Lowell is youngish in the picture, tho I will not be so bold as to guess what I mean by youngish. Early 30s, maybe, or younger. Elsewhere in the book there’s a shot of him and his hair verges on a Trotsky pompadour. In the cover picture, his hair is fairly tamed. Lowell himself looks untamed.

Lowell’s eyes are dark in the picture, and the seriousness of his pose really feels weighty. I will not overwork my impression except to say that there is intention in the pose and posture.

Lowell’s work never made much impression on me. I have recounted before that in Robert Grenier’s class, we read Lowell’s “Skunk Island” as if Zukofsky had written it. Grenier led us to hear the syllables homophonically. I did not think this was within Lowell’s sense of mission, nor do I. Grenier could know better, not that it even matters what Lowell intended, because Grenier (amazingly) studied under Lowell. This is not something that I knew at the time.

The idea of confessional poet is obnoxious to me. Of course the term confessional poet is one of those shorthand labels that pretend to greater accuracy than they can bear. There is more to Lowell (and Plath, Sexton, Snodgrass) than confession, but an imperative to divulge certainly exists.

This sense of confession arises from a need to make a subject. Lowell et al. overload that subject. They create spasms of intent out of their nerve storms. They try to make poetry out of that, but the psychological impetus outweighs the poetic. Just as in the cover photo, too much focus plays on the poet’s image.

And yet I am reading this bio, of a poet that I am not much interested in (tho Elizabeth Bishop, guest star, has begun to intrigue me).  Got to shake off the imagery of image, if the words of the writer are to be read.

Bibliography

I recently started keeping a list of what I have been reading. this list has no theme, I suppose, except what has come to me to read. The history books and one or two others are books that Erin has to read this semester. The biographies are all from the library. I could grab just about anything in the biography section. I mean, there were bios of every member of ‘N SYNC. I will either screw up my courage and take the books out, or read them there. Anyway, this list represents something or other.

Biographies

Lenin, Ronald Clark
One Fine Stooge, Larry Fine's Frizzy Life in Pictures, Steve Cox & Jim Terry
Little Man (Meyer Lansky), Robert Lacey
Dr Goebbels, His Life and Death, Roger Manvell
Lost Puritan (Robert Lowell), Paul Mariani
Many Tears from Now, Paul McCartney
Scott Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Meyer
One Matchless Time (William Faulkner), Jay Parini
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
History
History—A Very Short Introduction, John H. Arnold
A Brief History of the Human Race, Michael Cook
A Brief History of Islam* Tamara Sonn
Learning
The Artist's Way at Work, Mark Bryan with Julia Cameron & Catherine Allen
Moral Principles in Education, John Dewey
Experience and Education, John Dewey
Reading Magic, Mem Fox
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
Thinking in Pictures,Temple Grandin
A Pedagogy for Liberation, Ira Shor & Paulo Freire
Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B.F. Skinner
The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, John Wood
Novels
Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel
Sphere, Michael Crichton
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Philosophy
Understanding the Mind, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
The Phenomenology of Mind, G. W. F Hegel
Kant, Robert Scruton
Hegel, Peter Singer
Why Religion Matters, Huston Smith
Technical
HTML, XHTML & CSS, Elizabeth Castro
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications

Bruce Stater

Alan Sondheim posted this link to Bruce Stater's work on the Wryting-L list. I have just poked at it so far, but it is worth poking at.