Perfection!

Opposition of lines: Red and Yellow
by Piet Mondrian



What work of art or artist turns you on? I was recently at the Dallas Museum Art (come on, don't be jealous) and I literally had to run by a Mondrian much like this one because L was running in one direction and K in the other. I was there because my in laws were in town and I was keeping the kids busy while they looked around. In the end it wasn't a great idea. You can't imagine how uptight those guards get when little children are bouncing around priceless pieces of art! The kids and I ended up spending most of our time in the lobby or the gift shop.

Anyway, I was so sad when I had to speed by the Mondrian and not even properly look at it. I always thought people like Mondrian were kind of laughable when I was a kid. Who can't paint squares and lines? Couldn't a kid do that? But now I realize Mondrian was a visionary who changed our entire aesthetic. The lines, color and composition of his paintings reflect the best in the modern aesthetic. They're literally perfect.

On Gay Wallpaper

by William Carlos Williams

The green-blue ground
is ruled silver lines
to say the sun is shining

And on this moral sea
of grass or dreams lie flowers
or baskets of desires

Heaven knows what they are
between cerulean shapes
leave regularly round

Mat roses and tridentate*
leaves of gold
threes, threes and threes

Three roses and three stems
the basket floating
standing in the horns of blue

Repeating to the ceiling
to the windows
where the day

Blows in
the scalloped curtains to
the sound of rain

*three-pronged

On Gay Wall-paper

Ugh

Good evening Off Hesperusians,

I am spent. Physically, emotionally, mentally. I feel like I haven't read a poem in five years. In fact, I feel like I haven't read anything in five years. I am so tired and decrepit that it's difficult to even type this measly little post because my nails are way too long and wild. That's right, folks. My children are transforming me into Howard Hughes. Or at least a very tired Howard Hughes. I started this blog, in part, to have a safe, warm intellectual nook of my own. Something that was just mine, apart from the demanding and sometimes gruelings days as a mother to my two young children. But I am afraid folks that these adorable children have finally stood on top of my lifeless body and declared victory.

Okay, I'm being dramatic. But it has been a particularly hard week. It has been filled with unholy things. Fluids and infections, runny tummies (for everyone!), endless whining, crying and an odd outbreak of fruit flies.

So I write to you to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I am so damn lame. I'm not even going to pretend that I've read or written anything edifying lately. I would though appreciate your thoughts on the whole Juan Williams debacle. The more I thought about it, I never did understand his arrangement with Fox and NPR. It did always seems odd to me. But I liked him as a commentator. I heard an NPR story on the whole matter and they made him sound like a very occasional guest commentator, but he was much more than that. He was an NPR all star, no?

The whole thing is really odd. It sounds like it was a conflict that was waiting to happen, what with his dual roles in very different news organizations. But I personally wasn't that offended by what he said. It sounded like he was expressing a personal feeling but wasn't purposely trying to be incendiary like a Bill O'Reilly on the View. And it is confusing. He isn't a straight reporter, he is an analyst and a commentator mostly. Can you never insert yourself if you're constantly giving your take on things?

Thoughts?

Photo of the day

Nikki S. Lee is an intriguing Korean-American photographer who has this series of photographs where she inserts herself into different subcultures and poses as one-of-the-gang. The photo above is called the Hispanic Project. Others include the Yuppie Project, the Lesbian project, the Hip-Hop project. They're really vibrant, dynamic photographs.

Geoff Dyer--Who is this guy???

Is anyone a fan of author Geoff Dyer. This guy absolutely intrigues me. I started reading him because of his book on photography called The Ongoing Moment. It's hilarious because he's not an expert on photography, he even admits in the book that he doesn't own a camera, but the book is insightful, expansive...I really learned a lot.

But then the guy is also a novelist. I recently saw a book he had written called Paris Trance. There was a naked lady on the cover so I was a little too embarrassed to buy it. I'm a prude, what can I say?

I just don't know how to peg this guy. He's an essayist, novelist, and goodness knows what else. Does he have a cookbook out as well? He's also written a sort meditative post-modern self-help book called Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It (isn't that the greatest title?). What an enigma!

Anyway, is this guy well-known? Is he really as brilliant as he seems or is he just all over the place? Paris Trance intrigued me but I was afraid it was going to be too similar to Henry Miller. It's a "Lost Generation" novel about ex-pats in Paris. It could be good or it could be really really bad. I don't know. Every time I read jacket copy that talks about a book being erotic or sensual, I just think it's going to degrade the female characters. My most recent attempts at both Philip Roth and John Updike left me feeling grossed out and alienated from their characters. Because it's always from the male character's perspective, the women just come across as objects the male characters vent all of their frustrations and anxieties on. What's usually described as "erotic" comes across as crude and in humane.

What I'm reading

Just finished a fine coming-of-age novel called Jim the Boy by Tony Earley. I have never heard of this writer but I was browsing in the bookstore, the cover caught my eye and I felt in the mood for a well-written but not too serious novel. And that's exactly what I got. I really respect writers who write what they know. And I think Earley is that kind of writer. His characters and setting ring true and I trust that he can recreate this world that is so foreign to me.

Although, in some ways the idyll of a small farming town in the south isn't that foreign. It's reminiscent of other great American writers like Faulkner or Harper Lee or Willa Cather. Although it's foreign to me personally, I'm familiar with the place in my imagination. Just as I feel familiar with the mid-century world of prep schools from books like Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace and Lord of the Flies.

Earley has written a sequel to Jim the Boy called The Blue Star. I hope to start reading it today. It's been a long time since I read a novel I really enjoyed and didn't feel like work but also felt satisfying.

What are y'all reading?

Thug: ok or not?

A friend runs the SF Examiner crime blog but I had to call out the use of "thug" in this story about an arrest on the Muni platform:

If it “walks like a duck with a gun, talks like a duck with a gun, it’s a duck with a gun,” police said.

Bayview cops couldn’t avoid getting into a shootout Saturday. Two officers exchanged gunfire with thugs by a public housing development, though no one was hit, police said.

He said that the use of thug is to meant to denote "would-be criminals" but I think it's too presumptuous. On language: what do we really mean by "thugs"?

Apologies that this is not poetry-related.

Zone

Thougths on "Zone" ? I found some quotes from this poem in a book I'm reading and thought them quite striking. Although it's fascinating that the language is different in Poetry Foundation's version because of variations in translation. I liked the lines in the book I'm reading better.


Comment: More to come. The end of August was funky for me. I had a surprise appendectomy which set me back a few weeks. We were also visiting my family in CO for a few weeks. Hope you all are well!

Photo of the day

January 8

by David Lehman

The wind does whistle but it also hums
if you say it does, because you have
that power: language makes it possible,
and you have the choice: you can revile
the slogans and shibboleths of groupthink
or you can watch TV commercials as if
they were aesthetic products to be
appreciated and analyzed: not much
of a choice, is it: let's go beyond
"either/or" and see if we can't just ignore
what offends our nostrils, and makes
something out of our minds, out of our
minds in both senses: let's see
what happens when the imagination as
conceived by Wallace Stevens marries
the language as conceived by millions daily

From The Evening Sun, 2002.

Image of the Day

photograph by Garry Winogrand, 1963.

Correction: Casey doesn't know what ephemeral means

I don't know what ephemeral means. I improperly used that lovely word in my last post. I meant religious ideas that are theoretical and unprovable.

Thought of the day

"There is no God higher than the truth."--Mahatma Ghandi

Comment: I agree with this statement, but it also brings up a lot of big questions. First and foremost, what is the truth? Does any one person know the truth? Can we, in our lifetimes, claim to finally know the truth? Ideas and concepts that are ephemeral and ethereal like the presence of God, the beginning of the universe, the existence of Grace, the immortal soul, Heaven and Hell...I can not prove that these concepts are true, but I also can not prove that they are false. Are these things that we can not prove the whole basis for "faith"? But does that diminish our faith in things that are real, that are hard-earned and proven.

I guess, for me, the only truths I know are my values. And I think that that's what Ghandi means when he says the truth. No God is greater than your values. You should not go against your values in the name of religion. Religion should uphold and bolster the values most dear to your heart. The ones that you know in your gut. If this is what Ghandi means then I could not agree with him more.

But then again I was not brought up in a creedal religion. Perhaps if I had been raised within a religion I would feel differently. Does anyone else have a different perspective? Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.

Thought of the day

His Holiness said his experience was that the American people in general tend to react quickly to developments, being very joyous when something good happened or feeling depressed when something bad took place. He suggested that they needed to take time to think over the development.

— The Dalai Lama’s Web site, reporting on his visit to New York last week

Comment: I read this great quote in John Kenney's hilarious Op-Ed in the NY Times. I'm just so sick of this endless cycle of conflict and bickering. If you listen, read or watch the news we do come across as a nation's of chickens without heads. Squawk! Squawk! Squawk! All over the place. We never stop and think. We just judge and then judge some more. There needs to be more gestation and less pontificating. Can't we come together on the important matters and stop tearing each other apart?

Waterwings

by Cathy Song

The mornings are his,

blue and white

like the tablecloth at breakfast.

He’s happy in the house,

a sweep of the spoon

brings the birds under his chair.

He sings and the dishes disappear.

Or holding a crayon like a candle,

he draws a circle.

It is his hundredth dragonfly.

Calling for more paper,

this one is red-winged

and like the others,

he wills it to fly, simply

by the unformed curve of his signature.

Waterwings he calls them,

the floats I strap to his arms.

I wear an apron of concern,

sweep the morning of birds.

To the water he returns,

plunging where it’s cold,

moving and squealing into sunlight.

The water from here seems flecked with gold.

I watch the circles

his small body makes

fan and ripple,

disperse like an echo

into the sum of water, light and air.

His imprint on the water

has but a brief lifespan,

the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing.

This is sadness, I tell myself,

the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,

because he will not remember

that he and beauty were aligned,

skimming across the water, nearly airborne,

on his first solo flight.

I’ll write “how he could not

contain his delight.”

At the other end,

in another time frame,

he waits for me—

having already outdistanced this body,

the one that slipped from me like a fish,

floating, free of itself.

Comment: Happy Mother's Day from the Poetry Foundation. This poem made me tear up. There is so much love and beauty in the details of watching your child grow up. But there is always an underlying tenderness because we know all of those little moments are ephemeral. Time marches mercilessly on. It is as Nabokov's poet wrote in Pale Fire, "The melancholy and the tenderness/Of mortal life; the passion and the pain."

Sentimental Education

by Tony Hoagland

And when we were eight, or nine,
our father took us back into the Alabama woods,
found a rotten log, and with his hunting knife

pried off a slab of bark
to show the hundred kinds of bugs and grubs
that we would have to eat in a time of war.

"The ones who will survive," he told us,
looking at us hard,
"are the ones who are willing to do anything."
Then he popped one of those pale slugs
into his mouth and started chewing.

And that was Lesson Number 4
in The Green Beret Book of Childrearing.

I looked at my pale, scrawny, knock-kneed, bug-eyed brother,
who was identical to me,
and saw that, in a world that ate the weak,
we didn't have a prayer,

and next thing I remember, I'm working for a living
at a boring job
that I'm afraid of losing,

with a wife whose lack of love for me
is like a lack of oxygen,
and this dead thing in my chest
that used to be my heart.

Oh, if he were alive, I would tell him, "Dad,
you were right! I ate a lot of stuff
far worse than bugs."

And I was eaten, I was eaten,
I was picked up
and chewed
and swallowed

down into the belly of the world.

"Sentimental Education" by Tony Hoagland, from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty. © Graywolf Press, 2010 . Reprinted with permission of the author.

Comment: Another poem I snagged from The Writer's Almanac. Sudeep took classes from Tony Hoagland and got to know him quite well in college. I never took a class with him in college, but I have read a bunch of his poetry and even saw him read here in Dallas. When I got him to sign my book, I told him about our G.W. and Sudeep connection and he said, "You're a long way from D.C." I don't know. It made me feel sad. He was right. It's odd where you find yourself 10 years later. It made me feel old and far way from those carefree days. At the time he was teaching at a university in Houston. I wonder if he is still there. I'm sure poets, especially ones who teach live a nomadic life. Anyway, I thought this poem was a good example of his work. He's so effortlessly funny and sympathetic as a narrator. His poems are always tinged with sadness and contradiction, but they feel honest. I love too the title of the book!

The Wreck of the Hesperus

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,

Had sailed to the Spanish Main,

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,

For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,

A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

Oh say, what may it be?"

"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" —

And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,

Oh say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live

In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,

Oh say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That savèd she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave

On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side

Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

Comment: I had to include this gem of a poem. The blog's namesake just keeps showing up in poem after poem. I love it! And another serendipitous discovery was I have known this poem practically my entire life. I just never knew the title. And do you know why I knew this poem? Alright, anyone who doesn't have a high tolerance for dorkiness better shut down their computers...this poem is featured in the Canadian cinema classic "Anne of Avonlea". For all of you lame asses, "Anne of Avonlea" is the sequel to the much beloved film adaptation of "Anne of Green Gables." Anne herself did not recite this poem. She has the great misfortune of having to read Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman" after an accomplished and much older actress recites "The Wreck of the Hesperus" at a poetry recital at the White Sands Hotel. Are there any other "Anne of Green Gables" fans out there? Are you feelin' me on this one? No? Okay, just forget I ever disclosed this about myself. Now I want to recite this poem and clutch my breast at the end. Get the smelling salts!

Breakage

by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea.

How everything shines in the morning light!

The cusp of the whelk,

the broken cupboard of the clam,

the opened, blue mussels,

moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,

dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

*whelk: a common sea snail

Comment: Mary Oliver is a really extraordinary nature poet. She's not as flowery as lthe transcendentalists, but of course, she is influenced by them. She's not quite as dark (at least the little I've read of her) as Elizabeth Bishop, but nature holds the answers for her. She's a supreme observer like William Carlos Williams. When she writes, it's as if all the mysteries of life are in that "scallop full of moonlight". I wonder if I could ever look at nature in that way. I think about nature a lot because of K. He thinks about it all the time and stops to looks at the birds and insects and asks me questions about things I take for granted like eggs and nests. I wonder if I'll ever look at nature again like a child or Oliver does. What can I learn from observing the scene just outside my window?

Today

by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.


Comment: Happy birthday to my dear friend, Eugenia. I have no idea what the weather is going to be like in San Francisco tomorrow but I hope it is like the spring day Collins has described. Or at least I hope your mood is like that spring day. I am ultra-bummed because in finding and reading this poem I realized that Billy Collins had given a reading in Dallas. In fact, at a venue not three minutes from my front door and I completely forgot. FORGOT, folks. That is the state of my brain. Oh, well. I'm always slightly disappointed at readings. They're very rarely what you think.

Wishing you sunshine, warm breezes and gardens bursting with peonies!

Quote of the day

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."

— Maya Angelou


Comment: What do you think? True or not true? I tend to believe this, but then again what about second chances? What about a skewed or wrong impression?

Is contemporary literary fiction just a steaming heap of dung?

There is a thought-provoking review of "The Surrendered" by Chang-Rae Lee in the New Yorker this week (although it could be last week's because I tend to be a week behind). The first half of the review is a discussion of the conventions of contemporary literary fiction. How there is so much unnecessary description and attention to realism. How the emotions of the characters are so spelled out and explained. How despite the attention to real life details, the plots are often overly contrived and not true to life.

It made me feel really depressed about literary fiction. Like all the "good books" out there are really only Lifetime movies and nothing more. I understand the writer's point. Sometimes literary fiction does seem to blend and is more or less predictable in its degree of "literary"-ness to complicated plot ratio. But you can apply this to all forms. Geez, how many pieces of fruit can Cezanne paint? And Edward Hopper, enough already with the barren urban landscapes. We get it. Life is empty and quiet!

But is the only literature out the worth reading, non-linear, avant garde and hyper-intellectual? Basically the unreadable stuff? I guess it comes down to what you want out of a novel. And that's probably a personal list of demands.

For me, the difference is often the emotional response. I read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. Both examples of literary fiction that were critically and commercially successful. Both were good, but honestly, unremarkable for me. I wouldn't re-read either. And trust me, I am not dissing either of these authors. Their achievement is not lost on me. I could not write what they wrote. What they wrote took dedication, talent and imagination. But I wouldn't reread what they wrote.

And yet I could reread The Great Gatsby and Lolita over and over again. Probably the book I have reread the most is To Kill a Mockingbird. It's strange how there are those books you can reread again and again and get something new every time. These books are like old friends.

But there are plenty of esteemed writers I've never read like Cormac McCarthy or William Faulkner (I've never read anything by William Faulkner!!!). I guess what I'm saying is there is a lot of literary fiction that is unremarkable and kind of bland, but at the end of the day novels are just stories. They are not essays or meditations, they are stories. As much as Milan Kundera argues that there are no characters just ideas, it's not the "ideas" that make you weep at the end of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's the characters and their universal plight and the brevity of life and the salvation and consolation of love.

So--I think--even using plain language, conventional plots, characters who resemble real life people, you can still write a great novel. One that will be beloved and reread over and over again. But they are not a dime a dozen and you probably have to read a lot to find the true gems.

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Comment: I've never read anything by Mary Oliver but I want to get to know her better. Her name keeps popping up. Her poems are often cited at our Sunday UU services. Then I was reading a column in a local magazine here by a Baptist minister who talked at length about the meaning of two of her poems. Now if a poet inspires and is cited by both a UU minister and a Baptist minister...you can't help but be curious. "In Blackwater Woods" was one of the poems the Baptist minister referred to. It's the last two stanzas that really grab you. And in terms of truth, I feel she pretty much sums it up. The things we love the most in life are mortal. We must hold on to them dearly while we can, but with the knowledge that the people we love can't stay with us forever nor can we can stay with them forever. It's so painful, but it's one of the few truths we have.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

Comment: I had no idea this was a poem. I had heard of the movie about Nelson Mandela but did not realize that the title is based on this poem and that "Invictus" in Latin (at least according to Wikipedia means "unconquered". I've never heard of William Ernest Henley (is he a famous poet?), but this poem has a good story. Apparently he wrote it after his legs were amputated due to tuberculosis of the bone. When he originally published it, there was no title. An editor later added it. The last two lines are the soul of the poem. I wonder about the truth behind them. Are we really the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul? Are these things that can be captained or mastered? Are we more the stewards of our souls? The keepers, the protectors?

Thought for the day

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable; and
wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think
quietly, talk gently, act frankly..to
listen to stars and buds, to babes and
sages, with open heart; await occasions,
hurry never...this is my symphony.
--William Henry Channing

Comment: I found this quote in the "Live Your Best Life" section of O Magazine. Even if it's not always attainable advice, you've got to love those transcendentalists for trying. It really would be a beautiful path to follow. But it's difficult to stay on that path. One minute you're extolling the virtues of less and the next minute you want a new language program so you can learn another language, but you're lap top is old so you need a new lap top and so on and so forth. Here's a quote from Esther De Waal (I have no idea who this is) I have pinned to my board that I try to remind myself of in times of rampant frenzied consumerism, "Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants." It's such a powerful idea, it's just hard to live.

What I am Reading

Right now I am licking the fresh wounds from a breakup (too mundane to even detail), so reading is saving my life even more than usual. Reading is a big part of the plan of getting back on my feet. I've actually named my plan and it's called, The Continuation of My Awesome Excellent Self. Too much? Never!

Back on topic - What I am Reading: My neighbor had a copy of McSweeney's The Panorama Book Review, in which an interview with Junot Diaz caught my eye. I've read many interviews of Junot Diaz and each interview always convinces me that Diaz is an all-around awesome guy that I should read. So what I'm reading now is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

I am not far enough along in the book to pass on any great quotes about it, but here is something else I have been thinking about in terms of writing:

What's the importance of audience when you are writing fiction?

In the McSweeney's interview I mentioned above, Diaz said:

When I was writing this book [The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao], I was very aware in my head that I was writing about Dominicans in New Jersey - and that while I considered this experience universal that's not the way it's usually viewed by the larger world. But it's not like I could dumb it down because if I tried to write for some sort of vague mainstream audience, I would just lose everything that mattered in the book, I would lose all the awesome specificity and have nothing in the end to show for it.

...

If you're a writer like me, writing about people of color who are not always viewed as the center of the universe, you have to rely on your core readers, and on people who are nuanced readers, to keep your book alive...I think you should always write to the most specific audience imaginable, and from there springs the universal. It's not the opposite way - you don't write to a very big audience, and assume that's going to make your work universal. Every book that we continue to read a hundred years later, the thing that really joins it to other books that we're stlil reading a hundred years later is the extraordinary specificity.

In the few chapters of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao that I read, I can really see what Diaz meant. There were such specific details about Dominican life that he wove into the story in such a natural way - not in a way to explain it to the uninitiated, but in a way that tells you this is just what life was about for him.

Separately, in a New York Times profile of James Patterson (which I really enjoyed), I ran into the question of audience again. Patterson wrote "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls" - he is such a prolific author that he has 51 novels on the New York Times Best Sellers list, 35 of which went to No. 1. Some derogatively call Patterson an "airport author"but his popularity is undeniable.

From the profile:

Patterson considers himself as an entertainer, not a man of letters. Still, he bristles when he hears one of his books described as a guilty pleasure: “Why should anyone feel guilty about reading a book?” Patterson said that what he does — coming up with stories that will resonate with a lot of people and rendering them in a readable style — is no different from what King, Grisham and other popular authors do. “I have a saying,” Patterson told me. “If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of people, think about them a little bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of people in this country go through their days numb. They need to be entertained. They need to feel something.”

I have a short story and an essay that I am trying to finish, and I think audience is always the biggest question for me. Who am I writing this for? Why should my audience want to read it? Would I want to read it? I haven't found any easy answers for this yet.

What I'm reading

Sudeep writes:

I'm reading Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam. Yes, it's about basketball. Halberstam
follows the 1979 Portland Trailblazers. There lots of fascinating stories and people from a time when the NBA was getting more and more exposure and money from television and was changing into what it is today. It's so good I'm actually hesitant to keep reading it, I don't want it to be over!

Also, did you know Lucille Clifton died? I really like this
poem of hers:

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

What I'm reading

Roman says:

The Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

What I'm reading

Steph writes:

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. I'm really into detective novels after reading Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. I like how lean mean spare reporter-like the prose is. And I like the old fashion words (like "I'm tight" or "I'm drunk" or "dame" or "she's one hot dish") hard drinking hard living stuff. It's fun even when it's completely ridiculous. I also just read The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith - A M A Z I N G!!! It's a brilliant lesbian novel that actually inspired Nabokov's Lolita. I recommend it to gays and straights alike. She also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley and a new biography on her just came out and man was she WAY ahead of her time, so cool, so crazy, so gay gay gay!

What's everyone reading?

Anyone reading anything interesting lately?

Every night I look at Will in the World and curse for myself for not finishing it. I've finally realized that the only way I'm going to finish the thing is by making it required reading. When it's late and you're tired and it's been a long day, somehow a learned biography of William Shakespeare just does not hit the spot.

But I have stumbled upon a really interesting book about post-war American photography called The Ongoing Moment that is unlike anything I've ever read before. The author, Geoffrey Dyer, doesn't even own a camera, but he was interested in the subject and wanted to know how one photographer's images inform other photographers. How they play off each other so to speak.

He also talks about the process too of being a street photographer. That's something I've always wondered about but never knew. Some photographers like Stieglitz hid the camera because they thought if people knew they were being photographed the moment was somehow perverted. Stieglitz would actually hide his camera in his coat on the subway to photograph people. Then there are other photographers like Garry Winograd who were very blatant photographing on the street. You can actually see people staring at him in the photographs. Diane Arbus was also of this same school of thought. She actually thought it was a more honest photograph if the subject was aware she was being photographed. An interest debate, no? I'm not sure where I fall. I guess both have their place.

So what are we all reading/watching/listening to? I'm curious!

Working Together

by David Whyte

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

The Ineffable

by George Bilgere

I'm sitting here reading the paper,
feeling warm and satisfied, basically content
with my life and all I have achieved.
Then I go up for a refill and suddenly realize
how much happier I could be with the barista.
Late thirties, hennaed hair, an ahnk
or something tattooed on her ankle,
a little silver ring in her nostril.
There's some mystery surrounding why she's here,
pouring coffee and toasting bagels at her age.
But there's a lot of torsion when she walks,
which is interesting. I can sense right away
how it would all work out between us.

We'd get a loft in the artsy part of town,
and I can see how we'd look shopping together
at our favorite organic market
on a snowy winter Saturday,
snowflakes in our hair,
our arms full of leeks and shiitake mushrooms.
We would do tai chi in the park.
She'd be one of the few people
who actually "gets" my poetry
which I'd read to her in bed.
And I can see us making love, by candlelight,
Struggling to find words for the ineffable.
We never dreamed it could be like this.

And it would all be great, for many months,
until one day, unable to help myself,
I'd say something about that nostril ring.
Like, do you really need to wear that tonight
at Sarah and Mike's house, Sarah and Mike being
pediatricians who intimidate me slightly
with their patrician cool, and serious money.
And she would give me a look,
a certain lifting of the eyebrows
I can see she's capable of, and right there
that would be the end of the ineffable.

"The Ineffable" by George Bilgere, from The White Museum. © Autumn House Press, 2010.

Comment: Another poem I snagged from "The Writer's Almanac". I found this one amusing. And I love the word "ineffable". I don't know if I've ever used that word in a sentence! I'm going to use it now all the time. It's more poetic than "indescribable". I love that idea of imagining the lives of others, even though we don't have a clue, based on their clothes, their age, their professions. We can imagine a whole story about them without even talking to them like the narrator in the poem. He's already in love with her, in a relationship with her, and he's probably only ever said "thank you" to her. Not only that but he can imagine their love affair, but he can also portend its unfortunate demise.

I wrote a really bad short story with the same concept back in college. It was about how these strangers who drift in and out of our imagination can be very powerful and actually affect our lives. Do we imagine them because we are desperate for something more in our own lives? Do we create drama in our minds because we lack drama in real life? Is it just something to do? Or is there really a psychic connection that we so rarely act on. Like that person you happen to make eye contact with on the train and you wonder why you both were compelled to look and you wonder, what if? It's that ineffable connection.

More thoughts on "A Display of Mackerel"

I realized today that when I commented on "A Display of Mackerel" the only example I gave for a real world example was this Black Eyed Peas public performance piece done on Oprah back in the Fall. For some reason it was the only example that came to mind. But today, listening to the church choir, I realized that there are so many examples where we shimmer as a mass rather than as an individual. In a choir for instance, or in an orchestra, or at a baseball game doing the wave or at a concert all singing a favorite song or in a movie theater laughing loudly at the same film. Isn't that the best when a movie is really funny and everyone laughs together?

I used to love being part of an orchestra. I was terrible, of course, and thank GOD I was drowned out by the rest of the instruments, but I really enjoyed being part of that sound. It's funny how our culture stresses individualism so much...really valuing "uniqueness". And yet it feels so good to feel part of something, to get lost in fellowship to put a finer point on it.

I've realized too that the reason why those examples didn't come to mind right away is because I haven't experienced them lately. When's the last time I sang in a choir or played in an orchestra or went to a baseball game (that could be because I don't really enjoy watching baseball)? It's good to have these types of experiences in our lives. They're joyful and make us feel connected. I'm going to seek them out more. I'm going to be more mackerel than inimitable individual.

A Display of Mackerel

by Mark Doty

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Being in Love

By Chungmi Kim

Awakened from a dream, I curl up
and turn. The roses on the dresser
smile and your words bloom.
The red roses for Valentine's Day.

Like in a film
thoughts of you unfold
moment by moment.

I vaguely hear
the sound of your spoon scooping cereal
the water stream in the shower
the buzzing noise of your electric razor
like a singing of cicada.

Your footsteps in and out of the bedroom.
Your lips touching my cheek lightly.
And the sound of the door shutting.

In your light
I fall asleep again under the warm quilt
happily like a child.

Upon waking
on the kitchen counter I find a half
grapefruit carefully cut and sectioned.
Such a loving touch is a milestone
For my newly found happiness.

"Being in Love" by Chungmi Kim, from Glacier Lily. © Red Hen Press, 2004.

Comment: Not a very good poem, but it was exciting to see The Writer's Almanac send out a poem by a Korean American woman. I have to support my peeps. I do like the sentiment of the last stanza. His "gift" is touching. There is that point in falling in love when a small gesture like the preparation of a grapefruit means the world.

Manhattan

The last time I watched Manhattan was in college. I saw it today again. What a great Woody Allen film. Less endearing than Annie Hall or Hannah and Her Sisters, but still funny and heartbreaking. I love when he says New York is a "knockout". We should all be so lucky to love where we live with such intensity and certainty. Trust me, I wouldn't exactly describe Dallas as a "knockout". The opening of the film is beautiful. It's all kind of corny--sentimental Manhattan images, Gershwin pounding in the background--but it works. Isn't that why we love New York? The storied images, the black and white romance, the twinkling fantasy. Anyway, here's a line that made me laugh out loud:

"Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat."

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

by A.E. Stallings

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

Bring it on, 2010!

Good evening, friends. Can you believe that it is already January 3, 2010? For me, it's hard to believe that nine years have passed since college, the first job, living in New York, first dating Noah, 9/11. Nearly a decade. When I first met N's family, his oldest nephew was 4. We were just in London visiting and his nephew is now 12! He hangs out at skate parks and has a page on facebook. It's just so hard to believe. I'm sure there are innumerable quotes about getting older and the silent indiscernible passage of time, but I don't know of any. I'm sure you all feel it too at markers like the year end.

Before moving on to 2010, let's acknowledge 2009, shall we. I'll list ten memorable moments/things and please do the same if you're feeling up to it (nudge, nudge).

1. The birth of my daughter L in May.

2. K, now two, really embracing and enjoying all of his cousins in both Boulder and London.

3. Visiting E in San Francisco on Valentine's Day weekend. Shabu shabu, shopping, cappuccinos, the De Young, Burma Superstar...we did it all!

4. Discovering the photography of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, especially Shore's work Uncommon Places. I think about those images all the time.

5. Starting Off Hesperus and being about to discuss and share with all you lovely people.

6. Building a better relationship with my brother, and realizing the importance of family. When the shit hits the fan, family's got your back. It's not a cliche, it's the truth.

7. Barack Obama's first year in office. Personally feeling for the first time that a person who genuinely cares about our best interests is in charge. I believe he is an honorable, compassionate person who wants to better all Americans' lives.

8. Discovering the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. I really love that place. I don't know if we'd identify as Unitarians, but I feel so lucky and fortunate that it's here and a part of our lives. It's added a new dimension to my life. It's a safe place to think about everything important in life, much like this blog.

9. Traveling to London with L and K. This monster of a journey really has made any plane ride, whether it be to Colorado or the east coast seem like a breeze.

10. Seeing Wilco for the first time live in concert with N. They were awesome. They were perfection. It probably wasn't even a good night for them, but I have never had that much fun at a concert.

There are probably other huge (or HUGER) highlights I'm forgetting, but these were definitely memorable and meaningful moments of 2009. Goodbye, 2009. You were a good year! There were great highs and great lows. You sucked economically, but ultimately you'll always be a special year for me because you gave me my beautiful L!