Stevie Smith, come back to us!

I think I claimed somewhere recently that I had not been exposed to Stevie Smith's poetry before this class.  Not true!  I've read "Not Waving, But Drowning" before, I'm sure.  Okay, I think.  But I have really developed a new appreciation for her since I've been reading more of her poetry.  I think she and I would have gotten along famously.  Sad she died when I was only two.  My work for today was to pick a Modern British poem we hadn't yet read for class.  I decided to let the textbook fall open and see what I came up with.  The result was Stevie Smith's "Souvenir de Monsieur Poop."  Somehow that title caught my eye!  Hard to believe, I know.  This poem puts into words what I feel about those who feel a might superior about their knowledge of English literature.  There's more in my head about it than Stevie (Yes, we're on a first-name basis now.) puts in this poem.  She talks about the belief that the classics are the only valid literature, citing Shakespeare, Milton, and (tee-hee) Housman.  Another aspect of this is the idea that only some topics of contemporary authors are good enough to be called "serious" literature.  Poop on mysteries and horror!  Turn away from sci-fi and fantasy!  No, not every contemporary writer is a master of his craft.  But there is more than one goal of writing.  Not everything we read has to elevate us or educate us.  Writing can entertain us.  It's okay to escape sometimes, as long as you make it back to the real world.  I love Stevie Smith.  And I love Stephen King.  Maybe I can even teach him some day.  You might be surprised.  He even has subtext.

Are we growing up?

Is modern society any more enlightened, any more "grown up" than its predecessors?  I really have nothing more to say here, but I'll blather on anyway.  Three poems in this segment: Larkin's "Church Going," Hughes's "Hawk Roosting," and Heaney's "Digging."  All well written.  Each a commentary on some aspect of modern society and culture, thought Heaney's is also a commentary on the value of poetry and/or literature.  Larkin was writing about the disappearance of religion from society.  I don't think we'll live to see that day, do you?  Hughes seemed to be addressing the self-centeredness of humans, our lovely ability to see the world as revolving around us, here to serve our wants and needs.  Heaney made me the happiest.  He values his work as well as the muddier work of his ancesteors.  He believes in the past and the present, disparaging neither, with a need for both.

Auden, you mad, depressing, encouraging poet!

I am really enjoying the Auden we've been reading for this class.  I loved rereading those I've read before - "Musee des Beaux Arts", "Funeral Blues", and "The Unknown Citizen", for example - and I relished the new experience of reading "In Praise of Limestone" (that was sure a challenge!) and "The Shield of Achilles".  One of our assignments for this class is to put together a web page focusing on some aspect of modern British poetry or on a poet.  I was having a hard time with this.  Today, I think I get it.  I should have gotten it before.  I mean, life is full of just such contradictions as Auden and the other poets I'm currently studying present.  Aren't we lucky to live in a time when we have leisure time to spend on the internet and dancing and poetry and whatever else we wish?  But on the other side of the world or down the street are people fighting just to live, soldiers fighting in wars of dubious origins, poisoned streams, vacuous celebrities - I could go on, but I think you get my point.  The bounty of the modern world isn't a bounty for all.  And even those of us lucky enough to benefit . . .  I feel uncomfortable sometimes, knowing how lucky I am, and feeling that there is so little I can do to pass that "luck" on to others.  Yes, I know there is more to these poets and their poems than what I find affecting me, but that's what I'm taking from them today.

I do love me some W.H. Auden

I've been enjoying the opportunity to explore more of Auden's poetry.  Today: "September 1, 1939," "In Memory of Sigmund Freud," and "In Memory of W.B. Yeats."  These are three very specific, very personal poems.  While I enjoyed them all, the first really hit home.  It is Auden's reaction to the news that Germany has invaded Poland.  Auden chooses not to attack Hitler and the Nazis specifically.  Instead he addresses the false and common belief that the masses must follow authority - that the Fuhrer, or the President, or the Prime Minister knows best and will protect us.  Auden acknowledges that each individual ultimately only acts in his or her own best interest and warns that without love we will perish (an idea that he later recanted, cutting the poem from future printings).  Of course we won't die, we'll just live a bit more miserably than we would without love.  But, as I posted on our class discussion board, without respect, we will die.  If I cannot respect those with whom I disagree, how can I expect them to respect me?  And more importantly, how can we then coexist peacefully?  I wonder where wars come from, huh?

Love, War, Alienation, and Inanity

Today I read "Lullaby" (not "A Lullaby" - took me a few to figure out I'd read the wrong poem) and "Refugee Blues" by W.H. Auden and "Not Waving But Drowning"" and "Pretty" by Stevie Smith.  I loved them all.  (I did enjoy "A Lullaby" as well, but it was a bit difficult to answer questions about romantic love based on this poem.)  It's funny.  We started out with T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."  Eliot seems to have crammed every bleak, confusing, contradictory thing about life into that poem.  Now, we're looking at several of these issues individually.  Life in modern society can be overwhelming.  We can't fix everything.  Personally, I've tried to stake out one or two little corners where I might be able to make a small difference.  I did enjoy each of these poems, as I have enjoyed everything I've read so far.  I just find it depressing sometimes, focusing on problems for which I suspect no solution will be forthcoming in my lifetime.

Back to Eliot

So, today I read a few more T.S. Eliot poems, only one of which, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," I had read before. The other two, "The Hollow Men" and "Ash Wednesday," were new to me therefore more fresh and interesting. The biggest surprise of the three was "Ash Wednesday." After the despair of "The Waste Land" and "The Hollow Men" and the melancholy resignation of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I found “Ash Wednesday” refreshing, if a bit heavy on the religion for my taste. I suppose I’m just happy that Eliot found something to believe in, something to relieve the hopelessness and despair he experienced just from his view of everyday life. Yes, war influenced the dire vignettes of “The Waste Land,” but the mundane contributed its fair share as well. I don't agree with Eliot's conception of humanity's need for intercession, for salvation. But I can't fault him for the beauty and peace of the language and images in "Ash Wednesday":
"I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss"
"Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness."

"And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance."

"The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair"

Really, 'nuff said. I doubt that I can hope to write anything so beautiful.

A hodge-podge of poetry?

This week's (ha!) poems at first glance seem to be a hodge-podge of seemingly unrelated themes.  There were six poems: "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, "Aubade" by Edith Sitwell, "Hap" by Thomas Hardy, "Repression of War Experience" by Siegrfried Sassoon, "Leda and the Swan" by W.B. Yeats, and "Love on the Farm" by D.H. Lawrence.  I think that it was while I was reading Lawrence's poem that I began to see a connection woven among the poems: power and its lack.  We've got two anti-war poems, three poems dealing with women and "love," and a poem in which a man reflects on the nature of god versus the nature of chance.  Owen's soldiers are manipulated by those in power with promises of glory.  Sassoon's are encouraged by society as a whole to keep their problems to themselves, thus relinquishing their power to heal.  Leda is raped (a show of power), Jane loses the power to enjoy life once her man is gone, and the woman on the farm seems to willingly yield herself to the power of her husband.  Hardy's speaker seems to long for Someone in power, Someone at whose feet he can lay responsibility for the misery of his life.

We need to use our own power, whether society, the gods, or those who consider themselves dominant over us approve or not.

My life is a Waste Land?

So, here I am again, posting because I have to. I fancy myself a writer but find it difficult to write without a gun to my head. Lately, I've been having trouble assimilating all the bits and pieces of my life into a coherent whole. And now, here we are, the first reading of the semester (yes, I'm beginning work on the semester at the incorrect end of said semester): Eliot's "The Waste Land." Is there another piece of literature out there that takes so many disjointed pieces of life and puts them together in this way? Perhaps something by Pynchon, but with him you get a nod and a wink, the feeling of an inside joke. "The Waste Land" is serious as can be. For something that seems so hard to understand, I understood it all too well. The joys and pains, laughter and - okay let's just stop that cliche right there. All the disparate bits of life that don't seem to connect in any possible way, connect in one very important way - through the person who experiences them. The trouble comes when we try blend these bits and make sense of all those unrelated pieces: death, driving, school, the check-out line, conversations with friends we don't really like all that much, puddles, late-night television, pine trees, macaroni, war, puppies, literature . . . I think you get the point. How do all of these things gel into a complete, coherent life experience. It can be rather overwhelming.

That's all folks

Well, we're wrapping up our Post-WWI American Lit class this week. All in all it was a great class. I had only read one of the books before - Ellison's Invisible Man. One of the most interesting things to be able to do was to see how one book led to another, the topics and the experiences of the characters, as they were placed along the continuum of the twentieth century. We touched on the African American experience (Ellison and Morrison's Paradise), the Beats (On the Road), the women's movement (Erica Jong's Fear of Flying), gays and Latinos (Michael Nava's Rag and Bone) . . . and I just realized I've written about each and every one of the books in this blog in past weeks, so I'm being redundant. Anyway . . . I learned a great deal about the American experience from the reading and perhaps even a greater amount from the discussions that took place with the other students on the forums.

So now I'm moving on, continuing to read - as I always do - for fun, for my own edification. I just finished a great book called His Illegal Self by Peter Carey. This was something apart from anything I've read before. It's about revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies. It's about a little boy who experiences life on Park Avenue and on a commune in the Australian outback. I recommend you check it out.

Keep reading!

Dr. H lets us kick back and relax a little

Ahhh. Yes, that is a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy my literature classes. I mean, I get to read and get a grade for it. Is that great or what? And fortunately for me, I'm just twisted and analytical enough to come up with all kinds of explanations and hidden meanings for the stuff I read. Yippee! Anyhoo . . . This week was quite relaxing compared to the rest of the course. I've been a fan of Grisham and Connelly for a while - you know, lawyers, cops, and detectives running around solving mysteries? Well, that's just the type of thing we got to read this week: Rag and Bone by Michael Nava. Really just an enjoyable read: not too taxing, dome nice plot twists. But in this class, American Fiction Since WWII, this work was entirely appropriate, not because of style or genre, but because of the characters and the issues they addressed. The protagonist here is Henry Rios a lawyer whose partner, Josh has recently died. The novel goes on to address issues like drug use, alcoholism, bisexuality, adoption, gangs, religion - I could go on, but I won't. Any number of these would have been taboo, or at least not dealt with in a positive, compassionate way, a few decades ago. I wanted to dance a jig as I was reading this. Again, one of my classmates doesn't agree - something about treating homosexuality like a limp - but I don't see it. No, this isn't the greatest piece of literature ever written. But it is a wonderful example of the gradually opening minds of the American people. Perhaps this book - and others like it - will help us along.

Digging in their heels

So, this week's novel in class was Toni Morrison's Paradise. It was sometimes hard to follow, but certainly had some hard truths to tell. The story takes place in the mythical Ruby, Oklahoma, a black community established in the wake of the further disenfranchisement of freedmen in the south. The founders of the community were push from Mississippi and Louisiana to their first "Haven." When things stagnate there, a splinter group eventually moves on to Ruby. But, in any closed community, stagnation and dissatisfaction are inevitable. A society that doesn't change is destined to fail. Humanity is meant to continue to grow, to learn, to adjust. Differences beget advancement. The danger in Ruby is not only physical inbreeding, which is beginning to produce deformed children, but the mental inbreeding which produces a deformed mind and conscience.

"Hollywoodizing" Hollywood Debauchery

I loved the movie Less Than Zero when it came out 21 years ago. I watched it many times. I cried many times. All those pretty people leading meaningless lives, and pretty Andrew McCarthy as Clay trying to save his friends from that meaninglessness. Now I've read the novel, and Clay isn't quite as sympathetic a character in print as he was on film. And the characters in the book weren't just doing drugs and having casual sex. I don't really want to give too much away. It's still a good, depressing read, just as I found the movie to be good and depressing. I understand Ellis has been given a hard time about his writing - all the loose morals, gratuitous violence and such. But, when being a good American means, primarily, being a good consumer, why not numb yourself. It seems to me that Ellis is trying to point out that when your goals and interactions are meaningless - there's not one relationship of any depth among the characters - you have to escape somehow. I think when Hollywood cleaned up the story for the movie, they squelched its impact. The parents of the movie actually seemed to be concerned for their kids. Not so in the book. Ellis's felony indictment of American society is reduced to a misdemeanor. My recommendation: see the movie for the brooding performances of Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz and the realistic, stunning, and ominous performance of Robert Downey Jr. Read the book to really get the point.

Erica Jong and Francesca Lia Block

So, we were reading Erica Jong's Fear of Flying for class this week. And coincidentally, I picked up a book at the library (I always have to have something I'm reading just for me) called Quakeland, by Francesca Lia Block. Both books are about women trying to navigate the perils of romantic relationships in the feminist world. Both are about women trying to figure out just who they are. I must admit, I preferred Quakeland. It had a spirituality to it that was lacking in Fear of Flying. But both books were certainly realistic, just from points of view of different types of women with similar problems. Much of the difference comes from the different eras - Jong wrote in the early '70s; Block's book came out this year. Yet both books touched me deeply. I am, after all, a woman in the feminist world. I was raised during those first couple of decades of feminism. Intellectually, I understand that my life is my own intellectually. But my role models hadn't quite internalized those changes that feminism brought about. Block's Katrina, Jong's Isadora, and I are still trying to make independence and self-reliance work, to find out what a healthy relationship means to feminists like ourselves. I hope I figure it out soon.

Why haven't I read this guy before?

You know, I don't consider myself a conservative stick-in-the-mud, but I just read my first Thomas Pynchon novel, and that's sure how I felt. See what happens when I get shoved outside my comfort zone? I've always loved to read, but this was certainly something new. I'm used to your standard novel - standard conflict, standard exposition, standard climax - you get the picture. A nice normal story arc, easy to follow, easy to analyze. Pynchon knocked me on my ass! What the hell is going on here? I asked myself. No standard stuff here. The novel was all over the place, with observations from Oedipa, the main character, about life, love, the postal service, sex, drugs, men, business - the list goes on and on. And is she having a paranoid fantasy, is her dead ex-lover playing a posthumous practical joke on her, or is she really involved in some underground scheme to foil the U.S. Postal Service, traditional love, and the gods know what else.

And even though Pynchon - through his mouthpiece Diblette - tried to discourage me from analyzing the novel, by the gods I did my best. Well, I had to write my essay on something. But it was a puzzle to be sorted out anyway. I had to try to extract some kind of meaning from it. Ha! I really don't want to give it - or what I think it is - away. My own convoluted little brain added its own ideas to the mix and came away with the meaning best suited to me. That might be just what Pynchon had in mind.

I'm On the Road!!!

Well, what a coincidence! This week of On the Road in class, I am on the road (well, actually, I was in the air). I'm back home in Peoria for my 21st class reunion. Yes, 21st. Nobody ever got our 20th planned, so here we are with the class of '88. Really, the adventures of Sal & Dean remind me of some of the craziness of my late high school/first aborted attempt at college. Doing what I wanted just because I could. Experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Going, going, going nowhere. Someone once told me that all those people I called "friends" (nobody take this personally if you know me!) weren't really "friends." More like partners in crime, I guess. Did I lack a moral compass? You betcha! Do I regret the whole period? Not necessarily. I learned what I was capable of. I finally learned self-control. I eventually learned to love myself. Like Sal, I learned that even if you love someone, you don't have to follow them down the destructive path they're on.

Walk On By

So, this week in my (by "my," I mean the class I am taking) Post-WWII American Fiction class, we (by "we," I mean each student individually) read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This is a novel I had begun reading before, but never finished, not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I didn't have time. In my previous reading, I focused on the issues of identity in the novel. I mean, that narrator tries on personality after personality after being convinced by those who want to "help" him that they have the perfect role for him.

However, when I was reading this time, I caught on to another theme - the impersonality of modern society. And, with the idea of the individual as invisible, this certainly reflects the anonymity one feels when walking down a crowded city street. Okay, my thought process was definitely influenced by something else I read recently - Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, by Morris Berman. He proposes, among other things, that American (and, increasingly, global) society is so focused on individualism as to preclude most authentic relationships between people. Neighbors don't do a lot of hanging out in their yards anymore; we're too busy watching TV - or blogging!

Invisible Man explores the same phenomenon in an earlier form. One reason the narrator is able to remain "invisible" is the limited scope of the connections he does make. Work - a means of getting the cash to buy more things - while scarce in the 1930s, was fast becoming the primary focus of American society, perhaps more so during the Depression because of its scarcety. But, as Berman claims, we've lost the human connections that really make life worthwhile. Personally, I often find myself lonely, though I have classmates, church friends, and family. Maybe if I commit myself more fully to the full-fledged consumerism that defines American, I won't notice the loneliness anymore.

Television is no longer a vast wasteland

Yes, TV can be used for good. You can tell me that there are no original ideas. You can tell me that TV is for amateurs, that the only serious film is one on the big screen. But sometimes television moves me. I was sitting here watching Jericho tonight. I was watching a worst-case-scenario . . . Well, no, I guess it's not really the worst case, but . . .

I was watching a small Midwestern U.S. town which had been declared insurgent by a U.S. military officer. In my mind's eye, though, I was seeing an Iraqi town, filled with families and friends and merchants and the law and the clergy, all trying to make the best of a bad situation, trying to protect their own and have some semblance of a normal life. I saw them enduring want - of food and water and light, of safety and privacy. I also saw that army officer, stuck in Iraq in an untenable situation, trying to do what's right, for his country but also for humanity, of which every Iraqi and every American is a member.

I really don't know how far to go with this. I'm probably talking to the ether anyway. But, it tears me up. It twists my heart to see what human beings can do to other human beings.

Enough. Good night.
No poems today.

One final post for class.

Well, this blog started out as an assignment. This is the last post for the class. I've put my poetry out here. I've made some minor political commentary. I've gotten some nice responses from my classmates. I still haven't decided if I'm crazy or just eccentric. And I'm not sure if what I have to say is worth posting for everyone to see. But, I know that I need to write. And if this blog inspires me to do so, well maybe I should continue. We'll see.

Brain farming

Till the field of mind,
Make tunnels for the muses:
Poetic? Insane?
They worm their way, chewing up
Spitting out fertilized thought.

McCain Flap Follow-up

I see I'm not the only one who thinks that the NYT McCain article was poorly written, not wrongly written. There was a brief and to-the-point opinion piece (I use that word loosely) in USA Today Friday. Again, I encourage everyone to read the Times article for him- or herself. Don't let the boob tube crew tell you what was said, read it and analyze it for yourselves.

Are we really connected?

I've been in some discussions lately about just how connected we really are these days. The internet, email, cell phones, texting . . . In theory, all these things should allow us to remain "close" to those from whom we are geographically separated. I just don't know if that's really the case.

Signal Interrupted

Connected not
connected
Broadcasting

receiving

nothing.
Signal interrupted.

How many terminals?
How many channels?
How many decrypters?
How many keys?
How many codes?

Exponentially exponential..
Line upon line
filtered and
refiltered.

Code degradation.

Internal software error.

Static on the line.
Nothing on the line.
Dead air.