sonnets at 4 a.m.

Liam, Hannah & Carlos

2011-08-10T11:02:00.006-04:00

Hannah flew down from New York for a few days. She has an article on immigration and the private prison industry coming out in The Nation in September.

Self-portrait with Fruit Drink

2011-08-08T12:02:00.001-04:00

Lifetime Update

2011-04-27T10:56:00.017-04:00

So, what happened? Life, in no particular order. I remain busy at my day job. The county and state budget news depresses me and everyone else. I have been teaching my composition class at Hope--in fact the last class-day of the spring semester is today. Next fall I will be teaching a poetry class. Yes!

Life in general was--and remains--complicated by the affairs of multiple deaths-in-the-family. Add to the list Marcia's father, Hugh Kennedy, who died last month.

More on this later.

In December. we went to New York for Hannah's graduation. She is currently living in Brooklyn, writing for the New York Post, and working on an interesting novel. Yes, I was disappointed not to go to the AWP Conference. I will definitely be in Chicago, which is only a short train-ride away.

I have re-revised my hummingbird manuscript--in fact, most of my free time has been devoted to my manuscript, and I think it is a strong piece of work. If you are a publisher and want to see my wonderful, interesting ms., let me know. I also have a bunch of poems circulating among the journals.

The kids are happy and doing well in their new school--West Michigan Academy of Arts & Academics. Oh, and we have a new dog--Zoey--a most interesting rescue-dog case, who has worked her way into the family. I will post a photo of her.

It was a long winter and spring has been cold, wet and miserable. Here's to a warm and sunny summer.

I have read my way through War & Peace, in twenty minute-to-an-hour increments. I have some empathy for "Napoleon in rags / and the language that he used."

Onward.

__________________________

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1850)
by Paul Delaroche

The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw

2011-04-26T07:02:00.001-04:00

I am back.

A Thought After Attempting to Discuss The Brooklyn Bridge

2010-11-02T11:39:00.005-04:00

The idea of each epoch always finds its appropriate and adequate form.

-G. F. W. Hegel

A Poem for My English 113 Class

2010-11-02T11:22:00.006-04:00

M. DEGAS TEACHES ART AND SCIENCE AT DURFEE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL--DETROIT, 1942

By Philip Levine

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.

Heather Sellers

2010-11-01T09:22:00.008-04:00

Congratulations to Heather Sellers on the publication of You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know (Riverhead Books, 2010), and all the wonderful attention the book has been getting from The New York Times Book Review, Poets & Writers, Good Morning, America, Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere.

That's two best sellers by members of the Hope College English Department within the last year!

Finding the Grave of Carson McCullers

2010-10-12T07:03:00.005-04:00

Last Sunday, Hannah and Ivan went searching for the grave of writer Carson McCullers at Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, New York.

This is what they found.

Searching for gravesites seems consistent with our theme of late here at S@4AM.

Mario Vargas Llosa Wins the Nobel Prize

2010-10-07T11:06:00.021-04:00

Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Mr. Vargas Llosa, 74, is one of the most celebrated writers of the Spanish-speaking world, frequently mentioned with his contemporary Gabríel Garcia Márquez, who won the literature Nobel in 1982, the last South American to do so. He has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including “The Feast of the Goat” and “The War of the End of the World.”

Every year, the Nobel selection makes me feel stupid. I have read only one of Mr. Vargas Llosa's books, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982?), and that was so long ago I can barely remember the plot. I will have to order several of his books and get to work.

_________________________________

In the "More Bad News" department, Marcia's father fell at some point last Thursday or Friday (we're not really sure when) and broke his hip. He was operated on on Saturday, and is not doing well--he is mentally no-longer-in-the-world. We went to see him last night and Marcia was the only one who could go in the room. I waited in the hallway with the boys. Had we known how he was, we would not have brought them.

Marcia and I are okay, but Carlos and Liam are having a difficult time with all of our recent deaths and medical problems, so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

There is more going on than I have shared, but some of this may explain why I have been such a bad blogger--and not much of a friend--in recent weeks.

I would not want to repeat the past six months.

Margaret Blymier Lee (1922-2010)

2010-10-03T12:28:00.007-04:00

While we were in Gearhart, Oregon, attending the memorial service for Marcia's mother, Marcia's aunt died in Evanston, Illinois.

We will be attending Aunt Margaret's memorial service next Friday in Skokie.

Here is an obituary:

A memorial visitation for Margaret Blymeir Lee, longtime professor and administrator at Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy, will take place Friday, October 8, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Donnellan Family Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd., Skokie.

Lee died on Monday, September 13, at the age of 88.

Margaret Blymier Lee was the aunt of Marcia Kennedy (Greg) Rappleye of Grand Haven, Michigan, and Margaret Kennedy (Roger) Plichta of Muskegon, Michigan; great aunt of Carlos and Liam Rappleye, sister of the late Julius Blymeir, James Blymeir and Florence Arenz; sister- in- law of Robert Arenz of Gearhart Oregon; and special friend to Fran Birndorf of Evanston.

A longtime Evanston resident, Lee joined the Northwestern faculty in 1958 as an assistant professor and later became a full professor. In 1979, she was appointed associate dean for student affairs and undergraduate programs at the School of Education and Social Policy.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Northwestern professor emeritus earned a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Kalamazoo College, a master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and a doctorate of education in administration of pupil personnel services and counseling psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lee was an elementary and junior high school principal in the 1940s and 1950s and, from 1956 to 1957, principal of Washington School in Evanston, Ill. At Northwestern, she taught classes in educational psychology, counseling and personnel services, human development and secondary education instruction, among other subjects. She also was a very popular undergraduate and graduate adviser who over the years kept in touch with many of her former students.

Donald R. Rappleye (1924-2010)

2010-10-03T08:52:00.010-04:00

RAPPLEYE, DONALD R. - Of Jackson, Michigan, passed away Friday, October 1, 2010, age 85 years. Survived by his wife of 58 years, Bernice G. Rappleye; children, Pam (Tom) Dolan, Greg (Marcia) Rappleye, Mark (Sally) Rappleye, Cynthia (Chet) Teater, Brian (Peggy) Rappleye and Christopher (Anne) Rappleye; 14 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren; brothers and sisters, Mary Elizabeth (Bob) Eisele, James (Kate) Rappleye, Willard (Delores) Rappleye and Margaret Tobin; numerous nieces and nephews. He was a U.S. Airforce Veteran of World War II. Donald retired after 30 years of service from the Jackson Public Schools where he was Grade Counselor at Parkside. He loved to cook and worked at the St. Mary's Harvest Dinners. The Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church Monday at 2:00 p.m. Interment St. John's Cemetery. The Reverend Robert Pienta officiating.

The family will receive friends at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church on Monday from 1 to 2 p.m.

The obituary omits the most important facts of my father's life--that for many years, he owned a drive-in restaurant in Indian River, Michigan (very near the bridge to the upper peninsula of the state), and that our family spent every summer working in that restaurant--half the kids working the day shift, half working nights. We lived in a fifty foot trailer, twenty feet behind the backdoor of the drive-in.

Therein lies a memoir that would likely be read as fiction.

I won't be going to my father's funeral. He will have this instead.

THOUSAND DOLLAR DAYS

The man at the picnic table
in front of the root beer stand
in northern Michigan is my father.
Do you see his sign,
twirling through the piney air?
There are two hours until he opens,
and he's drinking a cup of black coffee,
making a list for the salesman
from the wholesale grocery,
who'll be banging at the backdoor
after the noontime rush. The sun
angles from the gas station and across
the parking lot,
where crows compete for popcorn
dropped by last night's customers,
mostly teenage kids,
on vacation with their parents
from the suburbs of Detroit.
It's the summer after the summer
their city burned. Martin is dead and Bobby is
dead, and Nixon is yet to come.
Denny McLaine is flaming his way to 31 wins,
and America thrashes in the bed
of Southeast Asia. But in a tourist town,
traffic is what matters.
So my father lays his pen down
to watch the passing cars, subtracting out
the junky Fords and pickups of the locals.
Inside, the hired woman wipes a rag along the counter
and begins to sing a hymn,
her voice carrying through the screens
and rolling sweetly below the canopy
that shelters as many as fourteen cars
on rainy afternoons. My father's eyes
are gin-clear, and he's sketching out plans
to add barbecue after the Fourth of July.
He counts three good car hops,
four sons and two daughters,
old enough to hold their own
through the heaviest dinner hour.
The season hasn't really begun, but already
he's had thousand dollar days.
My father smiles. His lot is
full, he imagines the rush,
as his hand strikes something
from his list. And I'm the skinny boy
you see, legs furiously churning,
rounding the corner from the old highway
to the new, sprinting toward the pylon
that rises from that one-story building
like a jagged orange fin, who sees his father smiling
and believes, against all the evidence,
that he might be the reason why.

-Greg Rappleye

In a Moment of Crisis, I Turn to the Coen Brothers

2010-10-01T21:51:00.004-04:00

A New Semester Begins!

2010-09-02T20:00:00.003-04:00

Wednesday was the first day for my English 113 class at Hope College. I seem to have another good group of students. I was excited to meet them and to be back on campus for another term.

Daniel Swift's Bomber Country: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War

2010-09-01T06:56:00.009-04:00

Mr. Swift is a young British book critic, and when I first spied the subtitle of his book (“The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War”), I got a sinking feeling. Here we go, I thought. He’s discovered some modestly appealing verse that an Allied pilot left behind in a drawer, and he’s going to walk us through it, in some elegiac version of a PowerPoint presentation. Thanks, but no thanks — I’ve got e-mail to catch up on.

Be Grateful for the Glory that is Jonathan Franzen

2010-08-29T12:25:00.044-04:00

The hour draws near. Salutory horns volley in the distance. I hear sighs and the persistent tunk-tunk of fountain pens dropping onto desks across this vast and troubled land. Give up, O pitiful American scribblers. Jonathan Franzen has already (or perhaps once again, I forget) written The Great American Novel and we won't be needing your undernourished little manuscripts; not according to Sam Tanenhaus' review of Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), which appears on the cover--and at considerable length inside--this morning's New York Times Book Review.*

According to Tanenhaus--who should know; after all, he's the editor of the Review, and in the best position to judge these things--Freedom is "a masterpiece...a capacious but intricately ordered narrative that in its majectic sweep seems to gather up every fresh datum of our shared millennial life." Franzen uses "phrases with full command of [their] ideological implications." Franzen knows many obscure but revelatory facts. Franzen––that Midwestern renegade genius currently laboring away in a sensory-deprived room on the Upper East Side--even knows that F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota.

How's that for fresh datum? Er, fresh data?

As Tanenhaus reminds us, Franzen's last novel, The Corrections, published days before 9/11, "towered out of the rubble" ( of the attack on The World Trade Center, I think) and became "a beacon lighting the way for a new kind of novel that might break the suffocating grip of postmodernism." Indeed, [The Corrections] "cracked open the opaque shell of postmodernism," replacing it with "an authentic humanism."

But Freedom is even better than The Corrections. For in this latest novel, "Franzen grasps the central paradox of modern American liberalism," Franzen "writes with brilliant economy," Franzen "knows that every man has his reasons." Indeed, every phrase in Franzen's novel brims with "crystalline instances of precise notation shaped by imaginative sympathy."

I must admit that, from reading the review, I couldn't quite figure out the plot of Freedom (a family moves from St. Paul to the tonier regions of Georgetown, goes to a few execrable Bush 2-era dinner parties, has some misadventures with a rock musician who looks like Muammar el-Qaddafi, and returns to Minnesota, wiser for the experience?) But no matter; all will be made clear when the Long Awaited Manuscript goes on sale this Tuesday, because, according to Tanenhaus, "'Freedom' does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew."

With all this white light, it seems I won't need a votive candle.

All I can say is Thank you, Mr. Franzen.

_____________________________

*Peace and War by Sam Tanenhaus, a review of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen ( Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), in The New York Times Book Review, August 29, 2010.

What I am Reading

2010-08-27T10:25:00.007-04:00

Things exist at three points in time: when they occur, when we learn they occurred, and when we forget them. This last, of course, is a sin.

-Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America (Random House, 1995)

If I were teaching a course about life in America at the end of the 20th Century-- and how we got here from there--this book would be the most important text on the reading list.

It's all here, written on the wall. Peel back the foreclosure notice and read.

And Another From the Manuscript

2010-08-22T10:46:00.010-04:00

ON MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE'S
APPROACHING THUNDER STORM (1859)

“This is a beautiful country.”
-John Brown, remark as he rode to the gallows,
seated on his coffin (December 2, 1859)

The top of the canvas spread with charcoal-gray clouds.
Beneath, a dove-gray meant as distant rain, falling
across darker hills, beyond the larger part of a lacquer-black bay.
Dead center, a white-sailed catboat has either made the far point
of the inner harbor, and will be safely home before the sky opens,
or the catboat has not made the point and must come about
again, meaning the sailors will not come safely home.
How the odd sunlight reaches––the creamy bloom of the sail,
a catboat moving too serenely––the light, startling the far-left point,
the one the sailors must make, then circling to fire the grassy greens
of the closer point. Do not fear for the man in the rowboat,
who has made the inner harbor and pulls for the green shore.
Do not fear for the silent man in the yellow straw hat, red shirt,
tan vest; seated in the foreground, his back to us, smoking a pipe.
No fear, either, for the dog facing the water––a yellow lab, I’d say––
perhaps the earliest depiction of this breed in American art.
But what of the man you can barely see? He is no more
than a cross of rose madder and flesh, standing
at the sole of the catboat, facing the mouth
of the inner harbor and the seated man in the red shirt,
tan vest and yellow straw hat; that ardent yellow lab.
In the left foreground, draping a rock, the shroud of a larger sail
the captain did not take when he left. Everywhere––
the water is luminously black, the sea, so eerily calm.
The catboat is not yet up on its heel, the sailors have not begun
to work for the point. It seems they never will.

________________________

This poem was originally published in Arts & Letters.

In the Heade painting, there actually is a man standing on the catboat. He is not visible in this reproduction. The bottom illustration is taken from a mural on the walls of the Kansas state capital building, painted in 1941-1942 by John Steuart Curry.

Yet Another Hummingbird Poem

2010-08-21T12:16:00.014-04:00

NOTES OF CAPITAO EDUARDO GONZALES
IN PREPARATION FOR A REPORT TO HIS EXCELLENCY
BARON DE TEMANDERE, FIRST ADMIRAL AND COMMANDER
OF THE BRAZILIAN IMPERIAL NAVY, REGARDING THE ACTIVITIES OF THE AMERICAN PAINTER, MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE

-Rio de Janeiro, December 17, 1863

He came with graphite and oils, to paint hummingbirds.
A ghost, he walks among orchids, seeking hummingbirds.

He has arranged his room with easels, a chair, a wicker bed.
He scrawls on foolscap, the floor awash in hummingbirds.

At night he drinks red wine, Bourbon, and port.
He speaks with his hands; his fingers––like hummingbirds.

He picks passion flowers, gardenias and palm fronds.
Next to each, he lays the bodies of hummingbirds.

I have rounded the Horn, and know many lands.
Ceylon was most strange. I remember no hummingbirds.

He supports the Union cause, and freedom for our slaves.
He does not love war. He loves only hummingbirds.

Women come to him so freely.
I pray my sister is not found among his hummingbirds.

I saw him sketch the harbor, and our stone battlements.
He is restless. He wants to paint hummingbirds.

An excellent shot with a fowling piece.
He fears the blood, as he works to skin hummingbirds.

My agents have trailed him at night.
He says he seldom sleeps, and dreams of hummingbirds.

I find him with his sketchbook, staring at the trees.
He says the palms, the banyans, are alive with hummingbirds.

In the steamy mountains, he steps from a mist.
Cradling his sketchbook, babbling of hummingbirds.

For days, the rain was never-ending.
I found him singing scales, shouting, “I am a hummingbird!”

I imagine their breasts––gold and green and red.
I fear I too will dream of colibris.

His leather satchel keeps his most secret things.
The merkins of their tiny nests, the bodies of his hummingbirds.

There are days I yearn for the sea. The sea was
all I knew, before the days of hummingbirds.

I will go with him to the borderlands.
He says the Delft-blue sky will swell with hummingbirds.

I remain your servant, Eduardo Gonzales,
Captain of the Imperial Navy, escrivao of hummingbirds.

_____________________

This poem first appeared in Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review.

Florence Mary Arenz (1928-2010)

2010-08-21T11:37:00.013-04:00

We have been dealing with the loss of Marcia's mother, Florence Mary Arenz, who died after a long illness on August 8, 2010, in Gearhart, Oregon.

Florence was born July 31, 1928, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the second daughter of Frederick and Mary (Ludwick) Blymeir. She joined her sister, Margaret and two brothers, Julius and James. Her early education took place in Grand Rapids. She graduated from Kalamazoo College with a B.A. in Sociology, then worked at the University of Chicago downtown campus as Registrar, as well as with famed psychologist Carl Rogers as personal secretary.

Florence later moved on to Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, as an Academic Advisor, counseling students on curriculum choices, and then went on to the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, where she was an Administrator.

She was gifted with a remarkably clear and lovely soprano voice, and was active for many years with various choral groups in the Midwest. Florence sang under the direction of Robert Shaw several times, and received many critical accolades.

She met Robert Arenz (Marcia's step-father) in Monterey, and they were married in 1980. They moved to Cannon Beach, Oregon, in 1982, where they founded A Great Shop, a gift and home furnishing's store. They moved to Gearhart, Oregon, in 1989 and brought the store with them. A Great Shop celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday in July of this year. The shop and its unique goods have been featured in many newspaper articles and magazines, including a cover article in Coastal LIving.

Florence is survived by Robert, her two daughters Margaret Plichta (Roger) and Marcia Rappleye (Greg), both of Michigan, and her sister, Margaret Lee of Evanston, Illinois. She also leaves two grandchildren, Carlos and Liam Rappleye.

Her extended family includes step-children Hans Arenz (Tammy), Eric Arenz (Debbie), Elaine Arenz Brock (James), Annabelle Arenz Groh, and Heidi Arenz Kleist (James), step-grandchildren Elliot Rappleye and Hannah Rappleye, along with a constantly expanding collection of grand- and great-grandchildren scattered across the nation. She was predeceased by her parents, her two brothers, and by step-daughter Roberta Therese (Tré) Arenz.

There will be a memorial service on Saturday, September 11, 2010 at Calvary Episcopal Church in Seaside, Oregon.

She is very much missed.

Four Orpheus Poems

2010-08-05T16:12:00.016-04:00

These are from my manuscript-in-waiting, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds, and all have been previously published.

ORPHEUS, GATHERING THE TREES

-The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Book X,
Lines 86-110

When love died the second time,
he sang at dawn in the empty field
and the trees came to listen.
A little song for the tag alder,
the fire cherry, the withe-willow.
The simple-hearted ones that come quickly
to loneliness.
Then he sang for the mulberry
with its purple fruit,
for the cedar and the tamarack.
He sang bel canto for the quaking aspen
and the stave oak;
something lovely for the white pine,
the fever tree, the black ash.
From the air he called the sparrows
and the varieties of wrens.
Then he sang for a bit of pestilence––
for the green caterpillars,
for the leaf worms and bark beetles.
Food to suit the flickers and the crows.
So that, in the wood lot,
there would always be empty places.
So he would still know loss.

ORPHEUS CONSIDERS HIS APPROACH
TO CERBERUS

A three-headed dog named Cerberus, guards
the opposite shore of Styx, ready to devour
living intruders or ghostly fugitives.

-Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 31.a

As one comes to wolves. Song of canine bodies
circling through the pines. Aria of bone-gnaw,
of driven snow in Caucasus, of sweet, sweet marrow.
Song of lip-curl, of bloody gums, of gritted teeth and snarl.
Whimpered song of bitch-and-den, song of musk,
of tongued pups, of burrow thick with steam.
Song of fire, circle-song, beaten onto skins. Song of meat,
of shearling, of glowing coals and cinders, song of hellish fleas.
Ballad of hound-hunger, of want; song that calms the dog.
In the stony deep, Oh! are lesser gods, the stink of sulphur,
and the spirits of the dead. The beast is chained, or else
the beast runs loose. I have sung my way through darkness
and wait upon the shore with open palms.
Oh, dog, dog, dog. What song must I sing to get by thee?

ORPHEUS, ADRIFT

His head [the women] threw into the river,
but it floated, still singing, down to the sea,
and was carried to the island of Lesbos.

-Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 28.d

Before my lips kissed the gravel
of river-bottom, I looked back

and saw the lost body,
and the fingers of my severed hand

twitching for my lyre.
Even then, I bobbed up, singing.

They threw the lyre beside me
and the lyre began to play.

I could hardly hear the strings
for the noise of rushing water.

As the river slowed through the tidal flats,
I came to love the taste of salt.

Eight months I have drifted
among the bluefish and the tunas.

Leached of all blood and beset by sea lice,
one eye pecked by a passing gull––

I still sing. The lyre, drifting with me, plucks on.
I hear the sounds of wave-on-beach

and sense the schooly candlefish,
frenzied in the surf.

Whatever land I drift toward,
I sing for what lives there.

My hair braids through the nut-brown kelp
that tangles along the shore.

ORPHEUS THE PROPHET

As for Orpheus’s head: it was laid to rest
in a cave at Antissa, sacred to Dionysus.
There it prophesied day and night.

-Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 28.g.

Salt-washed, my right eye pecked sightless,
my left, still cloudy with sea water,
I loll atop this stone and say what they want to hear.
When the weather is dry, I prophesy rain.
When asked for the stars, I say Look at the sky.
The blind-shrimp that scurry, tap-tapping through the pools,
the fruit bats that flap around and foul the stalagmites––
all of us are happy. A swan, paddling the last round
of wintered water, foretells its own death,
singing more sweetly as it comes.
Whenever I must speak now, I speak in stagy whispers.
The vireo, the meadowlark, the tiniest sparrow––
name one songbird, nested at last among the darkening trees,
who will not prophesy the night.

Non-Progress Notes

2010-08-01T22:52:00.003-04:00

I work and work and still, there seems no place in the world for my manuscript.

Godzilla and Mothra v. BP

2010-06-25T07:15:00.003-04:00

The headline on MSNBC this morning was "Robots Attack Gulf Oil Leak."

I think it's time we brought in the monsters and the Two Tiny Princesses to handle this.

Russell Rappleye (1998-2010)

2010-06-23T06:16:00.001-04:00

Long may you run.

Hannah in Johannesburg

2010-06-04T04:57:00.011-04:00

This summer, Hannah is working in South Africa as a summer intern at the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian.

While I was certain that she would have a wonderful experience, I thought it unlikely that she would have a story appear under her name.

I was so wrong.

The story (in her voice with photos by Reuters) is here.

Say it Ain't So! Bud Selig Refuses to do Justice!

2010-06-03T15:37:00.009-04:00

Bud Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, sniffs his fingers after refusing to reverse last night's egregiously bad call by umpire Jim Joyce, which denied Detroit Tigers' starter Armando "El Perfecto" Galarraga a hard-earned place in the baseball record books.

What do you smell, Bud?

I smell injustice.

Where is Emile Zola when we truly need him?

Portrait of Emile Zola by Edouard Manet (1868)

"Famous Quotes by Vision-impaired Persons Named James Joyce for $1,000, Alex"

2010-06-03T10:45:00.008-04:00

“A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

-James Joyce
Famous Writer

"...probably the most important call of my career...and I, fuck, I kicked the shit out of that call...I just cost that kid a perfect game."

-Jim Joyce
Now-famous Major League Umpire

Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)

2010-05-29T13:55:00.007-04:00

"This is the way the fucking world ends! Look at this fucking shit we're in, man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack."

-Dennis Hopper as "The Photo-journalist" In Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Story Behind the Story

2010-05-19T17:13:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday to...er, uhmmm, Me!

2010-05-19T10:36:00.003-04:00

I am 57 today.

The days run away like wild horses over the hills.

-Charles Bukowski

DONALD, REDUX

2010-05-19T07:43:00.013-04:00

*poof!*

Donald Duck in Rio de Janeiro

2010-05-09T13:53:00.003-04:00

Something strange is creeping across me.

-John Ashbery

The End

2010-05-02T12:29:00.006-04:00

*poof!*
________________________________

The painting is Fighting Hummingbirds with Pink Orchid (ca. 1875) by Martin Johnson Heade

Night Thoughts After Writing a Poem

2010-04-25T23:11:00.004-04:00

In all the world, who is there who understands my zen?

-Ikkyu (1394-1481)

In the meantime, I have fallen in love with the Brazilian singer, Ana Caram.

AWP? I Am Not Going

2010-04-06T10:40:00.006-04:00

I hope everyone going to the AWP Conference in Denver has a great time. Unfortunately, I won't be there.

A trip to Denver is not in the budget.

Come to think of it, there isn't much in the budget. Maybe enough for a box of Triscuits and some squirt cheese.

Dark Day

2010-04-06T10:01:00.003-04:00

As the Once-Constant Reader will recall, I am a sucker for dramatic weather. This is a good day. It's pouring rain and so dark outside my office I can barely see the outline of the pine trees, some sixty feet away.

Some fun.

Opening Day

2010-04-06T07:17:00.004-04:00

Therre may be a few things better than walking out of class on opening day, turning on the car radio, and listening on the drive home as your team goes from a 4-2 deficit in the 7th inning to an 8-4 win.

It's a very short list of things, however.

With apologies to any readers who are fans of the Kansas City Royals, Go Tigers!

Photographs from Thursday Night

2010-04-03T09:43:00.031-04:00

We were privileged to have writer-photographer Jeff Cunningham at the reading Thursday night at The Bookman in Grand Haven. Here are a few photos.

Jack Ridl, reading from Broken Symmetry, his collection published a couple of years ago by Wayne State University Press. Note to attentive future biographers: Yes, you can just see the back of writer Sue William Silverman's head. The poet Jane Bach was also in the crowd.

Jack Ridl shows the crowd a new anthology of poems by Naomi Shihab Nye. 9 of the 25 (actually 26) emerging poets contained in the book (selected in a "blind" process) are graduates of Hope College.

Someday, Jack will get the recognition he deserves as one of America's great poetry teachers.

Jack Ridl introduces the poems from Losing Season, published last fall by CavanKerry Press. This wonderful collection tells the story of a small town's struggling high school basketball team––imagine Jim Carroll channeling Edgar Lee Masters––and has received a great deal of national attention on NPR, in Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere.

Marc Sheehan, reading a poem from his amazing new collection, Vengeful Hymns, which won the Richard Snyder Poetry Prize from Ashland University Press.

This is Marc again, introducing a poem. I think the poem is "Job Accomplishments" which draws its epigraph from Bart Simpson.

This is a funny, poignant, elegant book you will want to read again and again.

This is me, introducing the Martin Johnson Heade poems from my manuscript-eagerly-in-search-of-a-publisher, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds.

Carlos, Liam and dad, listening to Marc's reading.

The three of us, answering questions after the reading.

A big S@4A.M. thanks to Jane and the good people at The Bookman in Grand Haven for hosting this event.

Reading Tonight!

2010-04-01T09:16:00.002-04:00

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Poetry Reading with Jack Ridl, Marc Sheehan and Greg Rappleye
7 p.m.
The Bookman
715 Washington Ave.
Grand Haven, Michigan

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

2010-03-29T10:54:00.016-04:00

Congratulations to Tatjana Soli, whose debut novel The Lotus Eaters (St. Martin's Press, 2010) is reviewed (and strongly praised) by Janet Maslin in today's New York Times. Tatjana graduated from the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College in 2006.

Read all about it here:

Tatjana Soli’s haunting debut novel begins where it ought to end. In this quietly mesmerizing book about journalists covering the war in Vietnam, the first glimpses of the place are the most familiar. The year is 1975. Americans are in a state of panic as North Vietnamese forces prepare to occupy Saigon. The looters, the desperate efforts to escape this war zone, the mobs surrounding the United States Embassy, the overcrowded helicopters struggling to rise above the chaos: these images seem to introduce Ms. Soli’s readers to a story they already know.

NOTE: The review (look along its left side) also links to Tatjana's website, which contains a wonderful excerpt from the novel.

Prairie Lights Books on the Front Page of the NYT

2010-03-26T09:35:00.006-04:00

There is a great photograph of Barack Obama visiting Jan Weismiller and the good people of Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City on the front page of today's New York Times.

Here's a link.

The Annual Poet's Lunch

2010-03-24T07:04:00.001-04:00

Monday was also the date for the Annual Poet's Lunch at the Tip-a-Few in Grand Haven. Left to right: Me, Judith Minty, Robert VanderMolen, Larry TenHarmsel, Jack Ridl.

______________

Perhaps brought on by the three tacos with hot sauce I had at the Tip, I now have a flare-up of gout in my right foot. Ah, the Suffering of the Poets!

Report from Washington, D.C.

2010-03-22T16:56:00.015-04:00

Hannah went to Washington yesterday and took photos of the "Tea Party" protest of the health care vote and the (much larger) demonstration for immigration reform.

Here are a couple of photos and a link.

______________________________

In other news, my car wouldn't start this morning so I had to come home this afternoon and put in a new battery. I did this successfully and without a hitch.

Amazing!

We are feeling quite manly at S@4A.M.

World Poetry Day

2010-03-21T09:44:00.006-04:00

Did you know that March 21 is UNESCO's World Poetry Day? I didn't.

To celebrate, here is one of my favorite poems.

SONG

Listen: there was a goat's head hanging by ropes in a tree.
All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it
Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing
The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then
They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat's head
Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly
The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away
Beside which the goat's headless body lay. Some boys
Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined.

The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they
Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school
And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything.
The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks.
The head called to the body. The body to the head.
They missed each other. The missing grew large between them,
Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until
The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies
Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills.
Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder,
Sang long and low until the morning light came up over
The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped....

The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named
The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after
The night's bush of stars, because the goat's silky hair
Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit.
The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night
She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train's horn
Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke
To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang
Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats.

She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily
That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming
Made it so. But one night the girl didn't hear the train's horn,
And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat
Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm
Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain
Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone
Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called
To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called
And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling
Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides
Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat's body
By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles
At the goat's torn neck. Then somebody found the head
Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take
These things away so that the girl would not see them.
They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat.
They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear
Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke....

But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have
Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they
Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job,
Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark.
What they didn't know was that the goat's head was already
Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn't know
Was that the goat's head would go on singing, just for them,
Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen,
Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would
Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees
Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

______________________

The painting is "Abraham Sacrificing Isaac" (1650) by Laurent de La Hyre

Great Moments in Montessori Education

2010-03-20T06:26:00.003-04:00

“I don’t want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer or a silly heart. I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously.”

-Uncle Buck

...So Falls Mulholland Falls

2010-03-05T10:13:00.002-05:00

In other news, I have a new pair of sunglasses (Ray Ban Clubmasters) and a new hat ( from Worth & Worth in NYC). No, I don't look like Leonardo DiCaprio.

I look like Strother Martin.

But he was a star, too, so what the hell.

____________________

Thirty four papers marked and mid-term grades in.

The Latest Publishing Scandal

2010-03-02T04:59:00.004-05:00

The publisher of a book about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima whose author relied on a fraudulent source has said it will stop printing and shipping copies because of further questions about the writer’s sources.

The publisher, Henry Holt & Company, says it is offering refunds to retailers and wholesalers for “The Last Train From Hiroshima,” by Charles Pellegrino, an account of both the mission to drop the bomb and its victims. The company had printed about 18,000 copies of the book.

I've had this book on order for about a month; I guess this explains why I haven't received it yet--and why I never will.

Earthquake in Chile

2010-02-27T13:39:00.007-05:00

I awakened when dreamland gave way beneath
my bed.

-Pablo Neruda, "Earthquakes," Canto General

As we await news of the devastating earthquake in Chile and await the progress of the anticipated tsunami across the Pacific, I note that the epicenter of the (albeit, offshore) quake was very near Parral, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 220 miles south of Santiago.

This is the birthplace of Pablo Neruda.

Albion College: It Just Keeps Getting Worse

2010-02-27T10:06:00.005-05:00

A commentator who calls himself(?) John Doe and who seems to know a great deal about what is happening at Albion College left the following comment to my earlier post on the decision to cut 10% of the faculty (approximately 15 full-time equivalent positions) as part of a "cost cutting" move at Albion College.

I did not want Mr. Doe's comment to go unnoticed.

After reading this, I wonder if we should change the name of the school to "Aspirational College."

Mr. Doe writes:

The situation is somewhat more distressing than the official notice lets on.

The president and Board of Trustees also want to suspend the Faculty Handbook in order to enforce the cuts with minimal interference or input from the faculty.

Another indication of concern is that some recent pronouncments from the administration refer to other schools in the GLCA (which includes schools such as Oberlin, Kalamazoo, DePauw, Hope, Kenyon) as an "aspirational" group. In the past these were considered as peer instutitions. But now it seems Albion is being positioned in a peer group with slightly less prestigious regional schools like Alma, Adrian, and Olivet -- not that there's anything so bad about those schools, but if students and parents are being asked to pay out some $30,000 a year, they should also know what comparisons to make.

O, Canada!

2010-02-26T11:05:00.004-05:00

Cigar, beer, hockey, gold medal.

HOT.

This is so TOTALLY my kind of woman.

Big Trouble in Little Albion

2010-02-23T19:33:00.016-05:00

I graduated from Albion College in 1974. Today, I (along with all members of the "Albion College family") received an e-mail from Donna Randall, the President of the college. Here it is, in relevant part:

"As we continue to deal with the effects of the economic recession, colleges and universities across the nation, including Albion, are faced with some exceedingly difficult financial decisions.

After thorough deliberation, the Albion College Board of Trustees has determined that the College must reduce the size of the faculty to bring it into alignment with current and anticipated numbers of students. The attached letter details the reasons for this decision and outlines the process that will be followed in achieving these reductions. This action is the latest in a series of measures taken over the past 18 months to balance our revenues and expenses. We believe that at the end of this process Albion College will emerge as a more vibrant institution, fully focused on its strengths..."

The proposed cuts would eliminate 15 full-time faculty positions, which is approximately 10% of the faculty.

I am not sure what is going on at Albion; it used to be a highly regarded liberal arts college, but its reputation and national rankings have slipped in recent years. The economic downturn in Michigan--in the economy as a whole--certainly has not helped.

At the same time, I must admit I have mixed feelings about the college, its poor relationship with its graduates, the ham-handed way it does things (e.g., tearing down the Gerstacker International House) and what it perceives its mission to be.

Here's a link.

Before saying more, I want to think about this.

After Breakfast and Before Lunch, I Remembered This, Thank God

2010-02-05T15:37:00.007-05:00

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest."

-Hermann Hesse, Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (1919)

Power Rankings: Is Tony Hoagland the Carolina Panther(s) or the Chicago Bear(s) of American Poetry? Or is He Somewhere In-between?

2010-02-05T13:10:00.020-05:00

There are 15 or 20 better poets in America than Tony Hoagland, but few deliver more pure pleasure. His erudite comic poems are backloaded with heartache and longing, and they function, emotionally, like improvised explosive devices: the pain comes at you from the cruelest angles, on the sunniest of days.

I am not sure what to make of an article that begins as strangely as Dwight Garner's review of Tony Hoagland's new collection of poetry, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Graywolf Press, 2010). What does it mean to be ranked the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, or 21st Best Contemporary American Poet? How are such ranking determined? According to whose standards?

As Lil' Wayne might put it, I think someone is "Talkin' &*%# like Lane Kiffin."

However, Garner's is a generally positive review of a very good book. And if there really are 15 or 20 better poets out there, I suspect 5 to 7 of them are publishing a new book every year or so. Does this mean the New York Times will be giving us more poetry reviews amid "All the News That's Fit to Print"? Why should we settle for a review of a book by someone, however amusing, who may only be the 21st Best Poet in America?

Walden Green Montessori School

2010-02-02T18:08:00.003-05:00

As Wittgenstein noted, what we cannot comment upon we must pass over in silence.

Where Do the Buffalo Roam?

2010-02-02T13:13:00.005-05:00

Are you someone I owe something to? I'm not talking about an $80 bar tab from 19 years ago. Good luck getting that one out of me.

But do I owe you something, maybe, in writing? Or about writing? Or a straight answer to a simple question?

I am no longer shouting "NIXON! NIXON!" at the FAX machine. Soon, you shall have whatever I owe to you.

Gonzo promise.

Seasonal

2010-01-29T06:50:00.007-05:00

No one eats oranges
In the full moon’s light.

- Federico Garcia Lorca

A Great Lakes winter is nearly suicidal in its bleakness. The most difficult time is from mid-January through early March, when the days bundle together along a strange psychic curve––rising from mild annoyance through clinical depression, then trailing off into despair and a kind of spiritual catatonia; mental footprints disappearing in a snow drift.

In early January, snow devils whirling in the fields, lost in an evening darkness that consumes itself as metaphor, the experienced native is unconsoled by changes in the weather. We cannot be fooled. A January thaw is deceitful, crusting the shriveled gray snowbanks and sleeking the walkways with ice. The jolly-sounding “clipper system,” raking down from Saskatchewan, is the Michigan equivalent of Flaubert’s sentimental education. A rare hour of sunlight causes us to knit our brows, to shield our eyes. Bright light induce migraines. We have winter in the blood.

Four or five years of this––the traditional undergraduate course–– is not enough experience to nod in sympathy; to say, Ah yes, I know what you mean. One must endure these winters for thirty or forty years to feel their full weight upon the psyche. No, Alaska and the sub-Arctic regions are not worse, thank you. Our far northern friends have time-tested ways of dealing with the cold. But in Michigan, near the 45th parallel, milk cows will be missed, even by the most raffish of farmers. Unless one counts a bull elk, a stray moose in the U.P., there are no Michigan herbivores of sufficient size for one to shoot and slice open; to crawl in amid the viscera, there to remain, sleeping and dreaming of spring.

Winter is the season for purchasing handguns. Pointless vandalism is the order of the night. The knowing phrase, “more bullet holes than a Michigan stop sign,” finds its murky origin in these dark months. Behind my house some four hundred yards, through a swampy, unpromising tangle of blackberries, pin oaks and cedars, my neighbors can be heard, cackling in despair and and firing their Smith & Wessons at the cold, hard stars.

The days are not entirely without consolation. From early December through late January, there are Clementines––boxes of Spanish oranges to be had. The Clementine is a Mediterranean variety of the Mandarin orange, discovered by a French priest, Father Clement Rodier on a sunny Algerian day in the early 1890’s. These smooth-skinned easily peeled oranges with their richly flavored, juicy flesh can be found in wooden boxes at most of the local grocery stores. Clementines were originally brought to the United States from Spain in 1997, after some of our fine winter weather surged through Florida’s citrus groves, destroying much of the orange crop. The Spanish varieties found a following among the residents of the Upper Great Lakes, and these stocks are now supplemented with domestic varieties from Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, and Ojai; the fabled cities of California.

A Clementine orange is an elegant, sweet, quatrain––a small stanza of poetry. In the dead of a Michigan winter, a Clementine is a momentary stay against oblivion. It is not difficult to imagine the poet Federico Garcia-Lorca wandering through Gaudi’s Park Guell with several of these beauties loose in the pockets of his overcoat. In the years since Father Clement first pulled a basket of oranges from a tree on an Algerian hillside, Clementines have been bred for seedlessness. I am told that if one encounters a seed in a Clementine, it means that the orange blossom was cross-pollenated by a bee. In the trade, seeded fruit is a bad thing. As for myself, I rejoice in the occasional seed. During the hard-bitten days of January, the thought of an actual bee dusting an orange blossom with its pollen-laden legs is a small luxury which pulls the heart toward Spring.

While Clementines are most often peeled, broken into the readily divisible sections for which they are famous, and eaten, they also have a place in winter salads, fruit tarts, ices, sorbets, and other similar confections. Here’s a recipe for Clementine and pistachio magdalenas, a Spanish version of Proust’s madeleine, but made with olive oil, instead of the butter favored by the French. After a bite of a magdalena with a sip of black coffee, I have often imagined that I am sitting in a sunlit cafe in Barcelona, in those first heady days of the Spanish Republic.

ORANGE & PISTACHIO MAGDALENAS*

2 Cups cake flour
1 Cup all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
6 large eggs, at room temperature
2 2/3 Cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted, plus more for dusting the cakes
2/3 Cup heavy (whipping) cream
1/2 Cup orange juice from Spanish Clementines
1 Cup light, fruity olive oil
2/3 cup pistachios, coarsely chopped
2 Tablespoons zest from Spanish Clementines, or more to taste
2 dashes of orange extract
1 dash of vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter, for buttering the muffin tins.

Sift the cake and all-purpose flours, salt, and baking powder together in a mixing bowl

Place the eggs in a large warm mixing bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat them until fluffy, about 1 1/2 minutes. Add the 2 2/3’s cup confectioners’ sugar and continue beating at high speed until the eggs are pale yellow and approximately triple in volumes. This should take about 5 minutes. Working in batches, beat in the sifted flours, alternating with the cream, orange juice, and olive oil. Stir in the pistachios, orange juice, orange extract and vanilla extract. Cover the batter with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes. Stir the batter well before proceeding.

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Generously butter the cups and top of the muffin tin of one 24-cup tin or two 12-cup mini muffin tins.

Fill the prepared muffin tins almost full with the batter. Bake the magdalenas on the center rack until they are light golden and a toothpick comes out clean 20 to 23 minutes (NOTE: Begin to watch carefully at about 18 minutes), switching the position of the tins after 10 minutes. Do not let the magdalenas over-bake. Let the magdalenas cool on a rack for about 20 minutes, then remove them from the tin(s). Serve the magdalenas warm, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.
Repeat filling and baking the muffin tins until you have used up the batter. This recipe should make approximately 18-24 magdelenas.
NOTE: Individual magdalenas can be successfully reheated the next morning in a microwave.

________________________

*I have adapted this recipe from The New Spanish Table by Anya Von Brement, New York: Workman Publishing, 2005 (p. 448-449).

J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)

2010-01-28T13:22:00.006-05:00

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Clementine and Pistachio Magdalenas

2010-01-24T18:09:00.003-05:00

I made these last night and have written a brief (1,200 word) essay on Clementine oranges and winter.

How delicious.

Color Massachusetts Red?!!?

2010-01-20T06:52:00.004-05:00

Hard to believe!

In other news, a person who appears to be from the Far East (as in, perhaps, China) has been leaving comments on this blog (that for whatever reason, cannot be deleted) linking it to soft core porn sites. The only response I can make is to take down the entire post.

Please, comment-linking person, you are annoying. Grow up and get a new hobby.

Haiti

2010-01-14T06:44:00.007-05:00

Caution!

2010-01-12T07:00:00.005-05:00

The headlines on the website of one of our local televisions stations this morning were "TEEN WEARING HEADPHONES HIT BY TRAIN" and "TEEN DROPS CELL PHONE, GOES UNDER BUS."

Teens! Be careful out there!

A Post-Christmas Pulse

2009-12-28T11:30:00.010-05:00

Constant Reader, I hope that you enjoyed Christmas and wish you a Happy New Year. Hannah is home from NYC with Ivan and we had them over for Christmas dinner with Marcia's father and the boys. A pleasant time was had by all--as nearly as I could tell.

If one is a writer, one must, at some point, write. So now that the semester is over, I am taking a few days off between the holidays to familiarize myself with a keyboard. I have a poem in mind and also hope to spend time with my novel. Perhaps you can imagine what my New Year's resolutions include, but more of that anon. Without being maudlin, I can say that 2009 was not the best of years––though we are happy to have survived it––and we are hoping for better things in 2010. Our largest concern at this point is with the health of older relatives––parents, aunts, etc. One wants all to be well, but the past several months have been particularly difficult, and it is unlikely that we will get through the coming year without one or more losses.

As a result of the holidays, I have several new books to read, including Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life by Carol Sklenicka (Scribner, 2009), The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar (St. Martins's Press, 2009) and Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon (W.W. Norton, 2009).

I love to read the biographies of writers and artists when I feel I am at the limits of my own tether as a writer, and I am looking forward to these. I am about 200 pages into the Carver biography. So far, the review by Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review (which I thought rather cruel when I read it––King was critical of Carver's personal excesses, not of the book) seems more than fair.

I also received some Christmas cigars, including, to my delight, two Cohiba Esplendidos from Uncle Fidel, which promise excellent smoking as we head into the New Year.

At Last!

2009-12-22T14:35:00.001-05:00

I have finished grading papers and have submitted my final grades for the semester. Hooray for my students--a good group this term.

Gracie's on the TODAY Show

2009-12-22T06:59:00.007-05:00

Congratulations to Gracie’s! and Chef Joe Hafner. Chef Joe from Gracie’s will be featured on the Today Show, 9am on Wednesday, December 23rd. Tune in at 9am and see him cook his favorite holiday dishes in front of a live audience. We can’t wait to try some of this delicious holiday creations for our own holiday company!

___________________________

This is a restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, where my son Elliot works. He will not be on the TODAY Show, but is doing some of the prep work for this event.

Elliot is a student in the Culinary Arts program at Johnson & Wales in Providence.

2:05 A.M.: Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling

2009-12-18T09:21:00.001-05:00

Am I the only one who wonders if John Lennon was channeling John Berryman's Dreamsongs when Lennon wrote "Come Together"?

Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger he shoot coca-cola
He say "I know you, you know me"
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me

He bag production he got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard he one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together right now over me

He roller-coaster he got early warning
He got muddy water he one mojo filter
He say "One and one and one is three"
Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see
Come together right now over me

Current Reading

2009-12-11T16:01:00.006-05:00

I am a bit more than a third through Jim Harrison's The Farmer's Daughter (Grove Press, 2009), a collection of three novellas. I started with the second story, "Brown Dog Redux," in which Harrison revisits the title character, a good-hearted seldom-do-well of prodigious appetites who may be half American Indian. If memory serves me--and since I am at work, it must--Harrison has written three other novellas in which Brown Dog is the central character.

Harrison has a unique voice and is a master at the novella form (perhaps his best known work is Legends of the Fall, a collection of three novellas published in 1979)* and thus far, The Farmer's Daughter does not disappoint.

The Great Blizzard of 2009 was largely a bust in Michigan. As the Once-Constant Reader will recall, I am obsessed with dramatic weather events. I was ready to perform many heroic feats in the face of the heartless storm--and to blog at length about them--but the possibility of ending up in the ditch--or even, of having to shovel my way from the front door to the driveway--did not materialize.

Bother.

________________________

*I double-checked and Yes, I was correct about the date the book was originally published. Good one! At least my mind has not entirely turned to Gruyere.

What Blizzard?

2009-12-10T06:40:00.009-05:00

The Great Blizzard of 2009 is thus far a complete bust. Threatened by our weather forecasters with up to 20 inches of snow, we have received approximately half an inch. For all the alleged scientific advancements in recent years, the forecasts were more accurate before they were driven by television ratings.

Last night we watched Carol's Journey, a film by Imanol Uribe (2007, Spanish with English subtitles). I am fascinated with the Spanish Civil War, and also with the post-Franco responses of Spanish film makers. If you are interested in an intelligent, beautiful film about childhood, family, and the loss of innocence, this film is very much worth your time.

_____________________

WEATHER UPDATE--1:25 P.M. It is snowing quite steadily now. Perhaps we'll have our blizzard after all.

Oregon, Mes Amours

2009-12-09T10:24:00.006-05:00

We spent a long Thanksgiving week visiting Marcia's Mother and Stepfather in Gearhart, Oregon. Above is a photograph of Marcia, Liam and Carlos on the beach.

Today is the last day of class for the semester. I have to collect final papers and my students will be filling out evaluations. Sounds like a simple enough plan, but for the fact that as of 1 p.m., we will be under a blizzard warning. More fun in Michigan.

I have much more to write and more pictures. But I had to come up with a way to "break the ice," so to speak and get back to blogging.

So here I am.

Memories of Youth

2009-11-03T13:03:00.008-05:00

I remember that my friend Eddie Cullen had a copy of Phil Ochs In Concert (Elektra Records, 1966). In the liner notes, Ochs reprinted eight poems by Mao Tse Tung with the question, "Is This the Enemy?"

I thought it was hilarious when Eddie's sister Gina (or was it Ellen?) penned "Yes" on the album in answer to the question.

Here's one of Mao's poems (mentioned today on C. Dale Young's blog)which also appeared on the album:

CHANGSHA (Memories of Youth)

The immense river is a transparent green
and a hundred boats are racing by.
The eagles strike against the sky,
The fish swim in the shallows;
In the freezing air all creatures strive for freedom.
Alone in the desolate vastness,
I ask of the ageless earth:
"Who is the ruler of the universe?"
I remember a hundred friends coming here
during the crowded, eventual years;
All of them young and upright,
Gleaming with brilliance,
true to the scholar's spirit.
I remember how vivid they were
As they gazed upon rivers and mountains:
The Chinese earth gave strength to their words,
And they regarded as dung the ancient feudal lords.
Do you remember
How in midstream we struck out at the water,
And the waves dashed against the speeding ships?

-Mao Tse Tung

Better, Thank You

2009-11-03T12:40:00.002-05:00

The formerly Constant Reader knows that I have not blogged much this fall and, in particular, that I haven't blogged at all for several weeks. The problem is that I haven't felt well and haven't had the energy to do much more than to attend to my day job and my teaching duties. A full recitation of my problems would drive away more readers than my inattention already has, but I have been on a strict diet and several medications for a bit more than a month and feel much better, thank you.

I am ready to resume blogging and writing. For me, at least, this is good news.

Albert York, Reclusive Landscape Painter, Dies at 80

2009-11-01T11:16:00.024-05:00

Edge of the Forest (Ca. 1963)

Bread and Wine (ca. 1966)

I had not intended to come back on a sad note, but was sorry to learn of the death of Albert York, an American artist whose work I know primarily through a profile of him that appeared in The New Yorker in 1995.

Here's some of what The New York Times had to say in its obituary, published this morning:

Rarely measuring more than 12 inches on a side, Mr. York’s paintings evoke a world in which time and art seem to stand still or even move backward through history. His trees had the symmetry of those in Renaissance paintings. His images of a single cow or dog evoked the manner of Dutch or English painters. His occasional figures might be robed or turbaned as in earlier times, or accompanied by a skeleton signaling life’s brevity. He frequently zeroed in on small vases of flowers, recalling late Manet, and even went so far as to do his own rendition of Manet’s “Olympia.”

But his paintings’ geometric simplicity, flatness of form and workmanlike brushwork exuded a quiet modernity, as did their wholeness of composition and feeling. In the catalog to a 1975 York exhibition at Davis & Long, the critic and painter Fairfield Porter wrote, “Certainly part of the strong emotional appeal of these paintings” is that Mr. York “is not clever, and in no sense superior to the nature of his medium or the nature of the subject, but that he is at one with both.”

The Sea, East Hampton (ca. 1964)

Back to Work

2009-10-05T08:42:00.003-04:00

Brazil, where hearts were entertained in June
We stood beneath an amber moon,
And softly murmured 'Some day soon'
We kissed.

Update

2009-10-02T13:23:00.006-04:00

"Once everyone knows the chords, I lose the magic."

-Stevie "Guitar" Miller, who told me this in a feverish dream last night, explaining why he didn't want to go onstage and play "I'm a Joker" with a Steve Miller tribute band that was playing in a bar that was like, in my dream. A dream in which I was, uh, Steve Miller's bodyguard.

Too weird.

I have been sick and busy at work and school. I will resume regular broadcasts this weekend. Promise.

We've Reached the Bottom; It is a Long, Deep Trench

2009-09-26T00:59:00.004-04:00

Experts predict that the penultimate catastrophe will occur at approximately 7:15 p.m. Thursday night, when the social networking tool Twitter will be used to communicate a series of ideas so banal they will instantaneously negate the three centuries of the Renaissance.

"The sciences, the arts, the humanities—all aspects of society as a whole will reach their respective low-points in just a matter of days," said anthropologist Robert Davidson, gesturing toward a nearby line graph illustrating western society's collapse. "We've been charting this cultural descent for generations now, from the advent of New Wave music, to the rise of scientific creationism, right through to the trampling death of several Wal-Mart greeters on the morning after Thanksgiving. Everything has been leading up to this Friday."

According to the panel, the final event will occur at 3:32 p.m., when a tourist, believing the impressive structure to be a giant mall, will enter Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, and, not finding what he is looking for, ask where "the damn Radio Shack is supposed to be."

Daniel Nester Sets Out for the Poetry Wilderness

2009-09-24T02:51:00.015-04:00

My thanks to C. Dale Young for posting this link to Daniel Nester's very funny article in The Morning News about his reasons for leaving the poetry megaplex of NYC. On his site, Nester says he took his title from an essay by Joan Didion which appears in her 1968 book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I suspect she was cribbing from the poet Robert Graves' memoir about his experiences in WWI.

.

Progress Notes

2009-09-20T20:44:00.006-04:00

I have been working on an edit of my novel manuscript, and then today wrote another 2,700 words. I am over 280 pages and yes, I do think the manuscript is publishable. In fact, in my humble opinion, it's pretty darn good, though I suppose someone else will be the ultimate judge of that.

Back to the salt mines in the morning. I am glad that I didn't waste any time watching the Detroit Lions today, who were spanked at home by Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings, 27-13. If anyone is still counting, that's 19 losses in a row for Detroit.

________________________

The drawing is Vuelo Aguila (1954) by the Mexican artist Alfredo Zalce (1908-2003).

Daisy Fried on Franz Wright's "Wheeling Motel"

2009-09-19T03:38:00.010-04:00

Like many poets, Wright is interested in the human condition — we’re all going to die. Unlike many poets, he doesn’t have much truck with things that distract us from that condition.

Report

2009-09-18T06:42:00.004-04:00

I went to to Holland last night to go to the Gregory Orr reading, walked through downtown alone and thought about everything and just could not do it.

Drove home and went to sleep.

Gregory Orr Reading Tonight

2009-09-17T09:25:00.010-04:00

The poet Gregory Orr is reading tonight at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, as part of the Jack Ridl Visitng Writers Series. The reading is at 7:00 P.M. at the Knickerbocker Theatre.

Orr has published nine collections of poetry and a highly acclaimed collection of essays, Poetry as Survival (University of Georgia Press, 2002). His most recent collection is How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Orr has received many awards and fellowships, including an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Violence.

Gregory Orr teaches at the University of Virginia, where he founded the MFA Program in Writing in 1975, and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Jack Ridl's "Losing Season"

2009-09-13T11:14:00.009-04:00

"Losing Season isn't just a great book of poetry, for it is much more than that––it is more like the Great American Novel we have long hoped would grace our literary landscape."

-Richard Jones

This gorgeous book is just out from CavanKerry Press. I have heard Jack Ridl read poems from collection–––which was many years in the making––and they are wonderful. Losing Season tells the story of a town, a coach, and a basketball team that is perpetually on the cusp of winning a game––of turning things around––and cannot quite bring themselves to do it. If Spoon River High School went into overtime––and lost at the buzzer––Jack Ridl would be there to chronicle it.

Jack Ridl is a professor emeritus from Hope College and knows what he is writing about––poetry-wise and basketball-wise. His father C. G. "Buzz" Ridl was a highly regarded (and winning) basketball coach at Westminster College and at the University of Pittsburgh, where he coached the team into the NCAA's Final Four.

Poems from Losing Season have appeared in Chelsea, Passages North, The New York Quarterly, Ploughshares, Yarrow, and many other literary magazines and anthologies.

Don't miss this one!

Thought for the Day

2009-09-13T10:43:00.001-04:00

"...Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"

-Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman.

Shock Notre Dame!

2009-09-12T20:12:00.003-04:00

Michigan 38

Notre Dame 34

Hahahahahahaha!

__________________

Next day note: And last night, Ohio State lost to Southern Cal.

If the Lions beat the Saints this afternoon, I will have had a football weekend in heaven.

Shock the World!

2009-09-12T15:56:00.006-04:00

Or at least, the State of Michigan. Central Michigan University beats Michigan State University in football, 29-27.

Just wait until Monday, when I get to rub this in to the MSU Extension people who work in my building.

Because I went to the University of Michigan, frustrating and amazing the MSU Extension people with a pointed comment or two; a bit of witty repartee, will be such a simple thing.

Perhaps such pettiness is beneath me.

Hahahhahaahha!

Current State

2009-09-09T19:18:00.001-04:00

TIRED!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2009-09-07T08:39:00.018-04:00

*poof!*

A Book We Will Be Reading

2009-09-05T06:53:00.010-04:00

"Yet somehow Nicholson Baker has written a novel about poetry that’s actually about poetry — and that is also startlingly perceptive and ardent, both as a work of fiction and as a representation of the kind of thinking that poetry readers do. “The Anthologist” is the story of Paul Chowder, a semi-successful, middle-aged American poet trying and mostly failing to write the introduction to an anthology called “Only Rhyme.” As in most Baker novels, not much happens. Chowder sits in his workplace/barn and thinks; he shampoos the dog; he goes blueberry picking; he installs flooring for a neighbor; he pines for his former girlfriend Roz, who left him after getting fed up with his procrastination; he acquires a couple of finger injuries; he gives a reading; and finally, he sits on a panel on rhyme in Switzerland, at which he . . . well, again, it’s a Baker denouement, so not much happens, at least in terms of gunfights or ninjas."

_______________________________

"Rhyme and Unreason" by David Orr, a Review of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster, 2009), The New York Times Book Review, September 1, 2009.

Gout, What is it Good For?

2009-09-05T06:27:00.004-04:00

Absolutely nothing--say it again.

Good God, Ya'll.

Here's a depiction of the artist at work. It my case, it was two pastrami sandwiches and an anchovy pizza that did me in. Bad stuff for someone with gout.

So it's my own fault, I suppose. Which doesn't mean I can't limp around feeling sorry for myself.

Knockin' Around the Yard

2009-09-04T12:33:00.004-04:00

We thought someone was knocking at our door.

No; it was a female Pileated Woodpecker sampling the delectable treats in our yard.

Although such sightings mean nothing, I always take them a sign of good luck.

Note: I did not take this photo, but trust me, I heard--and saw--the bird.

Questions of Marketing

2009-09-04T07:35:00.013-04:00

I have often read about how clever Amazon is with its purchasing records---how the company has programs that can predict what you might be interested in buying based upon your history as a customer.

Given my purchasing record, why would the gurus at Amazon think I want to order an advance copy of Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol?

I have nothing against Dan Brown--other than that his books are, you know, blasphemy and stuff and he's pro'lly going to burn in the 7th Circle of H-E-L-L--but I am not one of his readers. Based upon my somewhat loopy purchasing history, Amazon should be notifying me that they have a hot new monograph available on "The Mycology of Post-Volcanic, Inter-montane Guatemala."

_____________________

Above: Dore's depiction of Dante and Virgil searching for mushrooms near the 7th Circle.

Note: Lately, I find it impossible to write a cogent sentence before I've had a sufficient dose of caffeine.

Pre-Weekend Update

2009-09-03T10:52:00.012-04:00

My class went well yesterday; I should have a pretty good group of students.

I am taking the rest of the week off to work on my novel. My goal is to have something mailed to my agent by September 15. This is an ambitious goal, but if I wait much longer than that, the demands of teaching and my day job will slow everything I tried to accomplish this summer to a crawl.

It is a lovely day––sunny and warming. But I had to make a fire this morning, just to chase the chill out of the house. It wasn't much of a summer in these parts, and fall is on its way.

______________________

Above: American CIA agent, novelist, and infamous Watergate burglar, E. Howard Hunt.

4:27 P.M.: 249 pages.

The Dean Young Effect, Redux

2009-09-01T02:27:00.002-04:00

Readers of the American Poetry Review will want to turn all the way to page 54 of the September/October issue to read Dean Young's very funny response to Tony Hoagland's essay, "The Dean Young Effect," which appeared in the July/August APR. In his letter, Young admits that he is not only responsible for much bad writing today, but is also responsible for bad writing all the way back to Chaucer and Donne.

Young writes, "The list, as any delicate reader knows, goes on and on."

Syllabus, Syllabus...

2009-08-31T06:52:00.001-04:00

Where is my syllabus?

My first class is Wednesday.

William Logan on Louise Gluck

2009-08-30T06:22:00.039-04:00

Louise Gluck's A Village Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) is reviewed by William Logan in today's New York Times Book Review.* It is difficult to say which person (poet or critic) deserves the other more. Logan actually seems to like Gluck's poetry (his standard ratio of slams-to-compliments is reversed, standing in this review at approximately 1:2--I almost shouted "Hey, Mikey!").

Logan describes Louise Gluck's new book as "a subversive departure for a poet used to meaning more than she can say," a non-insight which strikes me as meaning less than it wants to.

But enough of William Logan; Louise Gluck wants our attention. At a respectful distance, of course.

Louise Gluck reminds me of Jorie Graham, in that while I find it necessary to read her work--and always learn something from her--I have never much liked her poetry. Gluck is an Apollonian for whom the moon is always waning; her poetry's preoccupation is with how others have failed to properly love and understand her. Because the world--because men, because all of us--so fail to meet Gluck's needs, it is difficult for an attentive reader not to become exasperated. One wants to say, "Hey, Louise, we're having a party over here, we're dancing; anytime you decide to join us, let us know."

One must finally turn away from the humorless girl in the self-enameled corner, holding her breath until she turns blue.

What is compelling--even riveting--about our work when we are 26 can become tedious when we are 66.

____________________________

*‘Nothing Remains of Love,’ by William Logan, a review of Village Life by Louise Gluck, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2009), New York Times Book Review, August 27, 2009.

Would Michiko Kakutani Like a Double Chocolate with Sprinkles from the Whippi Dip?

2009-08-28T19:54:00.022-04:00

I love Lorrie Moore's work and am pleased that her novel, A Gate at the Stairs (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), received a positive review in today's New York Times from the eminence grise herself, Michiko Kakutaki. But I wonder if Ms. Kakutani could be more condescending toward the "emotionally reticent" among us who live out here in "flyover country," as she calls it.

I say this as someone who lives in a Midwestern town too small to even have a Dairy Queen--the culinary destination which Ms. Kakutani considers the very apex of the Heartland experience. Instead of Dairy Queen, we have Miss Lisa's, and two miles down the road, The Whippi Dip. Once a week in the summer, I fire up the John Deere, load the kids in the hay wagon, and head to the Whippi Dip for a double chocolate with sprinkles.

Normally, we try to be home before dark. But once in a while, we go a little crazy, just to see the bright lights.

Please note--waffle cones are not permitted west of the Delaware Water Gap; so if that's your pleasure, bring your own.

You can read the review, here.

Coming Soon to a Blog Roll Near You

2009-08-28T06:03:00.004-04:00

I will be updating my blog roll soon--perhaps this weekend. If you've left a comment recently on S@4A.M., I will probably be adding your name to my list. If I miss someone, or if you've been quietly reading along and would like a link, please leave a comment and let me know.

Dominick Dunne, Dead at 83

2009-08-27T03:54:00.010-04:00

The New York Times obituary is here.

Reading Around

2009-08-27T03:04:00.009-04:00

Richard Wilbur has three poems in the August 31, 2009, New Yorker. The first one, "The House" (p.35) is an okay poem. The third poem, "Flying" (p. 55) is a poem that, were it not attached to the name "Richard Wilbur," would never be published in the New Yorker. The second poem, "A Reckoning," (p. 40) is my nominee for worst poem of 2009 published East of the Hudson River.

Read it, if you dare, here.

Mr. Bad Example

2009-08-26T10:47:00.036-04:00

Last night at a public meeting, someone suggested that I was a very poor role model for my children.* I am a poet and a writer, and one of my (several) reactions was to think back on the days when I was young and to recall things I had read that inspired me--that made me want to be a better person. Because I was raised by coyotes and yet, had a library card hidden within our family lair, writers were my role models when I was a child. And so late last night I looked back to the books I read when I was a kid and tried to find a few of the quotations--or if I could not remember them with a fair amount of precision--to find a few of the sentiments expressed by the writers I read and admired; passages that made a difference in forming my thinking and in some small way, shaping my behavior.

Having found a bit of the base materials, one then asks--in your conduct, in what you have stood for, in what you teach and have taught your children, do you try to live up to these early ideals? Let's leave that (potentially self-serving) question unanswered for the moment. Let's look instead at a few of the words I recall reading and as having mattered, if only because I think that is a more interesting subject than how I rate as a role model.

In no particular order:

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

" . . . tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me."

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why, I'll be there."

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self respect springs.”

– Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

-Thomas Merton

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

-Dylan Thomas

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

-Ernest Hemingway, In Another Country

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.”

-Flannery O'Connor, The Fiction Writer & His Country

"Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith."

-Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

"In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again: and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life; toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terror, and of God."

- James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

-William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

________________________

*Not to worry; I suspect this person and I have profoundly different ideas about children, education, parenting, and role-models.

However I rate as a "role model," I am sure that I am a very unsatisfying figure for my kids to rebel against.

Hell by Any Other Name

2009-08-25T10:19:00.007-04:00

Welcome to Rapelje, Montana--the only town in America named after...me.*

Hopping place, eh?

___________________

*Rapalje is an early version of "Rappleye."

A Moment with Susan Sontag

2009-08-24T06:31:00.007-04:00

What I write is other than me. As what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it. My books know what I once knew––fitfully, intermittently. And getting the best word on the page does not seem any easier, even after so many years of writing. On the contrary.

Here is the great difference between reading and writing. Reading is a vocation, a skill at which, with practice, you are bound to become more expert. What you accumulate as a writer is mostly uncertainties and anxieties.

All these feelings of inadequacy on the part of the writer––this writer, anyway––are predicated on the conviction that literature matters. “Matters” is surely too pale a word. That there are books which are necessary, that is, books which, while reading them, you know you’ll reread. Maybe more than once. Is there a greater privilege than to have a consciousness expanded by, filled with, pointed to literature?

Book of wisdom, exemplar of mental playfulness, dilator of sympathies, faithful recorder of a real world (not just the commotion inside one head), servant of history, advocate of contrary and defiant emotions––a novel that feels necessary can be, should be, most of these things.

As to whether there will continue to be readers who share this high notion of fiction, well, “There’s no future to that question,” as Duke Ellington replied when asked why he was to be found playing morning programs at the Apollo. Best just to keep rowing along.

-Susan Sontag, from “Writing as Reading,” Collected in Where the Stress Falls: Essays (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).

_____________________________

I am at 243 pages. More later.

Time to Dance

2009-08-22T10:03:00.006-04:00

"The Voice of Liberation" may have been a CIA front, but in my novel, it broadcasts bitchin' good music.