Eavesdropping V. Word-Scavenging: "So Unexpected"

The blogger Bowl of Orangeshas a post about "the thin line between being a pervert and being a writer." In the post, Bowl of Oranges (BOO) confesses to being an eavesdropper. I'd equated eavesdropping with being impolite but not with perversion, but I take BOO's point: writers do like to stare, overhear, smell, touch, and taste things to see if these things might just fit in with some writing or even inspire words.

I tend to listen in when the people talking are talking loud enough for others to hear. I think of it as a free broadcast. I don't ever move closer to get in better listening range. (I think I do probably stare at people too much, absorbing details, but almost always when they're not looking, so that I'm not perceived as being rude; nonetheless, I probably migrate over the "polite" line, something I need to watch, so to speak>)

What I do more often is stay receptive to what's said by people walking past on the street or waiting in line, and in a big city like Istanbul, that happens all the time--but happens frequently on a small college campus, for instance, or in a store.

For example, a few days ago, to women were walking by slowly, and I heard a snippet of their conversation. I deduced that neither was British, Canadian, or American but were mostly likely also from two different countries so that English for them as a compromise language. In any event, one of them said, with her particular was of accenting English, "Life is so unexpected."

--It is indeed, as are such bits of language for which one may scavenge as they are spoken into the air and then lost unless one captures them. What to do with the language?--well, that's all about a writer's choices. At the very least: savor them. I mean, "Life if so unexpected": what a great sentence, so unexpected.

Politics Comes to Taksim Square

My wife and I have been visiting Turkey for over a week, staying mostly in Istanbul. Yesterday we visited Taksim square, at the heart of a modernized, upscale section of Istanbul, across the Bosphorous from Sultanhamet, the most famous part of the city where Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace, the Sultanhamet ("Blue") Mosque, and numerous other sites are located.

This morning Taksim Square is at the heart of an international controversy. Last night, Israeli troops boarded one of the ships attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. That ship was Turkish, and 15 of those on board were killed. Protests erupted outside the Israeli embassy near Taksim Square, and some protesters surged over the fence.

Turkey and Israel have had good diplomatic relations, but these events, as well as Turkey's involvement in a nuclear-fuel deal with Iran and Brazil, have strained the relationship immeasurably.

Complicating the present crisis are the questions of whether Israel is, according to international law, an "occupying force" in Gaza, where international law permits delivery of humanitarian aid (some ships have been let through during past deliveries), and precisely happened on the ship after Israeli soldiers boarded it.

It's been enlightening to watch BBC-Europe, as the interviewer grills spokespersons from Israel and the humanitarian group with equal ferocity. He is polite but firm, well informed, and relentless--intolerant of canned answers.

Ironically, we strolled down Isticlal Street, which angles off Taksim Square, yesterday, a wide promenade lined with shops, apartments and embassies. (The Israeli Embassy is in a high-rise nearby). The promenade was the picture of serenity, as Turks and visitors from every part of the globe enjoyed the stroll. We counted 5 Starbucks cafes along the promenade--as well as the same number of Gloria Jean's Coffee storefronts: two franchises in peaceful conflict. In an instant, Taksim Square, the venerable Isticlal Street, and embassy row have been drawn into international political conflict.

The Nature of Istanbul

I've been in Istanbul for a while, and it is, of course, a great city--addictive, in a way, like Venice.

We all have our coping-mechanisms when traveling, I assume; one of mine is to focus on the trees, plants, and birds of a place because one is bound to make familiar sightings, and one is reminded in general that this is, in fact, a small planet.

It is said the Prophet Muhammad strongly discouraged the destruction of trees, and what a sensible viewpoint. Perhaps the Prophet's views on this matter have affected the extent to which Istanbul is full of trees, and most especially in our hotel's neighborhood, which is old and working class--not that far from the seaside on the sharp slope down from Hagia Sophia.

In any case, I've seen in Istanbul so far sycamore, olive, fig, beech, oak, pine [a short species, not completely dissimilar to the scrub pine of the Sierra Nevada foothills], fir, maple, ash, locust, eucalyptus, and many species I don't recognize.

Some of the grasses and shrubs (boxwood) look familiar, and there seems to be a thistle that's similar to the star thistle. There is a low-lying flowering thing I mistook for red clover, but it's certainly not red clover. I'll have to look it up.

Grape vines grow everywhere in neighborhoods, as do fig trees: wonderful.

As for the birds, they are endlessly fascinating, especially in the morning and at dusk. There are swallows--which particular species, I dare not guess, but they dive and glide and feed on insects like the tree swallows I remember from the Sierra Nevada, and they have those great bladed wings.

The crows here are two-toned, with a gray chest and a gray cape: splendid. A wide variety of pigeons and doves and gulls. Starlings. There's a medium-sized, gray-black bird that chugs through the air; it looks like what I'd call a cowbird, but I'm sure it's not that. There are also sparrows that nest in buildings (including those of the Sultan's palace) and storks. The stork legend in Turkey is that if you see a stork flying, you will be traveling a lot. I saw a stork flying when we drove to Ephesus, so I guess I'll be traveling more.

In the small city near Ephesus, while we were having lunch, I looked outside and saw what seemed to be a crows nest--a massive construction of thick twigs. But a white head arose. It was a stork--a stork's nest. How cool is that?

Cats in Istanbul are ubiquitous and often heart-breaking: underfed, aged too quickly. The main reason for their presence, I think, is that Istanbul would be over-run with rats if the cats weren't around. There are more cats here than ever I saw in Rome.


Istanbul: The Imperial City

Istanbul Evening

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Istanbul Evening

A white, four-masted yacht slips between
dingy barges and trawlers, disappears into
a blue haze on the Sea of Marmara. The call
to prayer's an hour away. Swallows dive
and glide, pigeons prowl, and the sun's
about to settle down.

Below the terrace, lush maples and oaks
sigh and sway, leaning west. Sounds of traffic,
children, and work never cease. Near a mosque's
minaret on the hill, a faded Turkish flag
flutters in slow motion. Now a seagull appears.

It glides in a wide arc, which now becomes
a large invisible circle. The glide traces
ever smaller concentric circles against
the backdrop of the sea until the gull
lands precisely at the point of a rooftop
below the terrace. The gull stands
authoritatively, facing a low sun, and
something in the scene says all is well

even when it isn't. 

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

A Turkish Poet's Varied Background

Here's a link to a article about/interview with a contemporary Turkish poet named Lale Müldür:

Müldür

Index of African Writers and Writing

An  Index of sources about African Writers and Writing:

African American Writers--Cornell Library

NATURAL HABITAT, by Michelle Reale

Natural Habitats, a collection of a dozen stories by Michelle Reale, has just been published by Burning River Press. Here is a link to an interview with the author:

Interview with Reale

FULL MOON AT NOONTIDE, by Ann Putnam

In the last post, I mentioned a fine new novel I'd read, and now I'd like to mention one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time, Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye, by Ann Putnam. It's the story of identical twins, Ann's father and his brother; of their journey through life; and of their journey toward death. They almost simultaneously in the same hospital, with Ann caring for them both (the uncle was a bachelor). While Ann was finishing the book, her husband died of cancer. There's enough tragedy in the circumstances for three books, but the memoir is full of hard-earned joy, hope, and humor that lift Ann's experiences and the reader's response to them out of despair and into understanding.

The book is published by Southern Methodist University Press. Superbly written; a great read.

Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye (MEDICAL HUMANITIES SERIES)

SNAKETOWN, by Kathleen Wakefield

I just finished reading SNAKETOWN (2010) by Kathleen Wakefield, and it’s one of the best contemporary American novels I’ve read in a long time. As fresh as its language and structure is, the book has qualities of medieval literature inasmuch as it confronts questions of evil, character, fate, and redemption unabashedly.

Set in a Southwestern mining town, the novel re-imagines the region with language and images that are at once lyrical and primal, mythic and immediate. The mountains, the mine, the valley, the town, and the key family never become fantastical, but they take on an aura that’s just surreal enough to lift the regional to the universal, as happens in the work of Morrison, Marquez, and Faulkner. Indeed, the hard-scrabble, insulated Sibel family sometimes seems distantly related to Faulkner’s Snopes clan but is more wretched. The novel opens with a note of doom and builds toward a dark symphony.

SNAKETOWN is an ambitious but unpretentious meditation on evil—how it arises, is cultivated, and overwhelms. Wakefield renders the tale in brief, carefully sculpted chapters. The character Orin Sibel, among others, is unforgettable.

SNAKETOWN won the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest and is published in paperback by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Wakefield is a lyricist as well as a fiction writer, working in television and film with Vangelis, Michel Colombier, and other composers.

Snaketown

Highly Qualified

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Highly Qualified


The lambs are qualified to be young.
We believe we're qualified to choose them
as symbols, food, and future wool.
God is not at the top of the great chain
of being, command, or corporate
personhood. God is, to say the lamby least,
beyond all that. The pasture belongs to us,
in our view. Our view carries a lot of weight
around here. A continent of clouds

advances over mountains toward our
real estate. The storm is not personal or
apocalyptic, but it does not necessarily
agree with us, and it is highly qualified.

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Bill Murray Ruins a Dickinson Poem

Lord knows why someone asked Bill Murray to read an Emily Dickinson poem--"I dwell in possibility"--to workers building a Poet's House in Manhattan.  Occasionally his diffident, smart-ass persona lands like a cow-pie on a girder, and this was one of those times:

Murray "Reading" Dickinson

A lot of dynamics here: male Hollywood celebrity in front of male workers; actor not knowing what Dickinson's poetry is; bad idea to have him read; etc.; he thinks he's beneath the task.

So his decision was to read it like a 5th grader who's never seen poetry before, pushing a half-rhyme to be a full-rhyme as if he just discovered Dickinson uses half-rhymes.

Why?

And why not select a poem by Langston Hughes, Jim Daniels, or Philip Levine (among many others) that would have riveted, so to speak, the workers?

What I'm Reading

In case anyone asks, I'm reading lots of students' essays and short stories right now.  The end of the semester, and all that.

However, I'm also reading The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which I had not read before: shame on me.  I guess one good thing about waiting is that this relatively new translation is supposed to be miles better than earlier ones.  Another book I'm reading is The Vikings, by Robert Ferguson, which relies in part on recent archaeological discoveries--as late as 2001.

The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson

The Idiot, , translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky (Vintage)

Sam Waterston Reads Poetry

Sad news today: NBC is canceling the long-running and, for some of us, highly addictive Law and Order.  The tightly controlled form of the show, accompanied by those "beats," reminded of a sonnet, transposed to the one-hour [@40 minutes] TV-drama genre.  Great work, Dick Wolf.  (With a tip of the cap to the late Raymond Burr, I must mention that Perry Mason had a similar crime-first, trial-second form.)

Sam Waterston, who acted on the show for a long time, reads poetry on the CD accompanying John Lithgow's anthology, Poets' Corner.

The Poets' Corner (An Unabridged Production)[6-CD Set]; The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family