Arthur Symons' Poem On June

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Arthur Symons (1865-1945) may be best known for his short but influential book, The Symbolist Movement In Literature, which affected the work of Yeats and Eliot, among others. He was a poet as well as a critic, however. And he obviously knew a thing or two about hats.

Here is a poem from his book, Silhouettes (1892). Obviously, it's romantic, perhaps too sweet for some, and not surprisingly, it's been set to music; and yes, it rhymes "June" with "moon." Nice ending, though.

In The Fountain Court

The fountain murmuring of sleep,
A drowsy tune;
The flickering green of leaves that keep
The light of June.
Peace, through a slumbering afternoon,
The peace of June,
A waiting ghost, in the blue sky,
The white curved moon;
June, hushed and breathless, waits, and I
Wait too, with June.
Come, through the lingering afternoon,
Soon, love, come soon.


by Arthur Symons

Thomas Mann's Birthday

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Thomas Mann, German writer and philanthropist, was born on June 6 (1875). His novels aren't the easiest to read; they include Death In Venice, Doktor Faustus, and The Magic Mountain. The latter is my favorite by him. It's protagonist is Hans Castorp. Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 but probably not on June 6th. He died in 1955.

Reciprocity

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According to the OED online, here is what "eavesdrop" means (not a surprising definition):

"To stand within the ‘eavesdrop’ of a house in order to listen to secrets; hence, to listen secretly to private conversation."

The earliest quoted example in the OED is from 1606, in case anyone asks or happens to be eavesdropping when you are discussing the word.
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Reciprocity


A man stepped out of a cafe,
holding a telephone-wafer
to one ear. I assumed he
left so as to be polite,
to secure a less fully
public space, and/or to
align the wafer with a
floating satellite. I
was already outside.

"In life," he said to
someone--and to anyone
within earshot, including
me, "there is a concept
called, 'reciprocity.'"

He paused to listen before
defining the term for his
intended interlocutor. Before
I began seriously to eavesdrop,
I left him to his conversation.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Harper Lee Turned 83

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Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, turned 83 in late April.

To Kill A Mockingbird was first published in 1960. It was memorably adapted to the cinema in 1962 (the image to the left is from the film), starring Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, and Mary Badham, among others.

The book remains Harper Lee's only published novel.

Here is a link to "her" web site:

http://www.harperlee.com/contact.htm

Sandra Bullock portrayed Lee in a film about Truman Capote (a lifelong friend of Lee's) and his book, In Cold Blood. The film is called Infamous but is the less famous cinematic version of the story, with Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Capote (in Capote) being the better known one. Toby Jones plays Capote in Infamous, which also features Daniel Craig.


Here is a link to more information about Infamous:

http://movies.about.com/od/everywordistrue/a/infamussb100606.htm

Night of the Open Mic

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When someone puts a microphone on a person, is the person "miked up"? I think so. But then if you participate in an event where anyone can come to the microphone and read, are you part of an "open-mic" night? Mike v. mic. The sound v. the spelling. Hmmmm.


Night of the Open Mic

I grew up in an era when voices
were wrapped in the rough velvet
of booze and cigarettes. Low purring
voices brought me news, commercial-
breaks, station-identifications,
travelogues, and live reports
through microphones, which were
large like the heads of sci-fi
insects. Now

everyone is miked-up. People speak
small ugly truths inadvertently during
commercial-break when a mic
is left open. Talk-show hosts are
their own guests and soak in their
logghorea. Men and women speak
into their lapels, their wrists, their
personal computers, their phones,
lamp-shades, and autos. The aural

symbols strummed out by
our vocal chords are broad-corded
and re-cast. Every phoneme is caught
like a metal filing on a magnet. Singers'
voices are bent into tune. Sound is synced
with virtual image effectually. Few listen
carefully--a dying, folksy art. But
every little sound is heard and horded.
The mic is always open in this age,
this long night. Whenever you speak,

you speak into a mic. Not just
wires but the air itself is tapped,
sounds distilled and bottled
into essence, evidence, and confession.
How close to the microphone should
I get? Such a quaint question. No
worries. The microphone is
always close to you; and open.
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Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Old Seagull

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Old Seagull

One old white seagull prowled wet grass
near brick buildings, looking for worms.
It walked arthritically and seemed chilled.

A lone, hunched seagull is a dignified
defeat, a sign of how hopeless hope is.
Was the bird's eyesight still good enough

to see worms? Did the bird ache? Do
seagulls fly back to the beach to die,
or do they get stranded on a street,

eaten by a crow or a raccoon? The
seagull was a general in exile,
a feathered Napoleon on Elba.

It was a heroic nun, a white flag
hanging from a wall of a blasted fort.
The gull seemed to know everything.

It kept its routine of life.
Walking past, I admired the bird,
which ignored me, which I admired.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Why To Study Creative Writing

An allegedly positive follow-up to my previous post is . . . why might one take a creative-writing course--in the community, informally (a writing-group), at a college, or at an M.F.A. program?

Let's try for ten reasons--no particular order:

1. Structure: sometimes it's good for artists to learn within a structure of some kind. It provides some discipline, some routine, etc. It brings tradition on board, in a good way. When someone takes a ballet class, he or she is doing something specific that day but also joining a long, long tradition. What's not to like? Same goes for creative writing.
2. It saves time. You can learn about all sorts of moves to make and mistakes to avoid in a hurry. I borrow this argument from Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town.
3.You get to "test" your work with a real audience. You will get varying responses. You will have to sort them out. No need, usually, automatically to dismiss people's reactions to your work--or to take them to heart. Consider them.
4. You get to meet other writers--at whatever level of expertise. Misery and creativity sometimes love company.
5. You get to look at, to study (if you will) literature from a different angle--the angle of the ones who produce it.
6. Imitation. An ancient idea, going back at least 2,000 years but really much further. To learn how to do X, you practice by imitating an example of X produced by someone else. Read a sonnet, write a sonnet. Look at Quintillian's program for the liberal arts, way back when. It involved reading and then imitating good writing.
7. Stretch. Often in a creative-writing class (of whatever kind), you'll be pushed, usually not rudely, to try something in your writing you might not otherwise try. It's kind of like going to a yoga class and stretching a tendon you thought would never stretch. It's a way to experiment.
8. "Give it a try." If you never "thought of" yourself as a writer but you think you'd like to try it, a class might be the place to do so. Often in my introductory poetry class (e.g.) I'll get a senior majoring in business, and she (for example) will find out she can write good poetry. What a nice discovery.
9. Make connections. Whatever one's interests are, it's often nice to share them with a community.
10. You get to represent--in writing (as opposed to in conversation, painting, or repression--something, anything, important to you: ideas, experiences, whatever. You get to share the representation with others to see how it goes. To see if it does what you wanted it to do.

For every one of the 10, there's also a good reason NOT to take a creative-writing class. Much depends at what stage you are in as a writer, and on where you are in your life. Maybe you don't need structure. Maybe you already have learned the basics and saved time, maybe you're at a point where you just need to put backside in chair and write. Maybe your experience in the class isn't productive. Whatever.

It's not an either/or situation. Studying creative writing in a group or a class can be just the ticket. It can also be not right for someone at a particular time. This avoidance of dumb binary-thinking is another reason to dismiss the lame, simple-minded thinking about "abolishing" creative writing classes. Why not keep all the options open?

Creative-Writing Under Almost-Attack

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Periodically, someone dusts off the old argument against teaching creative writing (especially in any kind of academic setting) and launches it like a rusted scud missile that lands harmlessly in a dry field. (Thanks to Fran for alerting me to this most recent harmless launch.)

This time it's Louis Menard in (gasp!) The New Yorker. I teach creative writing, so I think I'm supposed to be offended, but I can't quite muster offense. I'll make myself a candidate for the New Yorker's "block that metaphor" feature by saying that the "attack" isn't even rusted-scud material but more like that of a wet noodle, or a glob of wet noodles. Ouch, not the wet noodles again. Oh, stop. Oh, not the New Yorker.

How quickly can I summarize the argument (but fairly, too)? Let me try. Creative writing as a subject is bad because students can't teach students, writers can't teach students, teachers can't teach students, "genius" and "talent" can't be taught, some writers who have taught creative writing later disavowed it, some writers-in-residence are just louts pocketing cash, Somebody or Some Place Famous (Iowa) said it can't be taught (but will cash your tuition check), there are too many programs, if you write poems "for tenure," you've been compromised, the products of creative-writing classes are derivative, and I think that's about it.

I'll make this easy. Substitute the words "music," "reading," "painting," "dance," or "sculpting" for "creative writing" and then ask the same question. I don't believe I've ever heard an argument against teaching such things in an academic setting (or other settings).

Second, creative writing is, more than a little, another way to study literature and reading. It demystifies those parts of writing that can be demystified, and that makes for better readers. It is also a humbling process. Try to write a sonnet, for example. Or a successful five-page short story. Setting aside the question of how well you do, you will have deepened your appreciation for sonnets and short stories--and also, perhaps, cleared away a lot of rubbish about "artistes." Creative writing is--this will come as a huge surprise to dancers--a lot of damned hard work.

As to the "if you write poems 'for tenure', you've been compromised" argument: please. Not another wet noodle! When have writers not been compromised--by the State they live in (as in nation-state), by agents (if they're novelists), by publishers (who are now owned by multi-national corporations, which care deeply about literature), by their own tattered souls, etc.? Academia is no picnic, but it's no more corrupting to poets than fussy, misguided editors or having to work in a factory to make a living or growing up in poverty or growing up in wealth.

As to the "derivative" argument--all art is derivative, even when it sets out not to be. Creative-writing classes neither accelerate nor retard that process. Look at how derivative poetry was in any era--Renaissance, 18th century, Victorian (to settle on England). If you reach past the famous poets and the Norton anthologies to what was being written and published in general, you will say, "Gee, this all sounds the same." Well, of course it does. That's what happens with art. And then a breakthrough of sorts happens, or technology changes, or the tectonic plates of history shift, and "new" art arises.

Oh, and the article comes with the standard black-and-white photo of Robert Frost at Bread Loaf or wherever. Old photograph, old argument.

Social scientists would probably have a better shot than I or anyone who's closely involved with the topic at explaining what's going on, but what may be going on is that, as usual, Americans, including allegedly literate, "cultivated" (whatever) ones are habitually ambivalent toward academia in general, teaching in particular, art in general, and writing in particular. Get all four in the same room, and there's just too much to despise. The bile rises, and some clever fellow like Menard launches an almost-attack and suggests the teaching of creative writing be abolished. Enter Seinfeld. Yadda. (Yawn.) Yadda. Or in this case Yaddo. Yaddo.

Dang, and I was going to post a poem--by me or someone else. Much more interesting, even if it had been one of mine.

Writers Born in June

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(The photo is of John Edgar Wideman)
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Other writers who have or had birthdays in June: Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries), William Styron, Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), John Edgar Wideman, and Maurice Sendak.

Poets Born In June

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The photo is of Alfred Lord Tennyson. I wonder if anyone called him "Al." I'm thinking not.

Anyway, Tennyson was born in June, as were poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Judith Wright (Australian), and William Campbell (Canadian). I'm sure each was tempted at least one to rhyme "June" with "moon"; it's just an occupational hazard.

August Kleinzahler Wins Awards

Poet August Kleinzahler has won awards recently from the Lannan Foundation and the National Book Critics Circle for his poetry, which appears in such books as Sleeping It off in Rapid City and The Strange Hours Travelers Keep. Here is a link to a good article about Kleinzahler; the article appears on SF Gate, the online home of The San Francisco Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/02/DDKU17RF3B.DTL

Digital Technology

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(photo courtesy of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell--in connection with a lecture by Prof. Stine Grodal, Boston University, on “The Nanotechnology Label Across Communities: Categorizing a New Field.”)
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Digital Equipment

This digital equipment changes daily, rearranging
how technology's pointillism delivers the itsy-bits
which represent what's seen and heard. Our calls
are screened. Our screens are called something
different and become much bigger or much smaller,
as if designers were torn between an impulse
toward sky and one toward earthly atoms:
storm-large screens vs. nano-invisibility.

Among the demotic, consuming herd, I buy
what I must to keep within mooing-distance
of what's new. True, I could have been happy
with tubular black-and-white TV and stone-heavy
phones forever. It's all magic to me. I liked
the charcoal of Old TV, the clumsy heft of phones
bolted to walls. I sit beside a Heraclitan

river of research, development, manufacturing,
and marketing. Periodically, I reach and pick
something from the surface of mass-production.
I learn its basic applications without enthusiasm.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poetry-Dust-up at Oxford University

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Something of a scandal has erupted at Oxford University over the appointment--and subsequent rapid resignation--of Ruth Padel as an Oxford professor poetry. Apparently Padel had some involvement with eroding the candidacy of Derek Walcott for the same position. The story raises lots of persistent questions about "writer-in-residence" positions, tensions between "the artist" and higher education, writers who are in residence vs. writers who teach (or professors who write), gender, race, and sexual harassment--just to name a few topics left in the wake of the story. Here is a link (and thanks to Dr. Dolen for the heads-up on this story--see Dr. Dolen's Divinations" on the blog-roll):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/weekinreview/31orr.html