Memorial Day, Piedmont Birdcallers

YouTube - Piedmont Birdcallers on David Letterman

I realize my experience with young people is filtered through a happy lens, but I've never quite understood why so many adults flippantly dismiss the young as a disease to be gotten over. Especially if you've never seen the winners of the Piedmont bird calling contest, check out these teens on Letterman. It's not whether you win or lose . . . . .

If you're short on time, skip ahead to the three-minute mark to see the three-girl team. We males are always honking in one way or another, but girls are another story.

A thought: showing video clips like this might be a way to recruit college grads into
teaching . . . .

Also, here's some red, white, and blue from small-town Ohio for Memorial Day. Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow paid a very nice tribute to a Pearl Harbor vet who received 23 wounds that December 7 while firing non-stop at the invading planes. He had just died at age 100. The Left recognizes heroism too.

Robert Hass, "Faint Music" and the Notion of Listening

< Rebekah listens to Becky's story.


I’m not ready to quit on yesterday’s topic, which might be about conversational styles, a subject about which there must be Ph.D. dissertations.

Remember the Ancient Mariner and the Wedding Guest who couldn't get away because the Mariner’s story was so compelling?

Somehow I think Robert Hass’s poem “Faint Music” is about story telling and conversational style, among other things. Where’s the heart of the story? What is it in the story that’s important to believe? How does the storyteller convince us? One answer is, “Not by noise. Not by histrionics.”


“Faint Music” is a bit close to the talk-y poetry I’m always complaining about, but I find that it passes my almighty test of offering something in almost every line that feels essential, not just to the poem and its story, but to me and other humans trying to understand more of what’s out there, maybe the how more than the why.

Hass’s new book, The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems, was reviewed by David Orr in the May 16 New York Times Book Review. I haven’t been back to Hass in over a decade, but I take it as a sign that I stumbled across the review and then “Faint Music” (at Poetry Foundation) within a couple of days of each other.

“Faint Music” is a touch long, but it’s very accessible, tells a compelling story, and packs a wallop at the end. I hope you’ll stick with it.

Faint Music by Robert Hass : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


* *

MOUTHS THAT ROAR

Joe Scarborough, of MSNBC's Morning Joe shoe, are you physiologically unable to keep your mouth shut when others are speaking? In the Big Joe psyche, is bullying a terminal condition?

Today you spoke for Mika regarding her presence when the twin towers fell on 9/11. Is she “the little woman” who can’t speak for herself? Dude, she’s the one who was there, not you. So why not bring it up, then shut up? Defer to the one with first-hand experience regarding chemical pollutants. Let her tell her own story.

A few seconds later, you steamrolled Mike Barnicle. Again. Ditto your guests—apparently you invite them only to interrupt them. "Hey, Bobby, come on over to my house. I need something to walk on." Don't you review tapes of the show, the way athletes review game film? Is there no one around to say, "Jesus, Joe, you blew it again?" Are you like the BP exec who wouldn't listen to the guys who knew? I thought you hated the BP execs.

Verbal imperialism. Well, that suits the Republican character. Set ‘em up to think they matter, then mow ‘em down.

Like you, I am a straight white male, and I’m tired of public mouths like you coming on as domineering jerks, thus handing legitimate ammo to everyone out there who’s feasted on white male behavior and dominance in western history. How many times must I say, “Yep, guilty as charged”—because of boorish behavior by guys like you?

You probably scoff at the whole concept of white guilt, even as you engage in behavior that illustrates "our" guilt. Is that notion too intellectually complex for you? Or will you plead something like ADHD—you've got such passion, you just can’t hold it in. You get itches you must scratch—for an audience of millions. Go scratch in private, Joe. I want to hear your guests and colleagues.

It's old news that Volume 10 Motor Mouth Syndrome is a national epidemic these days. You see it at every mall, in every school hallway, in every public cell phone conversation. And in the public arena, it’s bad enough that we must confess national ownership of political televangelists like Haggerty and Beck. You, Oberman, Chris Matthews, and others could offer an alternative, but you take the much-traveled low road. The loud road. You yell and stomp and slobber, rendering yourself about a half-step up from Limbaugh in the national misfortune of news and commentary as carny side show.

Please, please assume the role of leadership inherent in your profession. There are countless occasions when journalism is our best hope against political deceit, and we just can't afford for people in your position to settle for the role of hulking verbal bully.

Be bigger than your ego. Ask questions. Gather info and opinions from smart, responsible people—which, of course, many of your guests are. If you must opine, make one- or two-sentence comments. Then shut up. Practice it in bed at night: shut up, Joe. Shut up, Joe. Shut up, Joe. Instead of grace before meals, try Thank you, Lord, for granting me silence. Shut up, Joe. Amen.

None of that will happen, of course. It doesn’t sell Wheaties. If I try really hard, maybe I can remember to record Rachel Maddow and watch her with breakfast. Brain food there. Knows how to talk, knows how to listen, zippier than public TV and radio, but still smart and responsible. More precious than gold. Amen.


* * *

Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish"

The video at the bottom is under three minutes and might make you smile (or wince).

In Bishop's poem, I like the overall pattern and direction, the movement toward the conclusion, but the whole seems somewhat overpacked with details. Could maybe 30% of these words be cut with no loss of power in the last line? Or, to appreciate the fish, do we need to be made aware of so many component parts?

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UIpOUgQt-g&feature=related








* *

Exit through the Gift Shop: Movie Review

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, or how many removes from reality can dance on the head of a pin?

grade: B+

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP is a documentary by “Banksy” and Shepard Fairey, two major street (or graffiti) artists. It’s a satire that reveals the work and trials of Thierry Guetta (Terry), a French immigrant to L.A., who tries to make a film about major street artists, while Banksy is making a film about Terry while Terry is making a film about . . . and so it goes.

If the movie has a purpose (or several), it is to raise questions about what art is, the role of megalomania and commercialism in the art world, and a profile of prominent street artists, those who are and those who wannabe. We also get a look at one man's magnificent obsession. All that evolves into the even larger question of what reality is and whether we can know it.

One thing at a time. Is “street art” art, shenanigan, or vandalism? Shall it be included in conversations about Rembrandt, Picasso and Hopper? Shall we use financial success and appeal to the masses to gauge the merit and therefore the dollar value of serious art, whether in the street or the salon?

In no time, I found myself wondering if Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Thierry Guetta were real people. Is this actually a documentary? Or is it a staged satire on the very kind of hip art it claims to be and, through that, an expose on popular taste, and, through those filters, the whole notion of an artistic canon?

From there, one wonders: if the film exposing fraud isn’t what it claims to be, isn’t “real,” is itself a fraud, then what is real? If two negatives make a positive, do two frauds make a reality? Is fraud the only reality? Is it Banksy or Rembrandt who is the greater fraud? Maybe it’s their handlers who are real? Or those who celebrate, fawn, and purchase their work?

If the Sistine Chapel has been restored (how many times?), where does Michelangelo leave off and the restorers’ art begin? Can we know Michelangelo? After all, there were all those highfalutin society women coming and going in Eliot’s great poem. “In the rooms the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” What they're saying doesn't matter much; they are dilettantes.

So do we go to Banksy for a substantive take on the Renaissance? And what’s the value of Prufrock's verdict on anything? If we like Prufrock, it’s because he’s so much like us; he’s that unreliable.

If we can’t trust Prufrock or those highly educated folks he critiques, how can we trust Banksy or Michelangelo? Artists are renowned for quirkiness, mental disorders, and rebellion. Shall we go to them for wisdom, for Truth?

I know! Let’s go to their handlers—agents, managers, editors, curators, art historians. They’ll know! And they’ll tell the truth. Or science. We could ask science; it never changes its mind.

And if we can’t trust high-minded, rebellious, tortured artists to make a good-faith effort to replicate reality as they interpret it, then how can we trust anyone about anything? Speaking of anything, what can we trust to be the right take on . . . on what? Reality? We’re right back to cogito ergo sum, aren’t we? I wonder whose dream I’m a part of.

As for EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, how can I resist praising a movie that stirs up such questions and presents such unusual humans? I suppose I’m easily stirred by such things, and I like it when somebody makes monkeys of the trendy set. "I trend, therefore I am."

But aren't the street artists the trendiest of all?

Epistemology can become a hairsplitting affair that diminishes or eliminates the most important of human experiences, both suffering and joy. So I’m annoyed at EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, even as I marvel at the ways it sucked me in and coerced me into thinking once again about all this reality business.

Marveling is not the same as respect or affection, however. I’m not sure the movie has a soul. Except for a broad compassion, I’m not sure I care about any of its characters, except for the wife and children (if that’s who they really are) of Terry, the obsessive megalomaniac.

In the end, the movie says “Gotcha.” And I reply, Big Fucking Deal. Who’s better off because you got me, if you got me, if there really was a movie, and I really was there, and the movie’s attitude really was one of superior, grinning, nihilistic satire?

Consider: people don’t honestly care much about Truth. They get a version at church or university and go home. People care very much about being made to feel a fool, and I think that’s what the movie’s up to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s this cynical sneering that street art itself is up to.

So, despite some intriguing moments and ideas in the movie, I do not feel enlightened or happy or good or wiser or more a part of the Brotherhood of Man because I saw EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP. It’s a sometimes intriguing and clever exercise, but it's always a disembodied, alienating intellectual game that doesn’t like or respect anybody or anything. Some budding intellectuals under the age of 30 might need to re-hash this stuff with hashish and exotic coffee. I don’t. Therefore, I am. Maybe.

Dylan Thomas, "Poem in October"

lying leaved with October






the still sleeping town, the sea wet church






Poem in October by Dylan Thomas : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

the singing birds








the fish in the tide, the heron Priested shore

e.e. cummings, "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

anyone lived in a pretty how town - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

"anyone lived in a pretty how town" has always been one of my favorite cummings poems. It might see the best there is in human love, and it captures small town life about as well as any writing I know, even though it consists of fancy and allegory more than detailed realism.

In Republic, Ohio in the year 2010, there sits Anyone in the hot red car he borrowed from a buddy to impress Noone. He's meeting her for lunch downtown at Fathead's restaurant. Republic has seen better days, but it's still a pretty how town.

Of course, that's only the beginning. Harvey and Lolo are also Anyone and Noone at the other end of the story. Why not? And why not make Anyone a veteran?

Lolo was ten years younger than Harvey, though each ended up with 88 earth years. Not too bad.

I wonder what they talked about. Maybe they had supper in front of the TV after about 1960, though the picture was probably pretty snowy until the cable came in around 1980. Did they watch Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley? Most likely they got only one channel and didn't have to choose.

anyone lived in a pretty how town - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More


* *

YouTube - Dylan Thomas — Fern Hill

Gary made a good point yesterday in visitor comments. It's important, or at least interesting, to hear Dylan Thomas read.

YouTube - Dylan Thomas — Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill." Ohio on Two-Lane Roads.

I’m just back from a two-lane road trip to central Ohio, and spring was making an Ireland of the buckeye state.

For fellow blue highway travelers, let me recommend north-south Routes 19 and 314 (connected by 224) from Magee Marsh to Sparta. It’s a stretch of two-lane, rural, understated beauty and mostly gentle curves—not a city to be seen or smelled, except for the short, harmless tacky-strip in Willard.

The parallel to that is Routes 61 and 4, which are also excellent, though construction on Rt. 4 could become a problem over the summer. Rt. 61 takes you through Galion, not a tiny town, but a pleasant one.

As for poetry, what I said about cummings yesterday is also true of Dylan Thomas, though I don’t think serious readers are quite as embarrassed to have found the Welshman important to them.

To be sure, Thomas is self-indulgent and redundant as he wallows in the wonders of nature, but I don’t think many would call him a philosophical simpleton, unless they’d say the same of Wordsworth. Also, who can fail to love the richness of the images in “Fern Hill,” even in its excesses?

Fern Hill - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

And who would dare to claim immunity to that conclusion? If you haven’t at least tried to sing in your chains, why are you still sitting here, bothering us, stealing our oxygen?

* *

e.e. cummings, spring

Top: spring singer


Left: pantheist's lectern


I’m pretty sure this is an unwritten rule: people who claim to be serious about literature are supposed to scoff at e.e. cummings as one more sentimentalist, along the lines of Longfellow or Dr. Seuss.

I’m pretty sure the following is true: many people who care about good writing have secretly liked e.e. cummings, the lovable rebel and the romantic in all senses of the word. Some might even confess they’ve found his work a turning point in their fondness for poetry.

I know this is true: several friends or colleagues and I have whispered to each other, “Yes, I like cummings. Shhhh. Don’t tell. It would kill any credibility I might have.” We might have gone on to say, “Yes, he’s sappy and puerile, but he opened up new ways to think, feel, and speak when I very much needed that.”

Here are two from cummings’ 100 selected poems (thanks to poemhunter.com). (I include the second poem, #54, mainly for its concluding aphorism—the rest is a bit much even for sappy me). (Did you ever notice that “manly” is natural typo for “mainly”? Can manly men care for cummings? “You with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?”)


#53

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile




#54

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Wren Attempts Sneak Attack on Warbler Home

Magee Marsh is a birding center on Lake Erie, about 20 miles east of Toledo, Ohio.
Saturday there was high drama there as a brown wren (look hard—she’s camouflaged against the dead tree trunk) tried to invade the nest of the flashy yellow Prothonotary Warbler (sorry I couldn’t get a better shot of him—believe me, I tried). If you'd like a better look, try here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=prothonotary+warbler&ie=utf-8&oe=u

The world of birds is a cautionary tale. For example, which is more interesting, the flashy bird or the plain bird who goes about his business? Or is it the tangle of trees always pretending to remain in the background, leaves and bark, shadow and light, and all of them contending for attention, dwarfing the critters we thought we came to see?

So it might be worth noting that the warbler had been warbling about his territory for an hour or more; the sky and all those trees were his. "Hey, baby, come look at my etchings." Or "Them's my etchings and that's my woman, so beat it, bud." I don't speak bird well enough to be sure which song he sang, but his music was talking the talk.

The highly desirable abode, the point of contention between him and the wren, was a cavity just below the several woodpecker holes in the rusty-brown part of the dead tree. (Slow down! Look carefully! This is not a race!).

Rumor had it that in bird brains this amounted to a gated community full of McMansions. No wonder it was hotly contested. It was where you lived if you were somebody.

I don’t want anyone losing sleep over images of bird combat for territory, so I’ll clarify that I didn’t witness any birds in aerial dog fights or thundering, head-butting land battles. However, other (legitimate) birders were abuzz about the imperialistic escapade and the wren's daring. Or was it deceit? Their tones were both excited and worried. I did and I didn't want to know what they knew.


* *

Lucia Perillo, "Early Cascade" and "The Second Slaughter"

Early Cascade by Lucia Perillo : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

I've only seen some of Lucia Perillo's poems here and there in magazines, but I've liked what I've seen. In "Early Cascade" I struggle a bit with the opening of the second stanza, but I think she concludes with a knockout punch.

Here's another one, this time about animals. I know there are some dog lovers out there, and I'll be surprised if they don't respond.

The Second Slaughter by Lucia Perillo : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Hicok, continued

Blogspot is fighting me on the links. Here's the text that was meant to go with the poems now listed as May 4 on Bob Hicok.

As much as we all love romantically sagging butts (May 3), here's another Bob Hicok poem, a satire on one of those targets we all love to hate.

Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone by Bob Hicok : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

However, I don't want to imply that Hicok cannot be serious, even grave and philosophical. So here's one more poem. Following his thought pattern is again something of a quiz, though not a very difficult challenge until, perhaps, the last two stanzas. In addition to their meaning, how do you hear the tone of the final lines?.

The poem is still informed by humor, but now it's also undercut by the gravity of the subject. I think that tension makes "Her my body" the richest of the three Hicok poems posted this week. Love carries the day, as it did two days ago. However, if we see Hicok's gambits as gambles, the stakes are higher in the reckless tossing of insects, drool, dog petting, cancer, and devotion. Does Hicok bring it off, or has he asked too much of himself in terms of controlling his variety of imagery or balancing wit against emotion that's both genuine and deep? The title's wording is a little unconventional, isn't it? What do you make of it?

Her my body by Bob Hicok : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Bob Hicok's "Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone" and "Her my body"

< href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181197">Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone by Bob Hicok : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

However, I don't want to imply that Hicok cannot be serious, even grave and philosophical. So here's one more poem. It's still informed by humor, but now it's also undercut by the gravity of the subject. I think that tension makes "Her my body" the richest of the three Hicok poems posted this week.

Love carries the day, as it did two days ago. However, if we see Hicok's gambits as gambles, the stakes are higher in this reckless toss of insects, drool, dog petting, cancer, and devotion. Does Hicok bring it off, or has he asked too much of himself in terms of controlling the sheer variety of his images, or balancing wit against genuine and deep emotion? Following his thought pattern is again something of a quiz, though not a very difficult challenge until, perhaps, the last two stanzas. In addition to their meaning, how do you hear the tone of the final lines?

The title's wording is a little unconventional. What do you make of it?

Her my body by Bob Hicok : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

* *

Bob Hicok, "Mortal Shower"

Bob Hicok is a little young to be writing a poem like "Mortal Shower," but a lot people over age 40 have worried out loud about aging, at least to friends. Some of us can even laugh at ourselves on the subject, at least some of the time.

But how many can turn sagging into a love poem? How many of us can make thoughts zig and zag like a Grand Prix race car zooming around curves, but ending safely at a finish line, or purring comfortably in the garage.

I don't know if this is one of Hicok's best or most important poems, but it's easy to underestimate the power of humor.

Mortal shower by Bob Hicok : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.