Zarah Leander sings Wunderbar, 1977

Can't there be something great in the sheer number of poets working today? Can it be like a fabulous bazaar, poems bunched and offered like flowers-- exotic sellers, startling colors?

It doesn't feel like that now. Diffusion. Too diffuse.

As though I walked into the drug store and saw 10,000 different brands of shampoo. So many options I don't feel delighted by the choice. Instead the suspicion all shampoo is the same. Too many choices, creating the feeling of sameness? How does that work?

Also something autistic about the circles of writers. Backs turned out to the readers, faces turned to each other.

Looking for a way to make a really joyful noise.

Beginning My Studies, Walt Whitman

BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness—these forms—the power of motion,
The least insect or animal—the senses—eyesight—love;
The first step, I say, aw’d me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish’d to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs.

Found in a town park in Wisconsin, Thanksgiving 2009.

Whitman, Whittier, and the fire.

There's been quite a bit of discussion lately within the Internet division of the poetry community about the nature of criticism as it relates to poetry.

I'm not sure I'm wise enough to add much beyond what I've already said in various comments. I don't feel up to quoting Deleuze in a good way. This isn't an attempt at a thoughtful philosophical argument.

I wanted to react to one point. Isn't there always one point? In one of the comment threads, a way of thinking went like this: I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the critics who trashed Whitman when he first appeared.

Well, me neither. If only for the reason I would have turned out to be wrong. I hate being wrong.

But on the other hand, I'm really glad those negative criticisms existed. Weren't they part of making Whitman who he was?

I don't mean Whitman the man, or even the poet as part of the man. I mean Whitman as the poet in the world. The great new voice which came from outside and changed the face of writing.

Can something important happen without a reaction? Poetry isn't completely atypical. Poets work in relation to each other. They stretch within and beyond the prevailing norms. Critics help set and codify the norms, note them as they move-- perhaps several steps later than the poets themselves. Sometimes they spot the true paradigm shifts. Sometimes they don't.

Emerson got it. Whittier didn't. But would Whitman have Whitman without other poets wanting to throw the books into the fire? For a game changer to exist, there has to be a game to change.

If there's no need for negative criticism today, doesn't that scare you? It terrifies me. It might mean we've evolved to a more wonderful place. It might mean there is no mainstream. That nothing poetry does *matters*. Did poetry die with the modernists?

I don't know.

I stand by my feeling that discussion of any kind is better than silence. Naturally I prefer treatment of writing come from a place of genuine empathy and love for the work. But shouldn't that go without saying?

Hard times come again no more

What about using real pop culture characters/figures for near-time dystopic science fiction? Legally, it should fall under fair use, if I read the available material. But would a publisher avoid a small piece of fiction that did something like feature a violent gang that named itself The Boy Scouts?

Found on the street today in Amsterdam.

this photograph

and


this earring

and

I also found a 10 euro note, but I spent that on chocolate cake.

a history of the mansion on the Tellico River

Johnny Guitar.

One of my worst habits in prose is exposing the already obvious. I tell the reader someone has spoken while they're already speaking. I mention a phone, when the fact that they're talking into a receiver is sufficient. I need the complete picture in my head. A story is a painting, not a photograph.

From "Creative Self-Criticism in Science and in Art", Karl Popper

We can distinguish two kinds of criticism, one that has aesthetic and literary interests and one that has rational interests. The first leads from myth to poetry, the second leads from myth to science; or to be more precise, to natural science. The former evaluates the beauty of the language, the energy of the rhythm, the radiance and vividness of the images, the dramatic tension and its persuasive power. This kind of critical judgment leads to poetry, especially to epic and dramatic poetry; to petic song, and with it to classical music.

Rational criticism, by contrast, asks whether the mythical report is true; whether the world really evolved in the manner asserted: whether it could have been created as Hesiod tells us or, perhaps, in according with Genesis. Under the pressure of such questions myth becomes cosmology, the science of our world, of our environment; it turns into natural science.

My third thesis is that there are still many traces left over from the common origin of poetry and music on the one hand and cosmology and science on the other. I am not asserting that all poetry is mythical in character, or that all science is cosmology. But I wish to say is that in poetry—one only has to think of Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann—and in science, the creation of myths still plays an unexpectedly large role. Myths are our attempts, naïve and inspired by our imagination, to explain ourselves and our world to ourselves. A large part not only of poetry but also of science can still be described as a naïve attempt, inspired by imagination, at explaining our world to ourselves.

Poetry and science—and therefore also music—are blood relations. They stem from the attempt to understand our origin and our fate, and the origin and the fate of our world.

(trans. Laura J. Bennett)

þæt

I'm comfortable with my adjective use. It's my conjunctions which can use some work.

Resolute.

This is my cat Grace. Grace is suicidal.



She's five years old. Grace has, in those years, jumped out of a second story window, hung herself in the closet, stolen and eaten blood thinners, and eaten several feet of Christmas ribbon.

While we were in Prague, Grace was staying with friends of ours who have looked after her before. This time, Grace decided that life without us was not worth living. She stopped eating and drinking. Our friends didn't notice this because she has long fluffy hair, tends to hide under the bed, and because our other cat Amor



who is not suicidal, ate all the food for both of them. He got very fat.

Just before New Year's we returned. We discovered our dehydrated and starved cat. This required multiple vet visits, expensive blood tests, and liquid with an eye dropper every three hours.

700 euros and two sleepless nights later, Grace is feeling better. Yay! On New Year's Eve she started to eat on her own. She demanded cat candy.

We gave a small party on New Year's Eve. That was fun. I was very tired. Because I was very tired, friends pitched in and turned the dinner part into a pot luck. Thank you, friends.



I drank champagne. Quite a lot of champagne.

The next day, I got sick.

I've been sick ever since.

So even though I intended to start this year with all kinds of writing-related activities, film watching, and cleaning my house and getting my paperwork done, I haven't accomplished very much at all.

Our house is full of crumpled tissues. I still haven't taken the Christmas tree down. I have played a great deal of Bejeweled Blitz.

But Grace feels better. So that's good.

That's all.

On business models for literary journals.

I just got an email from the local expat literary journal. They have rebranded themselves. Rather than shilling subscriptions to their journal, they want you to buy a membership in their writing community. For between 20-50 euros per year, you get one free copy of the journal, 35% off a subscription, a VIP invitation to their launch party, and reduced prices for their writing groups and workshops. The more you pay, the more reduced events you can attend.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (VIP invitation to their launch party? Seriously?)

They aren't the only ones taking this kind of initiative. Another journal that has been around for many years now regularly asks for payment for themed reading periods. They only have two periods per year where they accept unpaid submissions. Reading between the lines, the strong implication is your chances of acceptance are improved if you're willing to fork over the money.

The initiative of the first journal is certainly, on the surface, less pernicious than in the case of the second. But still, it begins to feel as though the journal only exists to hawk the workshops and their (paid) writing groups.

What's the purpose of a literary journal anyhow?

They certainly aren't enduring works of art in and of themselves. Even the most famous are swiftly forgotten. Some of the most influential had runs of no more than two or three years.

It seems to me that a literary journal is a way of facilitating a conversation about writing/art-- a conversation between writers, editors, and readers which finds form through the printed or online page. Writing groups certainly often grow up around a journal, but shouldn't that be an organic thing? Not a paid membership to some kind of writing club like fucking poetry girlscouts.

Pardon my language.

I get regular communication from these people. They never seem to talk about the work anymore. Increasingly it seems they're just hawking their wares.

2010's theme for me is the notion of a writer's community. So I'm more sensitive to this stuff, and thinking about it just a little bit more critically, I imagine.

I have nothing against editors making a living. So perhaps I'm overreacting.

They've never published me. So perhaps I'm a dog in a manger.

Or maybe I really just don't like workshops.

Last year, or a little before, I had contemplated joining one of their Master Classes. The next night I had a dream that I attended one, and a group of people held me down and pissed in my face. The bad taste in my mouth?

What do you think? The way of the future?

From The Journal of John Woolman

Look, my dear friends, to Divine Providence, and follow in simplicity that exercise of body, that plainness and frugality, which true wisdom leads to; so may you be preserved from those dangers which attend such as are aiming at outward ease and greatness.

Treasures, though small, attained on a true principle of virtue, are sweet; and while we walk in the light of the Lord there is a true comfort and satisfaction in the possession; neither the murmurs of an oppressed people, nor a throbbing uneasy conscience, nor anxious thoughts about the events of things, hinder the enjoyment of them.