Rowdy...robust...r.i.p. ... poet John Hollander

poet-john-hollander Well, John Hollander couldn't live forever, could he?

I thought he might. His poetry's  so rowdy and so robust that I figured, if the Grim Reaper showed up at his door, Hollander would tell him to #$%&@ off, and the Reaper would have to listen.

Alas, that didn't happen. The New York Times reported the passing of a great contemporary American poet this Saturday at the age of 83. I have little to add aside from saying that I worked on some edits to an article with him once -- he was the soul of kindness, by the way --  and sharing a poem of his that mixes the high and low as he muses on the battle of the sexes. I hope you enjoy it, my friends.

The Lady's-Maid's Song

When Adam found his rib was gone He cursed and sighed and cried and swore And looked with cold resentment on The creature God had used it for. All love's delights were quickly spent And soon his sorrows multiplied: He learned to blame his discontent On something stolen from his side.

And so in every age we find Each Jack, destroying every Joan, Divides and conquers womankind In vengeance for his missing bone. By day he spins out quaint conceits With gossip, flattery, and song, But then at night, between the sheets, He wrongs the girl to right the wrong.

Though shoulder, bosom, lip, and knee Are praised in every kind of art, Here is love's true anatomy: His rib is gone; he'll have her heart. So women bear the debt alone And live eternally distressed, For though we throw the dog his bone He wants it back with interest.

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Happiness for $10.99

The Happy Islands; photo credit: Thien Zie Yung What’s the definition of happiness? Driving home from Vegas this weekend, I realized that Sin City thinks it has some answers to that question. You start seeing them when you’re still miles out from the Strip, weaving through the desert on Interstate 15. One billboard says,

Gourmet meal  $10.99

with a picture of a lobster tail spilling out of its shell. Like it's on steroids. There’s more meat on display on another one:

Treasures Gentlemen’s Club & Steakhouse

Two kinds of meat, actually. The litany of signs is endless. Like the desert.

Happiness, Vegas-style, boils down to sex, money, and, as another sign declares, “sinful food, heavenly views.”

But novelist David Malouf is thinking about something else in The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World (Pantheon) published earlier this year. On our trip I took along this slender but considerable book — don’t let its mere 112 pages fool you —  to one of the most (in)famous desert cities in the world.

Oh, I wasn’t trying to be some cool master ironist; I wasn’t planning on sitting in my room reading Malouf while the rest of Vegas played. I just admire Malouf’s novel Conversations at Curlow Creek, about a good talk before a good hanging, and I wanted to see what he was about in the new book. Besides, its short length seemed just right for when I wasn’t driving.

As all those billboards were sliding by and the Vegas skyline came into view, I couldn't help thinking of what Malouf says about our contemporary notion of “the good life”:

The good life as we understand it today does not raise the question of how we have lived, of moral qualities or usefulness or harm; we no longer use the phrase in that way. The good life as we understand it has to do with what we call lifestyle, with living it up in a world that offers us gifts or goodies free for the taking.

But if that isn’t happiness, then what is?

Malouf doesn’t provide a single, definitive answer — that seems impossible. Besides, as a novelist, he’s more comfortable with evoking questions and leaving readers to form their own conclusions.

He marshals a glittering assortment of figures — among them Thomas Jefferson, Plato, Montaigne, Ovid, Rubens, Rembrandt, Dostoevsky, on and on — who have offered their understanding of what “the good life” and “happiness” are. Personally, I appreciate the view of 16th century author/diplomat Henry Wotton. Of Wotton Malouf writes:

The happy life for Wotton was the life that made full use of the gifts a man had been given, that fulfilled its promise, first in action, then in days and nights of rest; life had been good to him, but he had also served it well in return....He had done what he could for the world and done no man harm.

imagesDo no harm. How many of us can say that we’ve accomplished this and made full use of our gifts?

Malouf’s provocative, searching book ends on a note that addresses technology and its ill effects on the world. The fact that technology connects us and makes us aware of the entire world separates us from the world view of the medieval peasant by a million miles. His world extended maybe as far as an hour’s walk to a market or town. That was the portion of the world he worried about — unless, of course, invading armies were spotted on the horizon.

His sense of fulfillment was more limited, and also more controllable; technology today reminds us how so much is beyond our control. Malouf puts it much better:

It isn’t a question of whether our mind can accommodate itself to new ways of seeing, to new technologies and realities that are abstract or virtual — clearly it can — but whether emotionally, psychologically, we can feel at home in a world whose dimensions so largely exceed, both in terms of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, what our bodies can keep in view...

And what do we do when that infinite view becomes too overwhelming to think about?

Well, at times like those, nothing probably makes more sense than a $10.99 lobster tail. Then the medieval peasant in us takes over and our mouths start to water. Suddenly, the world's manageable again. We're happy--temporarily. (Man, those billboard designers are philosophical geniuses.)

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Mystic moments: Taliban poetry and more

sunlight-cloudsWhat's the purpose of poetry? A news story made me think about that question again. It also made me take a fairly recent book down from my shelf that I haven't looked at in a while, Poetry of the Taliban, edited by Alex Strick Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn (Columbia University Press). The Times of India reported that a university in Kerala pulled a poem from a class syllabus that had been written by an Arabic poet who's a former Guantanamo Bay detainee with alleged links to al Qaeda. The poet, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, composed the poem, "Song from Guantanamo" (for more information on this poem and the poet, see the two links at the end of this post) and it's included in an anthology that's a part of that college course in Kerala.

What I wanted to know, obviously, was what the poem said: What was behind the university administrators' decision? What had disturbed them?

The news article doesn't quote from the poem, but it does include an interesting point about the reasons behind the decision to pull the poem:

The Dean's report, without commenting on the literary quality of the poem, said it would be against moral values to prescribe a poem penned by a person who is said to have terrorist links, the sources said.

It sounds like the decision was based more on  the poet's alleged associations than on a specific message in the poem. (I'm sure there are plenty of people more familiar with this news story than me, and if you're reading this post, I'd welcome your comments and clarifications!) When you read the poem itself in the links at the bottom of this post, you'll probably conclude the same thing.

That brings me to the Linschoten/Kuehn book. It isn't about this situation, but it still seems relevant for this discussion, and that's why I wanted to share it with you.

Before I left my last job, that book arrived at the Times editorial offices and I kept it. Its title intrigued me. What did the poems say to their audience? I expected 200-plus pages of verse attacks on the West. There are certainly fierce, rallying cries like these lines from "Blood Debt":

Today, I write history on my enemy's chest with my sword, I draw yesterday's memories on today's chest once more.

But I also found other poems of intense spirituality with no hint of any political or military context:

I have opened my mouth in prayer, You have brought down your blessings In order to make my body blessed, To have the problems resolved. The spot on my heart makes a candle like the sun...

A preface to the book declares that "it is no exaggeration to say that in the ever-increasing archive of studies on the Taliban only a miniscule number have attended to the movement's aesthetic dimension..." Linschoten and Kuehn have certainly addressed the need for this kind of aesthetic study with their invaluable book.

But I also think their book not only helps us to understand the poems they've collected -- composed in the pre-9/11 and post-9/11 world -- but also situations in the world like the one involving the university in Kerala. The editors (and the translators of the Taliban book) have provided us with a deeper level of knowledge that can only help the world community -- and our common future. With that in mind,why not keep the poem in the Kerala syllabus and accompany it with context? The stakes remain the same, don't they?

My friends, I welcome your comments.

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If winter came to George R.R. Martin, what next?

George R.R. Martin in 2010. Credit: Julle So, what kind of obligation does a writer have to his fans?

I couldn’t help thinking of George R.R. Martin after watching a trailer of Baz Luhrmann’s production of “The Great Gatsby.”

That might seem like an unexpected leap, but it’s not a big one. Thinking about “Gatsby” made me think about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel, the unfinished “The Last Tycoon,” and then, “The Last Tycoon” made me think about Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” saga.

When he died in 1940, Fitzgerald left behind notes and outlines for “Tycoon.” He didn’t complete the manuscript, but he left a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do and how he planned to get there. Edmund Wilson put together Fitzgerald’s outlines and notes in an edition, and you’ll find richer insights on how to write a novel there than you will in any book or class titled “How to Write a Novel.”

That brings me to Martin. There are two more books to go in his saga, and he’s working on the sixth, “The Winds of Winter.” Plenty of his fans worry that we’re heading for a Robert Jordan situation — Jordan died before he could finish his epic “Wheels of Time,” and Brandon Sanderson finished it for him.

If something like that were to happen to St. George — God forbid! -- would any outlines or notes exist like Fitzgerald’s? (For anyone who can’t believe that I’d speak of the sublime Fitzgerald and Martin in the same breath, oh, get over yourself.)

I keep thinking that Martin should do the same thing, if he hasn’t already. Even if he changes his mind on some of the details of what’s supposed to happen to Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys  Targaryen, the poor, afflicted Starks et al., he knows where his story is supposed to end. He’s always said so to interviewers.

So, here's what I'd suggest to George:

One afternoon, why don’t you sit down at your desk with a plate of honey-dipped walnuts baked in a cookfire, pour yourself a flagon of brown bitter ale, and sketch out the basic plot points of  books 6 and 7 like Fitzgerald? Then, next time you’re running errands around downtown Santa Fe, stop by the bank and leave them in your safety deposit box in case of emergency.

Then, another writer — like Patrick Rothfuss, Daniel Abraham, or even David Benioff (producer of the HBO series and a novelist himself) -- could give us the conclusion that Martin wanted, not one imagined by somebody else, even if the words aren't entirely his.

That gets me back to my question at the top. Does Martin owe his fans anything?  Probably not. Even with everyone breathing down his neck — including HBO — he should be writing the story for himself.

On the other hand, writing is one of those situations in which a special relationship develops between a writer and reader. There’s a special bond there, a contract. Any of you who have traveled to Westeros and have aligned yourself with Starks, Lannisters, the Night’s Watch, etc. know what it means to be fiercely loyal. When it comes to his fans, George probably does too.

My friends, I welcome your thoughts!

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'Belief is possible at night': Averill Curdy's poetry

Poetry by ancient light. (Credit: www.davidtribble.com) It was such a nice experience this week dipping into Averill Curdy’s "Song and Error," published a couple months ago by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and finding Ovid there. It’s a pleasure to pick up a book by a contemporary poet like Curdy (or Carol Ann Duffy, whose favorite seems to be Virgil) and find someone who doesn't hesitate to invoke the Latin greats.

It's encouraging too. Here's a writer who believes that those laureled heads still have much to give to our present.

In "Ovid in America," we listen to 17th-century translator George Sandys as he meditates on life in the new world (Sandys was an early settler of Jamestown) and shares the great poet's sense of exile in a strange, unfamiliar place:

Without coppice, park, romancely glade, Or commanding vantage, Woods press on us; they fester.... I find no empires here, no apostles or emeralds. Instead, all things a-broil with an awful begetting & my hours unsettled by some new show Of riotous & mystical imagination...

Long before strip malls and highways, America existed in a mythic state, wild and  "a-broil with an awful begetting." Magnificent.

Words are so powerful, but how often do we think about that in the course of our days? We don't. We write memos and send texts, using language like a shovel or a fork. Which is why poetry matters, and why a poet like Curdy, a teacher at Northwestern University, is to be appreciated in this book, her debut collection.

Here, a little later in the same poem, is an act of creation, as Sandys hovers over  his translation:

From my hands at night (my light Some oil in a dish or a rush taper smoking, Not so different from Ovid’s), flower His fantastic shapes, shadows Of an old empire’s former splendor... Belief is possible at night, solitary, firelit. Then, I can believe in Ovid’s centaurs, Or that he was met at death by a three-headed dog....

The shadow of Robert Lowell falls here, Amy Clampitt's, too. Sometimes her language is much more complex, more elusive--and if it feels too elusive at times, well, that's okay too. The beauty of the language more than compensates, as in “Anatomical Angel” :

Unfastened avidly from each ivory button Of her spine, the voluntary muscles open Viruousities of red: cinnabar

The mutagen, and carmine from cochineal Born between fog and frost....

I think I get it, but even if I don’t, does it matter? The words stay with me an hour later, an hour after that, at the end of the day, at the end of the week.

Can I say the same thing about a text or a TV show?

Not really.

That's why it's poetry. That's why it matters.

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