Here’s an article on the recent Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo that features my friend and erstwhile professor Susan Morrison. It’s written by one Charlotte Allen, apparently the same woman who penned the recent “How Dumb Can We [women] Get” article in the Washington Post that created a stir.
The response to this Weekly Standard bilge has been no less heated among blogging medievalists; read responses here and here.
A response to Rilke’s writing on animals, including “A Meeting” and “Mitsou”; John Berger’s essay “Why Look at Animals?”
What’s ultimately denied in the equation of animals in relation to man is the animal in man. This seems obvious, and almost anyone confronted with the notion that he or she was denying their own animal nature would, one imagines, vehemently protest; yet I remember the resistance last week in class to the idea that things have a life of their own, however inhuman, vegetable, perhaps elemental.
I had been thinking quite frequently of a cartoon that I remember from childhood. In the cartoon a man and his dog are crossing the street. A truck comes and runs them over pancake flat. An ambulance comes. The medic drawls “Plasma,†and then “Dog plasma,†but in his urgency gets them mixed up, sticks the man with one I.V. drip and the dog with the other. Speeds off. The man wakes up: Woof woof. The dog wakes up: What happened?
As I read the Berger essay, my dog stared at me from its bed in the other room, a distance of perhaps 20 feet. There was a thunderstorm with frequent loud cracks and crashes, and he seemed anxious until I should meet his gaze, which was then sort of questioning and needy. Finally he came and lied down at my feet. I moved the chair so that I could sit beside him on the floor. He shivered against my leg while the thunder crashed.
What was the relationship here, the terms of the exchange? What was exchanged, who comforted who, who was scared of the storm, where did the fear begin and where did it end? Was there even a fear, or just the occasion for some sort of altered proximity that stands in the place of language?
And what has all this to do with art?
I think back to when I had a cat. When I was a boy, living at home with my parents. One day it got through an uncovered vent into the air ducts. I sat by the vent calling to it and dropping down food. I remember that I sat naked by the vent, with just a blanket to cover me. Finally the cat quite calmly crawled back up the duct into the room. There was a thereness to the cat’s presence then that never would have been had it not first so utterly and blithely disappeared. Years later, after I had moved away, I was home for a holiday and asked my mother where the cat was. “I had it put to sleep,†she said…
* * *
But what else is missing from our universe that used to be present, if not central? One thinks of looking up, as well as down and around. Birds. Stars. The weather. I am frequently astonished to discover they’re still there – stars and birds, the one at night and the other during the day, when I’m out walking around. It’s difficult to even see them unless one really tries, and almost impossible to have a relationship to them as immediate and intimate as one imagines used to exist between them and people.
It was while walking dogs in San Francisco that I began to look up at the birds in the parks where we’d walk, sometimes carrying a pair of binoculars for this purpose. Hawks were a frequent and thrilling sight. But also great blue herons, the occasional owl, even the quick-flitting patterns of “ordinary†birds over the sea.
Start out from my house headed SW on Cheatham past the River Pub; cross the San Marcos River and turn into Rio Vista Park, left through the children’s playground and across CM Allen over the train tracks past the donut shop, left again on MLK–
past Dunbar Park as MLK winds SW some more and then right on S. Johnson, past my old house; dogleg past San Antonio and across Hopkins and Belvin; swing left then right on Quarry up to Prospect; pass Wonder World; cross Bishop and turn right into Prospect Park–
Zigzag down the new gravel pathways in the shade under the trees until the gravel ends, but keep following the path through the tall grass until the path swings right along Purgatory Creek (which is dry), keep going till the path sort of fizzles out, then turn around and head back the same way–
Run back NE on Prospect. Follow it to the right and then NE again when it becomes Burleson; keep going till it crosses Moore (RR12) and turn left on Mary, right on Lindsey, left on Academy uphill to the Texas State Rec Center, past the center to the outdoor track / rugby field–
Run four laps at the track, stopping to hit the drinking fountain a few times; run down Sessom and right on Comanche and cut through the Texas State campus past the LBJ center and the library; going through the center of campus past the quad, run up the steps and do a few Rocky Balboa jumps at the LBJ statue (unless someone’s around watching)–
Down the hill to briefly follow Sessom SE till it hits University / Aquarena; cross, turn left and take bridge over river, around Strahan Coliseum and right on what used to be Bobcat Drive but is now Charles Austin; left on Jowers into City Park, follow along left and then take the path by the river–
To the end of the park, cross the train tracks and run on the newly built walkway alongside the bridge, wait till the traffic clears and cross Hopkins, SE on Riverside, cross train tracks and again pass the River Pub, turn left on Cheatham, home.
* * *
It’s about 10-1/2 to 11 miles and would make an excellent half-marathon course, except you’d want to start and end at the track and add a mile or two in the neighborhoods north of campus. And maybe a jump in the river on especially hot days.
Had a tough time with it today — maybe it was the three beers I downed last night at the Tap Room where I had to go to watch the Wings in game one of the Stanley Cup Finals; maybe it was the celebratory McDonald’s French Fries I scarfed afterwards; maybe it was the heat. Thanks to Dusty Springfield, the Pretenders, XTC, and Those Unknown for filtering through the Ipod and lifting me up over the last few miles.
Just had to follow up on a discussion from a previous thread re. .400 hitters in baseball. Sports Illustrated has put together a slide show of the last 15 hitters to surpass the mark late into the season.
Over the past several months, I’ve accumulated quite a stack of small press books in purchase and trade. They’re teetering precariously on my desk and floor and shelves. In no particular order, I’m going to try to go through them and offer some brief notes to those who might be interested in such things…
DISCLAIMER: The small press poetry world is very small indeed. Inevitably, I’m going to touch on work by folks I either know or have known or will know, in person or via correspondence. Please understand that these are thumbnail impressions meant to give some idea of the content of the books — not fully formulated and researched reviews. — DH
Slightly Left of Thinking – Steve McCafferey, Chax Press
Got to see Steve and Karen McCormack read this past week in Austin. I enjoyed Karen’s reading, which consisted mostly of medium-length meditations on specific moments, sort of like landscapes, interwoven with literary quotes and philosophical asides; I was sorry I couldn’t afford to buy a copy of her book. Really I couldn’t afford Steve’s either, but was completely blown away by the range, wit, and humor of his reading. Especially interesting are the series of “Pataphysical Poems,” which in turn include a series of “Ghost Poems” — poems that haven’t actually been written, but are in fact a description of the unwritten poems.
The fifth poem is a sonnette in Petrarchan rhyme scheme, and written in Scottish dialect. It asks whether Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” compares favorably with Hugh MacDiarmid’s “Second Hymn to Lenin.” My favorite passage is the one that ends with the phrase “an quentiss slycht him rycht and fycht” but the last line that starts with “Give fyff yet kynryk yhwman” fails to tie off the obvious geo-political sentiment.
Another favorite is “The Dangers of Poetry,” a tribute to the opening of Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, which goes just far enough in parodying the already parodic author-reader address. I’ll be a long time exploring the wonders of this book, and can’t wait to study with Steve at Buffalo.
* * *
Estrella’s Prophecies, Vols. I, II, III — David Baratier, Runaway Spoon (I), anabasis (II), Luna Bizonte (III)
This is weird stuff. The “prophecies” come in the form of cracked lyrics from, as the author writes, “a fortune-telling vending machine who has become an obsession for some time now.” I’m attracted to these books because of the low-fi, comic-book production, which fits quite well with the form, as well as the Spicerian feel of the project as a whole.
Earn a disproportionate amount of
the world’s attention this month.
Appear in all the media regularly.
Make a name for yourself, jerk. Since
it is doubtful anyone would show a
mother loved face for free, it will be
expensive and requires an alibi. For
this reason buy a car lot or a carpet
company. Once you are famous, become
an Elvis impersonator and marry the
queen of rock and roll who is no longer
Joan Jett. Crimson and clover is over.
Drop another dime in the jukebox baby!
Hey, oh hey, it keeps me moving on.
I like the easy flow of these “prophesies,” their feistiness and avoidance of poetic figures and constructions. Lines like “The taste of fun is / Sweet Tarts fat free tangy candy” just roll off the tongue and tickle the ear. Yet at times — and perhaps I’m clinging more than I should to the model of Jack Spicer — there’s not quite enough for me to latch on to in terms of content and language inquiry, especially over the course of what’s a fairly long project. Like some of Spicer’s work, there’s a good deal of punning and low-high culture path-crossing. Overall, I like, and will continue to dip in and get my fortune for the day.
– Response to Celan/Borges et al.
I put down the book I’m reading to spoon up the last of my cereal and all at once it hits me: the enormous sadness of breakfast transferred from the act of reading to the act of eating, while staring at the wall opposite my seat at the table, a small burp caught in my throat
The dog barks at a man in the yard who says “Nice doggie†while glancing up at me when I open the door to look out, his body tensed like a ballplayer out in the field, an almost feminine delicate receptiveness, and “I’m here to read the meter,†he says, I get the dog inside, meanwhile a big fat fly has come in
What the dog seems to understand so well is the language of absence and presence – distance and proximity – hide and seek – the pleasure in finding and being found. The cat can only disappear – has the poise to do so even in plain sight – where’s the fun in that?
Never so happy being me as the moment I fell into the swimming pool one summer day, unable to swim, just stared down into the water and let it pull me in. I remember the distorted forms of other bodies through the underwater, various murmuring poses on the deck of the pool, no one having seen me go in, the surprise of not being able to breathe, but no panic, just delight in the sheer cleverness of almost drowning right in front of them
But I keep going back to the shock of noticing that the tight-wrapped blanket had been taken off to reveal – a pipe! sticking straight up from the ground like a limb that had been wounded all winter. It was spring, and the old man who usually sat in front of the house had been replaced by a boy who grinned at us as we passed
As he called it eventually the word itself sprang up from its prone form and ran towards him, keen-scented and low to the ground, and leaped into his open mouth blocking out all other sound
Two dark boys carried along the street by the white shoes in their hands
He stood so defiantly still on the porch that something had to give – language a line snapped and the wheel’s teeth clicking on air – the train seemed to go backwards then and the tracks—
All of his childhood slipped away in the time it took to wash his hands in the kitchen sink
How lovingly knife prepared lunch but then fork had to eat it all at once
Heart wanted to reach for the blinds, hand reached for the lamp. Hat got put on the chair
October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008
(Above image: “Estate,” 1963)
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