Better words from better voices.

(Carson McCullers made uneven bangs cool, which I appreciate especially after my most recent haircut.)

One of the many, many (many) brain-breaking facts about trying to be a writer is that you must always and forever live in the awareness that there are writers out there who offer better words from better voices. It is a fact of life. Sometimes, it makes me want to weep with joy because there are such good brains out there making sense of my life for me. Other times, it makes me want to chew off my own fingers if only to keep myself from ever trying to compete. Surely I'm not the only person who feels this way. As a slogger, I've found that every so often, I want to shut up and give my slog over to a brilliant voice.

On my trip to Bellingham, I started reading Carson McCullers. She is best known for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (which I haven't read), but in one of the many used bookstores, I found the slimmest, trimmest paperback copy of her book The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories. Now, I think "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" may be one of the best short story titles I've ever heard. And in it, McCullers says this:

"First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons--but the fact that it is a joint experience between two persons does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only the stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is the knowledge that makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself: he must create for himself a whole new inward world--a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring--this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

"Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only the strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else--but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

"It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. The beloved hates and fears the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain."

Now. What do you think of this? Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." I guess when I read this passage, I felt physically as if the top of my head were taken off. Not because it says something that I didn't already know on some deep, inarticulate, emotional level, but because McCullers was so able to order and articulate it. I think that's what a good writer does--shows the nature of our lives and impulses to us--like a big, eloquent mirror. Reading McCullers is like staring into a big, highly verbal mirror.

As the poison lilies in the swamp,

Kendall

Well, this is weird. (To me. Maybe not to you. I don't know your life!)

Today was massively uneventful, except for a handful of less than eventful events. Like...I went to the grocery store twice. Twice in one day! Who does that? I'll tell you: people who have terrible pipes (house pipes, not personal pipes, that plumbing works fine if you wanted to know) and yellow water (again, not a euphemism, I mean actual tap water) that gives them soap-mouth and, also, unquenchable thirst from, well, from some salty Cheetos. People who sit on their futon, eyeing the diminishing amount of water left in the last remaining bottle, and realize that if they're going to make it through the night with all its salty snacks, another trip to the grocery store for potable water must transpire.

[I reuse. I fill the same containers again and again.] [Yes, thank you, I feel very good about it.] [Reducing, reusing and recycling are part of my spider-killing, plant-killing, no-platform platform.]

And it's a good thing I went back to the store, because I wandered over to the Paperback Section of the Grocery Store. Warning: I'm about to get a little judgmental. But books are sort of my thing, and everyone should be an elitist snob about something in their life. I'm sorry if you read paperback novels that are sold by the greeting cards at the grocery store, but I think that aisle is where sentences go to DIE. It is like a word graveyard back there, next to the reduced-price greeting cards.

There were so many amazing covers, and so many brilliant titles, particularly with the Harlequin imprint (The Maiden and the Magnate; Too Hot to Handle; The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin). Then, I saw a section with covers that looked like this:

These are apparently part of a growing body of romance novels about pregnant heroines. I'm just surprised. I'm surprised that pregnancy would be so central a factor in bodice-ripping, bosom-heaving romance novels. It's sort of like the first time someone gave me a bacon flavored chocolate bar--never would've thought of it.

Slog-readers, is it a strange connection between the purple prose of Harlequin romance, and the hard physical labor and extreme joy of bringing people into the world? It's weird to me, but so are lots of things.

Ravished and aquiver,

Kendall

Wednesday Night Poetry Corner

Today, I was tooling around on the Huffington Post, because really, "office hours" are nothing more than those hours a week when you're required to sit in your office, waiting for students who don't show up, so instead you end up reading everything you can find on the internet. Among the many items of junk, I found a non-junk story about Ann Bancroft and Mel Brooks. Did you know that they were married to each other for forty-five years, until Ann Bancroft passed away? Did you know that I find their love story pretty inspirational over all?

Somehow, reading about them got me thinking about this poem, by a guy named Mark Halliday, who is funny and smart and looks like Larry David. He writes poems that are sometimes tender, and sometimes bitey. I like this one:

The Beloved
Mark Halliday

I wrote this fine glossy poem
about how the true beloved is always ineffable,
the one at the palace window
when the purple light of storm astounds the forest,
the one whose touch is the breeze of April,
the one with breasts of pearl swaying urgent toward the mouth of dream,
cloud-sister of Grace Kelly,
always finally that one in azure kimono

and never the contingent one who flosses
and collides with you in the kitchen
and wants forever to lose five pounds
and notices the smell of your sneakers
and remembers guys with stronger arms.
I wrote the poem and felt kind of brave
and rather ineffable myself
and I kind of saw Apollo in the mirror

so then I published the poem in a smooth journal
dedicated to the Other World that words can make--
world, or only a superb hotel?--

so then my wife reads the poem
and she looks at me: her gray-green eyes
moving in those subtle motions that eyes make
when they're anxious to see something true.

Looking into her eyes then I feel
not like a bad husband really but like a guy
half an inch shorter than he thought
whose poem didn't have the guts to be complicated.

I'll Keep My Eyes, Thank You Very Much

Last year, when I completely lost my mind and elected to take a poetry workshop, I read a really lovely book by Thomas Lux, called The God Particles. Lux is a smarty-pants, and kind of a rock-n-roll type poet, judging from his handsome cover photo. I had a crush on him--a literary crush--which means that my mind plays a weird trick on me where I want the author to like me, so I make sure I really understand and respond well to his work in case we ever meet (and in my mind, we do meet, and I am unbelievably charming and well-versed). It's twisted, but it's true.

So you can imagine my dismay to read his poem titled, "Eyes Scooped Out and Replaced by Hot Coals," where he writes:

"that the eyes shall be gouged out
and replaced by hot coals
in the head, the blockhead,
of each countryman or woman who,
upon reaching his or her majority
has yet to read
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1819 - 1891), American
novelist and poet.

Um. (ashamed whisper): I haven't read Moby Dick. That's bad, and I know it. It makes me a blockhead. Thomas Lux claims it merits the forfeit of both my eyeballs. MD is pretty much widely recognized as one of the most important things that ever happened to human words and human brains. I get it.

I just never had a clear sense of what the book was about. I knew that there was a whale; I knew that there was a guy named Ishmael ("Call me Ishmael," I say, whenever someone mentions the novel, because I was told once that that is the first line, and I hope saying it will keep the person from asking me straight up, "Have you read Moby Dick?") and there is a Captain Ahab (I think?); and I knew that I should never, in any of my graduate classes, or in life, on pain of death (or getting my eyeballs scooped out) admit that I hadn't read it.

But a New Year is on the horizon, and I don't need to carry all this baggage and guilt into 2010. (By the way, are we going with "twenty-ten" or "two thousand and ten"? I like the poetry of the latter.) So, I'm reading Moby Dick. I'm on page 21. Do you hear that Thomas Lux? Leave me my eyes!

You know what? I already get why the book is kind of a big deal. It's funny. I just finished the scene where Ishmael, stuck in an over-crowded inn, has to share a bed with a stranger, who just happens to be a harpooner named Queequeg, a cannibal and seller of embalmed heads. So, there you are, with poor Ishmael, hiding beneath the sheets when Queequeg comes in from a busy night of selling his shrunken heads and climbs into bed, weilding a tomahawk between his teeth. And Ishmael, of course, freaks out. Funny, right? Can't you just see Owen Wilson as Ishmael, and Vince Vaughn as Queequeg?

If someone had told me MD was a funny book, I would have read it years ago. Plus, Ishmael, the protagonist, feels super modern and human and flawed. So, here is my big revelation for you, and you're going to be so pleased that you stuck with me until now (did anyone stick with me until now?) : Moby Dick is good.

You can send your gratitude for this insightful review in the form of cash money, or a comment on the blog either about a) your own confessions about Moby Dick; b) your suggestion for another book adults must read, or else have their eyes scooped out and replaced with hot coals.

Why Angela Carter Rocks My World (and should rock yours?)

Something that people do on blogs is write about what they're into (see previous post concerning Rabbits, Manicures, and Owl Tats). Other things that people are into--and should into be one word or two?--include: handmade crafts, home-cooked meals, and their children. Of which, I've got none. No handmade crafts, unless you count the unibrows I draw onto the faces of models in magazines. No home-cooked meals, although I am tempted to take a photo of my bowl of cereal and give detailed instructions for how to make it. And, no children (but remember the plants--I've got those two adorable houseplants).

Anyway, something I am into is books I've liked reading. Aren't people always looking for interesting new books to read? Isn't it worth talking about? Then, dear imaginary reader, consider Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

Nights at the Circus tells the story of Fevvers, a Junoesque woman with a remarkable pair of feathery wings growing where her shoulder blades should be. She's got a wild Cockney accent (get it, "Fevvers" is Cockney for "feathers"), a mysterious, mustached foster-mother with special powers, and again, the wings. Then, a journalist falls in love with her (who wouldn't, she's a total charmer), and sneaks into the circus as a clown so he can follow her around the world. They find themselves train-wrecked in Siberia, and, well, I've got to stop there. But if you like love stories about circus freaks in the Siberian tundra--who doesn't--I recommend it. Also, if you, like me, believe there is something serious, sad, downright tragic about clowns, then you must read this book. I won't show you crafts, or pies made from scratch, but I'll plug a good book to my nonexistent reader when the mood strikes me.

(Angela Carter also has one of the best stories I've ever read, "The Fall River Axe Murders," about Lizzie Borden. Here is a picture of Carter (look at those cheekbones!).)

"The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown." A. Carter