Ambrosia Placebo

"You see we got a degree in degreeing and a Ph.D in Ph.Ding." --Amiri Baraka

posted by: SadProfessor at 22:27 | link | comments (2) |

Let's see...

When I started this journal nearly four years ago I posted every other day.  Then it was once a week.  Then, for a short exuberant aberration, it was once a day.  Then it was once a month.  And now, it's apparently twice a year.  I've either been fantastically busy and fulfilled, or dreadfully stagnant and disheartened.

Unfortunately, it's mostly been the latter.  Quite simply grad school has been crapping all over me and my friends, and it isn't likely to quit.

I don't really know where to begin.  Yes I do.  I realized something in the spring that I meant to jot down here, when I was in a self-inflicted poem-writing frenzy, about how my two supposed passions (teaching and writing) are intimately interrelated.  I write (poems, natch) to find out what I'm thinking.  I teach to find out what I'm thinking.  Both take place in a dialogue, not a vacuum.  This was a great realization.  I realized I was on the right track.  I forgot to write that down.

Spring is often a time for optimism.  Fall is a time for regret.  Grad school is a time for optimistically regretting every decision you've ever made in your life.

It's my last year of funding.  After this, the deluge.  Of unemployment.  For starters.

I've been going to job market meetings where the graduate "director" makes comments like, "It's a corporate university, so suck up and deal with it."  "Brand yourself, package yourself into a commodity that neatly fits into preassigned categories."  "Give up on the individuality thing."  Four years minimum on the job market while languishing in pay-nothing adjunct positions is to be expected.

They're piling on more classes for us to teach, and berating us for teaching too much "content."  And blaming us for lowering the status of the program by not finishing our dissertations on time. 

My friend recently applied for a teaching achievement award.  She has taught more than 20 classes, directed a dozen independent studies.  Her students absolutely love her, many have gone on to amazing graduate programs.  And she is rejected for the award because the graduate "director" basically doesn't like her.  The graduate "director" actually laughed in her face when she submitted her application for the award.  Of course, the award went to a pair of soulless automatons that I know don't have half the credentials or recommendations (never mind integrity and decency and heart) that my friend has.

My friend came to grad school because she wanted to write poetry.  She hasn't written a poem in months.

I came to grad school because I wanted to teach.  Most days, I can barely stand being in the classroom staring at blank faces more than 15 minutes before I have to let them go, so that I can read their essays, most of which aspires to the sophistication of a grade school book report.  With worse grammar.

Even the literary journal I work on as poetry editor, which only recently has become a source of pride, after being guided by a bunch of soulless automatons, has returned to the clutches of yet another batch of unpleasant, soulless automatons.  And even though technically I am still associate editor, I have more or less been cast aside, as if my contributions were disposable all along.

And that seems to be the guiding theme, that we as grad students are disposable
ciphers, a punching bag for the university functioning as a service organization to the demands of the customers and consumers.  I mean students.  The English department caters to the lowest denominator, the bottom line (on the CV), and grants awards to the most mediocre, as if to emphasize that we amount to nothing, that we count for nothing.

This has been the biggest wrong turn I've ever made in life.  I should have listened to my instincts nearly four years ago and avoided applying for the PhD.  I really wanted an MFA in poetry, and somehow was discouraged from that track.  Now, I'm probably going to stick around to get a piece of paper (of if I run out of funding, I might just escape as ABD, though I still have two more field exams until I'm even to that point), on the outside chance I might want to get a college teaching job.  Although my undergraduate experience feels about as distant from me now as possible.  (Did college ever really feel like that?) 

And all I want right now is to be as far away from this pathetic culture of petty academia as possible.  I'd really like to go ahead and apply for an MFA, but I'm afraid I'll have flashbacks to this place, or worse, find the same sort of atmosphere.  I'd really just like to get off the grid, wipe the slate clean.  But how?

We are always already screwed.

posted by: SadProfessor at 15:51 | link | comments (3) |

Mee May Mah Mo'time...

It's been awhile.  And I've been busy.  I went to AWP, which I think is the last thing I mentioned before etherising from here for two months.  I had a hella' good time (apparently hella' is in a dictionary somewhere, so therefore I will be using this word without a hella' lotta reservations).  Met some amazing people and poets—not mutually exclusive categories—and was generally reminded of what life is all about.

To that end, I participated in an internet phenomenon called NaPoWriMo, or national poetry writing month for short.  Since April is the cruellest month (and it was, too, apparently).  I had a good time, writing every day, and already I'm missing it.  But I think I need a breather.  And considering I wrote 52 poems while others barely made 30, I think I won.  Not that it was a competition.  Everything else is a competition.  Hell, grad school is an effing meat market.  A hella' meat market.

What else?  Teaching the Beats and Counterculture, reading lots and lots, and a bit more besides, and generally trying to catch up on work, now that I seem to be free to work on things I'm actually interested in.  I don't expect this will last long.  The interest, or the freedom?  YOU decide.  Clusterf**k to the eternal Visiting Assistant Professor position, at best.  (Oh, I've been watching a lot of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, too.) 

What else?  My grandmother turned 95, my mother 64, my nephew is three going on four, my niece is nearly a year, and I am gladly assuming my role as the somewhat eccentric bachelor uncle.  So family life is good.

What else?  I just scrolled through my daily personal journal entries, and they all begin with "I slept in this morning."  So life is good.  Or it would be if I could ever wake the hella' up.

I'm getting there.  Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo.

posted by: SadProfessor at 00:58 | link | comments (3) |

Four weeks into the semester and I seem to be slowly getting the hang of it.  I remember my second semester of grad school, my rhetoric professor said, every semester you start again.  You learn how to remember to be approximately a professor again.  And then you take a break, and start over.  Something springlike in this.  Underneath the snow.

I've been avoiding my work, staying up far too late, reading poetry blogs and generally trying to forget the fact of going to campus in the morning (or what remains of the morning.  What remains.)  Never mind avoiding snow drift and cabin fever.  I'm getting back to poetry again, figuring out the contemporary scene, or my own spin on it.  There's a lot of spin.  I want to finally eradicate the notion that poetry is dead, or doesn't matter anymore.  I want to resurrect the poet-critic and bridge the creative/academic divide.  I may be starting some new blogs to document my research and findings and such. 

I'm looking forward to going to AWP.  It's been many years since I've been to a major literature conference.  (Apart from the one that got me started on this blog, actually...)  Eight years ago I went to Ogden, Utah and had an amazing time.  It snowed 13 inches on April Fool's Day.  We went to a poetry "slam" (in retrospect, the quietest slam I've ever attended . . . symptom of Utah?), and my friend and I got second and third place, respectively.  I remember he jotted down notable lines for each poet who read, and on the plane voyage back we wrote impromptu poems to those lines.  I think we got through four or five, and read through them aloud, right there in the middle of the plane, before we got tired and drifted back to Ohio.  I just read through those poems for the first time in awhile.  They were some of the most satisfying poems I've ever written.  I'd like to think it was the energy of the gathering that prompted their surfacing.  Maybe I can get back on that plane.

I post those poems here now, because I really don't know what else to do with them.  The titles (in bold) are those original lines.

*   *   *

The Lone Pedestrian on the Streets of Ogden, Utah

a poetry slam

Prologue:

What streets these are I think I know—
there’s no one walking on them, though.
We’re looking for a pub — the Beatnik Café,
it’s probably close by — the other way,
        to order with a spasm
        a Screaming Orgasm
in the drifting April snow.

*   *   *

We keep on building cause what else have we got to do?

I am aware of the wrecking balls
that have invaded our tenement flesh
leaving a debris only rats starved for dust
    would desire to rummage.

I am aware that ancient structures
must be displaced to allow room
for modern ones — but the need for the new
    arises from the neglect of the old.

I am aware that the view from the top story
is preferable to the dank dark basement —
but the basement serves as the foundation
    — the ambition to scrape the sky begins underground.

I am aware that seeds have been planted
and sown, and the only fruit that congealed
fell from the trees in a mad fury to earth,
    having grown too ripe to be plucked by hand.

I am also aware that even these rudimentary
constructions, the accumulation of our evolution
as a species enclosed, will one day rot
    and fall to earth, finally ripe with decay.

*   *   *

The ground moves, you know

The ground moves, you know.

For justification, some may refer
to the earth’s rotation,
its diurnal course that supposedly
no one can experience first-hand.

Others may refer to the earth’s revolution,
that cosmic battle,
that futile uprising against the sun.

Me, I refer to my dreams,
the strange speculation that something
is always in motion.  (even when asleep)

I’ve fallen asleep in parking lots,
at the foot of dilapidated park benches,
in dandelion fields, and always
the moon was my pillow, traversing the sky
as it faded impeccably towards the horizon.

On those occasions I knew
that the time will soon come
when I will have to sleep within the ground
— the moon will still circle me
and serve as support
for my dreams.

*   *   *

Everything but dreams

We laid underneath the ashen firmament of night
looking into each other’s stars.  We chose
not to speak, not even to touch,
but simply to lie stock still stone silent
and whisper our love (it might rain tomorrow)
to the premonition of infinity.

She was the first to break the silence
— her bated whisper was over come
by the brute force of her vocal cords —
“Do you think God can hear our dreams?”
I paused, waiting for that mischievous unnamed
muse called poignancy to pay me a visit.
“I think God is present in our dreams —
    (another pause)
— perhaps in a way God is our dreams.”
I looked at her softly.  Her face
slowly formed a question mark.  “But suppose
we can never accomplish our dreams —
what if they’re only there to taunt us?”
I responded: “That doesn’t stop us
from following them, does it?  I mean,
the stars are out tonight.”  She formed
a response immediately, but waited
a few moments to heighten the intense
dramatic anticipation.
“Then how do we reach God? 
What provides us access to know God?”
I stared into the blackness and replied,
“Everything but dreams.”

*   *   *

The water ripples still

I almost forgot about
the rainstorm last night
when I woke up this morning
to find a puddle out back
and rain from the gutter
dripping down steadily.
Even though it is now
afternoon, and the pavements
are all more or less
dry, the drops continue,
perhaps at a lesser frequency,
but the water ripples still.

*   *   *

My rain bleeding into the river

The exodus begins —
                    a metaphysical
bloodletting,
              spurred on by the motion
of sunlight in the dark
                        deep puddles
that scatter
             the sullen street.

No end
       to beauty
                 the sun
declares, diving
                 below the horizon
molding my imagination —
                         I lie asleep
on that self-same horizon
                          mountain isolate mute
thin of bones and flesh.
                          With the moon
come the thunder clouds,
                         those thick, hovering
slabs of bruised flesh.

                         The wind picks up,
transforming the puddles
                         into the moving street
black veins
            coming to life
                           as the moon wind increases.

I am transformed
                 by beauty
into a swelling mass
                     inebriate imagination
pulsing
        down the mountain
                          to the street below.

My rain bleeding into the river.

*   *   *

If I listen closely I can hear your scars

We have known conversation
like this, revealing only the things
that can penetrate
these whispered concrete veils
of smoke, breathing coffee
in midnight half-consciousness
those strange-lit cafes of the soul.

Epiphany comes
at 4 AM — the memory
of time passing
and premonition of morning.
We fall asleep to the sound of MTV
in the air-conditioned basement
punk rock lullabies.

I crawl from the carpet
to your sleeping body
dormant conversation presence.
I lay my head on all the breaths
you’ve ever spent
or ever will spend
— the breaths no conversation can reveal.

My ear is drawn to your heart beat
— the blood forms a new language
secrets coursing through your veins.
Suddenly I know why
we reserve the darkness for sleep
For truly — if I listen closely
I can hear your scars.

*   *   *

You would know her not by her eyes but by her hands

You would know her
        not by her eyes
                but by her hands.
She touches
        no one
                and that is the reason.
Her eyes however are too clumsy
        — they may wander
                or linger, depending
on their preference
        at a given moment,
                and the receiver
of her gaze or glance
        is almost
                intimidated, suddenly
aroused by the possibility
        of love.
                But her hands
give her real intentions away
        — she rubs her eyelids
                and yawns
her eyes closed
        her hands placed subtly in her lap
                folded.

*   *   *

I doubt if you’d appreciate what’s at my core

I doubt if you’d appreciate what’s at my core.
There have been others before you
    made the same assumptions,
presupposed that my superficial gender
denoted some transcendent quality
    of my character —
But I always proved them wrong.
I cite as evidence the fact
    that they always left me
before I had a chance to dump them first.

I see no reason to regard you
    as any different.

But now as you peel my skin back with your eyes
as you would an apple with a knife,
    you may observe
the inconsistencies and eccentricities
that I try in vain to exude
    through my outward circumference.

And now the choice is yours to make —
the seeds that lie in wait before you
    can just as easily be swallowed
and absorbed as they can be rejected,
neglected as the skin you choose to set aside,
    true reflection of the stuff inside.

Guess I was right.

*   *   *

Inca brothers protect your king, your land, your race

Inca brothers protect your king, your land, your race.
There is no other self to which you belong.

The infinite sun, your king.
The boundless horizon, your land.
The lips of lovers entwined, your race.

All are born in you, breathe through you.
All are your beginning and end,
    no beginning or end.
All are the fruition of you,
of one.

Inca brothers protect your king, your land, your race.
There is no other body to which you belong.

*   *   *

The grass breathes secrets only lovers can hear

Be thankful
we have this moment
recognition of fertility

between us
the milk of heaven
beneath us
the milk of earth

the dew
of our soul
our skin

Be thankful
the creation
that we lay upon
created us
to conceive

this breath
this birth
this touch of silence

The grass breathes
secrets
only lovers can hear.

posted by: SadProfessor at 00:28 | link | comments (1) |

Meditation at Lagunitas

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange--silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

--Robert Hass

posted by: SadProfessor at 22:07 | link | comments (3) |

January 28, 2007
Essay
Don’t Feed the Poets

By JIM HARRISON
I recently wandered through my home library in Montana and rediscovered Karl Shapiro’s “Bourgeois Poet” (1964), a book of prose poems I first read during the vile winter of 1966. My wife and I had moved back to northern Michigan, after I’d left behind a good job in Boston on the promise of my first book of poems, “Plain Song,” having been accepted by Norton. I don’t recall what shape I expected the promise to arrive in: I ended up trimming Christmas trees and working construction for two and a half bucks an hour. Our rented house was only $35 a month, but it was drafty, the furnace was faulty and frequently the place couldn’t be brought up to 55 degrees. All of these numbers can actually describe a life.

Reading Shapiro’s prose poems under such conditions was wonderful in that I was decidedly not bourgeois. As a young Francophile, mostly because high school textbooks of American and English literature in the ’50s were so dreary, I was sympathetic with the prose poem, essentially a French genre. Shapiro seemed to be deranged by the prosperity of his academic position — he was a professor at the University of Nebraska — and since I had flunked out of graduate school for reasons of arrogance I was familiar with the atmosphere he was evoking: “Now when I drive behind a Diesel-stinking bus / On the way to the university to teach / Stevens and Pound and Mallarmé / I am homesick for war.”

I was empathetic to Shapiro’s travails up to a point, but then my wife and I were eating altogether too much macaroni and cheap cheese and he sounded like a man who had had a huge porterhouse and half a cheesecake for dinner and was complaining about indigestion. The subtext, unworded but looming, was that, like coal miners, poets have to make a living, and Shapiro had children.

It should be remembered that bourgeois was a volatile word in the 60s, frequently an insult. After our horrid winter I ended up teaching at Stony Brook on Long Island, where I occasionally noted professors in bell-bottoms with long hair saying, “All power to the people,” whoever they might be. Obviously our workday clothing is also a costume signifying who we wish to be, and professors at the time could be nervous about being bourgeois. Only a Republican would wear a clean trench coat.

Shapiro (1913-2000) had gotten the title for his book at a party, after giving a reading in Seattle, when Theodore Roethke called him a “bourgeois poet.” The question is why it caused Shapiro such severe unrest that he poured heart and soul into what is really one very long poem?

I suspect Shapiro’s evident misery started early in his life with a heroic notion of the poet. Any poet knows that to become immortal all you have to do is write a single great poem. This is unlikely indeed. Perhaps there are tens of thousands of mules and draft horses across the countryside who dream of winning the Kentucky Derby. Better yet, a bartender in Seville told me last March, “We have thousands of aspiring Lorcas but only one Lorca.” Very early on a poet is struck by the cruelty and lack of democracy in the arts — so few get it all, and the hordes receive nothing but the pleasure and pain of an overdeveloped consciousness. Ted Kooser, the former United States poet laureate and a friend of Shapiro’s at the time “The Bourgeois Poet” was written, told me Shapiro was obsessed with the French symbolist poets. This explains a lot, since Shapiro’s notion of what a poet was implies the outsider, the outcast, the outlier, one who purposefully deranges his mind to write poems like Rimbaud, or one who could not walk, so borne down was he by his giant wings, to paraphrase Baudelaire. I must here imagine myself an English department chairman, who has to deal with these troublesome creatures, and say that a poet is hubris through and through in the same manner that an unruly pig is solid pork.

Shapiro was massively famous in the 1940s and ’50s, in the manner of Robert Lowell or Allen Ginsberg in the ’60s and ’70s, though his fame seemed to dip after “The Bourgeois Poet.” He served in World War II, then published “V-Letter and Other Poems” and won the Pulitzer Prize at 32. He became consultant in poetry, now known as poet laureate. Later, on a prize committee made up of famous poets, he was one of only two who voted against awarding Ezra Pound the Bollingen Prize, and it was a grand literary scandal at the time. Shapiro cast his vote as a Jew in opposition to a renowned anti-Semite. He was also voting against the wishes of T. S. Eliot, the virtual pope of poetry during the postwar years. I would suggest the possibility of anti-Semitism in the decline of Shapiro’s reputation. But when you begin your career as grandly as he did, where can you go but down?

“The Bourgeois Poet” is disturbingly brilliant though occasionally it is inadvertently comic. How can you be raffiné, much less stridently Whitmanesque, on a campus in Nebraska? A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed. The work is marvelous in small pieces but deflates a bit in the face of Shapiro’s heroic posturing over what a poet is. There is a wonderful carelessness possible only because it is the kind of poem in which every sort of effluvium fits into the plan. The danger here is that it must be interesting effluvia.

Often in the poem Shapiro refers to himself as “The Beep”:

The Beep feels seasonal, placid as a melon, neat as a child’s football lying under the tree, waiting for whose hands to pick it up.

He also writes, the torpor overwhelming:

Office love, love of money and fight, love of calculated sex. The offices reek with thin volcanic metal. Tears fall in typewriters like drops of solder.

And:

They erect a bust of me after my death. I know the right alcove, where the students sit, in the library corridor, smoking and joking about the professors. “I fought with tooth and nail to save my niche.”

Perhaps as a corrective and a cautionary, “The Bourgeois Poet” should be taught to the thousands taking M.F.A.’s in creative writing who wish to become poet-professors. As I said I tried it myself but found the work too hard. There’s a subdued but relentless hurly-burly in academia that swallows up discretionary time. It’s like living with a slight backache, not fatal but enervating. Besides, academic salaries are falling behind and it’s become questionable if poet-professors have truly achieved bourgeois status. Maybe lumpen bourgeois.

In the ’60s I was actually on a committee in New York City with R. V. Cassill from Brown and Ben DeMott from Amherst, among others, trying to figure out how to get universities to hire more poets and novelists. Through no fault of our own it worked out that way.

Historically, of course, the scales are tipped in favor of the non-bourgeois poet. Yeats warned that the hearth was more dangerous for a poet than alcohol. Rilke said, “Only in the rat race of the arena, does a heart learn to beat.” Well off the margins of the page in “The Bourgeois Poet” there’s an invisible Greek chorus singing, “You’ve got to earn a living.”

Ultimately for a poet the fence is so high the top is invisible, but it is what we are designed to reach for. Everything else is mere scaffolding. You will most likely get the back of the muse’s hand whether you have a chair at Harvard or are pumping septic tanks in Missouri. I must say my sympathies are still with César Vallejo, a grander poet than anyone now living on our bruised earth. In Paris between the world wars Vallejo and his girlfriend would pick out the empty wine bottles in trash receptacles to earn their keep.

Jim Harrison’s new novel is “Returning to Earth.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

posted by: SadProfessor at 11:32 | link | comments (2) |

Two months since my last post.  Hmmm...

I've been busy.  I made a real go of it at the end of the semester and managed to get one field exam out of the way.  Only two more to go!  (Damn...)  I also had time to spend with friends and see some good films and generally get a grip, even while grading a gargantuan pile of theory exams.  And I now seem to be in a position to actually enjoy the holidays, which is quite a change.

I recently read a profile in my undergraduate magazine of a friend from college who has been acting in plays constantly in a big city the past five years.  I looked at the list of roles...and I thought, "Well, I've taught that many classes since then..."  Not quite the same thing, I fear.

Even before reading that article, I've been thinking I want to get back to the theatre.  In some capacity.  Not to be a big time actor like my friend, but just to reacquaint myself with it.  It seems to be the one missing thing.

But then there's love.  "I forget about love.  It's just that I find love as odd as wearing shoes." (Corso, as if you didn't know.)  Yeah, I guess I'm longing for that experience lately too.

I realized not too long ago what I'm all about.  So much of this world is about living the same experiences, over and over—with perhaps a little variation.  Think about it.  The repetitive is almost encouraged, like a collective idea of success.  Repeated tropes.  Little boxes, made of ticky-tacky.  But it's pervasive.  I think of the suit I saw walking to a mock interview just before break.  Make the same, sound the same. 

Anyway, I realized that my life is about seeking the new experience, not unlike Maude.  Or Robert Altman saying I don't know what I'm looking for, I want something new.  Surprise me.  It's this attitude that has drawn me to every interest I've ever had—poetry, theatre, music, everything.  Even blogging...  (Maybe that accounts for the lack of posts lately.)  This seems to be what guides me, compels me, in everything I do.  I just hope that this idea doesn't get old...

So that's a start, anyway.

Happy holidays.  Revel in the new.

posted by: SadProfessor at 22:59 | link | comments (3) |

Writer's conference this past weekend--a melee of miscreant metaphysical marauders (I don't know what I'm saying for the sound) descended just outside campus, extemporizing manifestos into ether, golden bough egos networking accessible forms and devouring inordinate amounts of wine and cheese.  I had a good time, distracted from the incoherent progress report on my field exams and overall ennui with my presence in this gulag masquerading as graduate program.  Time to degree: infinity.

Also: saw The Prestige, in my view a meditation on Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" filtered through turn-of-20th-century sleight-of-hand obsession and glam rock god as mad scientist Tesla.  Good flick.

Also: lonely for love, crushed out on what could be.  Need to reacquaint self with telephone, restaurants, armrests, ecstasy.

posted by: SadProfessor at 17:41 | link | comments (2) |

I went to see a poet tonight, a new hire at the university.  I was expecting a good reading, since I'm somewhat familiar with his work from his visit last semester.  But it turned out to be truly inspiring--kind of a wake up call, a slap in the face to get out and do the work I'm called to do.  In the span of an hour, this poet reawakened everything that drew me to poetry and literature--and music and theatre and drama, while we're at it--in the first place.  I saw shades of the teacher I've always wanted to be.

I've been spending my days entertaining the notion that I've had since I started grad school--that I want to quit, that I don't belong here, that I'm stifled here, that I need to find another vocation, or at least a job with a living wage.  All those things are still true, but now I know why.  Academia just isn't my medium.  For others, it may be.  But I can't survive in this culture of competitiveness and CV building and pressing flesh in elevators at MLA conferences.  Not to mention specializing in "areas" of knowledge.  (I can barely sustain a constant interest in what's supposed to be my first field exam, without wanting to wander in different directions, which are distractions to the degree, but the only way to maintain the passion for what I do.  The degree requirements themselves contradict my own way of thinking and acting, and pursuing my interests.  Maybe there's a way of accommodating--but at the moment I'm not finding it.)

There are pockets here where I take refuge, like editing the poetry for our literary journal, where for a couple hours every week I can meet with a few colleagues and students and feel part of a literary community (however nonexistent), but all the while not do anything really productive to help my own career.  I just don't see the need to accomplish anything with my life--except creating the kind of atmosphere the poet evoked tonight, and the possibility of inspiration in others.  Sort of passing on the light, to paraphrase my undergrad college's motto. 

I sat down and wrote a "poem" for the first time in months, just to try and figure out why it's been so long.  I think I'm getting there.

*   *   *

Where are the faces
    I used to know
        in between the brittle pages
cracked yellow spines
    red leaf falling curtains    
        open dance upon the stage
Where are the words
    I used to hear
        in my sometime surprise mind
the curve of agile hands
    bending to meet
        the play of light in the hall
All gone forever
    no breath to wait
        no slur of speech
or hurried glances
    to perpetuate madness
        in the brief glint eye wink
no buried tomorrow
    of a freeze tag playground
        or silhouetted pillows
through the sleepover curtains
    tossing youth about
        like dirt of graveyard dig
Where is the din
    of child eyed wonder
        without hesitation breath
face first in the sun
    a dance, a figure, a sum
        a history of flesh
the tragedy of minutes—
    the hours to ponder seconds
        the radiance of moment.
I've been staring at the silent
    ivory tower as if it were
        my own eyes—
who else to teach but the book
    to quantify typestrokes
        diminished to a letter
all that's left is a pile
    of unread words incoherent
        to sentence to death
which is the apostrophe
    which is misquoted
        encyclopedic ignorance
I need not ask where but who
    turned this pillar of salt
        to bone, glass, jar,
to anesthetized art
    the condition of fear
        there's no need to breathe
without wire or string
    we trip over down dark halls
        no door open or there
to shut—I've got
    the blood still in my brain
        to still the impulse to think
Where is the face I know
    behind the faces I wear
        to face the silence with song.

10:30 PM
10/10/06

posted by: SadProfessor at 01:40 | link | comments (5) |

The television set is very rarely turned off in my parents' house.  Five years ago this morning, it was.  I was eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast, having resigned myself to spending a year at home after college, in between deciding not to take courses at a local university, and applying for a tutoring job at a community college.  My mother was in Philadelphia, starting seminary.  My father was in the other room, working on church business in his office.  I flipped on the TV, and there it was. 

I spent the rest of the day, indeed the rest of the week, glued to the television, as much of the country did.  I had planned on spending the day rearranging my room, adjusting to living at "home" for the first time in four years.  I tried for a few minutes, but I couldn't keep away from the images.  I remember walking out of the house for the first time a few days later and feeling estranged from the outside world, the sunlight somehow having taken on a different quality.  There was a foreignness about the world, as if it hadn't adjusted yet to a new reality.

After crying with my mother in the dark glow of the TV, I went to sleep that first night thinking this was the start of World War III, having grasped just enough analysis from reporters to make that conclusion.  Even then, a foreshadow of things to come.  The language was already returning to repeated and repeatable tropes, lacking the imagination to come to terms.

I think what the experience of that day brought to me was a sense that connection--human contact and recognition of life--is possible, and that's what we seek through whatever medium of expression or representation is available to us--even television, even language.  What the past five years has proven is the undeniable compulsion of those in power to use the same media to do just the opposite--to divide and conquer, to isolate and desensitize, to nullify.

Following 9/11, there was a possibility for a new world order, in the human connection--the compassion and kindness and goodwill--that such an horrific event somehow managed to generate.  Now we can only try to remember, but even that connection is tenuous, subject to the collective memory imposed upon us--the rhetoric, the repeated tropes, the manipulation.  There's so much in the past five years we need to forget.

The day after, my mother left a note on the fridge, a quote that she attributed to an episode of M*A*S*H: "Don't let the bastards grind you down." 

One world, many bastards.

May peace be with you.

posted by: SadProfessor at 02:07 | link | comments (4) |