The Great Debate (Judy Grahn Edition)

Fascinating debate on Monday night, in my Modern Poetry class, over how to read a short poem from Judy Grahn's "She Who" sequence (1971-72). Grahn's a lesbian feminist poet, and this sequence is a wonderful mix of theological, political, and interpersonal poems.

Near the middle, we get this boast:

I am the wall at the lip of the water
I am the rock that refused to be battered
I am the dyke in the matter, the other
I am the wall with the womanly swagger
I am the dragon, the dangerous dagger
I am the bulldyke, the bulldagger

and I have been many a wicked grandmother
and I shall be many a wicked daughter

Given this poem's invocations of "She Who," a sort of neo-pagan Goddess, I've always connected that line about "the bulldyke, the bulldagger" not only to sexual terminology of the period, but also to the bull-leaping and Goddess worship back in Knossos, as in this picture:

I take it, that is to say, that this poem is entirely self-celebratory--a sort of chant or rune in which the "I" who speaks gets to take on the time-defying, deliciously "wicked" nature of She Who herself.

What, though, to make of the poem that follows?

foam on the rim of the glass
another wave breaking

foam on the rim of the glass
another wave breaking
she once wanted to be a sailor

now she sits at the bar, drinking
like a sailor

My students were sharply divided. Some thought this was a sad scene: a woman who "once wanted to be a sailor" reduced to drinking away her sorrows, with the pervasive lowercase letters and that sharp linebreak at the close ("drinking / like a sailor") emphasizing the downbeat tone. Others took "drinking / like a sailor" as a livelier twist, such that this woman who once wanted to be a literal sailor has now discovered that kind of adventure and open possibility in her bar-life, and by extension in her erotic or communal life there in the bar.

For some, that is to say, this was a step down from the poem before it, and for others a continuation of--an instance of--the "wickedness" with which that poem ends.

Your thoughts, O Blogosphere?

On Today's Agenda

It's Monday, and that's my long day this quarter. I got in about an hour ago (10 am), and won't leave until after 9 pm, when my night class gets out and I hit the freeway home.

So: what am I up to today?

***

Spent some time this morning on a committee project. I'm chair of our department's one-year-old Curriculum Committee, ascending to that noble throne last month. On the table first is a new one-course "Diverse Traditions" requirement for English majors, which we approved last year without ever quite defining what counted as a "Diverse Traditions" course.

Heh.

As you can imagine, this has led to a certain amount of internal wrangling & Chicago-style politicking. I'm not at liberty to divulge the details, but broadly speaking, we're having to decide which courses will count for this requirement.

Here's some of the language I've been playing with to define the requirement, which I'll bring to the committee and to the department overall in the future for debate. Your thoughts, everyone?

In “Diverse Traditions” courses, students will study authors, texts, or topics that have historically been marginalized by the dominant culture’s literary canon. [I keep wanting to add, "hereinafter referred to as "DCLC," pronounced "De Klerk," but I'll save that for the meetings.]

To receive “Diverse Traditions” status, a course must focus on at least one of the following:

1. Works in English by racially or ethnically marked authors (e.g., Latino/a, Asian American, African American, Native American authors), with attention to how such categories of difference have been constructed and contested over time;

2. Works in English by women, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between gender, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

3. Works in English by sexual minorities, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between sexuality, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

4. Works in English by working-class authors, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between class, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

5. Works in English by immigrant, exiled, or diasporic authors, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between national identity, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

6. Works in English by religious minorities, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between religion and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

7. Non-Anglophone works (in translation) from predominantly Anglophone countries (e.g., Britain, Ireland, the United States), with attention to how such literature complicates or counterpoints the national literary narrative of that country;

8. Works by Anglophone authors from outside England and the United States, especially by authors who have historically been excluded from the Anglo-American literary canon;

9. Works of new interest in light of emerging categories of diversity (e.g., Disability Studies, Masculinity Studies), if the course introduces students to these emerging theoretical approaches in a way that will profitably complicate the way these works are taught or read in other contexts.

By separating these out, my plan is to allow debate and voting--if necessary--on each one, line by line, so that no single category can sink or delay the program as a whole.

From “Spring,” in James Thomson’s The Seasons

A lively discussion's underway over at Teach Me Tonight about the nature of love (here and here) in romance novels and elsewhere. Whenever I hear these discussions, I think of a line from James Thomson's The Seasons—"Perfect esteem enlivened by desire"—which Jean Hagstrum borrowed for the title and epigraph of a very good book a few year ago. The line comes from the "Spring" section of The Seasons, and although you can find the whole text on Google Books, I thought I'd post the immediate context here, for easier reference. (I've added the verse-paragraph breaks, to make the selection a bit easier to read.)

 

One thing I do notice: Hagstrum (and I, following) have always cut off the quotation at "enlivened by desire." In fact, there's an immediate adjective: "desire / Ineffable." What to make of that, I'll decide another time.

 

But happy they! the happiest of their kind !

Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate,

Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend,

'Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,

Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind.

That binds their peace, but harmony itself

Attuning all their passions into love,

Where friendship still-exerts her softest power,

Perfect esteem enlivened by desire

Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;

Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will.

With boundless confidence : For nought but love

Can answer love, and render bliss secure.

 

Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent

To bless himself, from sordid parents buys

The loathing virgin, in eternal care,

Well-merited, consume his nights and days ;

Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love

Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel ;

Let Eastern tyrants from the light of Heaven

Seclude their bosom-slaves, meanly possessed

Of a mere, lifeless, violated form ;

While those whom love cements in holy faith.

And equal transport, free as Nature live,

Disdaining fear. What is the world to them?

Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all?

Who in each other clasp whatever fair

High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish;

Something than beauty dearer, should they look

Or on the mind, or mind-illumin'd face ;

Truth, goodness, honour, harmony, and love,

The richest bounty of indulgent Heaven.

 

Meantime a smiling offspring rises round

And mingles both their graces. By degrees

The human blossom blows ; and every day,

Soft as it rolls along, shews some new charm

The father's lustre, and the mother's bloom.

The infant reason grows apace, and calls

For the kind hand of an assiduous care.

Delightful talk ! to rear the tender thought.

To teach the young idea how to shoot,

To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,

To breathe th' enlivening spirit, and to fix

The generous purpose in the glowing breast.

 

Oh, speak the joy ! ye, whom the sudden tear

Surprizes often, while you look around,

And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss

All various Nature pressing on the heart ;

An elegant sufficiency, content,

Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books

Ease and alternate labour, useful life,

Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.

These are the matchless joys of virtuous love ;

And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus,

As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,

Still find them happy; and consenting Spring

Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads :

Till evening comes at last, serene and mild ;

When after the long vernal day of life.

Enamour d more, as more remembrance swells

With many a proof of recollected love,

Together down they sink in social sleep ;

Together freed, their gentle spirits fly

To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.

This & That

Trying something new here: the "write it in Word, as a Blog Post" option. We'll see if it works.

***

This from Ben Friedlander, over at Facebook: "Tropes involve mental processes; grouping them under the heading 'metaphor,' which is done surprisingly often, is a little like using a globe for a street map."

I remember an interesting discussion of Auden's line, "The hourglass whispers to the lion's roar" (or "lion's paw," in other versions of the poem) that tried to walk students through the set of mental processes it takes to make the line meaningful. Where was that? Reading Poetry, by Tom Furniss and Michael Bath. From the results of this Google search, it looks like the line gets used that way a fair amount, actually.

***

So now the test: will this post? Is it preferable to the usual interface? One click, and we'll see!

LIVE at the Poetry Foundation!

Well, not LIVE exactly, but close enough. A column of mine, "Ten Poems I Love To Teach," has been published by the Poetry Foundation, and last week I was interviewed for about an hour for a possible podcast about two of the poems, "The Sun Rising" and "Wild Nights," to be hosted there as well. When it goes up, I'll post the link. In the mean time, you might want to take a look at the new Learning Lab the Poetry Foundation has set up, especially if you're a teacher. Lots of resources, some of which I was a consultant or editor for.

***

(A twinge: not that this will count for my promotion. But compared to the colleagues I have who were passed over for tenure, for flimsier reasons, I don't have much to complain about--and unlike some of my colleagues at other schools, especially public universities, I haven't been asked to teach for free or even cut back on travel. From now on, when someone asks me whether the glass is half full or half empty, I'm going to tell him, "Dude, I have a glass." Pollyanna, c'est moi.)

***

This is the first time I've posted anything here in several months. As I wrote last year (last school year, or Jewish year, take your pick), I find Twitter and Facebook now do the job of social connection that this blog once did. I'm not sure whether I'll have the time to post here with any regularity, or to do so particularly thoughtfully. But the mood struck, and the computer was on, so here I am.

***

The picture I've added above is of the late, great poet Ronald Johnson in his kitchen, back in San Francisco, I believe. The book I co-edited on Ron--the link is to your right--has sold perhaps a hundred copies so far. A labor of love, as they say, as was Ron's work, so I don't feel terribly bad about the slow sales. As the poem says, I never expected much!

***

Tonight is the Sharing Fest at my wife's church: a fundraiser for parishes in Haiti, Nigeria, and Mexico that she's run for the past seven or eight years. Last year, as usual, this was a terribly stressful time for her, not least because she was heading for Haiti herself soon afterward. This year, someone else is finally running the show, and there's no trip to follow. Much calmer, chez nous, but a real sense, also, that a year has passed.

It's as though I've had three or four New Years in a row: the school year starting, the Jewish holidays, now this. I have such vivid, horrid memories of the time when R was away: sleeplessly grinding out an overdue essay on the poet Lawrence Joseph, taking care of the kids and R's father, who was staying with us at the time, hearing from an editor that my piece was simply too late to use. It all worked out, in the end--but not without some anguished phonecalls back and forth to the tropics (Blackberry works in Limonade!) and a flurry of groveling emails.

Now that piece is out, and the Parnassus essay on Darwish and other Palestinian poets that followed, hot on its heels. I have several projects in motion--books, a new journal, classes, new committee work--but nothing that has me as unhappy as I was a year ago.

As good a time as any to return.

Bi-Annual Review

The other day I found a "Projects List" dated September 20, 2007.

At that point, I had 27 active projects. Or, rather, 27 active projects listed; there were at least three others that I must have been repressing at the time. Let's call it 30, more or less.

So--how'd I do?

Three of the projects I simply backed out of. One I pursued, but it failed, and in failing, took another down with. Five are still in progress, although of those, one is close... Well, let's be cut & dried about this. Five are still on-going.

So: twenty projects, of various sorts & sizes, done, and five to go. Plus a few new ones? Yes, but the total is still well below 30. Heck, it might even be in the high single digits!

Turning a corner? Here's hoping.

Take a Message to Bibi

Evidently Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, has been calling David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel "self-hating Jews." Most of the rebuttals have been of the "no they're not!" variety. Here's a different one, courtesy of the great Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. (Thanks to Bob Bires for sending me the poem this morning.)


In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

NEH Musings; Finkelstein on Mackey

Yesterday I wrote this:

Shirts to the laundry today? Move the long-sleeves downstairs, and the short-sleeves up. Purge NJ's closet: he's grown out of half his clothes. Stacks of trash & old boxes from the basement storage out to the alley. (Water damage--perfect opportunity to clean things up and out.) Lots of things to do.

Of course, today should really be all about the NEH seminar: emails to participants, gathering handouts, planning the first week, etc. And it will be--but as I listen to the Giggle Twins play foosball downstairs (my daughter & her sleepover friend) before camp, I find myself thinking, oddly enough, of an essay by Norman Finkelstein: "Nathaniel Mackey and the Unity of All Rites," Contemporary Literature XLIX, 1, 2008.

Here's how the essay begins:

Casual readers perusing the 2006 winner of the National Book Award
for poetry probably got quite a surprise when they opened Nathaniel
Mackey’s Splay Anthem. Their first shock would have come from the
eight-page preface, an unapologetic declaration and exposition of the
obsessive seriality that has possessed Mackey’s poetry since he began
publishing it more than twenty years ago. Bristling with neologisms
and arcane references, the preface presents Mackey’s entwin(n)ed
sequences as a practice akin to the poetics of the Kaluli of New
Guinea, a poetics that “posits poetry and music as quintessentially
elegiac but also restorative, not only lamenting violated connection
but aiming to reestablish connection, as if the entropy that gives rise
to them is never to be given the last word” (Splay Anthem xvi).

After quoting nine lines of the poem, Norman ends the paragraph this way:

The eccentric lineation and spacing, the enjambment making for a
continuous but still unsettling syncopation, the free-floating pronouns,
and above all, the disquieting physical intimacy that seems to
be part of some strange act, part performance, part ritual—this
“croaking / song / to end all song” (3) might be more than enough to
dissuade our hypothetical poetry-shelf browsers from turning the
page, National Book Award or no. For despite divisions into individually
numbered poems (some enigmatically composed beneath lines
across the page) and sections, the book proceeds relentlessly through
such strange enactments for the next 125 pages. In short, Mackey’s
poems cannot be read casually; they may not be readable as individual
poems at all.

What strikes me, nags at me, in this opening is the figure it invokes of the "casual reader" and "poetry-shelf browser" who would pick up a book based on its status as an award-winning text, only to find him or herself "dissuaded" from turning the page, precisely because this poet's work "cannot be read casually." Why does this figure haunt me so?

***

Then I stopped and got busy.

***

Procrastinating last night I sketched a new draft table of contents for my romance book. Still not done with that, but at least I opened the file and played around a little.

More NEH work today, and some urgent emails about Brisbane. If I can, I'll get back to musing on Mackey, though. His piece has some relationship to this NEH seminar, and I want to figure out what that relationship is. More on that later today, I hope.