Philophronesis

Going Solo

2011-08-17T01:20:00.001-04:00

Five years ago I read Chris Willman’s book about the political affiliation of country music artists and how this affected their songwriting and careers. Willman was inspired to write the book after profiling The Dixie Chicks during the political brouhaha over Natalie Maines badmouthing of George W. Bush. Country music at the time became an interesting battleground for the political soul of the nation.

It’s funny how things have changed. In the book Gretchen Wilson suggested that it wasn’t really proper to discuss politics with folks (see subsequently campaigned with Sarah Palin), Chely Wright was the poster girl for red-state military pride (she’s since come out as a lesbian), and Toby Keith was actually a presence on country radio (what happened to his career?).

I also distinctly remember an anecdote about a drunken Ronnie Dunn railing about the left and generally being an obnoxious idiot. The book did not paint a flattering portrait and so I got it in my head that he was probably just a jerk. So when he announced he was going solo and releasing an album without his former duo partner I thought for sure he would simply become part of the necrotic intellectual ulcer of the country scene left festering by Mr. Keith.

But to my surprise his latest album, Bleed Red, is actually fucking great. Dunn has interestingly chosen two slow numbers as the first singles. The eponymous lead single was a heartfelt apology song. And the new single, “Cost of Living,” is simply spectacular. It’s on repeat on my iPod regularly. It’s a first-person number about a guy in a job interview who’s just trying to make ends meet. It’s quiet, touching, and—surprise—not at all cloying. It’s definitely some grade-A material and Mr. Dunn sings it beautifully.

Anyways, this is much to say that this album has been a surprise. Five years ago I was ready to write him off as an industry dirtbag. Turns out all these years it was Kix Brooks that was holding him back. Who knew?

An Inspiring Op-ed

2011-05-29T18:56:00.001-04:00

A truly inspiring op-ed in the Times today about committing to love. Jonathan Franzen manages to combine cultural criticism, thoughtful pop psychology and a sentimental anecdote into a brilliant piece free of crankery.

“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The Real Deal

2011-05-14T00:33:00.001-04:00

Ask any pop music aficionado about their preferences and they’ll likely justify many of their choices based on the notion of authenticity. That word—“authenticity”—is an especially loaded one in cultural studies. Those in the popular press bandy it about as a badge of honour; academics will often poo-poo it as a chimera, a fantasy of rock snobs. There are many academic justifications as to why “authenticity” doesn’t exist, but underlying these is a primarily philosophical argument.

In the seventeenth century Descartes famously pronounced that “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am). In three words he encapsulated a fundamental notion of human character: we are extensions of our thoughts. Everything we do, therefore—our actions, choices, music preferences—are results of our essence. Being “authentic” means being true to who we are. In some ways, the Cartesian concept of consciousness is strangely “new age,” avant la lettre.

The history of the “self” over the past 350 years is a slow shift from Cartesian essence to fraudulent pastiche. First French and then American philosophers and aestheticians of the past forty years have finally called out humanity for its duplicity. Our actions, choices, and, yes, music preferences, they argue, are not reflections of our inner minds, but rather conscious choices meant to reflect the kind of people we would like to be. They usually refer to this as “decentered selfhood.” We have no essence or “authentic” self, only a vague collection of aesthetic choices meant to reflect some imagined version of ourselves.

Enter country music. Populist journalists of course venerate the genre as the expression of an “authentic” American spirit. Cynics and academics, of course. deride it as a commercial construct meant to reflect a fantasy of rural life—a fantasy ever less tenable as we become more urban, sophisticated and middle class.

But as I’ve argued in this blog many times, country music at its best speaks to the way we actually live our lives. The “Jesus and my truck” variety, as I call it, of course has no relevance to me or, if I may say, the vast majority of country music listeners. That kind of country is indeed a fantasy of fidelity, piety and patriotism that does not nor has ever existed. But songs about love found, love lost, household chores, drinking too much and being jealous are not imagined realities—these are experiences far more human than even most hip-hop and r&b can speak to (and I’m not knocking either of those genres).

This is all much to say that I still believe in some notion of “authenticity.” I don’t mean to apply it in some patronizing way (as it so often is). “Authenticity” usually only works as a label when you apply it to something both simple and exotic: Chinese pottery, Aboriginal handicrafts, the Hon. Jack Layton. But something can indeed be authentic (no scare quotes) when it speaks to something common, shared, everyday—something real.

This week I’ve been listening to Lori McKenna’s new album. Six summers ago I was utterly obsessed with Faith Hill’s album Fireflies—a stellar country album made all the better by two songs written by Lori McKenna. An appearance on Oprah and a attempt at mainstream country success later, Lori McKenna is back with an indie album with more songs about being a mom (she has five children), a wife (she married young, but is now 41) and living in a working class Massachusetts town (Stoughton, a half hour’s drive south of Boston).

McKenna’s songwriting range, like her vocal range, is limited. Almost all over her songs are about the three defining characteristics I’ve listed above. They’re intensely personal—you almost feel a bit bad listening in. But the specificity she brings to her songwriting is what makes her so stellar. You might think that songs that mention Fisher Price are beyond the artistic pale, but I swear to you that nothing is more moving than her lyrical turns of phrase. Her melodies are little more than short exclamations—sometimes pleading, sometimes exalted—but always direct. But nothing feels more real than this. It’s funny how songs which are so specific to one woman’s life can touch someone else so deeply.

I think that’s because she scratches below the “Jesus and my truck” version of working- and lower-middle class life. McKenna’s not trying to convince herself to be happy with the things she has. She’s trying to tell us about the joys and sorrows that make up her days. And so when she sings about the television flickering in the hallway, going to her kids baseball games and hugging her husband after work, it doesn’t feel like she’s preaching about the virtues of this life. She’s just telling you how it is.

Listening to this album makes me want to cry. I’m not a Massachusetts housewife, but I’ve stood in the hallway after a long day, in the glow of the television, and tried to make sense of what my life is, what it’s been and where it’s going. This music feels authentic to me. Call me an old fashioned Cartesian. But we are what we think. And I think Lori McKenna is the real deal. Check out her new album, Lorraine.

Dissertation Wordle

2011-03-26T16:51:00.004-04:00

My dissertation (now completed) distilled into a small visual diagram. I think it looks like a potato.

On the Truly Excellent Miranda Lambert

2011-02-23T01:16:00.001-05:00

This past Sunday Miranda Lambert was robbed. She did take home a Grammy Award for “Best Female Country Vocal Performance” for “The House that Built Me”—an award she surely deserved. But the award for country album of the year went to multiple-winners Lady Antebellum for Need You Now. I like that album and its eponymous single a good deal. But I don’t love it. I understood why when I read Jody Rosen’s recent take on Lady A in Slate. The subheadline of the article christened them “the dullest band on earth” and Rosen suggested that “the group's defining quality is a kind of nebulous in-betweeness.” This kind of banality was the perfect tonic, says Rosen, for the very immoderate age in which we live.

I certainly don’t begrudge Lady A their success. They are certainly capable songwriters (if a bit unoriginal). They even co-wrote a very sweet song with Lambert on her album (“Love Song”). But Rosen is right: this is a band that you lavish with only a moderate amount of affection. I do not feel the same way about Miranda Lambert’s Revolution.

Released on September 29, 2009, this is an album that rewards you with repeated listenings. Its not that its a staggering work of genius—or even that every song is of unimpeachable craftsmanship. But on the whole, this album is one of the most touching and quietly profound country albums I’ve listened to.

First, we have to discount a couple of songs which are fun diversions but not integral to the main action of this album. “White Liar” is a too-brassy specimen of Lambert’s revenge fantasy oeuvre; “That’s the Way that the World Goes Round” is her obligatory novelty song cover (though, like Gillian Welch’s “Dry Town” from her previous album, Lambert choose a grade-A songwriter to cover in John Prine).

The rest of the album is absolutely enthralling. I’ve discussed “Makin’ Plans” and “The House that Built Me” on this blog before. Both deal with the dangers of straying too far from home. “Makin’ Plans” is about being content with what’s familiar and “House” is an attempt to recapture some sense of place. Another song on the album takes the complete opposite approach. “Airstream Song” is about always being on the move.

Sometimes I wish I lived in an Airstream
Homemade curtains, lived just like a gypsy
Break a heart, roll out of town
‘Cause gypsies never get tied down

The music for it is also quite spectacular. It features a slightly odd amorphous introduction that sounds like the instruments are just tuning up before launching into a loose-limbed take on alt-country Americana. That a VERY commercial country artist makes room on an album for these kind of Brooklyn-based hipster-chic musical textures is fascinating. What’s more, however, is that Lambert doesn’t at all adapt any kind of ironic pose. She’s quite serious, and not in a falsely pious country way. She’s managed to find a middle way between sentimental commercial country schlock and the kind of fake-folksy shenanigans of urban redneck poseurs.

Even songs which could take the album into truly awful Red-state jingoism, like “Time to Get a Gun,” have such a winking kindness that you just smile even if you disagree with her politics (she grew up the daughter of private eyes, so she’s earnestly an NRA supporter). What helps is Lambert’s acknowledgement of her politics in relation to the liberal Northeast. But rather than adopting Country’s usual befuddlement at city-folk ways, Lambert suggests a rapprochement.

So let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines
You’ve got your friends just like I’ve got mine
We might think a little differently
But we got a lot in common you will see
We’re just like you
Only prettier

Her last chorus states that “I’ll keep drinkin’
And you’ll keep gettin’ skinnier.” How can you not love this? Clever, fun, culturally aware—appropriating American musical idioms and subverting them with contemporary cultural messages—graduate students will be lining up to document this.

Typically, however, they’ll likely focus on how she embodies some kind of post-feminist ideology and not discuss what I think is her true aim: to capture the sense of living in a post-place world. A sense of dislocation is present in each song—dislocation from the ideal relationship, from one’s home, from one’s culture. She confronts a burning question: unbound from any strictures and with limitless choice what makes you happy? Revolution touches on how this impacts every aspect of our lives. How we relate to the land, how we look after our neighbours, how we find love, how we find peace with ourselves. No album in my recent memory more deeply touches the cultural moment in which we live.

County is often blamed for being culturally regressive. I’ve rather loved its ability to bring some poetic dignity to our everyday struggles, but I’ll concede that sometimes artists can affect a nostalgia that I don’t share. But here Lambert has harnessed the most beautiful aspects of the country idiom to our cultural moment. Listen to this album and it will cut you to the quick.

But best of all, Lambert brings you great solace as well. “Heart Like Mine” is about a Christian girl who doesn’t quite live up to certain strict interpretations of good Christian living. She’s in a place like a lot of us: struggling to square what we are with we and others would like us to be. But this girl has hit on quite a good idea regarding her slightly immoderate alcohol consumption.

Cause I heard Jesus, He drank wine
And I bet we’d get along just fine
He could calm a storm and heal the blind
And I bet He’d understand a heart like mine

No more Christ-like words have ever been set to music in country. I love this woman.

U Smile, Sorrido Anch’io

2011-01-23T01:19:00.001-05:00

Quick confession: I don’t actually mind Justin Bieber’s music. Ok, actual truth? I kind of enjoy it. Its slick production and lyrical innocence remind me of pop music of the 90s. Remember them? The bull market, third way centrism, the tech boom—optimism. The only tough choice you had was between The Backstreet Boys and Nsync. I actually preferred 98 degrees, which is, I know, ridiculous. But don’t tell me that “The Hardest Thing” wasn’t a kick-ass song. Trust me. I just watched the video. I still love it but now miss my fleet of turtleneck sweaters.

But the Bieb’s music also shares an aesthetic heritage with a slightly older genre: the eighteenth-century sentimental opera aria. Before you declare my argument utter fancy, just compare the lyrics of Bieber’s hit “U Smile” with Don Ottavio’s aria “Dalla sua pace” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Both describe an innamorato’s dependence upon his loved one for his every happiness. In the eighteenth century, this declaration of one’s entimental nature—of one’s empathy—was a sign of refinement and nobility. They weren’t called gentleman for nothing. Since the mid-century the sensitive man was all the rage. Teenage girls, it seems, might have liked Don Ottavio just fine.

Bieber: “U Smile” (Bieber/Duplessis/Altino/Rigo)

I'd wait on you forever and a day
Hand and foot
Your world is my world
Ain't no way you're ever gon' get
Any less than you should
Cause baby
You smile I smile
Cause whenever
You smile I smile

Don Ottavio: “Dalla sua pace” (Da Ponte/Mozart)

Dalla sua pace la mia dipende;
Quel che a lei piace vita mi rende,
Quel che le incresce morte mi dà.
S'ella sospira, sospiro anch'io;
È mia quell'ira, quel pianto è mio;
E non ho bene, s'ella non l'ha.

[My peace of mind depends on her / what pleases her gives life to me / what grieves her brings me death / If she sighs, I sigh, too / her wrath and her sorrow are mine / and I cannot be well if she is not]

Don Ottavio is by no means a beloved character of opera.  Despite his highly empathic declarations, critics have often criticized his inaction and even implied his impotency.  His fiancée, Donna Anna, doesn’t seem to have a lot of respect for him.  Poor guy.

His situation is made slightly worse because most opera productions demand that Ottavio sing both his arias (“Dalla sua pace” was added for the Vienna production of 1788, a year after it debuted in Prague).  This means that he spends most of his time onstage singing about how sensitive he is.  What a bore.  Musicologist Joseph Kerman, though, cut him some slack: “Ottavio’s reputation for blandness does not take into account this capacity of his for sympathetic chromatic resonance.  One does not begrudge him his bonus aria.”  In other words, Mozart’s music makes it all worthwhile.

I’m not sure that the Bieb’s music will stand up as well as Mozart’s.  But for the time being, his particular brand of bubble-gum pop makes me smile.  One should not begrudge him his success.

When His Thoughts Was as Free

2011-01-18T18:21:00.001-05:00

Many apologies for not updating this blog in several months. I’m going to try to do better in future.

It has currently reached that point in the day when I require a pep-talk to forge on with work. The eye of heaven has cast its gaze on parts west and so I feel like I can put my labours to rest. But humans invented artificial light for a reason, and so I should really continue on. I will, however, sneak in a short post. You won’t tell, will you?

Sometimes during long days at the office my mind starts to wonder. Especially on gray, soggy winter days like today it settles on good memories of careless summer days. Few poets better captured the simple joys of ~~maidenhood~~ youth better than James Whitcomb Riley (sorry for briefly recalling Camelot).

Riley was a poet who spent most of his life in Indianapolis. Many of his early poems were published in a Hoosier dialect (like the one below). His collection “The Old Swimmin’ Hole” (1883) is every bit as folksy as the title suggests. One of his most famous poems, “When the frost is on the pumpkin,” is published in the volume. One of my favourites is “The Mulberry Tree.” It could have been a very grating elegy for a misremembered past. But there’s a tinge of melancholy in the poem that I think gives it a bit of emotional heft. Sentimental, of course. But totally effective. Here’s the last stanza:

Then its who fergit the old mulberry

   tree

That he knowed in the days when his

   thoughts was as free

As the flutterin’ wings of the birds that

   flew out

Of the tall wavin’ tops as the boys come

   about?

O, a crowd of my memories, laughin’ and

   gay,

Is a-climbin’ the fence of that pastur’ to-

   day,

And a-pantin’ with joy, as us boys ust to be,

They go racin’ acrost fer the mulberry tree.

Soffro anche spesso

2010-07-21T05:43:00.001-04:00

“Being a part of something special makes you special, right?”

Those words, uttered by Rachel Berry in the first episode of Glee, are remarkable. I remember watching the trailer for the series on YouTube last spring and instantly falling in love, mostly because of how moving I thought that line was. The show, with its cast of mildly misfit highschoolers, is all about that kind of desperate enthusiasm that teenagers ooze. But as we age, we somehow never completely get over that need to feel special.

It’s maybe just that the things that make us special change a bit. I had that thought in the shower before bed last night, while I was humming Radiohead’s biggest hit, “Creep.” Now, lest you think I have some affinity with the angsty grunge-rock lyrics (how 90s!), you should know that I think of that song in Italian (which is maybe worse). But a cover of “Creep” was a huge hit while I was there last fall. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it playing on the radio, sung in appropriately grungy style by Vasco Rossi—a sort of Italian cross between John Mellencamp and Leonard Cohen in both vocal stylings and political activism.

Now you know that I hate my “when I was in Italy” stories, but this little episode actually gave me some insight into why people love to travel and why I still tell these damned stories all the time. The song, in English, is of course about a guy who doesn’t feel he deserves to be with a girl who’s “so f***ing special.” The Italian is a cleaner version about a guy who doesn’t want to leave a girl; he’s going to stay “ad ogni costo” (at any cost—the title of the song). The Italian girl in question isn’t quite as perfect as Radiohead’s “angel.” She has “eyes that are never honest,” but she’s apparently still special enough that you wouldn’t want to leave here. Rossi makes that very clear in a kind of brilliant reworking of the Radiohead version. The last line of the verse in English (with the infamous epithet) is

I wish I was special
You're so fuckin' special

The Italian version goes for a rhyme instead

Tanto è lo stesso
Soffro anche spesso

[Much is the same / I also often suffer]

The second line rolls around in the mouth (and sounds) almost the same as the English version. The s-f-n-sp chain of consonant sounds is identical. It’s hard not to imagine that Rossi started with this line and built the rest of the song around that.

Now this is much to say that a song I heard in Italy was about wanting to be a part of something special. But that makes me think that one of the reasons that people love to travel so much is to capture some of that feeling that Rachel Berry gets from being in Glee club. It’s also maybe one of the reasons we (I) reminisce so much about our travels. We loved that sense of being special. Of being a stranger in a far land. Of being a part of something bigger than ourselves.

So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on people who have the bug for travelling. My last post was perhaps too critical. After all, we all want to have those radically transformative experiences. They are the stuff of dreams, and of course, poetry.

Dante was a guy who met a pretty special girl at the age of nine. It was that experience that inspired him to write La vita nuova, one of the most important works in literature. It has a lot of wonderful poetry, but its most iconic passage is perhaps the first sentence, which is in prose.

In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova.

[In that part of the book of my memory before which there is little that can be read, there is a heading which reads: here begins a new life.]

Just down the street from my apartment in Naples was the Piazza Dante, a lively and unsurprisingly run-down eighteenth-century square with a beckoning statue of Dante in the middle (above). I’d sometimes perch myself at his feet in the afternoon and wonder when I could mark a new heading in the book of my memory. Naples wasn’t that for me. But I did feel pretty special to be there.

“I Don’t Care for Roving”

2010-07-13T23:47:00.001-04:00

In life you occasionally come across someone who suggests travel is a necessary component of your education. This person is usually someone who backpacked through Europe on a summer holiday, or more recently braved South America, in order to “find themselves.” They’ll regale you with stories of a restaurant found on a narrow street, a kiss stolen from an exotic stranger, and the myriad of ways in which life is so different from the way it is here in Canada.

I used to hate coming across these people. That was until I inadvertently became one. Last year I had the opportunity to “live abroad” (I’m vomiting as I right that). I now find myself peppering my conversations with useless facts about life in Italy as though my few months there impressed upon me a certain knowledge of the place, its people, and its character. But no sooner do the words “when I was in Italy” leave my lips and I feel something in my soul turn sideways. Am I that douchebag?

Despite my newfound “cultural capital” I feel really no different then when I left. I may be marginally more engaging at poncy academic events, but I found no insight about the ways of the world or who I was.

I was perhaps predisposed to feeling this way because I could never understand how seeing more of the world could make one any wiser than one who stayed put. I would always cite Emily Dickinson as my example. The woman barely left Amherst, and never left her house for the last twenty years of her life. And yet her poetry displays the most brilliant insight about life. Joy, sorrow, the natural world—no better travelled writer has written anything superior about these topics.

So while writers have been arguing for decades about the reason of her seclusion (Did she nurse a broken heart? Was she the victim of family cruelty?) I preferred to think of Dickinson as a brilliant recluse, who had all that one needed to know about life there in her home and in her orchard.

But last month Lyndall Gordon, Professor at Oxford and noted literary biographer, has suggested a new reason for Dickinson’s hermetic life: epilepsy. Lives Like Loaded Guns details the relationship between Dickinson, her sister-in-law, Susan, and her editor, Mabel Loomis Todd (who was also the mistress of her brother). Susan attempted to get Dickinson’s poems published. But the Amherst homebody couldn’t convince New York publishers to do so. Todd—worldly, and well-travelled—took to editing the poems herself and made Dickinson the household name she is today. Score one for the peripatetic set?

Maybe not. Emily may not have got around very much, but it is because of her poetry that she’s famous. Perhaps the fact that she never travelled and wrote about the life around her made her poems that much more universal. Todd just gave her some good PR. It’s just too bad that Dickinson may not have been able to travel, even if she wanted to.

For those of us who have the option, however, travel doesn’t necessarily bring the delights that it promises. I was thinking a lot about that while I was away and listening to Miranda Lambert’s album Revolution which came out just as I was leaving last September. A recurring theme on the album is a sense of home. The first verse of “Makin’ Plans,” for example, makes the case that travelling can change a person.

If I ever left this town
I’d never settle down
I’d just be wandering around
If I ever left this town

If I wasn’t by your side
I’d never be satisfied
Nothin’ would feel just right
If I wasn’t by your side

It’s a bit desperate, maybe. Should one not travel out of fear?

One of the most emotional tracks on the album, “The House That Built Me,” presents the flip side of the coin. While the house/life metaphor can be a bit shopworn, this song is so touching it works beautifully. The singer returns to her childhood home because

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

No wonder that it’s become the surprise hit of the album. Who can’t relate to wanting to go back home? Maybe Emily Dickinson. But if she did venture out her front door, she might be disappointed by what she found. “I don’t care for roving” she wrote her mentor Thomas Higginson in 1870. Thank goodness. Neither do I.

Some Quick Yeats from the Office

2010-03-02T18:37:00.001-05:00

Things to Think (At Work)

2010-02-05T14:37:00.001-05:00

Poetry, the Law, and Me

2010-01-18T00:25:00.001-05:00

There’s an urban legend that poetry is no longer relevant—that only scarf wearing, tweed sporting, rheumatic leftist white humanities profs of a certain age bother with the stuff (see, for example, Patton Oswalt’s plea to be named Poet Laureate, here). While poetry collections may not top the bestsellers lists these days, you can’t go to a movie, read a book, or watch an advertisement without running into some verse.

Or, for that matter, brush up on your copyright law. I had to do a bit of just that after my video post (below) was identified by YouTube as containing copyrighted content. Through the magic of technology, YouTube had managed to sniff out my less-than-thirty-second clip of Sugarland’s “Something More” that appeared at the end of the video. I naively assumed that this little snippet fell within “fair use” in the United States (where YouTube runs its servers, and therefore where its content is subject to law).

Silly me. Any use of recorded music on YouTube, even by an amateur user, it turns out, is subject to copyright law. What would have made an appropriate musical selection? Apparently anything prior to 1923, the last year in which creative content entered the public domain. Be warned, next time you might have to watch me “cut a rug” to “Toot Toot Tootsie” or “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (both hits that year).

Copyright is continually being extended by the American Congress. It was most recently in 1999 with the Sonny Bono Copyright Copyright Term Extension Act. That law could have been struck down in the 2003 Supreme Court case, Eldred v. Aschcroft. It was a case that turned on the publication of, you guessed it, poetry.

The plaintiff, Eric Eldred, had wanted to publish Robert Frost’s collection New Hampshire online in his continuing effort to promote literacy by making literary classics available to the masses for no cost (other that your internet connection). New Hampshire’s copyright was to expire, but the Bono Act ensured that the long-dead Frost would receive royalties for another twenty years (he died in 1963). Eldred defied the extension and published anyway. Court cases ensued. Eldred lost them all.

I’m not sure how much money I owe Frost for publishing some of his poems on this blog. You’d think he just might like the publicity. Wouldn’t you want your work to still be published without censure when you’re dead? How are we supposed to make something new when we’re cut off from the past?

Lawrence Lessig, Harvard professor and Eldred’s lawyer, asks that question in his book from 2008, Remix: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In the Hybrid Economy (available in paperback, via Amazon, here). Lessig worries about the erosion of the public domain. He writes that in 1923 the average copyright was held for 28 years. Today, the average copyright is forever—seriously, all current copyrights are enforced and can theoretically be extended ad infinitum just as the Bono Act extended them in 1999.

Imagine, Lessig asks, if we still had a 28 year copyright? I wouldn’t have to get by with Al Jolson numbers. I could rock out to “What Kind of Fool,” or “Morning Train.” And really, wouldn’t that be amazing? Or course, Barry Gibb and Sheena Easton would renew their copyrights and those particular songs wouldn’t be in the public domain. But think of all the great music that would be: the whole Lennon catalogue, for example.

But what’s really important (my rocking out certainly isn’t) is creating copyright law that encourages creativity, not limiting it in the name of profits. That’s why copyright was created in the first place. The full title of the first copyright law, the 1709 Statute of Anne (pictured above), is “An Act for the Encouragement of learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” Copyright was for a renewable term of 21 years.

My story has a happy ending. The copyright holder of my song decided not to wipe my audio track (I had that happen when I ran afoul of the Golden Girls theme some months ago), but rather to post an ad encouraging listeners to buy the song. What a brilliant solution. It doesn’t penalize amateur users, and encourages the sale of the product and the creative interpretation of that product.

So thank you, Universal Music Group, for your enlightened stance on copyright. I got to promote poetry, and you got to promote your band. Now, if only every company decided to “Act for the encouragement of learning” in addition to acting in the name of profits. This little episode has me heartened that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Totally Inappropriate Person

2010-01-14T23:59:00.001-05:00

Poker Face

2010-01-12T22:37:00.001-05:00

This Saturday I’m heading to the Met HD broadcast of Carmen. The new production, directed by Richard Eyre, got a rave review by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. He particularly lauded the direction of the final scene, which he wrote was

executed with such stunning realism, a dangerous mingling of sex, rebellion and violence: the very essence of “Carmen.”

Carmen caused a scandal when it was first performed in 1875. But in the past century-and-a-quarter it’s netted a number of high-profile admirers. Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Debussy—many contemporary composers were quick to declare their love. Hell, even Nietzsche thought Bizet had saved music with the opera.

Ever since, it’s been fashionable to like Carmen for all sorts of PC reasons: its musical merit, its exploration of class, its feminism, its realism. But let’s be real. Tommasini is right. Carmen is compelling because it is lurid, sexy, and ends with a good stabbing.

Feminists of course always get upset with that last one. If Carmen were a man, would he have to pay for his sins with his life? Of course. That’s the plot of Don Giovanni. At the very least he would be assaulted in his SUV with a nine iron.

But women are always more compelling than men. Don Giovanni would be no fun without Elvira. And Carmen would be a total snooze with just Don Jose. In fact, it would be a bit like an extended poem by Matthew Arnold. I’ve never been much a fan of his most famous, “Dover Beach.”

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night

As if to prove women are more interesting, Anthony Hecht wrote this brilliant parody entitled “The Dover Bitch.”

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.

Carmen must have been the perfect antidote to Arnold’s brooding—and chaste—Victorianism. A woman who refuses to love only one man? Arnold would have definitely thrown himself off those white cliffs.

Luckily we don’t live in such a bleak and bland world as Arnold. We have our very own Carmens, like Lady Gaga. As silly as the lyrics to “Poker Face” are, it’s hard not to admire Gaga’s take on a well-worn conceit. Instead of the “rebellious bird” of Bizet’s “Habanera,” Gaga goes for the poker table. Timely, clever, and catchy.

Can't read my,
Can't read my
No he can't read my poker face
(She's got to love nobody)
Can't read my
Can't read my
No he can't read my poker face
(She's got to love nobody)

P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)
P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)

I won't tell you that I love you
Kiss or hug you
Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin
I'm not lying I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunning

I can’t wait to watch Carmen do some bluffin’ with her muffin—in high def no less—this weekend on the big screen.

Perloff v. Bishop

2010-01-06T01:42:00.001-05:00

More Poetic Advertising

2009-11-01T15:18:00.001-05:00

Readers of this blog will have already taken notice of my considerable love for Walt Whitman. If you ever feel blue, just pick up some Whitman and you immediately feel better. It’s like feeling the sun on your face—Whitman just makes you feel like glad to be alive.

A couple of posts ago I griped about a few of the advertisements in the Toronto subway. I never thought I’d actually get to post about poems IN advertising, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

Levi’s has a new campaign which combines three of my favourite things: Whitman, jeans, and sentimentality. The new “go forth” ad (below) uses an amazing montage of scenes of youthful revelry in a post-Katrina New Orleans and pits them against scenes of financial scandal in post-Lehman Brothers New York.

The whole thing is actually narrated by Walt Whitman, using an extremely rare recording of him reading an excerpt from “America” (the recording is available online, via the American Academy of Poets, here).

The wax cylinder recording, like the commercial, leaves out the last two lines of the full poem.

America

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, 
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, 
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.

The ad seems to be going for Obama’s call for “renewing America’s promise.” I’ve never been so stirred by an ad before. The fireworks are exciting. And Whitman’s ghostly voice, echoing across the “adamant of Time,” is thrilling. I think Levi’s did an amazing job of it. It doesn’t feel like they’ve resurrected Whitman for nefarious corporate purposes (unlike the recent Direct TV Chris Farley ad).

But I must confess: after watching it I wanted to read some Whitman—or advocate for fiscal reform—not go out and buy pants.

On Naples

2009-10-12T18:29:00.004-04:00

When I was a kid we used to have Neapolitan ice cream in the fridge. It came in a box and was really messy to open up because you got it all over your fingers. But you got to lick them afterwards—in three flavours no less!

For a long time that’s all I knew of Naples: it made great ice cream. Many poems have been written about Naples. None to my knowledge about its ice cream. This is probably because Italians don’t eat ice cream like that any more (it evolved from Spumano, a 19th century dessert). They now indulge in gelato, a denser, creamier cousin to North America’s frozen confection.

Naples has an uneven reputation. It’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it places. I will always remember reading the first line of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s 1955 book on Domenico Scarlatti: “In 1685, Naples was as populous, as dirty, and as noisy as it is now.” Ouch.

Poets not surprisingly look on Naples slightly differently. Percy Bysshe Shelley called Naples home for a short time in 1818. He wrote two poems about the place. The first is happily titled “Lines written in dejection, near Naples.” He juxtaposes the beauty of the city against his current state, in which he has neither “hope nor health.” I don’t know what was bugging him that day, but it seems that the Naples of 1818 was a bit quieter than Ralph Kirkpatrick would have us believe: its voice is “soft like Solitudes’s.”

The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

Two years later Shelley wrote a poem reminiscing about the great time he had there and praising the townfolk for creating a constitutional monarchy after the revolt of July 1820. One of the striking lines is the second, in which he refers to the sun as the “lidless eye of heaven.” This was an image popular a couple centuries before: Shakespeare famously used it in Sonnet 18 (the “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” one), and Spenser used it before him in The Faerie Queene (I, iii, 4).

Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest
The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven!
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice
Which armed Victory offers up unstained
To Love, the flower-enchained!
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,—
Hail, hail, all hail!

One of the earliest poems about Naples was by the poet Statius, who was born there. His Silvae, written in the first century AD, were lengthy songs of praise. 2.2 was for a villa of Pollius Felix. No one has yet written a rhymed translation of these Latin poems, so it’s not much fun to quote. Suffice it to say he thought that Naples was pretty great.

It seems then that the poets love Naples. People who write books are a different matter. Mark Twain, like Raph Kirkpatrick, didn’t think so much of the place when he visited. He wrote that Neapolitans “crowd you -- infest you -- swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look sneaking and mean, and obsequious.”

I guess when it comes to Naples we praise in verse but complain in prose.

On that Poor Achaean, Taylor Swift

2009-09-17T02:27:00.003-04:00

Some weeks ago I set out to write a post about rage. It seemed like a timely idea since the American healthcare debate had reached such a level of indecency that many media outlets began replacing voter “anger” with the “r” word. The week of August 10 seems to be the flashpoint. Google “health care rage” and you’ll find several dozen news articles and op-ed pieces in newspapers like the Boston Herald, the Washington Post, and MSNBC using the “r” word (though not, curiously, the NYTimes).

That week also coincided with this blog’s look at the Iliad. It’s the first work of literature ever written down in Western culture—and its first word is “Rage” (μῆνιν). But I had just been to a wedding and wanted to write about something cheerier, so I chose “singing” instead.

This week, however, rage is once again impossible to avoid. As if ~~crazed rednecks~~ misinformed low-income voters weren’t enough, now tennis champions, members of congress, and music stars are all throwing fits. The targets of their anger are also surprisingly diverse: an Asian line judge, a black president, and a white teenage country music star. Pace Jimmy Carter, it can’t just be race that causes such an outburst. Why is everyone so angry?

William Blake didn’t see a problem with rage. It was the keeping it to yourself part that he thought was dangerous. His “A Poison Tree” makes a somewhat too-obvious statement about the importance of sharing. He would have done well in the Oprah-age of personal confession.

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

For Dylan Thomas, of course, rage was a good thing, if you knew what to rage against. Pleading with with your dying father to fight: absolutely. Foot foul: probably not so much. It’s hard not to be touched by this wrenching poem, which is somewhat surprisingly cast in a formal villanelle.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wallace Stevens is a poet I don’t like very much. He’s too self-consciously intellectual to be any fun to read—all his poems are such work. But this is of course a fatuous remark to make about a genius. In “The Idea of Order at Key West,” Stevens ruminates about the workings of the mind using the metaphor of a ship at sea, siren calls, and a sailing buddy named Ramon. The last quatrain has become famous for his remark about rage:

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Using the word “rage” with “order” is indeed brilliant. It sounds oxymoronic—using an irrational emotion as a verb which takes “order” as its object. But it makes perfect sense. As humans we try desperately to make things make sense. But we’re of course severely limited by the irrational way we think of things. Linguist George Lakoff has been making this point for years, most accessibly in last year’s The Political Mind. Lakoff (following Erving Goffman) suggests that our frames of reference, not our reason, govern our understanding. When we’re confronted with things outside our frame, we “rage for order.”

That’s not a good excuse for yelling at the president. And least of all for picking on poor Taylor Swift. But it is natural to get angry at things we don’t understand. We’ve been doing it—and writing about it—for as long as we can remember.

On a not-so “Fab” Ad

2009-09-13T01:16:00.001-04:00

2007 was a heady year for environmental politics. An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar, the “Live Earth” concerts gave people a reason to watch network television in July, fluorescent bulbs finally became affordable, and the lexicon absorbed a panoply of new buzzwords like “going green,” and “carbon footprint.” That year some interest group, perhaps intoxicated from bio-diesel fumes, posted ads in the subway which read: “Caught Doing Laundry During Peak Hours!” Pictured was a thirty-something woman holding a laundry basket—her mouth agape with horror at her misdeed. I found these ads ridiculous. Of all the environmental boogey-people to target, they apparently settled on what they thought was the worst of the worst: stay at home moms. They shouldn’t do their laundry during the day when corporations have non-green-roofed, non-LEED certified office buildings to deep freeze. They should do such indulgent activities at night. “I’m sorry, Timmy, Mommy can’t tuck you in tonight. She has to wash your clothes for tomorrow while the power grid is in low use.”

2009 has brought back another series of irksome ads. They range from the silly to the irresponsible. In the former category are the ChooseVeg.ca ads promoting veganism. As a bloodthirsty carnivore I realize that I’m already biased against their message. But touting the virtues of the “curious and insightful pig” and the “inquisitive, affectionate, and personable” chicken is too comedic to take seriously. In the latter category are the MoneyMart ads which promote the fleecing of poor people with 400% APR payday loans (see the Slate article on their shiftiness here.)

But I suggest the worst offender for awful advertisements is Bell. I’d like you to meet Liam. Liam is part of Bell’s new “Fab Ten” promotion for cellular phones. He’s from Toronto and describes his style as “Street Chic.” In the ad he proudly sports “the perfect Cardi/Hoodie combo.” Liam “[g]ot it on sale Xmas Eve when I was supposed to be shopping for a friend.”

Let’s get this straight. Liam is vain aesthete/last-minute shopper who’s so selfish he can’t even do a simple task for a friend without pampering himself with another purchase? Liam is, in short, a douchebag. Who on earth would want to be like Liam? I am, at this moment at least, proud to be a Rogers customer.

I generally like ads. I’ll sound like Don Draper if I say that they can enrich our experience of everyday products by imbuing them with an aesthetic charm. Imagine blow drying your hair after a shower without the image of lustrous locks billowing in slow motion. It seems so regal to do something so quotidian thanks to the folks at Pantine. But I’m afraid that this Bell ad appeals to a much baser instinct in us. It doesn’t elevate the notion of style, but celebrates an empty kind of aestheticism that’s solipsistic and sad. Why care about your friends when you can buy a phone for yourself that matches your hipster wardrobe?

It’s good we have other arts, like poetry, to remind us that sometimes the world is indeed too much with us. This poem by Wordsworth implores us to “go green,” but in a way that ads chastising desperate housewives could never do.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God!  I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

                              —William Wordsworth—

On the Poetry of Mad Men

2009-08-26T16:58:00.003-04:00

Two nights ago I watched the season three premiere of Mad Men. I’ll confess to being hopelessly addicted to this show, even if I remain conflicted about the series’ message. I can’t think of any other movie or television show which makes anomie look so stylish. The writers are careful to focus on character, but it’s undeniable that the show’s real hook is Danish Modern. It can’t help but glamourize jewel tones, skinny ties, teak furniture, and the Janus-faced lives of those at Sterling Cooper that go along with them.

But of particular importance to this blog: the show also manages to glamourize modern poetry. Season two found Don Draper fascinated with Frank O’Hara’s 1957 collection Meditations in an Emergency after sitting next to a hipster reading it in a bar. He even read the final stanzas of “Mayakovsky” in voiceover at the end of the first episode.

Thanks to this, sales of O’Hara’s book shot up 218%. It’s easy to see why “Mayakovsky” caught Don’s attention. It’s oppressive atomism and melancholia is a gloss on his personality.

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

The actual Mayakovsky (Vladimir, not O’Hara’s poem) led a tragic life of denunciations and depression. He shot himself at the age of 37. Perhaps a little too into his art, his suicide note was in the form of a poem. O’Hara himself met a sad end when he was hit by a dune buggy (on a beach on Fire Island, of all places!) Let’s hope Don doesn’t succumb to either of these fates.

Bruce Handy’s recent Vanity Fair piece also revealed another poetic tidbit about a character. Writer Matthew Weiner gave actress January Jones a poem by Sylvia Plath to read at the start of the second season. “Ariel,” written on Plath’s 30th birthday is, according to Handy, “an abstract howl of female rage and despair.” Handy fails to mention that Ariel is also the name of the horse Plath rides in the poem. At last Betty Draper’s hours of riding lessons throughout the second season make sense (and all this time I thought it was just for the sexy equestrian wear!) Plath’s metaphor of shedding the shackles of female domestic captivity (she “unpeels” as she rides) becomes itself a metaphor for Betty’s character arc in season two (as she finally stands up for herself).

White
Godiva, I unpeel --
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And
now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry

Melts
in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that
flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the
cauldron of morning.

I wonder if every character in the show has a similar literary pedigree? In celebration of Mad Men’s return, I’m going to suggest a poem each week that relates to a co-worker, family member, or sexual conquest of Don Draper (the latter category of course being the most substantial).

This week I’ll start with my favourite character: Roger Sterling. In Vanity Fair Handy described him as “sybaritic,” which of course means that he is ~~inflicted with a sexual transmitted disease~~ “devoted to excessive luxury” (OED). But since this is a blog post and not a William Makepeace Thackery novel, I’ll simply describe him as a hedonist. But he’s also a charming wit (see Season 3, Episode 1) and a stone cold silver fox. What poet’s work might encapsulate this decadent and libidinous entitlement?

Why Byron of course! Roger’s break-up speech to Joan in Season 1 (“I am so glad I got to roam those hillsides”) reminds me of this ditty. Byron, lecherous at the best of times, sounds downright dirty here. I think most people read it as a wistful elegy, but to me it’s the poetic equivalent of a drunken leer. Crisp and naughty—I bet Roger Sterling would like it just fine.

So, we'll go no more a roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
    By the light of the moon.

Next week: Peggy Olson.  Your suggestions, dear reader, are heartily welcome.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend…

2009-08-25T13:15:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note on my noon hour today. As I sit by my office window, bombarded by the sounds echoing off of the concrete library next door, I feel a sudden sadness for my elm which once stood mighty at my window-side. The old sentry was taken down by a crazy wind last summer. I miss my old friend, so as a tribute I thought I’d share this cute poem by Bishop. She wrote it when she was all of sixteen—which kind of shows but mostly doesn’t.

"To a tree"
Oh, tree outside my window, we are kin,
For you ask nothing of a friend but this:
To lean against the window and peer in
And watch me move about! Sufficient bliss

For me, who stand behind its framework stout,
Full of my tiny tragedies and grotesque grieves,
To lean against the window and peer out
Admiring infinites’mal leaves

How Can I Keep From Singing?

2009-08-15T01:54:00.006-04:00

Two posts ago I paraphrased the first two lines of The Iliad. Well, I paraphrased Wikipedia’s translation of the first two lines. Translation can be a tricky thing. As we found out earlier this week, mistranslation can send a Secretary of State into a bit of a fit. I like Wikipedia’s version, which is a mashup of two famous translations: Richard Lattimore’s 1951 version (long a favourite of academics), and Robert Fagles’ 1990 updating (now the gold standard of the English Iliad). Lattimore’s first line begins with “Sing, goddess, the anger […],” which is the construction I used. It has an incantational flare that I like. Fagles begins more brutally with “Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,” which is more striking—it really punches you in the nose. It’s also more faithful to the original Greek. Homer’s first word is μῆνιν (menis: rage). “Sing” (ἄειδε [aeide]) is actually the second word. Fagles version strikes me as more modern, even if it is closer to what Homer wanted. Does that mean we are more like eighth century BCE folk than we were in the 1950s?

From the Greek verb “aiedo” (to sing) we get the work “ode,” which is a familiar and specific poetic form. So, I thought it might be cheery to take a look at some poems that aren’t odes, but talk about the joy of singing. I can’t sing for the life of me, but I’m blessed to have many friends that can, and so this post is for them.

The only kind of singing I can do is the kind Walt Whitman was talking about in his famous poem, “I Hear America Singing.” Here the common man doesn’t actually “sing.” They make music with their labour. We often use musical words to describe the noise of machinery. We talk about the “hum” of this or that. But here Whitman raises the language to an ecstatic level. The very act of work becomes a symphony as players throughout the nation lend their hands make its performance. I love Whitman for his unapologetic romanticization of the working class. I’m sure everyday work like this in the 1860s wasn’t so jolly, but this poem has a great “whistle while you work” ethic, even if you’re not whistling.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1885 collection, A Children’s Garden of Verses, contains some beautiful and charming nuggets. Whenever I pick it up I get excited about boring my kids to sleep with it (I occasionally have fantasies that they’ll love having me read poetry to them before bed, but, well, let’s be real). In the simply titled “Singing,” Stevenson elides the difference between birdsong, work songs, children’s songs, and busking. The multicultural angle caps of this feel-good take on music and the everyday.

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
And nests among the trees;
The sailor sings of ropes and things
In ships upon the seas.

The children sing in far Japan,
The children sing in Spain;
The organ with the organ man
Is singing in the rain.

Our last poem is one of my all-time favourites (there are eight trillion reasons this poem is sheer genius, but I’ll restrain myself!) It, again, is not just about singing a song. In e.e. cummings’ “i love you much,” singing is the joyous sound that accompanies the arrival of someone you love. It makes me think of The Mirror Has Two Faces, which I’ve seen more times that I’d care to admit. As you may remember, hearing Puccini in your head when you’re in love plays a prominent role in that movie.

But what really kills me about this poem is the second-last stanza. Here singing still refers to that feeling you get when you see someone you love, but cummings casts a wider net, encouraging the world to get listening. It makes me think about what the beauty singing brings to the world, and about my cool friends that make that happen in my life.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)
more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky
-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess
(except my life)the true time of year-
and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each nearness)everyone certainly would(my

most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

So whether you hum, whistle, or sing, make sure you take some time to make the world a little more beautiful with your “ode” today. And avoid, if at all possible, going into a “menis.”

On Poems for Birthdays

2009-08-12T23:51:00.004-04:00

Occasional poetry is some of my favourite, not only because I have terribly bourgeois tastes, but because it's poetry that's meant to be shared with friends. So many poems are for private reflection, it's nice to have poems that are unapologetically social.

But when it comes to finding poems for birthdays, one has to be resourceful. Many of the best poems have such gloomy takes on getting older. This genre could occupy an entire post, but it's late and I'm going to leave you with only a few short favourites of a happier variety.

Jonathan Swift's wit is legendary. So, it's no surprise to find a birthday poem by him that sparkles with wit. Beginning in 1719 he wrote a birthday poems for "Stella," his mistress. In 1727 he wrote to an older Stella that birthdays were not occasions to

[...] think on our approaching ills
And talk of spectacles and pills.
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.

I think those lines still sound fresh. I can't imagine what were in pills in 1727, but apparently the daily chore of taking medication has not changed. But Swift is right. Birthdays are about celebrating. That's why I like this gem by Christina Rosetti. Thanks to the arrival of her loved one, it sounds like her birthday is going to be a real smash:

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Birthdays are also about giving thanks. That's why I love this poem by American poet Philip Appleman. Entitled "Birthday Card to My Mother," it pretty much makes every birthday card I've ever written sound like crap. But that's the great thing about poetry: it expresses all the things we can't put words to ourselves. I bet his mom was touched to read this last stanza:

You have survived it all,
come through wreckage and triumph hard
at the center but spreading
gentleness around you--nowhere
by your bright hearth has the dust
of bitterness lain unswept;
today, thinking back, thinking ahead
to other birthdays, I
lean upon your courage
and sign this card, as always,
with love.

So should you find yourself celebrating a birthday soon, forget about your ills, get yourself a silk tablecloth, and imagine getting a card from Philip Appleman. You deserve it!

On the Neo-con Version of History

2009-08-11T23:30:00.001-04:00

Every night as I fall asleep I listen to a podcast from iTunes U. I can’t go on enough about what a magnificent resource this is. Not only for acquiring knowledge from leading educational institutions, but also for falling asleep. Let’s be honest: university lectures are more often than not soporific. Ambien is less effective as a sedative.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been listening to Donald Kagan’s introductory course on Greek history that he gives at Yale. It’s particularly interesting not so much for the content (which can get a bit snoozy), but because Kagan is perhaps the most conspicuous neoconservative academic working at a reputable university today.

His introductory lecture is a miniature version of the NEH Jefferson Lecture he gave in 2005 (available here). To refer to Kagan’s view of history as conservative is to refer to Versailles as a house. You have to go back all the way to Livy to find a philosophy of history that Kagan agrees with. Namely, that the virtues of the past can be models for the future, while the vices must be avoided. This is a view of history that hasn’t held much water since at least the nineteenth century, as Kagan will readily tell you. In fact, Kagan is happy to tell you all about how history and the humanities have gone awry in the past two centuries with peevish disdain. However, I suppose he can be forgiven for being a bit crank. After all, it must be lonely to be a rational neoconservative working among the fey sophists of postmodern academia.

The year before Kagan’s lecture, poetry critic and literature professor Helen Vendler proposed “that the humanities should take as their central object of study not the texts of historians or philosophers, but the products of aesthetic endeavor: architecture, art, dance, music, literature, theater, and so on.” She thinks this would make history not only more compelling, since art is more interesting than philosophy or political theory, but also give a more well-rounded picture of the past. This is of course in direct opposition to Kagan, who thinks that only the political machinations of the Peloponnesus can give true insight into human possibility. Given Vendler’s proposition, and her status of a modern poetry lover, I thought it would be interesting to look at a couple of poems that took history as their subject to see what poets thought about this whole deal.

Our first poem is confounding one. W.B. Yeats had a rather bizarre view of history. He came up with a cockamamie notion of two “gyres” which intersected in some swirling vortex. I can only imagine two conical slinkies, so the profundity of this view is beyond me. In “The Second Coming,” the slinkies are apparently in a bad phase, and Armageddon is at hand. Yeats eschatological imagery is, I think, scarier than anything in the bible.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Thanks to this poem, I now understand this New Yoker cartoon:

In 1973 Robert Lowell published a collection of poems about history entitled, what else, History. Given his status as founder of the confessional poem, Lowell’s version of history is intimate and individual. Though he writes about Leonidas, Cleopatra, Napoleon, and Hitler, his poems are about the powerlessness of human action and the commonality of life experience. In “History,” Lowell remarks on the sad end we all meet, and the untidy mess we leave behind:

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.

As Jonathan Veitch wrote, Lowell has “a sense of history as rupture, of human action truncated by the imperium of death.” I’m guessing Kagan isn’t a fan. Lowell sounds an awful lot like those relativists that neoconservatives can’t stand.

In fact, I can’t think of any poems today that Kagan might like. I suppose he’ll have to stick to the Homer.

But why should a neoconservative view of history matter? And what about poetry? History has always been used to justify the present. For Kagan, neocon extraordinaire, the ancient Greek political system was the single greatest accomplishment of early civilization. It is therefore incumbent upon the present generation to gift democratic governments to every nation, by force if necessary, since they don’t have the benefit of an intellectual tradition rooted in ancient Greece. This is the intellectual ferment that resulted in the Iraq War. But is it sound reasoning?

When the Iraq war happened, I was youthfully neocon-inclined and was romanced by the notion of spreading democracy about the world. After the disaster that was the first five years of the War, I regret my enthusiasm. I’m haunted by Robert Bly’s poem “Call and Answer” from August of 2002. He wrote:

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can't
Escape from silence? If we don't lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.
How come we've listened to the great criers-Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglas-and now
We're silent as sparrows in the little bushes?
Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

Maybe if we thought more about the uses of history, we might come to better understand how we want to go about making our future. And maybe, some years from now, a new Homer will have something profound to write about what all went down.

Sing, goddess, the rage of the West, son of Greece, the destructive rage that sent countless ills on the Iraqis…

All in a Day’s Work: Part II

2009-07-28T05:19:00.006-04:00

What does work mean? Is it enough to put in a day’s work, or should our labours express some better purpose? As I suggested in Part I, thinking about the meaning of work is inescapable.

It wasn’t something poets did for a long time. Only in the nineteenth century do we find poems explicitly about working lives—and perhaps obviously so. That was an age of both the drudgery of factory work and the rise of a class of people who could choose which work they wanted to do. It’s funny how choice brings about anguish. And with anguish, of course, comes poetry.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about the soul-sucking nature of work without purpose. For him,

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

Being a Romantic guy, he contrasted his own inability to do good work with nature's natural humming rhythm of labour: bees stirring, brooks flowing, and birds flying. Nature is always at work, renewing itself. Humans are never so purposeful (at least not all the time). As nineteenth-century architecture critic John Ruskin remarked in “The Nature of Gothic,” “the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers.”

Part of Ruskin’s project was to bring moral purpose to work—to combine morbid thoughts with miserable work. Only through work could one think healthily, and only through thought could one work happily. That’s why he loved Gothic architecture so much. It was the perfect combination of artistic imagination and practical masonry. Flying buttresses not only look great, they hold up the wall!

But even by W.B. Yeats’s time, poets were still caught between the choice of working to get by, or working at what matters. In “The Choice,” Yeats ruefully remarks about concessions required by such a decision:

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

Talk about depressing. “Miserable workers” are left scarred, “morbid thinkers” are broke (no surprise there, I suppose), and both are demoralized at the end of it. Can the working life really be so bleak?

A more modern example always makes me feel better. It’s ambivalent, if not downright depressing, but it’s honest. Gary Snyder’s “Hay for the Horses” is a terse poem about an aging farmhand. It reads like a journalistic account of his hard-working morning and is capped off with a little folksy first person:

"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

Work life is just like that. It may not be what we want, but it’s what we do. What does it mean? Well, the horses got their hay.