Part of me thinks there is more to life than this. And another part of me thinks, no there isn’t, I’m just some damn character in a novel—probably by Virginia Woolf or Franz Kafka or someone like that—who’s always thought there was more to life and is rudely awakened at some depressing point. Or—and this is even worse—who goes on believing there’s more to life until the day she dies but never gets anything more. Then the literary question is all, “Well, should we despair for her, because she never got what she wanted, or should be envy her and rejoice for her because she believed in the chance up until the very end?”
Let me tell ya. Don’t rejoice. Don’t. It’ll piss me off.
It’s like the people who see poetry in tragedy. Seriously. Shut the hell up. Tragedy is never poetic unless you’re the person to whom something tragic is not happening, or this is years down the line and you don’t feel tragic anymore and you feel like saying something profound like, “You know, I think that had to happen to me, in order for me to grow.” Well, I’m sick of growth. If I wanted to see more growth I’d get a damn Chia pet, and I’ve always thought those things were hideously ugly. (By the way, have you seen that there’s an Obama Chia pet now? Seriously? That’s how we honor our presidents?)
Anyway—I’m in one of those moods tonight, so maybe we should all just disregard this pointless blather. But I do want to say that I don’t really feel like being Mrs. Dalloway or, say, that girl from “The Glass Menagerie” whose name I can’t remember right now (see?).
Let’s put on a comedy, Shakespeare.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin (And More)
I was thinking (as I often do when I’m washing my face and looking at myself in the mirror—don’t ask) about a “short story,” or fable, really, that I wrote for my book. Frayne (a dragon) tells it to Susan (a little girl), and it’s about a tiny mosquito that overcomes a bully of a dragon by biting him all over. And as I was thinking, I wondered what people would say about the little story, because, at the end, the dragon has learned his lesson and the mosquito gives him some very effective salve for his bites. All is happy, the end.
I could just hear them:
“Oh, come on. What a sickly sweet way to end a story. Everybody wins? The bad guy doesn’t get punished? Everyone is friends?”
And maybe it’s true, maybe it’s a little too optimistic, or maybe it’s too Mary Poppins/Pollyanna. But I had to end it that way, and here’s why.
Because, when I was little, my grandparents had an old book of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just-So Stories,” and I read the story about the rude rhinoceros who leaves his skin on the riverbank. And a man, to punish the rhino for eating his cake, puts the leftover crumbs and some burned currants in the skin, so that when the rhino puts it back on, he itches until his smooth skin wrinkles all over—and he itches forever. Forever.
When I read that as a little girl, it made me sick. I hated that man who made the rhinoceros itch, no matter what the reason. I hated him because—because—he didn’t just cause the rhinoceros pain. No. There is dignity in pain, in bearing it, even in being dealt it, somehow, in martyrdom, but there is no dignity in itching. It even makes a sentence sound absurd. The rhino—he didn’t go out with a bang, he wasn’t put on the rack, he didn’t get his head chopped off, he was made to itch—forever. It’s painful, it’s horrifying, and it’s ridiculous.
Another thing that happened to me a lot when I was little was that my brother would scratch me when we were fighting. And sometimes scratches, besides hurting, will puff up a bit and itch monstrously. The pain of those scratches didn’t bother me. But the itching—that would bring tears to my eyes. I’d scratch my hand or my arm or whatever body part it was and think, “He must really hate me. To want to cause me shame like this.”
Or, well, maybe those weren’t the exact words that went through my head. But they were the essence of my feelings. And those feelings, if people ever accuse me of being sentimental or sickly sweet or too nice, are why I can’t let dragons itch forever, or even for very long. It’s because the rhinoceros did. And because I never want to be the cause of someone or something’s suffering like that, not even in a story.
The end.
I could just hear them:
“Oh, come on. What a sickly sweet way to end a story. Everybody wins? The bad guy doesn’t get punished? Everyone is friends?”
And maybe it’s true, maybe it’s a little too optimistic, or maybe it’s too Mary Poppins/Pollyanna. But I had to end it that way, and here’s why.
Because, when I was little, my grandparents had an old book of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just-So Stories,” and I read the story about the rude rhinoceros who leaves his skin on the riverbank. And a man, to punish the rhino for eating his cake, puts the leftover crumbs and some burned currants in the skin, so that when the rhino puts it back on, he itches until his smooth skin wrinkles all over—and he itches forever. Forever.
When I read that as a little girl, it made me sick. I hated that man who made the rhinoceros itch, no matter what the reason. I hated him because—because—he didn’t just cause the rhinoceros pain. No. There is dignity in pain, in bearing it, even in being dealt it, somehow, in martyrdom, but there is no dignity in itching. It even makes a sentence sound absurd. The rhino—he didn’t go out with a bang, he wasn’t put on the rack, he didn’t get his head chopped off, he was made to itch—forever. It’s painful, it’s horrifying, and it’s ridiculous.
Another thing that happened to me a lot when I was little was that my brother would scratch me when we were fighting. And sometimes scratches, besides hurting, will puff up a bit and itch monstrously. The pain of those scratches didn’t bother me. But the itching—that would bring tears to my eyes. I’d scratch my hand or my arm or whatever body part it was and think, “He must really hate me. To want to cause me shame like this.”
Or, well, maybe those weren’t the exact words that went through my head. But they were the essence of my feelings. And those feelings, if people ever accuse me of being sentimental or sickly sweet or too nice, are why I can’t let dragons itch forever, or even for very long. It’s because the rhinoceros did. And because I never want to be the cause of someone or something’s suffering like that, not even in a story.
The end.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Haiku
So, par for the course, while drinking lattes and eating cheesecake at B&N with my mom and brother, my brother brought a couple of books into the cafe to look at. One was a book of haiku we'd looked at a couple of other times and really enjoyed, and it made me remember a haiku I'd thought of but forgotten to write down the other day about an apple tree. Luckily, my mom had a notepad in her purse, and she and I both had pens, so before long we were all three writing haiku.
Here is my apple haiku:
Shiny round apples
hanging from the tree branches
sway gently, still small.
And the other haiku I came up with:
The still silverfish
on the floor believes itself
completely hidden.
My small, fuzzy dog
first eats kibbles and then claims
the comfiest chair.
The chipotle sauce,
even when sniffed just a bit,
goes up my nose—ouch.
Yeah, as you can tell--they were just for fun. :)
Here is my apple haiku:
Shiny round apples
hanging from the tree branches
sway gently, still small.
And the other haiku I came up with:
The still silverfish
on the floor believes itself
completely hidden.
My small, fuzzy dog
first eats kibbles and then claims
the comfiest chair.
The chipotle sauce,
even when sniffed just a bit,
goes up my nose—ouch.
Yeah, as you can tell--they were just for fun. :)
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Read an Article on Infanticide for Class, and Then . . .
So it's occurred to me that, since this is a blog about my writing, I can basically write about anything I want and still have it apply. Because, you know, I'm writing it.
That said, I'll jump right in. I was reading an article by Steven Pinker called "Why They Kill Their Newborns" for the composition class I teach tomorrow night, and it just annoyed me so much that I had to jot down my response to it. Not a scholarly response, mind you--I have no intention of doing any research here or anything like that. (It's an argument class I teach, and I have that kind of stuff on the brain.) But I have to say something about the article, and I figure this blog is the best place to do it.
Steven Pinker is an intelligent person--that much is obvious. Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and all that. And he makes an interesting claim: that mothers who kill their newborn babies do it not because they're monsters or because they're insane, but because they're genetically predisposed to do so when found in their particular unfavorable circumstances. Pinker says that "[in] most societies documented by anthropologists, including those of hunter-gatherers (our best glimpse into our ancestors' way of life), a woman lets a newborn die when its prospects for survival to adulthood are poor. The forecast might be based on abnormal signs in the infant, or on bad circumstances for successful motherhood at the time."
Okay. I get that. And if he'd said, "This is why a young, single, homeless woman killed her infant," I'd get that. too. I'd say, "Yeah, man, I think you're on to something."
But Pinker is talking about Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, "18-year-old college sweethearts [who] delivered their baby in a motel room and, according to prosecutors, killed him and left his body in a dumpster" and "another 18-year-old, Melissa Drexler, [who] arrived at her high school prom, locked herself in a bathroom stall, gave birth to a boy and left him dead in a garbage can."
Yeahhhhhh . . . that was biology?
To his credit, Pinker tries to address the possible skepticism himself: "And yet the recent neonaticides will seem puzzling. These are middle-class girls whose babies would have been kept far from starvation by the girl's parents or by any of thousands of eager adoptive couples. But our emotions, fashioned by the slow hand of natural selection, respond to the signals of the long-vanished tribal environment in which we spent 99 percent of our evolutionary history. Being young and single are two bad omens for successful motherhood, and the girl who conceals her pregnancy and procrastinates over its consequences will soon be disquieted by a third omen. She will give birth in circumstances that are particularly unpromising for a human mother: alone."
All right. Yes. I get it--being young and single and alone might kick this biological impulse to kill one's child into gear. That's what a prehistoric hunter-gatherer (or maybe just gatherer) woman would have done. But would that prehistoric woman have brought about any of these unfavorable circumstances herself? Would she have hid her pregnancy under, I don't know, her bearskin garment and gone off by herself to deliver her baby? I doubt it, unless she were some kind of social outcast or something. And that's what I think it all comes down to anyway--society.
I'm sorry, but I think that Pinker's idea that middle-class girls kill their babies because of genetic programming is ridiculous. Like I said, maybe this would happen to a girl on the streets, or in a destitute family, who would have nowhere to turn. Middle-class girls do have somewhere to turn, but they know that society will ridicule them if they do. It's not that young, single women can't be good mothers today or raise their children in good environments--it's that society will look down on them for it, and the girls know this and can't bear the thought. So they hide their pregnancies, shut their minds and emotions off to anything connected to their babies, and, in desperation, kill those babies or allow them to die because they think they have to to avoid the raised eyebrows and head shaking. I'm not saying I don't pity this--I do--I just don't think it has anything to do with what Pinker is proposing.
Also, his idea that we have sympathy for those who kill their newborns but not for those who kill, say, their three-year-old children, because we don't see newborns as "complete" people yet seems rather out there to me, too. I think that, if it's true we feel this way, it's about us, the adults and our psychological responses and attachments, not the growth of a baby into a "real" or "complete" person. I know this is a really crude and simple example, but, well--I'm a doll collector. And when I want to buy a particular doll, it kind of sucks to realize I don't have enough money for it and have to walk away from the shelf empty-handed. But when I actually pick up that package and carry it around the store, believing that I'm going to buy it before talking myself out of it at the last minute, I have a lot harder time putting it back. And I think about how much I wish it were a part of my collection a lot more after I leave the store than I would have if I had just looked at it wistfully for a few seconds. And half the time I end up going back the next day to buy it after all.
Here's maybe a better example (and I don't have kids, so I'm going to talk about the next best thing): I saw a puppy the other day at a flea market that was adorable. Absolutely adorable. And I wanted it and had to leave rather sadly when I realized (once again) that I couldn't afford it. Now, if I found out the next day that that puppy had died, I'd be genuinely sad. I might even be depressed for a few hours or at random points during the next few days. But it would be NOTHING compared to how I'd feel if my three-year-old dog, Dax, died. I would be beside myself. I doubt I'd eat. Maybe I'd sleep--since that's my way of escaping pain. And you'd better bet that I'd be depressed indefinitely.
And why? Because of the difference in my emotional investments in the two dogs, over time. Yes, I love Dax more, because she's been with me for three years, because I've learned all her little moods, because she's a part of so many of my memories. That's why I'd be more upset if she died. Not because she's older, but because I've spent more time with her, and thus bonded more with her (and allowed myself to bond more with her, because she's mine, and I know she's going to remain mine, unlike that other little puppy).
So I think this is what people are unconsciously thinking when they express more horror at the thought of killing a three-year-old, as opposed to a newborn. They know how bonds strengthen over time (no matter how powerful that initial bond it), and they can't imagine the monstrosity of murdering something that should be so dear to you. Not that a newborn wouldn't be dear--it usually is. But I can imagine a scared, desperate woman cutting herself off from any love for her newborn, distancing herself from it, even imagining it isn't hers or that it isn't real. Not because either of those things is true--but because the mind can be a very powerful thing, and we're very good at convincing ourselves of any number of lies. Could she convince herself that a child she's thought of as hers for three years isn't anymore--or isn't even real? I doubt it, unless she really is insane.
I feel bad for mothers who are so desperate not to be "found out" that they kill their children, and I feel sick about the dead babies. It makes me sick that society makes people feel as though they have no options. But I really don't think it's Pinker's version of biology at work here, no matter how good he makes his idea sound.
And now--whew, now I'm really glad I wrote this. I don't feel annoyed anymore, and I think I can go to sleep.
That said, I'll jump right in. I was reading an article by Steven Pinker called "Why They Kill Their Newborns" for the composition class I teach tomorrow night, and it just annoyed me so much that I had to jot down my response to it. Not a scholarly response, mind you--I have no intention of doing any research here or anything like that. (It's an argument class I teach, and I have that kind of stuff on the brain.) But I have to say something about the article, and I figure this blog is the best place to do it.
Steven Pinker is an intelligent person--that much is obvious. Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and all that. And he makes an interesting claim: that mothers who kill their newborn babies do it not because they're monsters or because they're insane, but because they're genetically predisposed to do so when found in their particular unfavorable circumstances. Pinker says that "[in] most societies documented by anthropologists, including those of hunter-gatherers (our best glimpse into our ancestors' way of life), a woman lets a newborn die when its prospects for survival to adulthood are poor. The forecast might be based on abnormal signs in the infant, or on bad circumstances for successful motherhood at the time."
Okay. I get that. And if he'd said, "This is why a young, single, homeless woman killed her infant," I'd get that. too. I'd say, "Yeah, man, I think you're on to something."
But Pinker is talking about Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, "18-year-old college sweethearts [who] delivered their baby in a motel room and, according to prosecutors, killed him and left his body in a dumpster" and "another 18-year-old, Melissa Drexler, [who] arrived at her high school prom, locked herself in a bathroom stall, gave birth to a boy and left him dead in a garbage can."
Yeahhhhhh . . . that was biology?
To his credit, Pinker tries to address the possible skepticism himself: "And yet the recent neonaticides will seem puzzling. These are middle-class girls whose babies would have been kept far from starvation by the girl's parents or by any of thousands of eager adoptive couples. But our emotions, fashioned by the slow hand of natural selection, respond to the signals of the long-vanished tribal environment in which we spent 99 percent of our evolutionary history. Being young and single are two bad omens for successful motherhood, and the girl who conceals her pregnancy and procrastinates over its consequences will soon be disquieted by a third omen. She will give birth in circumstances that are particularly unpromising for a human mother: alone."
All right. Yes. I get it--being young and single and alone might kick this biological impulse to kill one's child into gear. That's what a prehistoric hunter-gatherer (or maybe just gatherer) woman would have done. But would that prehistoric woman have brought about any of these unfavorable circumstances herself? Would she have hid her pregnancy under, I don't know, her bearskin garment and gone off by herself to deliver her baby? I doubt it, unless she were some kind of social outcast or something. And that's what I think it all comes down to anyway--society.
I'm sorry, but I think that Pinker's idea that middle-class girls kill their babies because of genetic programming is ridiculous. Like I said, maybe this would happen to a girl on the streets, or in a destitute family, who would have nowhere to turn. Middle-class girls do have somewhere to turn, but they know that society will ridicule them if they do. It's not that young, single women can't be good mothers today or raise their children in good environments--it's that society will look down on them for it, and the girls know this and can't bear the thought. So they hide their pregnancies, shut their minds and emotions off to anything connected to their babies, and, in desperation, kill those babies or allow them to die because they think they have to to avoid the raised eyebrows and head shaking. I'm not saying I don't pity this--I do--I just don't think it has anything to do with what Pinker is proposing.
Also, his idea that we have sympathy for those who kill their newborns but not for those who kill, say, their three-year-old children, because we don't see newborns as "complete" people yet seems rather out there to me, too. I think that, if it's true we feel this way, it's about us, the adults and our psychological responses and attachments, not the growth of a baby into a "real" or "complete" person. I know this is a really crude and simple example, but, well--I'm a doll collector. And when I want to buy a particular doll, it kind of sucks to realize I don't have enough money for it and have to walk away from the shelf empty-handed. But when I actually pick up that package and carry it around the store, believing that I'm going to buy it before talking myself out of it at the last minute, I have a lot harder time putting it back. And I think about how much I wish it were a part of my collection a lot more after I leave the store than I would have if I had just looked at it wistfully for a few seconds. And half the time I end up going back the next day to buy it after all.
Here's maybe a better example (and I don't have kids, so I'm going to talk about the next best thing): I saw a puppy the other day at a flea market that was adorable. Absolutely adorable. And I wanted it and had to leave rather sadly when I realized (once again) that I couldn't afford it. Now, if I found out the next day that that puppy had died, I'd be genuinely sad. I might even be depressed for a few hours or at random points during the next few days. But it would be NOTHING compared to how I'd feel if my three-year-old dog, Dax, died. I would be beside myself. I doubt I'd eat. Maybe I'd sleep--since that's my way of escaping pain. And you'd better bet that I'd be depressed indefinitely.
And why? Because of the difference in my emotional investments in the two dogs, over time. Yes, I love Dax more, because she's been with me for three years, because I've learned all her little moods, because she's a part of so many of my memories. That's why I'd be more upset if she died. Not because she's older, but because I've spent more time with her, and thus bonded more with her (and allowed myself to bond more with her, because she's mine, and I know she's going to remain mine, unlike that other little puppy).
So I think this is what people are unconsciously thinking when they express more horror at the thought of killing a three-year-old, as opposed to a newborn. They know how bonds strengthen over time (no matter how powerful that initial bond it), and they can't imagine the monstrosity of murdering something that should be so dear to you. Not that a newborn wouldn't be dear--it usually is. But I can imagine a scared, desperate woman cutting herself off from any love for her newborn, distancing herself from it, even imagining it isn't hers or that it isn't real. Not because either of those things is true--but because the mind can be a very powerful thing, and we're very good at convincing ourselves of any number of lies. Could she convince herself that a child she's thought of as hers for three years isn't anymore--or isn't even real? I doubt it, unless she really is insane.
I feel bad for mothers who are so desperate not to be "found out" that they kill their children, and I feel sick about the dead babies. It makes me sick that society makes people feel as though they have no options. But I really don't think it's Pinker's version of biology at work here, no matter how good he makes his idea sound.
And now--whew, now I'm really glad I wrote this. I don't feel annoyed anymore, and I think I can go to sleep.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
4 AM and Words
I felt like writing a blog when I should be sleeping, so here it is: Have you ever "tasted" a word? It drives my boyfriend crazy when I say that. Every now and then he'll hear me muttering something to myself and ask me what I said.
"Oh, nothing," I tell him. "Just tasting a word."
Annoys the heck out of him. I've been told by others that they can probably understand his annoyance. He thinks I say things like this on purpose to annoy him, but I swear it isn't true (in this case at least). You really can taste words--or, perhaps, feel the sound of them. (Is there a sense I haven't covered yet?)
I like lots of words, but tonight the word "political" popped into my head. Think about it. Not the meaning, just the word. Just the sound of it. Say it out loud: Political.
Now say it like Ally McBeal would say it. Pol-i-tical. Add in a lip curl and accentuate the second syllable.
It just got a little bit evil, didn't it?
I think that ending "L" is the reason I like it so much . . . or the whole "-litical," said quickly. I don't know. There is something about "L"s.
Oh, right--did I mention I've been watching Ally McBeal lately? Sorry. This is what you get for four in the morning.
"Oh, nothing," I tell him. "Just tasting a word."
Annoys the heck out of him. I've been told by others that they can probably understand his annoyance. He thinks I say things like this on purpose to annoy him, but I swear it isn't true (in this case at least). You really can taste words--or, perhaps, feel the sound of them. (Is there a sense I haven't covered yet?)
I like lots of words, but tonight the word "political" popped into my head. Think about it. Not the meaning, just the word. Just the sound of it. Say it out loud: Political.
Now say it like Ally McBeal would say it. Pol-i-tical. Add in a lip curl and accentuate the second syllable.
It just got a little bit evil, didn't it?
I think that ending "L" is the reason I like it so much . . . or the whole "-litical," said quickly. I don't know. There is something about "L"s.
Oh, right--did I mention I've been watching Ally McBeal lately? Sorry. This is what you get for four in the morning.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sappho
I've been reading Sappho.
I've wanted to for a long time now--or maybe not that long a time, maybe it's only been a few weeks or a month or something, but with my impatience these days it seems like forever. I've wanted to read her ever since my brother remembered who he'd been thinking of, that's how long I've been wanting to read Sappho.
My brother and I go to bookstores and bookstore cafes a lot; we both love coffee, and we both love books. Well, actually, he loves coffee and tea and all that stuff, and I just love the coffee and tea lattes, and sometimes just plain tea. And also he tends toward modern adult literature much of the time, and I tend toward children's literature, especially fantasy. But we meet a lot on the classics (in that, we've both read some of them and want to read more) and we're always open for general discussion on any kind of books or literature, any kind at all. SO, to wrap this story up, one time in Barnes & Noble he was trying to recall an ancient female poet. I told him I didn't know (yes, it's true, I didn't know), and the matter dropped with a few shrugs of the shoulders. But a week or so later we were in Borders, and he happened to mention that, oh yeah, he remembered who that poet was he'd been trying to think of--Sappho. And we looked for a copy of her poems, since we were right in a bookstore after all, but couldn't find one.
And that is when I decided I wanted to read Sappho.
I looked her up online shortly thereafter. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know much about her. Okay, fine, all I pretty much knew was that her name sounded familiar. I'm not sure if I even knew she was a poet, or a woman, of if she was real (you know, she could have been some Greek mythological figure or something). Yeah. I disgust me, too. But at least one of the reasons I didn't know much about her (besides the fact that my literary education is a bit shoddy) is that no one knows much about Sappho. Apparently we only know a few brief facts about her, and the rest is highly debatable. She was born around 630 B.C.E., she was from the island of Lesbos, and she was most likely bi-sexual. She might have been married. She might have had a daughter. And her poetry was loved and celebrated by many, but despised by religious figures, and so most of her work has not survived. It has been burned to cinders by Crusaders and torn into strips for mummy wrappings; it has been allowed to deteriorate until we have nothing left but two seeimingly intact poems amidst mostly fragments of verse that have a strange and alluring beauty all their own.
I think I might love Sappho.
I looked for her in Half Price Books recently and bought a copy of Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone--who drives me up a wall. Barnstone, not Sappho. I know, this is the person who barely knew Sappho existed a few months ago, criticizing one of her translators. But his introduction is just so pompous and wordy and "Look at me, look at what metaphors I can create!" and--
No. No. I will not go off on a rant about translators. This is about Sappho.
Ahem.
So I am about halfway through the book, and here are some of my favorite lines/verses so far, from her untitled poems and fragments:
Icy water babbles through apple branches
and roses leave shadow on the ground
and bright shaking leaves pour down
profound sleep.
* * *
Flaming summer
charms the earth with its own fluting,
and under leaves
the cicada scrapes its tiny wings together
and incessantly
pours out full shrill song
* * *
Love shook my heart like wind
on a mountain punishing oak trees.
* * *
and how there was no
holy shrine
where we were absent,
no grove
no dance
no sound
* * *
A deed
your lovely face
if not, winter
and no pain
* * *
Now she shines among Lydian women
as after sunset
the rosy-fingered moon
surpasses all the stars, and her light reaches
equally across the salt sea
and over meadows steeped in flowers.
* * *
Sigh. Beautiful. And then I wrote this, poor poem as it is, about Sappho's line fragment "if not, winter." Seems a shame to put it in a post with snippets of Sappho, but--oh well. Here it is--
For Sappho
If not, winter
if not—
and though
it speaks it seems
of sorrow
it sounds
like bells
If not—
if not,
winter
it seems
will come down
in fallen flight,
roses close
on needled green
snow will awaken
the night
Fire
will not touch it
April
will not take it
it will
cool
it will
freeze
ice will crust over
your bones
but it’s all right
you’ll breathe
frost
and exhale
legacy
through your
paling
crystal mouth
* * *
And now, good night.
I've wanted to for a long time now--or maybe not that long a time, maybe it's only been a few weeks or a month or something, but with my impatience these days it seems like forever. I've wanted to read her ever since my brother remembered who he'd been thinking of, that's how long I've been wanting to read Sappho.
My brother and I go to bookstores and bookstore cafes a lot; we both love coffee, and we both love books. Well, actually, he loves coffee and tea and all that stuff, and I just love the coffee and tea lattes, and sometimes just plain tea. And also he tends toward modern adult literature much of the time, and I tend toward children's literature, especially fantasy. But we meet a lot on the classics (in that, we've both read some of them and want to read more) and we're always open for general discussion on any kind of books or literature, any kind at all. SO, to wrap this story up, one time in Barnes & Noble he was trying to recall an ancient female poet. I told him I didn't know (yes, it's true, I didn't know), and the matter dropped with a few shrugs of the shoulders. But a week or so later we were in Borders, and he happened to mention that, oh yeah, he remembered who that poet was he'd been trying to think of--Sappho. And we looked for a copy of her poems, since we were right in a bookstore after all, but couldn't find one.
And that is when I decided I wanted to read Sappho.
I looked her up online shortly thereafter. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know much about her. Okay, fine, all I pretty much knew was that her name sounded familiar. I'm not sure if I even knew she was a poet, or a woman, of if she was real (you know, she could have been some Greek mythological figure or something). Yeah. I disgust me, too. But at least one of the reasons I didn't know much about her (besides the fact that my literary education is a bit shoddy) is that no one knows much about Sappho. Apparently we only know a few brief facts about her, and the rest is highly debatable. She was born around 630 B.C.E., she was from the island of Lesbos, and she was most likely bi-sexual. She might have been married. She might have had a daughter. And her poetry was loved and celebrated by many, but despised by religious figures, and so most of her work has not survived. It has been burned to cinders by Crusaders and torn into strips for mummy wrappings; it has been allowed to deteriorate until we have nothing left but two seeimingly intact poems amidst mostly fragments of verse that have a strange and alluring beauty all their own.
I think I might love Sappho.
I looked for her in Half Price Books recently and bought a copy of Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone--who drives me up a wall. Barnstone, not Sappho. I know, this is the person who barely knew Sappho existed a few months ago, criticizing one of her translators. But his introduction is just so pompous and wordy and "Look at me, look at what metaphors I can create!" and--
No. No. I will not go off on a rant about translators. This is about Sappho.
Ahem.
So I am about halfway through the book, and here are some of my favorite lines/verses so far, from her untitled poems and fragments:
Icy water babbles through apple branches
and roses leave shadow on the ground
and bright shaking leaves pour down
profound sleep.
* * *
Flaming summer
charms the earth with its own fluting,
and under leaves
the cicada scrapes its tiny wings together
and incessantly
pours out full shrill song
* * *
Love shook my heart like wind
on a mountain punishing oak trees.
* * *
and how there was no
holy shrine
where we were absent,
no grove
no dance
no sound
* * *
A deed
your lovely face
if not, winter
and no pain
* * *
Now she shines among Lydian women
as after sunset
the rosy-fingered moon
surpasses all the stars, and her light reaches
equally across the salt sea
and over meadows steeped in flowers.
* * *
Sigh. Beautiful. And then I wrote this, poor poem as it is, about Sappho's line fragment "if not, winter." Seems a shame to put it in a post with snippets of Sappho, but--oh well. Here it is--
For Sappho
If not, winter
if not—
and though
it speaks it seems
of sorrow
it sounds
like bells
If not—
if not,
winter
it seems
will come down
in fallen flight,
roses close
on needled green
snow will awaken
the night
Fire
will not touch it
April
will not take it
it will
cool
it will
freeze
ice will crust over
your bones
but it’s all right
you’ll breathe
frost
and exhale
legacy
through your
paling
crystal mouth
* * *
And now, good night.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Montgomery and Brontes and Austens
So the title of this blog is a quote, if you haven't figured that out. Yes, my writing does tend to be old-fashioned a lot (kind of unfortunately), but I don't usually go around bandying verbs like "fancy" (or the noun form of "fancy" either, really). The quote is from Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery, whom many already know is my favorite author (rivaled only by Tolstoy, my old-time love). Montgomery is best know for her classic, Anne of Green Gables, and don't get me wrong, Anne of Green Gables is a fantastic book. But Emily--Emily Byrd Starr--is a writer, you see, and beyond that, I've always looked at her as an ingeniously drawn character who seems so real that I've wished several times I could meet her. (It will always be a great sorrow for me that I can never meet Montgomery, who died much too early.)
But anyway (before I start digressing like crazy), here is the passage I took my title from:
"I shall carry pictures of you wherever I go, Star," Dean was saying. Star was his old nickname for her--not a pun on her name but because he said she reminded him of a star. "I shall see you sitting in your room by that old lookout window, spinning your pretty cobwebs--pacing up and down in this old garden--wandering in the Yesterday Road--looking out to sea. Whenever I shall recall a bit of Blair Water loveliness I shall see you in it. After all, all other beauty is only a background for a beautiful woman."
"Her pretty cobwebs--" ah, there it was. That was all Emily heard. She did not even realise that he was telling her he thought her a beautiful woman.
"Do you think what I write is nothing but cobwebs, Dean?" she asked chokingly.
Dean looked surprised, doing it very well.
"Star, what else is it? What do you think it is yourself? I'm glad you can amuse yourself by writing. It's a splendid thing to have a little hobby of the kind. And if you can pick up a few shekels by it--well, that's all very well too in this kind of a world. But I'd hate to have you dream of being a Bronte or an Austen--and wake to find you'd wasted your youth on a dream."
"I don't fancy myself a Bronte or an Austen," said Emily. "But you didn't talk like that long ago, Dean. You used to think that I could do something some day."
"We don't bruise the pretty visions of a child," said Dean. "But it's foolish to carry childish dreams over into maturity. Better face facts. You write charming things of their kind, Emily. Be content with that and don't waste your best years yearning for the unattainable or striving to reach some height far beyond your grasp."
But, Dean--how do you stop "yearning"--for anything? If we're Brontes or Austens or nothing but scribbling fools?
It's odd, but, while most fans of the Emily books hate Dean, I don't. I never have. He is good and he is bad, like all of us, and just as selfish and giving by turns.
There--I'm starting to talk old-fashioned again--it happens a lot more when I just get done reading something "old."
Maud (as L. M. Montgomery was called, for her middle name) didn't think she was an Austen or a Bronte either, and she isn't, of course. She's only recently made it into the literary canon, and she has little more than a dusty corner in it now, at best. Besides, she could never get away from being classified as a "children's writer," even though she wrote books aimed at adult audiences as well. Even today, those adult books--A Tangled Web, The Blue Castle, and in my opinion Emily's Quest and several of the later Anne books--can be found only in the children's section, if they can be found in a bookstore at all.
And, sure, much of the prose she wrote was purple--it drips still with flowers and dew and "pretty cobwebs" spun up in old farmhouse garret rooms--but she has created, for me, the best damn characters who have ever "lived." And she has truths in her "children's books" that still ring out for me, and she has been my idol since I was in my early teens for a reason.
If I could have met her, I would have told her that. And quite unabashedly, too.
But anyway (before I start digressing like crazy), here is the passage I took my title from:
"I shall carry pictures of you wherever I go, Star," Dean was saying. Star was his old nickname for her--not a pun on her name but because he said she reminded him of a star. "I shall see you sitting in your room by that old lookout window, spinning your pretty cobwebs--pacing up and down in this old garden--wandering in the Yesterday Road--looking out to sea. Whenever I shall recall a bit of Blair Water loveliness I shall see you in it. After all, all other beauty is only a background for a beautiful woman."
"Her pretty cobwebs--" ah, there it was. That was all Emily heard. She did not even realise that he was telling her he thought her a beautiful woman.
"Do you think what I write is nothing but cobwebs, Dean?" she asked chokingly.
Dean looked surprised, doing it very well.
"Star, what else is it? What do you think it is yourself? I'm glad you can amuse yourself by writing. It's a splendid thing to have a little hobby of the kind. And if you can pick up a few shekels by it--well, that's all very well too in this kind of a world. But I'd hate to have you dream of being a Bronte or an Austen--and wake to find you'd wasted your youth on a dream."
"I don't fancy myself a Bronte or an Austen," said Emily. "But you didn't talk like that long ago, Dean. You used to think that I could do something some day."
"We don't bruise the pretty visions of a child," said Dean. "But it's foolish to carry childish dreams over into maturity. Better face facts. You write charming things of their kind, Emily. Be content with that and don't waste your best years yearning for the unattainable or striving to reach some height far beyond your grasp."
But, Dean--how do you stop "yearning"--for anything? If we're Brontes or Austens or nothing but scribbling fools?
It's odd, but, while most fans of the Emily books hate Dean, I don't. I never have. He is good and he is bad, like all of us, and just as selfish and giving by turns.
There--I'm starting to talk old-fashioned again--it happens a lot more when I just get done reading something "old."
Maud (as L. M. Montgomery was called, for her middle name) didn't think she was an Austen or a Bronte either, and she isn't, of course. She's only recently made it into the literary canon, and she has little more than a dusty corner in it now, at best. Besides, she could never get away from being classified as a "children's writer," even though she wrote books aimed at adult audiences as well. Even today, those adult books--A Tangled Web, The Blue Castle, and in my opinion Emily's Quest and several of the later Anne books--can be found only in the children's section, if they can be found in a bookstore at all.
And, sure, much of the prose she wrote was purple--it drips still with flowers and dew and "pretty cobwebs" spun up in old farmhouse garret rooms--but she has created, for me, the best damn characters who have ever "lived." And she has truths in her "children's books" that still ring out for me, and she has been my idol since I was in my early teens for a reason.
If I could have met her, I would have told her that. And quite unabashedly, too.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Hello, folks! (Admittedly not much of a warning for what follows.)
Well, this blog has been sitting here, empty, for quite some time, and the reason is that I've had no idea what to put in it. I'm still not sure. I've often wondered--can you call yourself a writer if you haven't written anything real in months? In years? For the longest time, I can remember telling people (in those obnoxious introductions you do on the first day of a class, in undergrad orientations, at the start of graduate assistantships) that I'd written a book. And then it finally hit me--yes, I'd written a book, but I'd written it roughly five years ago, when I was seventeen, and it was crap.
Or not really crap, in the sense that it was a good work for a seventeen-year-old to have written, or finished, since I started it at fifteen. It was about 400 solid pages of supernatural romantic suspense (which is how I finally decided to categorize it), and if I'd done any actual research on England and its history and peasant life (though I truly did know the architecture of an Elizabethan mansion inside and out by the time I was finished), it could have been something. Maybe. In a genre-ish, not-going-to-stand-the-test-of-time-or-win-any-awards-or-be-all-that-memorable kind of way. But that would have been enough for me at that point. I wanted to get that acceptance letter. I wanted to see my name in print. I wanted to go into a bookstore all alone, walk down the aisles of the mystery section, and find my book on the shelf. It wasn't as cute as when I was about ten and I said I didn't care about the money, that I just wanted my published book, even if I never got a dime. No, I wanted money when I was seventeen, lots of it. But I wanted it so I would be able to keep writing.
The problem is that I didn't. Keep writing, that is. I went to college, like I was expected to, and hated every second of it. I majored in English, of course, but, while most of my professors were great, I never seemed to get to read anything I wanted to read. Not once, as an English major, was I assigned any Bronte, any Dickens, any Austen or Eliot or Dostoevsky-- Sure, there was a dash of Dickinson's "admiring bog" and a quick glance, thankfully, at some short stories like Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich," but not much more.
And I didn't write. I couldn't.
Why?
Then I graduated. I wanted to work in a bookstore, like Barnes & Noble. I didn't. I went to grad school, and I started teaching. And I got to read a few things I wanted (mainly because I got to pick them myself for projects). I also cried a lot that first semester because of all the work and that stupid obsession I have with perfectionism, and I didn't write. I didn't write. Aside from papers, of course. 20-frickin'-page papers.
Then, finally, I took a children's literature class and wrote a "short" fantasy that really should have been a book, about a little crystal fairy horse. I loved that little horse. And he made me want to write again.
Which I did. I wrote and wrote, and hammered out about 160 pages of a middle grade fantasy novel called The Princesses of Rosalea, and I loved it--still do. I toyed with it after that, got advice, and rewrote it, doubling the length. I loved it more, except, of course, for the beginning. If there's one part of a thing I hate writing, it's a beginning, and, no, nothing has ever helped like "Don't worry about writing the perfect 'beginning'--just jump right into a scene" or "Start with action" or "Ask your characters what they'd do." And as for that last one, I mean, seriously? Ask my characters what they'd do? There's nothing more fake, in my opinion, that an attempt like that one at being "real" and "natural."
Of course, the book got rejected--after all, I had to submit my beginnings. (And I do mean beginnings--I've completely rewritten the beginning of this book more times than I can count.) And in the meantime I kept on teaching, post-grad school, as an adjunct composition instructor, with minimal income, with no benefits, and with, well, composition. Ugh. Composition.
But at least I could say I'd written a book again, one that I was proud of. Right? Maybe . . . It's a little over four years now since I wrote that book, even though I'm still tweaking it. And, once again, I can't write anything new. I've managed to crank out twelve pages of another book, but that's it. Twelve pages.
So why can't I write? For the same reasons I've let myself gain weight, I guess, for the same reasons that I don't hesitate to order a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts even though I'm diabetic, for the same reasons that I find myself putting off washing my face and taking showers until my skin and hair are disgusting and greasy. I know, it's horrible, and gross. But it's what depression does to you. It makes you want to cry for no reason, and for all the reasons you think you've failed so far, and it makes you opt for sleep (or that pointless facebook game) at the last minute instead of writing, even though you want to work on your book, or books, so badly.
I don't hate my life, but it sure feels like I do much of the time. It's because I hate what I do and what I don't do. I hate teaching composition, mainly because I don't even believe in it. Is it good for students to learn how to write? Heck yeah. But the way I'm "teaching it"? I doubt it. I lecture about crap like the "writing process," which they'll never use once they leave my class, and why should they? Yeah, that's right, Elbow, that's right, Murray, who cares about your damn freewriting and your ask-my-students-questions-about-how-they-feel-about-their-piece-of-writing? I think it's all likely a bunch of bullshit. I'm sure it works for a select few. But most--I doubt it.
And why the hell does a student--or anyone--need to know what a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is? (Pronounced, of course, in my best Latin: poste hoke air-go prope-tair hoke.) Are they really going to, someday, in their wondrous careers, pick up an argumentative paper written by, I don't know, some sinister career nemesis, and exclaim, "Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Now I've got him! Yes, now I've got him!" (Or her. To be politically correct. And apparently my imaginary career person is British.)
But, seriously, is it going to happen? I once again . . . wait for it . . . doubt it.
And if I, the teacher, doubt it, how can I make my students believe it?
I can't.
And if it all makes me so mind-numbingly depressed, how can I write? What I want to write, that is, and not the handouts I have to have ready for tomorrow?
I can't.
I can't.
I can't.
I need to do something. Now.
Maybe I'll go get a PhD.
Or not really crap, in the sense that it was a good work for a seventeen-year-old to have written, or finished, since I started it at fifteen. It was about 400 solid pages of supernatural romantic suspense (which is how I finally decided to categorize it), and if I'd done any actual research on England and its history and peasant life (though I truly did know the architecture of an Elizabethan mansion inside and out by the time I was finished), it could have been something. Maybe. In a genre-ish, not-going-to-stand-the-test-of-time-or-win-any-awards-or-be-all-that-memorable kind of way. But that would have been enough for me at that point. I wanted to get that acceptance letter. I wanted to see my name in print. I wanted to go into a bookstore all alone, walk down the aisles of the mystery section, and find my book on the shelf. It wasn't as cute as when I was about ten and I said I didn't care about the money, that I just wanted my published book, even if I never got a dime. No, I wanted money when I was seventeen, lots of it. But I wanted it so I would be able to keep writing.
The problem is that I didn't. Keep writing, that is. I went to college, like I was expected to, and hated every second of it. I majored in English, of course, but, while most of my professors were great, I never seemed to get to read anything I wanted to read. Not once, as an English major, was I assigned any Bronte, any Dickens, any Austen or Eliot or Dostoevsky-- Sure, there was a dash of Dickinson's "admiring bog" and a quick glance, thankfully, at some short stories like Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich," but not much more.
And I didn't write. I couldn't.
Why?
Then I graduated. I wanted to work in a bookstore, like Barnes & Noble. I didn't. I went to grad school, and I started teaching. And I got to read a few things I wanted (mainly because I got to pick them myself for projects). I also cried a lot that first semester because of all the work and that stupid obsession I have with perfectionism, and I didn't write. I didn't write. Aside from papers, of course. 20-frickin'-page papers.
Then, finally, I took a children's literature class and wrote a "short" fantasy that really should have been a book, about a little crystal fairy horse. I loved that little horse. And he made me want to write again.
Which I did. I wrote and wrote, and hammered out about 160 pages of a middle grade fantasy novel called The Princesses of Rosalea, and I loved it--still do. I toyed with it after that, got advice, and rewrote it, doubling the length. I loved it more, except, of course, for the beginning. If there's one part of a thing I hate writing, it's a beginning, and, no, nothing has ever helped like "Don't worry about writing the perfect 'beginning'--just jump right into a scene" or "Start with action" or "Ask your characters what they'd do." And as for that last one, I mean, seriously? Ask my characters what they'd do? There's nothing more fake, in my opinion, that an attempt like that one at being "real" and "natural."
Of course, the book got rejected--after all, I had to submit my beginnings. (And I do mean beginnings--I've completely rewritten the beginning of this book more times than I can count.) And in the meantime I kept on teaching, post-grad school, as an adjunct composition instructor, with minimal income, with no benefits, and with, well, composition. Ugh. Composition.
But at least I could say I'd written a book again, one that I was proud of. Right? Maybe . . . It's a little over four years now since I wrote that book, even though I'm still tweaking it. And, once again, I can't write anything new. I've managed to crank out twelve pages of another book, but that's it. Twelve pages.
So why can't I write? For the same reasons I've let myself gain weight, I guess, for the same reasons that I don't hesitate to order a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts even though I'm diabetic, for the same reasons that I find myself putting off washing my face and taking showers until my skin and hair are disgusting and greasy. I know, it's horrible, and gross. But it's what depression does to you. It makes you want to cry for no reason, and for all the reasons you think you've failed so far, and it makes you opt for sleep (or that pointless facebook game) at the last minute instead of writing, even though you want to work on your book, or books, so badly.
I don't hate my life, but it sure feels like I do much of the time. It's because I hate what I do and what I don't do. I hate teaching composition, mainly because I don't even believe in it. Is it good for students to learn how to write? Heck yeah. But the way I'm "teaching it"? I doubt it. I lecture about crap like the "writing process," which they'll never use once they leave my class, and why should they? Yeah, that's right, Elbow, that's right, Murray, who cares about your damn freewriting and your ask-my-students-questions-about-how-they-feel-about-their-piece-of-writing? I think it's all likely a bunch of bullshit. I'm sure it works for a select few. But most--I doubt it.
And why the hell does a student--or anyone--need to know what a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is? (Pronounced, of course, in my best Latin: poste hoke air-go prope-tair hoke.) Are they really going to, someday, in their wondrous careers, pick up an argumentative paper written by, I don't know, some sinister career nemesis, and exclaim, "Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Now I've got him! Yes, now I've got him!" (Or her. To be politically correct. And apparently my imaginary career person is British.)
But, seriously, is it going to happen? I once again . . . wait for it . . . doubt it.
And if I, the teacher, doubt it, how can I make my students believe it?
I can't.
And if it all makes me so mind-numbingly depressed, how can I write? What I want to write, that is, and not the handouts I have to have ready for tomorrow?
I can't.
I can't.
I can't.
I need to do something. Now.
Maybe I'll go get a PhD.
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