Recalled to Life

Why did I choose to major in English? I guess it boils down to words, words, words (man, I just can't stop with the Shakespeare).  I am fascinated by language:  its malleability, the sensuality of the spoken word, the layers of meaning.  In short, it is miraculous.  Words can bring us to tears, take us to dizzying heights of ecstasy, plunge us into despair, and lighten us with laughter.  How does the writer accomplish such feats?  We study literary devices and parse poetry, but is the soul of literary greatness knowable?  We have read a considerable amount of writing over the last three weeks. Some fun, some tragic, some not so great.  It's interesting to consider what modern works might stand the test of time and what will fall by the wayside.  I confess to not being terribly impressed by many of the post-modernists we read.  I think that it might come down to the final couplet in "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

 Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all

 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (49-50)

Art, in my opinion, should be beautiful.  Truth is beautiful.  "My Papa's Waltz" is a modern work that relates a sense of beauty in the midst of pain, but no one writes of this better than Dickens.  There is beauty in tragedy and sadness because they are true representations of the human condition, but there is always hope.  In A Tale of Two Cities, we weep for the sacrificial death of Sydney Carton, but we see the potential in humanity through the sacrifice.  We are "recalled to life."  It unifies us and gives us hope that does not disappoint.  On that note, I leave you with a song about hope that I wrote and recorded for my twin daughters.

He's Bigger Than the Beatles!

Ah, Shakespeare!   The mere mention of the name compels me to don a British accent and commence making grand flourishes and gesticulations with my hands, in flagrant violation of Hamlet's directorial admonition.  What is our fascination with the bard?  I do not think it is because we were force-fed a diet of “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet”, and “Macbeth” with a side of “The Tempest” in junior/high school.  I had to read many things that I promptly forgot.  Somehow or another, Shakespeare manages to connect with his audience on a level that I dare say might be metaphysical.  He taps into the universal or as Jung might say, the collective unconscious. Perhaps it's because he belonged to the theater.  A writer for theater has to be more concerned about the audience than other types of writers.  Bawdy and raucous lower classes patronized the theater too.  Maybe that's why he is so beloved.  We feel like he is an eloquent yet slightly inappropriate one of us.  Maybe that's also why we feel free to use his works and parody his dialogue with impunity.  Isn't that how westerners show their affection?  Do we lampoon because we love or love to lampoon?  It's a query worthy of Hamlet, himself.  Personally, I confess to having used either direct Shakespearean quotes or bastardizations thereof in no fewer than 3 writing assignments last semester.  Roll over Beethoven; Billy boy is bigger than the Beatles.  So, in honor of his immense star power, I give you the following pop culture nods to the literary main dude offered up by Gilligan's Island, the movie Clueless, and the Animaniacs. Prepare to be entertained, after all...

The play's the thing!

Coffee Talk: The Grind of Time

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Elliot is a curious and complex piece of poetry.  I don't think it would have impacted me in the same way had I read it in my youth.  Time is interpreted differently in different stages of one's life, and I think that is part of what this poem speaks to:  the idea that time stretches out infinitely and full of possibility in one's youth and becomes almost antagonistic in middle age.  The reader interprets allusions to time through his or her own bias or experience and that in turn alters the poem's meaning or significance.  A young person might heartily endorse the narrator's view, "There will be time, there will be time" (26).  One who has more life experience might react to the same passage with sorrow or even bitterness.  The line, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (51) speaks volumes to me.  I think it addresses the same sense of our having lost sight of life’s beauty in the mad rush for success or merely subsistence that Wordsworth was all riled up about in "The World is too much with us." The drudgery of repetition can cause one to slip into a trance-like existence, with senses dulled to pain or pleasure.

It is interesting that this poem was written during the time Elliot was studying Greek philosophy at Oxford.  There he was, an American, surrounded by the ancient culture, art, and architecture of Europe.   It is easy to imagine him, newly arrived from a nearly newborn country, confronted by the vast storehouse of the western world's greatest achievements and wondering if he will contribute anything worthy of addition to the treasury.    

On Nature and Noise

This world is too much with us.  This short, declarative sentence that does not even make up the entire first line of Wordsworth's poem by the same name, carries on it the burden of centuries.  I can see Atlas struggling under the weight of it and have felt its irresistible force against my own back.   In this age of information, where color and shape dance before our eyes in a frenzied bid for attention, the simple beauty of nature is often unseen and unremembered.  The counterfeit dance of digitized being lures and lulls us into complacency.  As Wordsworth says, "for everything, we are out of tune" (8).  We are each our own instrument, a cacophony of dissonant chords.  We need to find the harmonizing intervals by rediscovering Nature and each other.  Only then can our symphony modulate to resolve itself in its final measure.

I would like to share an untitled poem of mine that is a much poorer treatment of the theme than Wordsworth’s but is my own voice, however cracked and squeaky.

Alone in your fields

I am struck by the splendor,

Oft taken for granted

Just the natural order.

The knowledge from Eve’s fruit quickens me.

The trees weep their rivers,

Sorrows carried along

mingle with mine,

Crying for a glimpse of Eden.

The knowledge from Eve’s fruit saddens me.

Chattering breezes carrying secrets

flutter round my eyes.

Teasing me with infinity,

Dancing in disguise.

The knowledge from Eve’s fruit stifles me.

A bird’s song constant.

An answer hastens calm,

and suddenly
but just for a moment,

The knowledge from Eve’s fruit passes from me.

If I Only Had a Brain...and a Flux Capacitor

I sat down to write about dear Emily and instead imagined Robert Frost reciting "Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood."  Emily materializes overhead in a flowing white gown, leaning out of a DeLorean.  "Roads?" she demurely asks.  "Where we're going we don't need roads." Whiz! Bang! Kapow!  She streaks off into the stratosphere.  

 (It's no matter that Frost's poem was published some 30-odd years after her death.  The flux capacitor renders it all perfectly believable.  And they all thought she never left the house....)

My own flight of fancy aptly describes my feelings for the poetry of Emily Dickinson.  It takes me to a metaphysical plane from which the ordinary seems surreal.  "The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --" is no exception.  It delights, perplexes, confounds, and illuminates in a dizzying display of virtuosity.  It begins innocently enough, by inducing the reader to consider the vastness of human potential and creativity through the lovely comparisons of the brain to the sky and the sea.  It's in the last stanza that she whacks the reader over the head (or in the brain) with a mallet.  "The Brain is just the weight of God--" (9).  Whoa!  Let me wrap my head around that one for a min..uh..lifetime.  "For--Heft them--Pound for Pound--" (10).  "Heft" really says something specific.  It refers to lifting something heavy, like the weight of knowledge?  Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but could it possibly be referencing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  After Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the tree, Gen. 3:22 says, "Then the Lord God said, 'behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil...'" (NASB).  While man was created in the image of God, it was not until the fall that he became like God, or of equal weight if we maintain the imagery of the poem.  Still, he is only like God "As Syllable from Sound--" (12).  There is a separation or delineation between God and man as sound is divided into words and words into syllables.  Knowledge is only part, a syllable, of the whole, sound.  Wow.  I am reduced to one whimpering syllable.

Elijah may have ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, but I rise on the winged words of Emily Dickinson.

For Whom Does the Bell Cricket Toll?

Yasunari Kawabata writes "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" in the first person, which draws the reader into the story as we join him in his observation of a happy band of children.  This delightful vignette is a shining lantern against the dark seedy underbelly, in which many of the stories we have read dwell.  Although it is set during the nighttime, it is teeming with life and light.  Bright colors typically associated with Asian culture are present in the carefully crafted lanterns that bob along the embankment in the hands of their makers. The writer applauds the craftsmanship displayed in the lanterns, contrasting them with store bought objects he classifies as tasteless.  He takes pride in his Japanese ancestry and culture through his admiration of the lanterns.  The fact that the children made the lanterns with such care suggests that the perpetuation of traditional Japanese culture is assured, to the delight of the older observer.  This is further emphasized in his use of the term "wide-eyed" to describe himself as he admires the "old-fashioned patterns and flower shapes" (par. 4) of the lanterns.

We are reminded that the children are on an insect hunt when one boy calls out, having found a grasshopper.  He asks if anyone wants it and, although he receives many enthusiastic affirmative replies, he repeats his offer until he finally bestows it on a girl.  We are then treated to the discovery that instead of an ordinary grasshopper, the insect is actually a bell cricket.  The writer has an epiphany at this point.  In my cinematic imagination, the music swells and the lanterns shine more brightly as it dawns on him that the boy likes the girl and the name of each is emblazoned on the other with light from their lanterns.  Kawabata is nostalgic for youthful love and even a bit jealous, as he says, likely for the naiveté of the young lovers.  He likens the bell cricket to the rare kind of true love not to be mistaken for the common grasshopper that will bring heartache.  The writer is wistful as he envisions the children's future, but for me there is too much beauty to dwell on the probability of pain.  I as a reader am left satiated and the cricket's song echoes in my breast where hope resides.

Don't Hold Your Breath

I am haunted by Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants."  For a short story in which nothing much actually happens, images swirl in my mind's eye when I turn it towards those long, white hills and the railway station.  For some reason, I picture the station as an isolated structure flanked by tracks that stretch endlessly in both directions.  The climate is arid and save for the hills and river, the terrain is colorless. I can see the flies and the waves of heat rising from the tracks, hear the buzzing, and smell the salty sweat mingled with the sweet licorice scent of anise.  Those hills, though.  They rise white, and smooth as marble with their humped backs, denying a foothold to the adventurer bold enough to attempt the ascent.  For me, the setting is the life of the story.  It breaths while the American and the girl suffocate, stifled by their burden and each other's company.

In the midst of this vivid setting, I can hear the man saying, "They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural." (line 46)  It echoes.  It hangs in the air.  It pulsates with the heat waves.  It is the most disconcerting statement used to describe abortion that I have ever read.  It seems mundane and horrific simultaneously.  Perhaps it is the emotionlessness of the statement in contrast with her obvious agitation and misgivings.  It sounds like he's just suggesting they air out her womb like one airs a stuffy room that was shut up, so it can be entered once more.  

Suddenly, I am with Jig at the table as she sits alone.  The atmosphere is constricting and I must inhale to remind myself what it is to breath.  Life.