Month: February 2004

Wendell Berry’s Poems, from 1964-1968

The further I read in Wendell Berry’s Collected Poems, the more poems I found that I liked. Today, I’m covering poems published from 1964 to 1968, approximately the first hundred pages of the book. As I read the poems, uncharacteristically I found myself agreeing with a blurb found on the back cover of the book, one that said, “”Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau.” To me, of course, that’s somewhat of a mixed blessing, because I find both Emerson and Thoreau far better philosophers than poets. Like these two, I often find aphorisms in Berry’s poetry that seem better than the poems themselves, lines like “The truth preserved by lying/ becomes a lie” or ” The world is greater than its words/ To speak of it the mind must bend.”

Though I’m still unwilling, and unable, to explain exactly what I mean by “poetry,” I know it when I read it, and at times I find Berry’s poems lacking in the kind of imagery and language characteristic of my favorite poetry. My favorite Berrry poems are the ones that, while remaining philosophical, rely more heavily on imagery to convey the poem’s ideas:

THE WILD

In the empty lot ” a place
not natural, but wild ” among
the trash of human absence,

the slough and shamble
of the city’s seasons, a few
old locusts bloom.

A few wood birds
fly and sing
in the new foliage

–warblers and tanagers, birds
wild as leaves; in a million
each one would be rare,

new to the eyes. A man
couldn’t make a habit
of such color,

such flight and singing.
But they’re the habit of this
wasted place. In them

the ground is wise. They are
its remembrance of what is.

Perhaps a few months ago this poem wouldn’t have struck me quite as much as it does now that I live across from an undeveloped lot (which, of course, is also part of Pt. Defiance park) that wild birds and animals seem to desperately claim as their own. But I can remember my own pleasant surprise forty five years ago when I found that wild rabbits still claimed unused parts of the industrial area where I worked in Seattle. What clinches my love of the poem, though, is the use of multiple meanings of “habit.” While the word “habit” ties all the multiple meanings together, it also seems to quietly raise the observation to a religious level.

Although “Against the War in Vietnam” is really a little too didactic for my taste, it does reminds us how little we seem to learn from history and why any concept of “progress” is questionable:

AGAINST THE WAR IN VIETNAM –

Believe the automatic righteousness
of whoever holds an office. Believe
the officials who see without doubt
that peace is assured by war, freedom
by oppression. The truth preserved by lying
becomes a lie. Believe or die.

In the name of ourselves we ride
at the wheels of our engines,
in the name of Plenty devouring all,
the exhaust of our progress falling
deadly on villages and fields
we do not see. We are prepared
for millions of little deaths.

Where are the quiet plenteous dwellings
we were coming to, the neighborly holdings?
We see the American freedom defended
with lies, and the lies defended
with blood, the vision of Jefferson
served by the agony of children,
women cowering in holes.

If there’s any doubt why I like this poem, just see how accurately the first paragraph seems to apply to the current Bush Administration. Ask yourself what has happened to the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy.

There was a long sequence of poems entitled Window Poems that I was rather apprehensive about before I actually started reading the sequence, because generally I dislike long, rambling poems. Turned out, though, that some of my favorite poems are found in this section. Poem number 9 may not be my personal favorite, but in some ways it is more typical and offers a better idea of what the section involves than some of the poems that I prefer a little more:

9.

There is a sort of vertical
geography that portions his life.
Outside, the chickadees
and titmice scrounge
his sunflower seed. The cardinals
feed like fires on mats of drift
lying on the currents
0f the swollen river.
The air is a bridge
and they are free. He imagines
a necessary joy
in things that must fly
to eat. He is set apart
by the black grid of the window
and, below it, the table
of the contents of his mind:
notes and remnants,
uncompleted work,
unanswered mail,
unread books
-the subjects of conscience,
his yoke-fellow,
whose whispered accounting
has stopped one ear, leaving him
half deaf to the world.
Some pads of paper,
eleven pencils,
a leaky pen,
a jar of ink
are his powers. He’ll
never fly.

Again, it’s easy for me to relate this poem to myself, because one of the main selling points, for me, of our new home is that the computer room is on the second story and has two large windows that allow me to constantly observe the sky and much of the old-growth forest that makes up Point Defiance. Even if I can’t be outside, I want to be part of that world.

Clearly, though, the window is a metaphor for man’s relationship to the natural world, a complex metaphor that is alluded to here, but is really only fully developed in all twenty-seven poems. Still, we would all do well to remember that no matter how much we identify with nature, we are “set apart/ by the black grid of the window/ and, below it, the table/ of the contents of his mind.” It is this very separation that, in the end, makes it impossible for us to really “fly.”

Just Checking Back In

Traveling to Santa Rosa could certainly be counted a success as both our trips to and from Santa Rosa went as smoothly as can be expected of any trip that involves spending thirteen to fourteen straight hours riding in a vehicle. The trip down was sunny and bright, while the trip back was generally wet and gray. Surprisingly, and thankfully, the brightest part in the car was Kel, who was happily entertained by four doting adults, DVD’s played on dad’s computer and an occasional movie on the TV. The highlight of my trip was tickling poor Kel when I became uncomfortably bored with staring out the window at cloud-covered mountaintops. Luckily, he suffered the tickling with shouts of genuine, or faked, glee.

Mary’s eightieth birthday party also went well, and I got to meet a number of relatives I’ve only heard about over the last seven years. I guess it’s lucky I couldn’t find a new Canon Rebel digital camera to buy before the trip, though, because somehow I failed to take a single picture, despite the fact that I had bothered to pack my Nikon, the battery charger, and the Memorex card reader for the trip.

Despite the fact that the weather was great for the trip down, I found myself forced to walk in rain that I would generally avoid walking in even here in Tacoma. That came as a bit of a shock, as I can’t remember ever encountering anything but sunshine when I’ve visited Santa Rosa in the last seven years. It shouldn’t have shocked me, though, as I lived in Walnut Creek for four years, and remember quite vividly the heavy winter rains, which almost seemed a relief after the scorching summers.

It’s a rather gray, bland day here in Tacoma, a rather accurate reflection of my mood since returning from Santa Rosa late last night, and falling tiredly into bed to succumb to the soundest sleep I’ve had in the last five days. I’m not sure I’ve fully awakened even now, though the clock reads mid-afternoon. I suspect it will take at least a couple of days to fit back into the ruts I’ve made here in Tacoma.

Meanwhile, though, I have started reading Wendell Berry’s Collected Poems: 1957-1982 and should have something ready by tomorrow.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Shelley, somehow anticipating the finale of my three-part essay, has made a pre-emptive strike on it. Entitled “Community Member or Writer” she wonders whether being a “community member” compromises a writer. Of course, she does qualify this by saying at the end of her blog entry that being cut free from a community may free the writer to become a better writer and to join a better community. Still, the essay seems to counter what was to be the main thesis of my own entry.

Personally, I’ve never bought all the hype on how blogging will change society and bring “democracy” to politics. I long ago offered my opinion that blogs could no more replace traditional media than television could replace the print media. Those who rely on nightly television, or, worse yet, talk shows, for their news instead of in-depth analysis in magazines or newspapers find themselves lacking the kind of analysis necessary to make sound decisions. Judging from most of what I’ve read, God help those who rely on bloggers to make their poltical decisions.

Those who happened to read my articles at Open Source Politics have noted that I relied almost exclusively on traditional media, not fellow bloggers, to support my argument. While I may comment over at CalPundit, I still turn to the traditional media for evidence to support my opinion. While the good-old-days of objective news have obviously disappeared, it seems to me that if you’re willing to do some research magazines and newspapers, particularly if you’re willing to look at publications from other parts of the world, still offer the best hope of correctly analyzing any particular situation.

What, then, is the real potential of blogging? What can it offer, that other mediums can’t offer? Well, one thing it did for me was help to quickly find a small group of “poets” in Tacoma when I moved here from Vancouver. My occasional Sunday breakfast or walk with Mike or Rick, not to mention numerous emails back or forth, have made my move to Tacoma much more bearable than it would otherwise have been. Without my web page, this would have never been possible. I would never have met these people on my own, even if we had accidentally sat down next to each other at a restaurant.

More amazingly, it’s brought me into contact with bloggers from Canada, England, Austalia, France, Spain, and even, recently, Brazil. That’s amazing, especially for someone like myself who would be perfectly content to physically never travel further away from home than the Cascade Mountains. On a personal level, it makes me regret that I didn’t spend more time learning a foreign language. Suddenly there is a “real” reason to learn a foreign language other than to meet some arbitrary school requirement.

It seems to me that blogs offer us a real chance to become members of an “informed community,” the kind of “community” that has never been possible before because blogs transcend our traditional sense of community. For centuries, mankind was limited to “tribes,” “churches,” or “villages.” For many, that’s all the community they need. For others, though, those kinds of communities have lost their appeal because they are too confining, too limiting. Blogging gives us the chance to create communties based on ideas rather than merely on location.

Of course, some would argue that newsgroups or mailing lists do precisely this, and I’ve gone those routes only to have them dissolve into flame wars. The shortness of the messages and the immediate response often seems to preclude reasoned arguments. And, yes, at their worst, blog comments often seem to lead down the exact same path. On balance, though, blog entries, if not always the comments, seem to engender reasonable arguments. There’s something about being forced to present a reasonable statement of your opinion to the world that seems to call forth the best in all of us.

In its better days this blogger felt like he was joining a conversation with Jonathon, Jeff, Shelley, Dave and others who joined in spontaneously. The discussion not only made me consider other’s opinions, but made me rethink my own position so that I could share it with others. A similar phenomena took place when I reviewed Elaine Pagels Beyond Belief. Actually, a similar phenomena is still ongoing as people come to comment on an Elizabeth Pierson Friend poem originally posted by Bruce of Birchlane.

I’ve thought about switching gears and making this a blog “of place” and joining the “ecotone” phenomena, and I still might, but I’ve done my place thing in a previous incarnation (it’s the high Cascades) and would like to try the same idea with other ideas.

In a sense, I guess recent comments on my last two posts at least reassure me that not all of the 20,000 visitors per month are angst-ridden teenagers looking for a last-minute comment on a poem they do not understand and sure-as-hell don’t care about (Though as a high school teacher I always thought that there should be more sites online that offer some reasonable commentary on poems). What I’d like to see, though, is an occasional “theme,” for the lack of a better word, that some bloggers could consider and contribute to in a way they felt comfortable with. Although I wouldn’t swear to it, for instance, I think wood s lot has occasionally followed up one of my entries with references to sensational resources that I hadn’t found in my original look at a poet. Perhaps wood s lot would be the perfect place to start spreading such a meme. It could run anything from an idea like “child abuse” to a more “literary” or “spiritual” idea that various individuals could comment on from various perspectives. The topic could be posted far in advance so that bloggers would have a chance to think about it and comment on it as time allowed.

C+, Your Site Lacks Unity.

One of the nagging problems with this site has been its lack of focus. Perhaps all those years of teaching high school composition and trying to get students to write with some resemblance of unity makes this lack of unity in my own work troublesome. Still, I’ve realized for quite awhile that I’m attempting to do at least two major things in this blog, promote poetry and seek personal enlightenment.

Having taught for thirty years, it seems impossible to totally divorce myself from that role. You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher. Adding to the problem, being linked to by other poets or by college poetry teachers has fed my ego. For instance, I was pleased when a college professor suggested her college students use my interpretation of Roethke’s “In a Dark Time” as a starting point for their own ideas on the poem. I was even more pleased when The Academy of American Poets pointed towards my appreciation of another poet. Being linked to has become it’s own form of addiction. But I’m actually most delighted when someone writes that I’ve helped them to rediscover their love of poetry, especially if it is someone who studied poetry in college and then let it drop by the wayside.

There’s no doubt that on one level this is a “poetry blog.” I know it, I promote that idea, and, sometimes, I even take a false pride in it. So I exit the classroom, right, still talking to myself, still pretending to address a class full of inspired students who’ve long since exited the room, left. Self-delusion sometimes seems the best way to keep us from losing all respect for ourselves.

On another, more important level, or, at least I like to think so, this blog is an attempt to attain personal enlightenment, and poetry, indeed literature itself, is nothing more than a tool to help attain that level of insight. Hopefully no one really thinks there is any logic to the way poets are discussed on these pages, unless there is some form of serendipity going on that I’m unaware of. When I actually take the time to look back at what I’ve written, generously, I would like to think that there is some sort of spiral order, where I circle back to re-examine what I looked at many years ago, only to rediscover old truths can be reawakened with new insights. As I explained once, though, the books have nearly chosen themselves since the older ones all come from books I bought while attending college but never had time to finish. Most of the newer ones are the result of browsing whatever bookstore I wandered around in while Leslie picked up a stack of mystery novels. Those that show any continuity are probably the result of Mike’s recent suggestions.

This understanding of self, of course, was the source of my original love for poetry and has probably been the driving force in my life. As I get older, it has become more, not less, important. A problem with this, of course, is that thinking about life is only one dimension of life. Too much thinking, too much time spend considering other’s ideas, detracts from time that should be spent in other ways. I haven’t spent enough time in the woodshop or the garden. I spend more time at the computer than I spend walking, and certainly more time than I spend doing my yoga. Meditation, per se, has virtually disappeared from my life, replaced by the contemplation of poetry, though I suspect that both would prove complimentary given the opportunity.

At times I certainly lose sight that this, and not the promotion of poetry, is the main goal of this site. I end up analyzing someone’s poetry rather than relating it to myself and helping me to see my world more clearly. The truth is that I retired early because I was tired of teaching, because it had become a burden rather than a source of joy. Instead of making my life more meaningful, it sucked the essence out of it and made me tire of the very things that had led me there in the first place. If you share too much of yourself without replenishing your energy, you find yourself with nothing left to share with others. If I find this site becoming the same kind of burden, then it will be time to move on, to leave it behind.