I Get by with a Little Help From …

::Thursday, August 8, 2002::

:: I Get by with a Little Help from … ::

As a Romantic, and an introvert, I would like to believe that, as McLeish says in “Speech to a Crowd,” I can simply “tell myself that the earth is mine for the taking,” that I can reinvent myself to adapt to the world of constant change that threatens to alienate me from myself and from others, making life meaningless.

Unfortunately, judging from past experience, I’m not sure that’s true. I suspect that as Jeff Ward suggests much of what we learn we learn through dialogue with others, whether those others are real people that we know and deal with or “virtual” others, authors who we can only dialogue with through reading and internal discussion.

On the other hand, I’m also unsure how much we can learn from others. I guess I’ve always subscribed to the idea that authors really can only help us to clarify our own ideas rather than converting us to totally new ideas. I’ve long suspected that it’s dramatic events in life that force us to change our views of the world, not literature per se, though literature may give us new insights if we’re ready for change. Sometimes, perhaps, we don’t even realize how our values have changed until we read an author who can articulate what we’ve been feeling.

Maybe I’m the exception rather than the rule, but I suspect that I didn’t change very much from five years of age to twenty-two of age. Although the grades I earned in high school and college show I gained a greater knowledge of the world, my basic personality and view of the world stayed the same throughout this time period. In other words, knowledge by itself didn’t change either me or my views in any significant ways.

What did change me dramatically was my two years in the Army and not just the six months I spent in Vietnam, although that did have the most dramatic effect upon my views. My introduction to the South and the racism and poverty that existed there in the 60’s shocked me to a new awareness. The following six months in Vietnam where I realized how fragile life truly is and how men could change from loving, family providers to killers in a matter of days certainly had the most profound effect upon me.

When I returned from Vietnam, I not only changed my life plans, but I also found new literature that helped me see the world in different ways. At first I found insight in Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Later, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 became my mantra, confirming my view of a world where capitalists “cashed in” on every good human quality that people showed. Later, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seemed to reflect the changes in attitude that had occurred in my own life.

It was only after the birth of my two children that I returned to a more optimistic view of the world, though certainly never again as optimistic as the view I held before Vietnam. I found hope in novels like To Kill a Mockingbird where, despite his failure to save the innocent black man, Atticus Finch stands out as a realistic hero in a world that desperately needs heroes.

My divorce after seventeen years of marriage brought new realizations and attitude changes, though I’m not sure I’ve ever found a literature to reflect the resulting changes in my attitude. Caught up in the demands of merely surviving and trying to ensure that my children didn’t suffer from their parents’ mistakes, I had little time to reflect on life for quite awhile. This divorce crushed nearly all the illusions I still had about romance and love. Fifteen years later and remarried, I’m still trying to make sense out of the feelings generated by losing the last of my childhood illusions.

My recent throat cancer was probably my closest brush with death, though Vietnam at 24 was certainly more profoundly moving. Still, the inevitability of death was never clearer, demanding new insights to carry me through this stage of my life. What is the role of a man whose children are raised and who neither wants nor needs to work to survive? Six months haven’t been enough time to come to terms with those issues, but I continue to search for answers.

Perhaps as McLeish argues I could, and should, find these answers for myself. But I suspect that a more realistic approach is to read those who have experienced similar feelings and examine their conclusions. After all, the greatest advantage of being a “social animal” is having others to help carry the load.

It Took Dominion Everywhere

The mind sometimes strays from its chosen path. The part of this entry in PASSIONATE PURPLE (my first choice of RED was simply unbearable to read) is a slightly irrelevant RANT that may even detract from the argument I’ve been trying to develop here. SKIP IT if you’e tired of rants. I include it merely because writing it down made me feel good. So I decided to leave it in, rather than excise it.

Wallace Stevens is apparently one of those poets you either love or hate. When I was a grad student and one of my college professors stated unequivocally that Wallace Stevens was the “greatest American poet ever,” I immediately dismissed the professor as a f _ _ _ _ _ _g idiot and promptly withdrew from the class. (There are persistent rumors that INTP’s can be rather opinionated, but personally I tend to dismiss those rumors as mere jealousy on the part of those incapable of becoming INTP’s.)

Though Wallace Steven is to me nothing more than a provocative minor poet, he was (or is, for all I know, or care) the darling of literary critics who pushed style over content, arguing that “style is all” and, with a suggestion I found particularly irritating, argued that poets like Thomas Hardy are hopelessly dated because they lack style. I won’t rehash this debate but will note that personally I think the argument is pure bullshit.

(Let me back away a minute here and introduce you to my favorite poetry anthology, Louis Untermeyer’s Modern American Poetry, simply the best collection of poems I’ve ever read, accompanied by insight that seems “right on,” perhaps, of course, because it mirrors my own ideas so closely.)

Commenting on some of Stevens’ early poems, Untermeyer says, “Such poems have much for the eye, something for the ear, but they are too fantastic and dandified for common understanding.” Summarizing, Untermeyer states, “Some commentators maintained that Stevens was obsessed with nuances, superficial shades of color, infinitesimal gradations. Others declared that Stevens had added a new dimension to American poetry.” According to Stevens, “Poetry is the subject of the poem.” And on that note, we can begin to see why, unfortunately, poetry, like much of modern art, has become the province of a “literary elite,” a rather small group, rather than the province of the people.

Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar,” is a poem that at first exposure made me irate. Upon later reflection, though, it puzzled me rather than just irritating me. To me, at least, it raises the whole question of “objective correlatives to a new level:”

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose upon it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

As a lover of wilderness, I first found the idea that a simple jar could transform the wilderness as preposterous and offensive. Encountering it later in a different context and forced to cover it “objectively” in a classroom, I had to stand back and look at it from some different perspectives.

Still, that’s a rather large claim for a simple, bare, gray jar, isn’t it? And round it “was.” Before the jar, we would have to assume, “wasn’t.” Wasn’t there? Didn’t exist? Was … nothing? And why was it “nothing,” non-existent? Because the jar wasn’t?

In what sense was the wilderness slovenly? Was it merely “untidy”? Or was there something truly offensive about it? Was it offensive because it was “untidy” or because it couldn’t be controlled and contained? Was Stevens merely another Bushy, non-conserving, conservative who feared or despised what could not be shaped and controlled? Or did he truly have a unique insight into man’s relationship with nature?

There is something strangely appealing in the image of this jar sitting in the middle of a wilderness, the “wilderness rose upon it.” The jar is a focal point, as it were, that somehow unifies and gives meaning to the wilderness. Perhaps it merely reminds me of “formal gardens,” with their formal patterns, which I find both appealing and repulsive. Here the jar takes the place of the traditional central fountain. These formal gardens, though they seem symbolic of man’s desire to control nature, also suggest our need for, and admiration, of nature’s beauty.

The simplicity of the jar, though, also suggests Japanese gardens where “lanterns” or simple figures of Buddha often serve as a focal point for a garden that attempts to mimic nature. Although the gardens attempt to capture the essence of nature, they are also quite “formal” in the sense that they follow certain “rules.” Though I generally dislike “formal gardens,” I absolutely adore well-done Japanese gardens. I’m not quite sure why, but I suspect that’s precisely what I am trying to explore in this essay.

The key to the poem, of course, lies in the line “It took dominion everywhere.” It, the jar, a symbol of man’s oldest artwork, the earthen jug that first simply carried life-giving water, later becoming the dominant artwork of many civilizations, the ceremonial fount of holy water, the urn of ancestral remains, as a symbol of Art, gives meaning to the wilderness, indeed, controls our very understanding of “wilderness.”

And there’s our dilemma. Is it true that there really are no “objective correlatives,” that culture so dominates our existence that nothing makes sense outside that context? Do objective correlatives become objective correlatives through cultural associations? Can an object, outside a cultural context, have any “meaning”?

Is the joy I find in hiking mountain wildernesses merely the result of the culture I’ve been raised in and not the result of some primitive identification with my surroundings? Or, is it a means of escaping a culture that I find increasingly oppressive and a means of rediscovering true meaning in my life?

:: MT and AT&T Broadband ::

I finally heard back from my ISP and, just as I expected, I am unable to run MT on their servers because they don’t support CGI’s.

If I’m going to make the switchover I’m going to have to pay for a separate server. I must admit that I’d really like to construct a site like Jeff Ward’s site where the blog is just one part of the site, but money will probably be the deciding factor. I’m sure as heck not going to start working in order to produce such a page.

The Girl Can’t Help It

Though not particularly one of my favorite poems, “The Girl,” and the title says it all, is one of those poems that seems to stay with you over the years. Though I hadn’t read it in probably 20 to 25 years, I remembered it almost instantaneously once I started reading it.

Wonder why that is?

This poem, unlike “The Poor” contain no commentary from the poet, thus beautifully fitting Williams’ idea that there is “No ideas but in things.”

The Girl

with big breasts
under a blue sweater

bareheaded-
crossing the street

reading a newspaper
stops, turns

and looks down
as though

she had seen a dime
on the pavement

So, why is it that this poem works perfectly well without any commentary from the poet? Has Williams found the ultimate “objective correlative?”

Is its appeal to human nature, at least male human nature, so basic, so universal, that it needs nothing more? Or, have past societal trends, like Holllywood “sweater girl” promotions been so widespread and pervasive that we have been “conditioned” to react exactly the way the author wanted us to?

Would a primitive native who lived in a society where women didn’t cover their breasts react the same way to this poem that someone from the West would react?

:: The Object and Nothing but the Object ::

“The Poor” is one of my favorite William Carlos Williams poems. In many ways it fits Williams’ idea of “No ideas but in things.” It contains a number of vivid, concrete images that certainly convey emotions to the responsive reader.

In order to make a point, though, I’ve taken the liberty of removing the first line and a half from the poem. Read the poem without this line, then insert the line that has been removed and reread the poem to see whether you believe it changes the poem or not:

THE POOR
___ ___ ______ __ _______
_______ __ , the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements

Or a cast iron balcony
with panels showing oak branches
in full leaf. It fits
the dress of the children

reflecting every stage and
custom of necessity-
Chimneys, roofs, fences of
Wood and metal in an unfenced

age and enclosing next to
nothing at all: the old man

in a sweater and soft black
hat who sweeps the sidewalk-

his own ten feet of it-
in a wind that fitfully

turning his corner has
overwhelmed the entire city

Personally, the image of the old man sweeping his sidewalk in a city overwhelmed by dirt is a favorite image that has stayed with me for many years, one I remembered without even trying to memorize it.

"Why would that be?" you might ask. Perhaps because I was a caseworker for awhile and observed many futile attempts by clients to overcome the problems they faced, while society ignored more serious problems that were sure to overwhelm them relatively quickly. Obviously I bring experiences to this poem that most people would not bring.

What would you say is the “tone” of this poem? Is it melancholy? Is it full of despair? Is there a sense of delight? How are all of these images tied together?

What happens to the poem when you put the opening lines “It’s the anarchy of poverty/delights me” into the poem? Do these lines change your perception of the poem itself?

For me, at least, this sentence serves as the “thesis” statement of the poem, changing the tone of the poem considerably. The word “anarchy” provides a different structure to the poem than I would have imposed on it. “Delights” is, for me, though, quite unexpected, changing the whole meaning of the poem. I doubt that “delights” is a way I would have ever described this kind of poverty.

And though I’m still not entirely convinced that poverty can ever really be a “delight,” it makes me look back at the images in a new way.

It seems to me, though, that Williams does not merely present the object “without further comment;” in fact, his comment alters not only the way we see this poem but, quite possibly, the way we see poverty.

:: MT and ME ::

Okay, I have to admit it, I’ve been thinking about switching from Adobe GoLive to MT. Unfortunately, I know a lot less about coding than Jonathon gives me credit for. I hand code very little. I’m a layout, print, person, not a computer person. Because I was into Photoshop I naturally gravitated toward GoLive, and that’s about as far as I have gotten.

The real hold up is that I don’t think ATT broadband will work with MT since it doesn’t work with Blogger. When they lost Excite, ATT would no longer allow outside access to their websites. You have to use ATT Broadband to connect. I’ve sent an inquiry to tech support to see if there is any chance MT will will work with their servers and am anxiously (STILL) awaiting their response.

Nor can I host my own site using an old computer because that is against the contract I’ve signed with ATT Broadband.

I’ve noticed that Alwin Hawkins, who also has ATT broadband, hosts his site on another host. I’m supposing that there is a good reason.

I’m not sure I want to pay more than the $40+ a month I’m already paying to play this game, though I am watching comments on Jonathon’s site to see what it might cost for a new host.

(Oh, by the way, how do you set the width of your page so that it is variable? I thought I had solved that problem earlier.)

So Much Depends Upon…

Whitman’s use of the term “dumb ministers” in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” to describe objects that contribute to our soul, and Jonathan Delacour’s ongoing discussion of “objective description” and “subjective description” somehow reminded me of William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” a poem students often found “dumb,” though not in the sense Whitman used it.

“The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

In discussing his poetry Willliams said, “Emotion clusters about common things, the pathetic often stimulates the imagination to new patterns—but the job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language to him which is authentic. In my own work it has always sufficed that the object of my attention be presented without further comment.” Later, he stated, “No ideas but in things.”

Judging from many a student’s reaction to “The Red Wheelbarrow,” though, it’s not clear that pure description does “suffice.” Students were most likely to react in dumb silence or outrage when presented with the poem. Simply put, they didn’t get it, and often felt that there was “nothing to get,” much like the outrage expressed by many when confronted with modern paintings with titles like “White on White.”

One wonders now that it has become stylish to include an old wheelbarrow as a planter in a garden whether some students would react differently to the poem, and whether Asian students, having been raised in a very different poetic tradition, might have a different reaction to it.

In other words, do objects have meaning in themselves or do they only have meaning within a cultural context?

Was T.S. Eliot correct when he argued that: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion?” (See the Dead Poet’s Circle for further discussion of objective correlative.)