liquid inspiration

On Sunday I attended the New Issues Press / Herb Scott Memorial fundraiser at Bell's Eccentric Cafe, and enjoyed readings by poets native to Kalamazoo and dear to Mr. Scott and to the CW program at Western.  I always forget how much I love these readings... sitting in a hall, listening to melodious or monotonous voices shape words, lines, images; feeling a calm and focus difficult to reach in other places, brought on by the intensity of a singular voice creating a singular vision. These poets evoked images of an herb called boneset painting a pattern of flowers and tendrils across a woman's throat; a memory of a father explaining the structure of a black walnut to his son while his dog waited, tail-wagging, for him to throw it; images of old women power-walking through malls built over ancient bogs; the tale of a funeral procession for a dead dryad.  

Suttung pursuing Odin

I stood in Bell's cavernous new performance space and sipped my mead, the drink known in Norse myth as the nectar and source of poetry, stolen by Odin from Gunnlod and gifted to bards, prophets, and scholars in the mortal world. As I drank, I felt sort of out-of-time, standing in a great wooden hall and drinking an ancient drink, listening to modern-day word-smiths spin lyrics from the raw fibers and threads of momentary visions, melodic syllables, and near-forgotten memories. Is this what Anglo-Saxons felt, sitting in fire-lit mead-halls, listening to scops intone the stories of heroes and monsters, God and Creation? (Minus the train whistle as the 3:45 from Chicago rattles through town, of course.) 

Politics in place

Several days ago (seems like longer, but I'm sure that's due to my diet of 24-hour political news) the news commentary shows got hold of a clip of Congressman Paul Ryan's visit to the Iowa State Fair-- the same venue that last year saw Mitt Romney assert that "corporations are people, my friend"-- where Ryan was asked (well, shouted at, really) about whether he planned to cut Medicare. Over the hubbub, Ryan responded with (I'm paraphrasing here) "I know the people from Wisconsin and Iowa, and they know how to be polite and respectful. I don't think she's from Iowa." As it turns out, the questioner is from Iowa, and would still like a substantive answer to her question. Ryan's entire trip to the fair raises an interesting issue about people's claims on their homes, their states, their identification with certain spaces-- and this nasty tactic of taking those identifications away. Clearly, this is a trick of political rhetoric: Ryan implies that the woman and her companions were plants and therefore not worthy of attention, perhaps even insinuating that they came from one of the coasts and thus their views were not shared by or relevant to Iowans (also that they should learn to behave like nice Midwesterners). Ryan denied this woman an answer, a frustrating though not surprising choice, given that these kinds of public events are intended (or were intended, before the era of the sound bite) to provide a chance for the public to question, to speak to, to get to know the men and women who want to speak and legislate for us in government, and to give those would-be representatives a chance to hear and defend themselves to their constituents. Yet he also denied her an identification with her own home space, suggesting that "I know this place and its people better than you, and you don't fit here (despite the fact that I'm from Wisconsin, and not Iowa)." After the outburst, the woman and her friends were removed from the event. So she was denied an answer, an identification with her home state, and her space at the fair. Voiceless, homeless, placeless. 

At the same event, walking with his entourage, Ryan was approached by a journalist who asked whether he planned to do anything about the drought affecting Iowa this year. His response (again, I'm paraphrasing) was "I don't want to deal with those policies now. Right now I just want to enjoy the fair." What kind of a disconnect is this?! First, Ryan pronounces that a woman is not at home in her own home, based on his own understanding of "Iowan" values, behavior, and mind-set. Then, he brushes off an opportunity for a substantive discussion of an issue clearly important to Iowan farmers (and, I would assume, anyone else who plans to consume produce this year). Why does he choose not to address this question? Because he wants to enjoy the fair, the food, the fruits of the landscape. And possibly deep-fried Twinkies. This vacillation between claiming to understand and identify with a state, and then claiming to be too busy entertaining himself at the State Fair to show any interest in the state's landscape... it's shameful (though unsurprising) wobbling for a politician. But this instance of disconnectedness points to a greater problem. Are we able to center our selves in one place at one time, to be aware and sensitive to the varied facets of landscape and community-- the diverse voices and opinions of a place's inhabitants; the needs, character, and produce of the land; the location and history of a community's beloved events (yes, the state fair!)? Are we able to see and comprehend the connections between these facets? If not, maybe we should be. We should be aware that the drought affects the landscape, the landscape provides the space and produce for the fair, the voter and the journalist attend the fair to ask the candidate to protect their healthcare and the landscape, and the candidate... just wants a corn dog. 

**picture credit: The Phoenix Sun. Available at http://thephoenixsun.com/archives/9351/you-are-here-4

"Kindred Spirits" and the Representation of Nature

I've been kicking these ideas around for a few weeks now, so I figured I'd finally commit them to paper (or something like that!) We briefly discussed Asher Durand's painting "Kindred Spirits" (1849) in class several weeks ago in relation to Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. I love this painting... the mountain vistas, the two figures gently shaded by an overhanging branch, the darkness in the painting's foreground broken up by the white waters of the river. Bryson too mentions this painting about half-way through his literary trek along the Appalachian Trail, observing the regular reproduction of this image in books concerning the American landscape of the nineteenth century. I remember seeing "Kindred Spirits" on the cover of my Early American literature anthology in undergrad, and thinking how glorious it must be to hike the Trail!  Of course, Bryson de-romanticizes our notions of this kind of walk in America's woods, observing that "nothing like that view exists now, of course. Perhaps it never did. Who knows how much license these romantic johnnies took with their stabbing paintbrushes?" (117)

Depicted in the portrait are Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School movement in American art, and American poet William Cullen Bryant (anyone read "Thanatopsis"?) These kindred spirits-- the poet and the painter-- meeting at an idealized spot in the Catskills mountains, raises (for me) questions about the representation of nature. In this class (and in general), we look to artists to "capture" nature for us, whether it be in verse, in non-fiction reminiscences, or on canvas. Bryson himself questions the realism of this painting, and even a quick online search tells us that the work combines several different landscapes and was composed many years after Cole's initial hike into the woods. This leads me to think about how we-- painters, poets, writers, students alike-- represent nature. Do we strive for realism? Is it necessary or even possible to recreate what is "real"?

Reading through Bryson's account of hiking the AT, we know that parts of this must stray from his actual experience... his later incorporation of environmental research, his portraits of small towns such as Centralia, even his accounts of specific thoughts and moments must be synthesized, edited, and polished in order to produce a satisfying piece of writing that holds together as a book, and that holds together chapter by chapter (and that makes us laugh at every other page!) How much realism is lost in this process? How much can we expect Bryson (or any of ourselves, for that matter) to be able to reproduce an "objective" version of reality?

Even in our preservation of nature, do we lose a sense of what is REAL? Bryson observes that "in America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition-- either you ruthlessly subjugate it [...] or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit" (200). By deifying nature in places like the Appalachian Trail-- by trying to remove traces of human activity-- don't we also misrepresent what "nature" is?

In the end, of course, I'm no closer to an answer than I was at the beginning. But I think that as long as we are aware of how we tend to represent things-- in image, in verse, in fiction, in memories-- we can see through those representations to find what is real.

the World-Tree in Autumn

A friend directed me to this image, created by Anselm Kiefer and displayed in the NY Times, of autumn in Auvergne. Kiefer has captured an earthly version of "Yggdrasil," the Norse world-tree (immortalized in the Edda), looking both barren and lively. I'm struck by how much detail we can see in the branches... they are gorgeous in gray tones.  

Check out the original publication: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/18/opinion/20100919_OPART-copy.html?emc=eta1

anglo-saxon poetry for the digital age

Here's my digital story (mind you, I did this about 3 years ago for Allen Webb's "Teaching with Technology" class, so it could use some updating!) The poem I'm reciting is the Old English elegy "The Wanderer," translated into modern English by my OE translation class from many moons ago. Images are a mix of my own photos and some grabbed from the Web.

Enjoy the bleak outlook on life!