Comfortable Living

At my age (which I am less and less inclined to reveal as that number increases) one hears a great amount of talk about what is called a “comfortable” life. It has been said that this includes the pursuit of a singular career which will provide one with a reasonable salary — if such a thing can be so qualified. This is all well and good (especially, I am told, for the stability of our national economy). Or, to be more specific, this is all well and good, if one’s main pursuit in life is to be comfortable — that is, if one pursues comfort itself as the end goal of a so-called satisfactory life.

But if one views the attainment of comfort as a means to achieve other goals, higher than comfort for its own sake, then one might realize how utterly uncomfortable one must be, by necessity, and for most — or what seems like most — of one’s time on this earth. I myself languish when I am comfortable (which is both most of its entangling allure and part of its liberating danger), but I enjoy it so much that it does me little good. I formulate bad habits, increase my bad faith in others, I become lazier, my mind begins to slip, I have little need for challenge or creation, I seek stimulation from artificial sources. In fact, in looking back upon my thoroughly comfortable life (and I am speaking of and limited to my own experience here), my proudest and most productive moments have occurred when the circumstances of my life were decidedly uncomfortable. When I have been challenged beyond my abilities, then I have understood what I am able to accomplish. When I failed others and myself, then I have realized the possibility and meaning of loyalty. And when I have lit out for the territories of the unknown, I have discovered exactly the same. So perhaps it is evident why I am distrustful of any talk of this business of the “comfortable” life — while comfort suits my sense of want, it cannot (and will never, I am afraid) suit my sense of need. Because of this, I will not long be satisfied with it, even while I am enjoying it.

In addition to this, I am not the least bit convinced that the attainment of comfort is a reasonable goal. I first began to suspect as much when I realized that those same people who encouraged or, at times, demanded me to seek out a comfortable living were the same otherwise respectable elders who repeated to me that life in this world is difficult, ugly, and not a bit fair. So perhaps this philosophy of comfort was developed in response to a difficult world, so that one may overcome (or, at the very least, tolerate) life’s adversities simply by earning a comfortable wage. But I cannot reckon with this understanding of life and the world, as no level of perceived comfort (and comfort is ultimately nothing more than a perception of things) will alter life’s inherent difficulty or lack of fairness. Moreover, the perfectly comfortable life is perfectly impossible, as are all of mankind’s delusions of a perfect world. Even the notion that one may salve the world’s imperfections with a reasonable level of comfort is, as life will prove to everyone, something of a delusion.

And so I accept discomfort, not simply because it is inevitable, but rather because I realize how much more potential within me is made possible by it. The danger in writing this is the knowledge that such claims, having been made, will need to be tested, and I have no doubt that God (or Providence, or Fate, or Random Chance, or Oblivion — however you are comfortable in naming that great Watcher of us that we have perceived in the Universe at large) will take every opportunity available to make me into a thoroughly authentic man. I suspect that when these claims inevitably are tested, I may be revealed as not entirely honest.  So be it. Such is life.

.

(Author’s note — In typing this entry from an original hand-scrawled manuscript [which in itself was a considerable labor], the author realizes his own proclivity toward parentheticals, dashes, varieties of colons [semi- and the like], &c. which may cause great discomfort to even the most patient of his Readers. Sincerest apologies abound)

Bonding: A Fiction

Dewey, my son, wants to go to a restaurant, one of those places with heads on the wall. Deer, moose, antelope, buffalo, dik-diks, etc. I wanted to take him to my usual place, Captain Nemo’s, one of those places people go to complain about terrible jobs and homicidal wives. I thought it might be an enlightening experience for him, in a take-your-son-to-work sort of way, to see where his father spends his time and who he spends it with. But no, he wanted to come to the place with the heads on the wall.

My son orders a salad and a root beer. I order steak, rare. I look at all the heads on the walls while Dewey pokes at his mug with his finger, melting shapes of hooded monsters, bogeymen probably, into the frost. There’s a dead deer head right above our table. Someone, some taxidermist, has put blood-red marbles instead of glass eyes into its empty sockets. And I thought I had derangements.

“There are tiny little bugs in the air,” I tell Dewey. It’s good for him to know about such things.

“Are there?” he asks.

“These little germs that get in your lungs when you breathe the air outside. Then they get into your bloodstream.”

“What happens then?” he asks. He’s really curious, but I give him a look that says if he doesn’t know already, it’s no use telling him.

His salad arrives. The croutons are moist. They look like little slugs.

“Do you remember acid rain?” he asks me, poking one of the slug-croutons with his fork until it bursts.

“Yes.”

“Well now they’re saying it’s not just in rain, but the atmosphere too. Which is why I have asthma, I think, and also why I get rashes on my skin.”

I want to ask who ‘they’ are and why they’re telling my son the things his father should be telling him. But I don’t ask – ‘they’ could be anyone, everyone. It’s a god-damned dangerous world out there.

Critical Epigraphs in the Age of Digital Reproduction

It would be so nice to have my work mean something, mean something to so many people, mean something to so many critics, to so many undoubtedly important critics; it would be so nice for everyone to see that my work means something to so many undoubtedly important critics; it would be so nice to read good things about my work; even if they just come from my friends doing me a favor, or even if they are a stranger paid to review it, or even if nobody will recognize their names, it would be nice to fill five or four pages (or three, even three pages, a modest and fully justified three pages) of my book with wonderful adjectives of praise; it would not be nice to face the darkness of my soul without my glowing epigraphs; no, it will not be nice to face the nothingness of my being without them; it will be so nice when, in a bookshop, on a web vendor’s site, in a PDF preview of my reasonably priced ebook edition, it will be so nice when a potential reader sees these few (but yet so essential, so essential) pages of all the nice things that all the nice people said about my work; it will be so nice when I no longer will be jealous of all the nice things that all the nice people have said about other writers’ work; it will be so nice when they all inevitably love me; it will be so nice to show other people, to show my children, my children’s children, other people’s children; nice, yes, nice is the fitting word for it, the only word for it, yes, yes, yes, yes.

In Memoriam

Poet Samuel Menashe, a great mentor and a beautiful man. 9-16-1925 to 8-22-2011. Rest in peace, my dear friend.

“Now”
By Samuel Menashe

There is never an end to loss, or hope
I give up the ghost for which I grope
Over and over again saying Amen
To all that does or does not happen—
The eternal event is now, not when

Truly Unnecessary

 

“Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” –Mark Twain

 

Frigedæg (Lof-leoð Friges)
Anglo-Saxon translation by Jacob Kempfert
From the original Modern English by Rebecca Black

(Hwæt, æ-æ-æ-æ-æ-æt)
Eala-la-la, la giese
Giese, giese
Giese-se-se
Giese-se-se
Giese-se-se
Giese-se-se
Giese, giese, giese

Seofon ymbe middæg, arisende on ealne ærne mergen
Sceal aferscan, sceal dunestigende gongan
Sceal min læfelne habban, sceal morgen-atne habban
Sceawiende ealne, seo tima gongende biþ
Gierrende on ond on, gehwa astellende
Sceal to niðersige gongan to crætwæn-astynte
Sceal min crætwæn læccan, ic sceawie min frynd (min frynd)

Aseonende on forman hlede
Sittende on laste hlede
Sceal min mode witan
Hwelc hleda ic mæg niman?

Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende, wucuende
Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende

Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Glæd, glæd, glæd, glæd
Gehydg-sceawiende to wucuende

vii ond xlv solmerces, we beoþ on herewege pæððende
Drifende caflic, ic wile tid fleogan
Glæd, glæd, ymbþenc glædnesse
Þu canst hwæt hit biþ
Ic hæbbe þis, þu hæfst þis
Min freond biþ andlang min, la
Ic hæbbe þis, þu hæfst þis
Nu þu canst hit

Aseonende on forman hlede
Sittende on laste hlede
Sceal min mode witan
Hwelc hleda ic mæg niman?

Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende, wucuende
Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende

Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Glæd, glæd, glæd, glæd
Gehydg-sceawiende to wucuende

Giestrandæg wæs Þunresdæg, Þunresdæg
Heodæg biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg (gadriende)
We we we glædmodlic
We glædmodlic
We beoþ gongende habban galfreols heodæg
Æfterradæg biþ Sæternesdæg
Ond Sunnandæg cymþ æfterra…mæl
Ne ic wille þas wucuende forðferan

R-S, Rebecca Sweart
La aseonende on forman hlede (on forman hlede)
On laste hlede (on laste hlede)
Ic beo drifende, ymbliðende (giese, giese)
Caf lana, inwendende lana
Mid an cræte ymbe andlang min (hwæt!)
(Cumaþ on) Pæððende æt biþ an scol-crætwæn anforngean me
Ginaþ tick tock, tick tock, wille galan
Capie to min tide, hit biþ Frigedæg, hit biþ an wucuende
We beoþ gongende glæd habban, cumaþ on, cumaþ on ge eall

Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende, wucuende
Hit biþ Frigedæg, Frigedæg
Sceal niðer-abiddan on Frigedæg
Gehwa biþ gehygd-sceawiende to wucuende

Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Gadriende, gadriende (giese)
Glæd, glæd, glæd, glæd
Gehydg-sceawiende to wucuende

(Niwan stefne)

Riddle 23

Riddle 23 of the Exeter Book

Text

Agob is min noma     eft onhwyrfed;
ic eom wrætlic wiht     on gewin sceapen.
þonne ic onbuge,     ond me on bosme fareð
ætren onga,     ic beom eallgearo
þæt ic me þæt feorhbealo     feor aswape.
Siþþan me se waldend,     se me þæt wite gescop,
leoþo forlæteð,     ic beo lengre þonne ær,
oþþæt ic spæte     spilde geblonden
ealfelo attor     þæt ic ær gegeap.
Ne togongeð þæs     gumena hwylcum,
ænigum eaþe     þæt ic þær ymb sprice,
gif hine hrineð     þæt me of hrife fleogeð,
þæt þone mandrinc     mægne geceapaþ,
fullwer fæste     feore sine.
Nelle ic unbunden     ænigum hyran
nymþe searosæled.     Saga hwæt ic hatte.

Translation 

Wob is my name turned around;

I am a strange creature, in strife shaped.

When I bend, and the fatal arrow

travels through my breast, I am all-eager

to sweep far away from me that deadly danger.

After my ruler forsakes my limbs, who shaped

me in that torment, then I am longer

than before, until I spit destruction corrupting,

the all-vile venom that I before swallowed.

That which I thereabout speak in passing

does not easily pass away from any kind of men:

if it which flies from my womb touches him—

him that through his strength

far buys the deadly drink—

then he firmly buys the full atonement.

Nor to obey anyone will I unbind

unless I am skillfully bound.

Say what I am called.

—–

Commentary

Solution: Bow

Riddle 23 is one of the rare riddles of the Exeter Book that gives its answer. While the answers to Latin riddles were given by their titles (the Latin riddles being rhetorical word games rather than true enigmas), few of the Old English riddles provide solutions. When the solution is included in the riddle itself, it is often further hidden by an additional linguistic trick – in this case, the answer, “boga” (bow), is spelled backwards as the name of the strange creature (Agob). I translate the backwards “Agob” into “Wob” in order to retain this additional orthographic complication in the Modern English.

Agob is seen as “Agof” in the Exeter Book, which Mitchell and Robinson indicate is a corruption “by an inattentive scribe” (235). Sievers[1] suggests that in the eight century the spoken “b” might have been written as “f” according to custom, and so “Agob” in the urtext was “corrected” at some point between the eighth and tenth centuries as “Agof” to accommodate this philological adaptation.  In either case this corruption/substitution further confounds the riddle’s solution.

The reason for this additional veiling of the answer may be due to the paradoxical nature of the bow and its arrow: in order to fly forward, the arrow must be pulled backwards through the bow, and the bow must “swallow” the arrow that it then “spits” out as destruction. This structure of reversal is noticeable particularly in line 6, with the mirroring of “me se” to “se me” after the caesura. Line 6 also includes the verb “gescop” to indicate the shape of the bow’s tormented limbs. This reflects “sceapen” of line 2: “on gewin sceapen,” (in war/battle/strife created/shaped), which itself has a double meaning – bows are crafted as weapons in times of war, and they are “shaped” into their bent form during a battle.

The bow here is not connoted as an instrument of valor or victory (as many weapons are considered in Anglo-Saxon poetry), but rather a corrupting force. Its curving body is likened to a snake that spits venom. The arrows may indeed be poisoned, for even a touch will send a man to his death – an event that is further riddled by the word “fullwer,” a full covenant or atonement. The use of the noun “hrife” (belly/womb) as the source for the poison is of note. The closely-related adjective “rif” (sometimes spelled “hrif”) means violent, fierce, or noxious[2], relating either to the nature of the bow or of its poison. If the sense is that the bow is conceiving the poisoned arrow in its womb (rather than spitting it up from its stomach), then the imagery could, perhaps, be indirectly related to James 1:15: “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The previous snake imagery of the bow gives credence to this, harkening back to Satan in Eden instigating the Fall (the poison to mankind’s souls), as well as the riddle’s notion that a man “buys the deadly drink through his own power” (þone mandrinc mægne geceapaþ), connected to a man’s “own evil desire” in James 1:14. Then the “full atonement” (fullwer) of death is made.

The riddler then ponders the paradoxical nature of the bow in lines 15 and 16. The bow will not “unbind” unless it is “bound” (more literally, it will not “loosen” unless it is cunningly “sealed”) – that is, the arrow will not shoot unless the bow is skillfully made and strung. Conceptually this is not a paradox, but it is made one through linguistic wordplay.

In translation, I have added an additional pun in line 10, not present in the original text, of the bow speaking of the arrow “in passing” – the twang of the bowstring as the arrow shoots, passing through the bow in an instant. This plays off the translation of “togongeð” (literally, “to-going”) as “pass away,” a euphemism for death. The line breaks in my version are constructed so as to end in the similar sounds of alliteration, assonance, and slant rhymes. The lines are also constructed in the curve of a bow. The spacing of lines 13 and 14 represents the arrow, and their cant down- and leftward is meant to reproduce a “notching” effect as the bow is drawn, readying itself to “unbind,” and send its target to his “full atonement.”

---

[1] Sievers, Eduard. “Zu Cynewulf.” Anglica xiii (1891): 15.

[2] Bosworth, Joseph and Northcote T. Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. London, 1898.

The Falling Sickness

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” Thus saith the latter-day sage and prophet Joseph Heller. One might say the same of books — that some are natally mediocre, having been written under a malalignment of aesthetic stars; that some achieve mediocrity, by the long, dark remainer-shelf of the soul; and that some have mediocrity thrust upon them — often under the influence of those that believe (rather misguidedly, I suppose) that they know this particular work the best. I will leave it to my reader to fill in examples of such mediocre books as he or she sees fit; examples of each classification abound on the heavy shelves of world literatures.

My intent is to discuss an unnerving trend in recent years, one that focuses primarily on the third classification: the forceful thrusting of humdrummery upon unsuspecting books. During a recent visit to the haven of the hiply literate (Barnes & Noble — and it must be noted here that I am not and never have been “hip” [which, I suppose, it what most hipsters think of themselves, although I adamantly deny being a hipster {which I grudgingly admit is characteristic of most hipsters -- a pox upon their kind!}], and I consider myself “workably literate” [that is, I know the language and literature being discussed very rarely, but I compensate quite successfully through hogwash and bunkum] , so for me any sense of “hip literacy” is out of the question) I discovered an English translation (as it was advertised) of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  Having considered this for a moment or two (workably literate people generally second-guess their first impressions, having a vast archive of useless truths and trivial lies through which to sift), it occurred to me the possibility that an English translation of The Scarlet Letter was, perhaps, a bit extravagant. If I had any remaining doubts as to whether Nathaniel Hawthorne had already written The Scarlet Letter in English, they were soon dispelled by the adjacent copies of the work in its original language. The “translation,” apparently, was not one of English to English (although that perhaps would be more interesting, with all of its Borgesian Pierre-Menard-Author-of-the-Quixote implications [See? "Workably" literate]), but rather it was a translation of English to 21st-century American (although translating Hawthorne into “American” seems doubly ironic). Its overall quality was one of sheer — how to put it lightly? — simplicity, although much larger and much stronger words would suit it equally well (and I can already hear the cries and accusations of “Elitist!” in my ears — the curse of the low-functioning literate is to be considered elite by the ordinary and ordinary by the elite). But by changing mere words, by simplifying from Hawthorne’s original, the whole of each paragraph was transformed. Entire meanings and purposes were irrevocably lost. At long last, the aim of the alchemists had been accomplished — provided, of course, that the alchemists had grown tired of gold and wanted to transmute it back to lead.

Alas, I did not purchase the translation, even though it was certain to have a quite intriguing translator’s preface, so I do not have examples from its text at hand. But throughout literature there are many examples of such tawdrification that would suit my purposes equally well; why not produce a specimen from the best of them? Shakespeare’s work has gained the most notoriety and lost the most meaning from such “translations” (again I am putting it lightly — “Bowdlerizations” would be appropriate, but instead of editing out perceived vulgarities, entirely new ones are provided). Take, for example, an exchange from Julius Caeser, Act I, scene ii. Conspirators Brutus and Cassius inquire of Casca the events of Caesar’s military parade. Casca informs them that Caesar denied the offered crown three times, and then “he fell down in the market-place and foamed at the mouth and was speechless.” Brutus interjects,  ”‘Tis very like: he hath the falling sickness,” what in this age we call epilepsy. Cassius then responds: “No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I, and honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.” Cassius is not implying they all have epilepsy; instead, he refers to the fact that they have fallen under the spell of Caesar, and are powerless against him — in Elizabethan times, epileptics were considered to be under a spell, or possessed by a spirit. The other implication of the “falling sickness” is that its sufferer is powerless to resist, and cannot be held accountable for his or her actions. Thus, Cassius’ turn of phrase not only communicates his outrage at Caesar’s rule, but also includes a hint of moral justification for the future assassination — the conspirators cannot be held accountable for their actions, as they have a sort of falling sickness. How much is lost in the contemporary translation!

BRUTUS: He has epilepsy.
CASSIUS: No, Caesar doesn’t have it; but you, and I, and honest Casca, we have epilepsy.

There is no implication or subtlety. There is no moral ramification. When Casca doesn’t get Cassius’ meaning, there is no weight to it: we likewise don’t understand, for there is nothing to get. It is simply the wordy aside of a fool, full of sound and fury, etc. etc.

This type of “translation” (the type which does not seek to make things clear so much as make them trifling) is our own modern “falling sickness” — by no means an epilepsy, but certainly a captivating spell, a powerlessness. It is too mindful a task to approach an unfamiliar text (or an unfamiliar usage of language) on its own terms. It is easier to conform the text or language to what we already know. It is easier, true — but it is also much more mindless (“more mindless”? Like I said, “workably” literate).

We must recast the books as we see fit in order to approach them. It is our reflection we most admire. Those books that don’t reflect us must be reformed by our hands, like the distortions of a fun-house mirror. Our condescending political-correctness (such as removing the word “nigger” from Huckleberry Finn), our hip and truncated sarcasm (such as the recent anthology summarizing the world’s greatest novels as Twitter posts — I shudder to dwell upon this for any length of time that is more than necessary to compose this sentence), our insistence that the power of every myth be trimmed to irreverent and manageable stereotypes (such as the overwhelmingly unexceptional Twilight series and spin-offs, as well as the recent slew of 21st-century vampires and “monsters” artlessly plunged into Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, and the life of Abraham Lincoln) — those books that don’t reflect these aspects of ourselves must be made to do so.

There is a great danger in this falling sickness, but we are all under it to differing extents.  I am reminded of the gold doubloon nailed to the mast in Moby-Dick. Each crew member analyzes the doubloon, and interprets its imagery according to how it suits him. That’s well and good, and common to all of us and our pet perspectives. The falling sickness is most like Ahab, who sees only his own self in the images printed on the coin, and sees the coin itself as the world’s mirror of his image. The difference is that the falling sickness is neither as nasty nor as megalomaniac as Ahab — it hasn’t the guts for that kind of spectacle. It has flies in its eyes, but it can’t see them for the flies in its eyes. Instead, its fate is closer to Casca’s from Julius Caesar, who is incapable of appreciating Cassius’ humorless humor, or why Cassius says they have the falling sickness — “I know not what you mean by that, but I am sure Caesar fell down.” Honest Casca? Indeed, dishonestly so!

To a B+ Student Disputing Her Grade

An A is merely three thin lines
Arranged by a brief pen’s designs
Upon the unsuspecting page;

Its own aesthetic quality
is not as pleasing as a B
In this post-modernistic age.

And A can’t strike so rare a nerve
As C’s sleek, captivating curve
That always will the A upstage.

There are no tears of night that D
With its sun-rising symmetry
Has yet been helpless to assuage,

And F: three strokes of that same pen
That made the A have formed its friend,
A firm and fully steadfast sage.

(And to the blessed Illiterate
Any letter’s subtle wit
Is nothing but a foolish cage!)

One errs when one so elevates
An A above its other mates
Supported only by vague rage:

The Typist’s touch, the Artist’s eye,
Must also equally apply
As means by which to clearly gauge!

Envoi
The Teacher can’t alone retool
The value of each majuscule
Without an ample raise in wage.

The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth

I brought the Minnesotan bones of Bill Holm to New England tonight. He is unheard of here, even in the most Midwestern of these eastern states, and I don’t believe he stuck. There is something in the sensibility that is profoundly different.

The best example I can think of is this: the only thing Minnesota is more proud of than its work is its weather. Having lived for years in Minnesota, and now having left its ten thousand lakes and ten thousand borders, I can say that Minnesotans carry both their work and their weather with them wherever they go.

Not that this isn’t the case with Mainers — I would hardly deign to say whether it is or not, being but a foolish infant here with hardly a sense of object permanence: Maine can play peekaboo with me like Minnesota tried so long and so hard to do, and Maine still can easily fool me and rack me up in fiendish fits of laughter — but rather, I only mean to say that while Minnesotans are proud of their weather, Mainers are likewise proud; but with a sense of pride that borders on mere vanity.

David Mamet writes (with an understanding of the core of the Midwestern worldview and sentimentality, the true profundity of which is most likely unknown to him): “At least once a day we reinterpret the weather — an essentially impersonal phenomenon — into an expression of our current view of the universe,” and all humanity nods its head and mutters, “It’s true,” while those in Minnesota nod their heads and smirk to themselves and mutter, “It’s true.” There is a pleasant masochism that is shared among Minnesotans, that our native weather tempers us, and sharply awakens our senses and our pains and pleasures, like the needles in the skin of the awakening foot, or the mirthful razor of our funny bone cracking a counter. It makes us stronger, callouses the skin, toughens our hide; and we are as proud of such consistent stings as a heap of clay must be of the incising blade of the master sculptor. Minnesotans put up with it and commiserate. Mainers for the most part believe they have grown accustomed to the cruelest cold and the bitterest wind, and can only with the strained gentility of etiquette accept a rival to their claims.

I don’t believe that Minnesota has harsher winters than Maine. From what I can either sense or guess, they are equals. But I have many times in Maine been asked if I am prepared for the winter, and when I respond most certainly, yes (which is, I suppose, also a type of vanity), I am asked with dubious arch of eyebrows if I’m quite sure I know what I’m talking about.

But thinking it over, a Mainer could as easily receive a similar mistrust in Minnesota, and an equally vain mistrust at that. So what, then, is the difference?

Perhaps it is always unpleasant in varying degrees to be the outsider. As Auden writes, “Isn’t it true that however far we’ve wandered into our provinces of persecution, where our regrets accuse, we keep returning back to the common faith from which we’ve all dissented, back to the hands, the feet, the faces? … Those in love cannot make up their minds to go or stay. Artist  and doctor return most often. Only the mad will never, never come back. For doctors keep worrying while away, in case their skill is suffering or deserted … And the artist prays ever so gently, let me find pure all that can happen.”

And it is here that I return to my first point: I feel as if I have brought Bill Holm the artist to the worrying doctors of academia, and the doctors have done what doctors frequently do — glance with mild and required curiousity, nod and sniff or hum a moody note, and then forget, and then move on to more important and more worrisome matters. “The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up York State, or in the Carolina hills,” to purloin a sentiment from the ghost of old “Red” Lewis, who ends his most remembered work (and yet a work so conveniently avoided or simplified) with a bomb to blow up smugness — which is in turn ignored, in favor of concern about the weather, the storm windows, and a probably-stolen screwdriver.

And so the bones of Bill Holm will rest primarily in my mind, where neither he nor I are perpetual outsiders, as we so frequently have found ourselves amidst this de facto world of inorganic geographies, with borders of dry dust and chalky institutions. Sinclair Lewis is there too, an arm around us both, a scotch and cigarette in each hand, bellowing with a taut and tattered grin, “Well, let me tell you something. I’m the best goddamn writer in this here goddamn country!” And we all nod together and sip his whiskey. And then what do we three talk about? My God! We talk for sweet and holy hours about the Minnesotan weather.

Poems (Written Upon the Collapse of Facebook on the 23rd of September, 2010; Being in the Style of the Ancient Masters)

Poem (Facebook has collapsed!)

Facebook has collapsed!

It was not raining here but

they said it was raining back

in Minnesota and raining pretty

hard at that and flooding too

they told me and I was thinking

all about this when I realized

FACEBOOK HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no weather in the internet

there is no rain in the internet

I am registered on many social networks

and now I must use all of them at

my disposal to complain

Oh Facebook we hate you come back

After “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)” by Frank O’Hara

The Second Coming

Refreshing and refreshing in the widening gyre

The user cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The screen-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of confluence is drowned;

The best lack all connection, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some devastation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast article out of Wikipedia is sought

For explanation of what the “Second Coming” means;

A shape before the screen with hunched body,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is blinking its slow eyes, while all about it

Stream shadows of the indignant Twitterers.

The network drops again but now I know

That six years of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking browser,

And what bored beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward the Blogsphere to be born?

After “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats