Poetry, to me, needs this same dynamism. Fizz and sugar. Summer and winter. Blah and yadda. But I’ve found an interesting explanation of how a static poetic style can fit into the dynamic model.

David Orr, in his review of Richard Wilbur’s latest book, Anterooms, evidences why I use the soda analogy. At the bottom, he mentions “Randall Jarrell claimed that as a poet, Wilbur ‘never goes too far, but he never goes far enough.’” Which makes Wilbur one of our flat-Pepsi-loving friends. But Orr also validates Wilbur’s lack of fizz. “It helps to recall that much of modern poetry is built on juxtaposition…Wilbur is an exception to this tendency. His writing is intent on reducing difference — he asks us to see a poem not as a sum of distinguishable parts, but as a smooth, silvery whole.”

To me, creating a “smooth, silvery whole” doesn’t require or exempt a dynamic or a static style of poetry. It’s the subject matter that influences the ability for a static style to still stay carbonated, or to “go far enough”. Orr again:

“[Wilbur's work] does ask something slightly unusual from the contemporary reader. It asks us to value ­poetry that is happy to be read as solid and static, rather than unstable and in flux. This is especially tricky if you’re writing about death, as Wilbur is in the strongest poems here. Death, like Wilbur’s poetry, does not easily admit of divisions; it is “the total emptiness forever,” as Larkin put it. What happens when you combine a style so dependent on surfaces with a subject that is, in a sense, nothing but surface?”

Then, Orr connects his dots and rebuts Jarrell.

“[T]o write convincingly about death — and also, as Wilbur has increasingly done, about grief — isn’t a matter of “going” anywhere. It’s a matter of remaining poised in the face of a vast and freezing indifference. And while the strong, spare poems here are unlikely to strike many readers as the illustrious pronouncements of a Grand Old Man — the kind of figure Jarrell had in mind — they are wholly successful in meeting the darkest of subjects with their own quiet light. Which is, surely, a far grander thing.”

I would argue that Wilbur’s static style, when applied to static subjects like death or grief, represents an eye in dynamism the same way that an eye represents the calm at the center of the hurricane. Orr’s contrasting terminology confirms this. His last sentence speaks in terms like “darkest of subjects” as dynamic against “their own quiet light.” I very much like his framing of “remaining poised”, but it still stands as a contrast to “vast and freezing indifference.” As Orr maintains, Wilbur’s static style works more effectively with the subject matter of death, but it does so in such a way that its static nature is incorporated and juxtaposed into the larger framework of contrast.

In essence, we need a hurricane around the eye of static stability. We need the friend who isn’t burping along.

Thoughts:

-If you don’t have space, don’t pull over to explain your full load. That just wastes everyones’ time.

-If you do have space, but don’t pull over, don’t wave to rub it in.

-If you self identify as an environmentalist or as someone concerned with the planet’s wellbeing, driving blithely past is hypocritical.  Ridesharing is an easy way to reduce our total carbon footprint.

-In the case of a hitchhiker, you don’t even need to make prior arrangements–they’re right there, right now.

-Offering a ride makes public transportation a private affair. It offers a chance for every person (with a car) to contribute a little towards a large problem. This gives them ownership over the situation, and creates change by lots of small instances.

-The seats have to be out there; why else does the HOV lane (with only a two person requirement) still present a valid way to avoid traffic? If every car were even a seat or two fuller on their drives, we could probably eliminate a quarter or more of the cars on the road. Enough people will still want their car, their space, and their regimentation to provide the spots to sit.

-If hitching a ride were as common and universally accepted by society as, say, sharing an elevator or chairlift, we might be a bit less paranoid about that dude on the side of the road. Strangely, both drivers and hitchhikers locate a decent amount of fear of those who they share their ride with, but they enter into equally risky and potentially dangerous situations all the time with no thought to the (same) consequences. Hell, just being in a car on U.S. 2 is a dumb idea at least 50% of the time.

-Hitchhikers always have good stories or thank you gifts. I’ve gotten beer and oranges from hitchhikers. I’ve given away stickers, beer, and cheap lift tickets. And you can’t pay for a good conversation.

In it, and under some wrapping paper, I found Alain de Botton’s new book, “A Week at the Airport.” From what I can gather, he’s a philosopher and travel writer who was asked by the management to spend a week at Heathrow and write about his experiences there.

Overall, I was quite surprised and impressed with the book. He probes into lots of the crannies that I was curious about, such as airline food and maintenance, but still manages to keep a good balance between humanity and the machinery of an airport. This book would be a perfect carry-on read. His language might seem excessively decorated, but the moments of levity make it worthwhile, so persevere through. The back flap classifies it as “Travel/Philosophy” and it certainly fits both categories; there’s a lot of cogent, important thinking in here about every conceivable subject. If you’re interested, here’s an excerpt from the NY Times.

In his introduction, de Botton paraphrases the director that set up his time in the airport: “there are still many aspects of the world that perhaps only writers could be counted on to find the right words to express.”

This certainly resonates with me. de Botton also asked, as a condition of employment, that he be given a desk to work at. It was placed outside on the terminal.

Many places on this planet deserve the same treatment that the director suggested for the airline terminal. The easiest way to get this to happen is to enable writers at every level,  and what better to enable writers than to make available a sturdy, free desk?

My proposal: put desks everywhere. Take something simple and sturdy, sort of like this one

and then put them in places like

or

or

or

Not that these places need a writer’s justice. But if we put desks there, we’ll be better for it.

********NOTE***********

I’m not suggesting that we put desks in otherwise undeveloped places. However, if there’s a parking lot, we can certainly find room for a desk.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a bit about risky sports, the health care system of the US, and the choices result for people who are pursuing activities that might get them hurt.

Several years back, a skier overshot a jump at Snoqualmie, sued, and received 14 million in damages. Several things happened. Both Snoqualmie and Stevens instituted terrain park passes to educate all users of the parks. RCR, an operator of a number of resorts in western Canada, totally removed jumps from their parks while claiming that they were making an “industry leading move.” They’ve since reinstated kickers.

Much finger pointing occurred after and during the lawsuit. Skiers and snowboarders spent a great deal of time blaming the skier, Kevin Salvini, for endangering the very existence of terrain parks. Obviously, there’s some credibility to this, as lawsuits have enormous power to shape the way ski areas operate.

Salvini and his lawyers blamed the resort for building a poor jump, which was also true. If fifteen people got hurt on one feature, it’s certainly an indication that it should be assessed. In my experience, Snoqualmie’s jumps have always been lacking. They certainly aren’t well maintained or built, partially because of the often slushy conditions and partly because the dirtwork they build them on is cramped to begin with.

There are good arguments on both sides, but there’s a serious disconnect that fuels most of the conflict in this case.

In America, the attitude towards taking risks is that the risk taker must be “responsible” for the consequences of their actions. At first glance, this seems pretty straightforward, but the Salvini case shows that it doesn’t work. When someone takes a risk and ends up a quadriplegic, it isn’t humane, compassionate, or in anyone’s interest to say to them,”Oh, well, you made that choice. Deal with it” for a two reasons.

One, it’s unrealistic and elitist to expect people to have the financial backing to be able to care for themselves in the case of any possible emergency. I certainly don’t have 23 million sitting around. The logical end result of such accounting-based reasoning is that only the very rich could participate in anything. I say anything, because (Two) risk isn’t counted or noted equally. People sitting on couches have heart failures, people jumping from the Golden Gate survive. It’s irrational to count hitting ski jumps as extra risky when far more people die and endanger themselves every single second in cars; we hold a double standard biased against the risks that are less common or less ingrained in our culture. Not that those odd risks are any less dangerous than our normal ones.

Whenever the problems with “sue-happy America” or litigation come up, someone just back from a study abroad or vacation chimes in that “Europe is way better that way.  You can do anything over there, because they don’t sue each other.” Which leads me to why the American system puts risk takers in an impossible bind. The random spouting European legal dogma is right, but he/she is right because the system that countries with universal health care have in place doesn’t force people to face down risks that they can’t handle. Instead of expecting people to pay, have insurance, or “deal with it,” their status as a human being guarantees them the right to health care (at the expense of higher taxes, techno, and ridiculous haircuts). In America, the Salvinis of our population don’t truly have the option to “take responsibility” for their actions, and as such are forced to sue to care for themselves. If we had health care that was a natural right, it wouldn’t be an issue. We wouldn’t have to play the blame game, and people could truly take responsibility for their risks because they’d have a backup plan when the landing disappeared and they slammed into the slope beyond.

And it wouldn’t be complete without some interesting articles:

50th Anniversary of The Pill

Diction of scientific studies about the human fertilization process

For the Last Wolverine — James Dickey

Privilege of Being — Robert Hass

Privilege of Being, as read by Robert Hass

Zucchini Shofar — Sarah Lindsay

Swearing by Effingham — Jason Koo

More France stuff to come. I promise.

There’s no doubt that I bristle at the Times article because I enjoy reading and writing–whenever an article or piece of literature decides to ring the tired “literature and language is dying or useless” bell, I can only say that they’ve missed the point of the stuff and need to get their heads out of the ether or their asses to read a good book or a few poems. At the base level, people conducting MRI tests or applying Darwinian biology to writing want to know: why do we read fiction writing? There is also the implicit question: how is fiction writing useful, and what evolutionary advantage does it give?

Answer 1:

I read fiction in books because I live in fictions. You can come at it in any number of ways: knowing that one’s perception is only as good or as bad as the sense that indicates it, the prevalence of religions, even Santa Claus. But it all indicates that there is a lot that we don’t know, and a lot that we make up to fill in the wondering. This is natural–inborn fictions function as fillers of these gaps in every culture. One simply cannot debate that. Fiction writing is a further extension of this need to fill things in; writers and readers are both intrigued by the premise that a story starts up, the “what if I decide that, today, Ralph Metzkow is spending all of his savings on Pastry Strudels?” The writer wants to know, so they conjure who Ralph is, his personality, and what the hell he’s going to do with all those pastry strudels. The reader, once clued in, is along for the ride. But both want to fill in the blank of wondering. Fiction writing allows just that–to find out what’s going to happen with the pastry strudels.

Answer 2:

In an essay, Terrence des Pres presents a talk given by Wallace Stevens about what Stevens calls “the press of the real.” The poet is, of course, talking about the pressure that reality exerts on us as individuals and together as societies. Bills, hurricanes, disasters, the fear of death, and the fact that one cannot do much to efface these situations all press in on us as a regular part of daily life. Stevens answers the question of “why care about poetry in the face of these other issues” by noting that poetry, and art in general, is a way of pushing back against the “press of the real.” This internal pressure is achieved by creating and living in ways that push back against reality, that conjure, in Stevens’ words,  a “violence from within to counter the violence from without.” Not an advocacy for physical violence, but a realistic notion about the state of wariness required when dealing with the sorts of gorgons that will find you after you leave your bed each day. Fiction writing is just this sort of “violence from within.” It equivocates the brutal facts of the “press of the real” through an equally brutal factlessness that one still has to recognize as beautiful. Given our obsession with fact, we should give up on fiction writing. But we stay with it, because we know that it is a lie and still bears much to give us: laughs, consolation, joy, inspiration. The very things that the “press of the real” tries to squeeze out and steal.

Methodological issues:

Evolutional theory in general and in relation to literature is all pointed towards the end of the fittest surviving and reproducing. Explaining fiction writing as merely a survival technique that either allows one to fill in blanks or to push back the “press of the real” demeans the notion of holding, using, or creating fictions because fictions are not just about surviving and having kids, they are about living. When asked what they want to be, kids don’t answer, “Oh, I’d like to be a surviver, and to reproduce.” They want to be firemen. Paleontologists. Astronauts. People that do things and explore cool stuff. Not just survivors that reproduce. Livers. Evolution focuses on surviving and reproducing, but these don’t mean living to me. Living is making something out of one’s surviving (and reproducing, if you’re into the whole offspring thing). If we are going to talk about living–I would consider enjoying and profiting from the benefits of fiction (that I’ve listed above) part of living–then surviving and reductionist evolutionary answers have no place in discussing why fiction is “valuable” or “useful.”

There are superbly tasty things that go along with eating in France, but all of it is compliment to a specific awareness that time is required for conversation, proper enjoyment of the food, and laughter. Most Americans are busy, and want more time. Time. And I appreciate that, here, there is no push to move eaters through. No pressure to leave. Time to stay for dessert. For coffee. For the conversation. If there is anything missing from eating at home that they’ve still got here, it is time.

A few interesting notes about the TGV (french trains) /RER (Paris Metro)station that adjoins CDG. There isn’t an arrivals board for trains, so I wasn’t sure if my girlfriend had pulled in yet. Asking about it in English at the INFO booth yielded some hostility and a response that there was a train with some relationship to Rennes coming in at 10:30. Of course, Michael Jackson came on the station radio about when I finished my question. And yes, he was singing in regular English. When the automatic intercom announcer says the acronym TGV, she blurs them all into one sort of sound. To duplicate the effect, say teegeevee ten times, and double your speed each time. By the end, you’ll have it. More or less.

For most of the first day, we wandered around Paris by foot. In order to get my backpack on the plane, I removed the hipbelt. Not such a good idea for walking around with a 50 lbs pack, but better to have five books than a Kindle.

We went by the Hotel de Ville, Notre Dame, Seine, Eiffel Tower, palaces, and some of the other large buildings that I don’t know the names of. All of this made me really interested in architecture. Sort of surprising, but it’s such beautiful stuff with all the statues and carvings and ornate decorative frippery. Very few of the buildings are distinct from each other, so it all sort of flows together. Which I like quite a bit. Less wasted space. The palaces are huge though. Absolutely massive. I’ve no idea what one would do with that much space. Maybe make quarter mile long bowling alleys. Or have an indoor mile long track in a straight line. Best of all, I could have both by the looks of the buildings. But it’s neat to have old architecture and buildings around, and makes for a sincere contrast with the mentality of tearing things down to build new structures.

All through CDG, the architecture is very mechanical in its look, with exposed beams and spars, bolts and nuts and plates sprouting up all over. Same style (obviously) on the Tower, which we didn’t go up in because of the 500 yd lines to get up there. In a Rennes park yesterday, we saw a pavilion with a big beam that protruded out of the top, and had cables going down in a conical shape from the top of the beam to support the roof. It looked like a bunch of tent lines with no tent on them. On the other side, there’s the old ornate stone, with its gargoyles and saints and statues. Walking around downtown Paris, one sees the inspiration for all of the monuments and buildings in Washington D.C. just sitting there. And the statues are everywhere, doing anything conceivable. I have this Harry Potter-esque notion that they randomly become animate and switch places every night. There must be some huge warehouse where they go to relax, get the pigeon poo cleaned off, and sip a nice mineral water drink.

Shortly after we arrived, we both wanted to grab something to eat. After walking around for a bit, we found a small café and ordered galettes. It’s a neat sort of flatbreadish pancake thing that is folded around some contents, in my case some cheese and tomatoes. It must have been cooked with a bit of oil in the dough or the cheese seeped out, because the edges were crispy and delicious, sort of like a fried cheese lattice that you get when you put cheese on a grill. Today, we went to another creperie and I tried one with mushrooms, tomato and cheese. Super tasty, with a butter and sugar crepe to follow. We sat right next to the cooks downstairs–it was like being next to a small stove. Fun to watch them make the crepes and galettes though.

Interesting how every culture has its own flat type of bread. Pita. Tortilla. Crepe. Gallete. Greek flatbread. Naan. Injera.

On the first day, we picnicked on the Seine for dinner. Baguette, camembert, French spicy mustard, some beer, and little fluffy candy bananas with the consistency of circus peanuts. Scenic. Tasty. Beautiful girl. Yum.

On my first day in Rennes, two days ago, I took a nap in the afternoon to make up for some of the sleep lost on the planes. Can’t tell if I’m jet lagged, so that’s a positive. After my nap, we went out to dinner at a place called L’Amiral, which was some of the best food I’ve ever had. Three different wines, tones of great veggies, bread, glorious desert….. so mind blowing. Here’s to great food, and to sitting down with great people to eat it.

Yesterday, after sleeping in past noon, we went to park in Rennes. Super nice place for a walk and a picnic. Some guy was flying a remote control airplane, and the triangles of its grey wings were backlit against the trees that are just starting to bud. Way pretty. A jogging path winds through the woods, and it has these interesting pieces of exercise equipment about every 500 yrds or so. Balance beams, poles in a line to run through, stretching stuff, monkey bars. I tried it all out, and got my balance on.

Just as I could identify the French people at the gate in DFW, everyone here knows that I’m not French. Some guy yelled at us yesterday–I didn’t need to know what exactly he said, it wasn’t nice. I’m not often in the position of a minority, but it’s way uncomfortable to be yelled at for no fault of your own. It’s a useful feeling to remember so that one doesn’t perpetrate it on others. He’ll get his.

Public transport is so easy here. No need for a car. No class distinctions as to who rides the bus. So nice. Wish that it was like that at home.

Here’s to baguettes. YUM.

Expect more ramblings in the next few days. Cheers.