[300 Reviews]

Consider this the official announcement of my new review site, 300 Reviews.  The goal is fairly simple: collect 300, 300-word reviews on the sorts of subjects that might not fit in mainstream venues.  I want the reviews to be entertaining, thoughtful, creative.  If you want to know more, you can read my spiel.

As of today, you can check out some great pieces by:

Alissa Nutting

Sara Joy Culver

Carl Peterson

Brian Oliu

& Tom Farrington.

Hope you enjoy the site, since I’m enjoying my role as editor.  The work we have coming up is nothing short of wonderful: “Single Ladies” Pronouns, Baking, Cats, & Mass Transit, to name a few.  Check it out, subscribe to the feed if you like it, and forward it to your friends.  We’d like some company over there.

[FLW FTW]

I’m sorry to say it was news to me that Frank Lloyd Wright was a madman. Today in the library I came across a book of his, When Democracy Builds, published in 1945. It was only this book, rather than his designs, which led me to my new understanding of our most famous architect. Take this paragraph from the foreword as early proof:

This book is written in the firm belief that all true human Culture has a healthy idea of the Beautiful as its Life-of-the-Soul: an Aesthetic-Organic, as of Life, not on it. One that nobly relates Man to his environment. This true Aesthetic sense would make of Man a gracious, potent, integral part of the whole of Life. Ethics, Art, and Religion have survived only as they were actual departments of the aesthetic sense; and survive only to the extent that they embodied human sentiment for the Beautiful. To ignore this truth is to misunderstand the Soul of Man, turn him over to Science ignorant of his significance and blind to his destiny.

Of course, this was 1945, and it certainly makes sense that the rants which follow appear at the end of World War II. It makes sense when later he sounds almost Melvillian (thanks to Robert Dixon for the observation) in his disdain for the modern urban citizen:

The properly citified Citizen has become a broker, a vendor of gadgetry, a salesman dealing for profit in human frailties, or a speculator in the ideas and inventions of others; this puller of levers is a presser of the buttons of a vicarious power, power his by way of mechanical craft.

In some ways it’s hard to disagree completely. There is a feeling in the text that seems to prophecy our conquest of the virtual (hello blogosphere), and our increasingly digitized existence, as expressed in the many terminals we use as interfaces with the world. Yet, this is also clearly a form of madness. Paranoid, anxious, hyperbolic madness. The type of mind that would worry about the potential for cultural contagion carried on the backs of immigrants.

It’s still all very palatable, though, until he starts comparing cities to cross-sections of fibrous tumors, and arguing that the Buddha taught individualism.  It leads in the direction of capitalized Democracy, “Law Organic,” and the decentralization of all things.  It leads in the direction of this final line: “The ever moving Infinite that divides Yesterday from Tomorrow is still the Present.”  And what a closer that is.

It reminds me of something I’ve wondered for years: am I crazy enough to be a real artist? I don’t think so. I think I’m doomed to obscurity by my very plainness. Most days I feel grateful for that. And most days I don’t aim to fool onlookers. It reminds me of Slavoj Žižek, pawing around his kitchen in an early scene in the documentary bearing his name. He happily shows the filmmakers how he stores his clothes in kitchen drawers, rather than regular kitchenware. It’s as if he’s screaming, “Look! I am eccentric! I am eccentric enough to be considered a real philosopher, right?” Right. Play on, master thespian.

[Sacked by a gang of snails]

Where have I been?  Right here, baby.  Don’t worry, I never left, it’s just that Druid City can swallow you whole sometimes.

I have every intention to get back in the swing of things, blogwise.  After all, there is news to share, and friends to congratulate!  But first, here’s a picture of a snail I took in Transylvania, and a (long overdue) link to Brian Oliu’s new blog:

Um…Brian Oliu’s New Blog.

Also, my good friend, David Welch, turned me on to this Ashbery poem that I’ve managed to miss up until now.  Go give it a read: “My Erotic Double”!

[Vif Retour]

A couple of months have passed with a flurry.  I made my farewell to Romania and pitched headlong into the intoxicating study of French.  The fabled French countryside regaled me with bike rides, strong cheese, and far too many sunny afternoons to be good for any kind of work.  I did manage to read several novels and books of poems, despite the constant desire to simply lounge in a dumb stupor.  Good friends were also good motivators; I send my thanks to a persistent (if unnamed on this site) study buddy who encouraged my diligent work in various small cafés.  And of course, yes, there were new friends, to whom I owe gratitude for my improvement in conversational French, and for their boundless patience.

My French sojourn also came to an end, though.  I am back, a newly re-minted Yankee, peddling myself in the great state of Alabama.  There are old colleagues, new projects, and good causes to follow up on here.  More appears with every hour.

So, “vif retour!” And be sure I’ll be updating a bit more often, now that I don’t have the excuse of the cafés or the rivers to draw me away from…my secretive body.

Now, go read (and love) this Anne Sexton poem.

[Goodbye Brasov!]

Well, my Fulbright grant period has come to a close.  Debriefing is forthcoming when I’ve had a bit more time to reflect on the last nine months.  But even if it will take some time to gain perspective on all that I’ve experienced and learned here, I want to take a moment to bid this place farewell.  Thanks, Brasov!  You’ve been a good host — both for ups and downs.  I’ll miss living here, I’ll miss the people, and I’ll look forward to returning some day in the future.  For now, though, I’m gone.

[House on the Hill]

This morning in Transylvania it’s raining like the Hoh rain forest and while that’s generally good for my level of indoor productivity, it’s not what I’d hoped for during my last week in Romania.  Still, back home in New York my friends and family have had it much worse with precipitation; I shouldn’t complain.  I can say, at least, that I’ve had plenty of good outdoor experiences this spring, as you can see from the above picture.  It comes from a small village, Măgura, in Parcul National Paitra Craiului, where some friends were gracious enough to take me.  The house belongs to one of those friends, and boasted an amazing view of both Paitra Craiului and the Bucegi mountains.  Have you been to Transylvania?  You should visit.

And that’s all I really wanted to say today.  It’s not a hard-hitting blog post about unrest in Iran, but I think other people have that covered.

[Another Anniversary]

Elaine Feinstein has given us many things for which to be grateful.  Among her novels, poems, translations, and other writing, I was first struck by her translations of Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva.  You can see a copy of one of the most famous poems here.  If Feinstein’s translations of this remarkable “silver age” poet had been all she could contribute to the literary world, that alone would be enough for us to forever owe her a debt of gratitude.

But she has given us more.  In her most recent book of poems, Talking to the Dead, Feinstein teaches us something about grieving (a subject that you would think exhausted after so many millenia), and shows that extended apostrophe need not be either sanctifying or crude.  I think she demonstrates the best of what grief has to offer: a confusion that is ultimately clarifying in how it shows us how death brings both loss and relief (for the survivors too), both the endearing and the things we might rather forget.  Here’s a highlight from the volume:

Another Anniversary

Today is your birthday.  There is cool sunshine.
Fig leaves and roses cover the wooden fence.
What happiness can I wish you in your death?

Here is the garden that I made for us
though you saw only the winter shape
of a weeping crab apple and a bare plum,

it was my offering, and you received it so;
but most of what we work at disappears.
Little we worry over has importance.

The greedy and the generous have the same end.
The dead know nothing of what we say to them.
Still, in that silence let me write: dear friend.

I don’t know Feinstein personally, but the work brings out many of the ideas I’ve been working with, lately, on grief and loss.  It strikes close to the things I’ve wanted to say.  In short, a simple and high compliment: I find myself wishing I’d written it.  Thus, I felt the need to talk about it and share the poem.  Back to navel-gazing in the near future.

*The above poem is reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press.

[it's okay with me]

The weather in Transilvania is gorgeous today and I’ve every urge to wander up into the mountains for a picnic or something else equally idyllic, but work is running hot — there’s simply too much on the table yet to be dealt with.  Even a single hour this morning with Ian McEwan (yes, still reading Amsterdam) felt like cheating while papers remain to be graded and reports are waiting to be written.

Still, I wanted to take a moment to announce a new film & criticism blog by friend and film scholar, Dustin L. Collins, called it’s okay with me.  (That’s his mug up top.) Dustin’s perspective and scope is fresh: in the short lifespan of his new blog he’s already dealt with a modern classic, one momentous character, a new “best of,” and, yesterday, some truly seminal film animation.  I highly recommend surfing over, reading what he’s already posted, and subscribing to the newsfeed, as this will clearly develop further and grow.

Here’s to new critics and theorists joining the conversation: it’s good; it’s necessary.

[Stop the Pantomime & Write!]

The longer I call myself a writer, the less I can stand mystic visions of art-making.  I may have grown too skeptical, but my skin puckers at the very mention of the word “muse” and I summarily ignore all blathering about divine channeling and celestial inspiration.  This isn’t to say that I can’t find some value in these statements historically speaking, but its not my mode of thinking, and I can’t stomach it in my peers.  It’s possible that this metaphysical rapture is a real part of the process, an inexorable aspect of talent and creation.  But if it’s so, it’s the piece on which we have the least control, and, yes, there are other parts of the process deserving of our attentions.

In general, what I react against is the mythos of the artist figure.  Of course I think our great artists should be revered, yet not in the ways they often are.  Salute the poet for her poems, not her emotional distress and eventual suicide.  Praise the painter for his paintings, not his extravagance and tacky parties.  And stop incorporating the foibles of regular life into the terms of artmaking.

He had a number of friends who played the genius card when it suited, failing to show up to this or that in the belief that whatever local upset it caused, it could only increase respect for the compelling nature of their high calling.  These types — novelists were by far the worst — managed to convince friends and family that not only their working hours, but every nap and stroll, every fit of silence, depression or drunkenness bore the exculpatory ticket of high intent.  A mask for mediocrity, was Clive’s view.  He didn’t doubt that the calling was high, but bad behavior was not a part of it.  Perhaps every century there was an exception or two to be made; Beethoven, yes; Dylan Thomas, most certainly not.

– Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

I appreciate McEwan’s tendency to dispel the hocus pocus and get on with the work.  This isn’t to say that his artistic characters don’t still need trips to the mountains for inspiration, or that they don’t suffer from fits of various kinds.  But the metatextual statement reinforces that all of this myth-making plays second violin to the reality of the working process.  Clive Linley works through the night on his symphony, and when his attempts to write the final melody elude him, he sets himself to lesser tasks like “rewriting messy pages of manuscript…”  Mundane, tedious stuff.

But of course the crucial argument here, in McEwan’s text, is about the whole myth of the wild genius.  I’m with Clive on this, if I’d phrase it differently: writers who get drunk every night may end up writing about it, but more importantly, they’re drunks.  Similarly for the depressed, the depraved, and the disassociated.  I’m sure there’s some truth that artists need some vice or failing in order to create genuine art that reflects human experience.  The problem is where these things become sought after, cultivated, and used as an excuse for self indulgence.  Find me any person without some small crisis and I’ll be amazed, so it’s not unique to the artist and it certainly doesn’t need to be adopted with deliberation.  Going on a weekly bender doesn’t make you any greater of an artist, and if anything, it probably saps the strength you would have had for your work.  Even pulling no-shows to events only makes you seem inconsiderate, not like a mind so great it must be unreliable in social engagements.

For me it comes down to this: while there is an excitingly thin line between madness and genius along which we often can see our greatest artists walking or running, it can’t be forced.  Bringing yourself to delirium through planning and effort couldn’t be further from that looming insanity we see on the edges of  truly great minds.  It cannot be programmed.  Any who make a real attempt will probably blow right past the line and end up crazy.  Even if you could manage it, would you make that trade for the work?  I love John Berryman’s poems, but I’d never take on the life he lived in order to write as he did.  If I am mediocre, I’d rather not mask it.  I’d rather give up the hocus pocus and try to develop through work.

[BWR is Fresh]

It’s been quiet around here lately; well, only if the “here” I’m referring to is the blog. It’s the end of the semester in Romania, so I have exams to give and papers to mark galore. It’s also nearing the conclusion of my Fulbright grant. I’ll have more to say about that later, but it should suffice for now that this has been quite a nine month stretch.

Right now, though, I want to pull myself out of the workload to pay another nod to my friends over at The Black Warrior Review, who have a snazzy new website. Design editor, Justin Runge, (also of Blue Hour Press [see the tight network that this is?]) has done a great job. Congrats also to Editor Kate Lorenz for pulling the new site together. It doesn’t seem like it’s been a year since I worked at the BWR, but it’s nice to see all the positive changes that have continued after I had to leave.

I recommend you check out their fifth-ever Fiction and Poetry contest.  Great work always comes out of the submissions for the contest; maybe the next winner is you!