StormHaven

RPW: AN OLD MASTER NEWLY CONFIGURED

What to say about the Old Master?  The only American to win Pulitzer Prizes in poetry and fiction . . . that's a start.  Easily, with Cleanth Brooks, the most popularly influential American literary critic of the post-50's era, and only because of the utterly pervasive Understanding Poetry and Understanding Fiction, the two text books that taught American high school and college teachers to teach literature they way that Warren and Brooks wanted it taught . . . that's another reason.  And then, pure longevity:  Warren's writing career spans a good half-century.  He wrote a lot, and he wrote well.

But people generally don't read his poems as much as his fiction.  Understandable, particularly since All the King's Men is now a "major motion picture," which I've never seen.  But his body of poetry in some ways not only develops, but careens through its phases in a way that I've always found to be typically American, at least, and perhaps typically poetic. 

And this last statement will require a bit of elucidation.

Warren was a voracious reader, a life-long student, and a devoted amateur philosopher.  And what he read, what he studied, and what he philosophized about appeared in his poetry, varyingly digested.  I'm calling this project of synthesis--and that's what is was for Warren--an essentially poetic project because, while the poetry rises from Warren's immense preparation, it also rises in a form that hardly resembles its sources.  There is transformation here of an extraordinary kind.  That's what I'm calling poetic:  synthesis and transformation, taking a known quantity, reworking it, and giving it back in its newly resplendent form.  This, or something like it, stands at the heart of Warren's contribution to letters, and while it can be argued that all poetry does this, I would argue that Warren's poetry attempts this project in a way, and to a degree, that most poetry doesn't.

Take Audubon, for example.  Just what in the world is that poem?  A history of a Franco-American painter?  A confession?  A poetic aviary?  A depiction of the American frontier before the Civil War, the event that Warren claimed was the continental divide for the American imaginative writer?  But what is the goal of the poem?  Maybe it is this (Section IV):

To wake in some dawn and see,

As though down a rifle barrel, lined up

Like sights, the self that was, the self that is, and there,

Far off but in range, completing that alignment, your fate.

The self that was, is, and will be:  these are the parameters of story, and story is the supreme ordering device of our lives.  We tell them to our friends and to ourselves.  Perhaps this is why the last line of this poem is simply, "Tell me a story of deep delight."

One of the most effective ways of reading Warren--try this as you go through him--is to list his subjects, and then, after you've done that, star those that you'd categorize as obsessions.  His development to me is orderly and encyclopedic--there's a wealth of information here, but it's all easy to find.  Try this, and let me know what you think.

MILOSZ'S BALANCING ACT

Last week, with Heaney, we talked a lot about balance, about balancing politics with art, and seemed to be in agreement that Heaney accomplished such a balance. In that respect (not in terms of chronology), Czeslaw Milosz out-Heaneys-Heaney. I also commented last week that by describing specific “political” events or tragedies, can be a way of dealing with that specific tragedy but also with more “universal” tragedy, and Milosz accomplishes that as well. Becoming so engaged with his collection that I did not want to, nor could I, put it down, I was emotionally exhausted by the time I finished Milosz. Part of his ability to write “universally” (for lack of a better word) is his collapsing of time and space. Of course we can call this technique “postmodern” or something of the sort, but it’s much more than that (though there are also a few mentions of binaries being inadequate/constructed/etc.- particularly along the lines of gender; I’m thinking of “Table I” and another that I can’t lay my finger on just now). It is not surprising that someone who witnessed firsthand just how dangerously fluid political and geographic barriers can be (of “fictitious States” (“Fear-Dream”), and “Countries and cities that must remain without name, for how can I explain/ why and how many times they changed their banners and emblems?” (“Capri”)) would be able to transcend such (or similar) barriers in his. Nor is it surprising that someone who a) lived such a long life, but more importantly, b) saw the shifting of spatial boundaries occur so rapidly over such a short period of time due to the “forces of history” would be taken with the idea that the past is always present and that the present is always a part of the future. A sort of cyclical view of history and time so that the same sorts of tragedies repeat themselves in different places at different times. Words like “anywhere” and “nowhere” pepper Milosz’s poems as do confessions of not being able to remember precisely what year/month/day something happened (and of course it doesn’t really matter when exactly or where exactly). The most obvious illustration of this theme is “City Without a Name” in which he remembers a place from his youth but is in California (“the feast of Insubstantiality./ Under a gathering of clouds anywhere,”and “not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn;” “there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the day are simultaneous”) Such a view, as I’ve described it, sounds rather depressing, but I don’t get the sense that Milosz held a completely cynical or pessimistic view of humanity; there seems to be an underlying sense of hope, a faith that things can and will get better (and of course, he lived to see it, at least partially accomplished). One of Milosz’s earlier poems, “Campo Dei Fiori,” exemplifies this: at first we recoil from people going about their business while a man is publically burned (“Before the flames had died/ the taverns were full again,/ baskets of olives and lemons/ again on the vendors’ shoulders”), but towards the end of the poem, when Milosz/the speaker, “I,” responds to the event, his impulse is to be “a voice” for the forgotten (“our tongue becomes for them”– a line which absurdly reminds me of Zora Neale Hurston) with the hope that immortalizing the tragedy will perhaps prevent it from happening again (“on a new Campo dei Fiori/ rage will kin dle at a poet’s word”). The idea that words can change the world for the better recurs throughout Milosz’s collection, particularly in poems such as “Incantation” (which in his intro to the collection, Heaney seems quite taken with, especially the line about poetry being an “ally in the service of the good”). The idea that language or poetry “puts what should be above things as they are” and is also able to open “the congealed fist of the past” pervades Milosz’s writing, though in other poems, it is less explicit. (Something we may want to discuss is the tension or difference between his view of art’s purpose and the Communist regime’s view– I take it from Milosz’s obituary in the New York Times that he was dissatisfied with the latter, so I think we should ask what the difference is between art that changes the world and art as explicit propaganda.) Living long enough to see a positive change (and geographically escaping it for a time), however, seems to have produced a strong sense of grief and guilt– for example, “To Raja  Rao,” he confesses that all of the moving about leaves him not only feeling displaced (“on the border of schizophrenia”) but also with “guilt and shame” (This seems not unlike Heaney’s guilt, though Milosz seems to be more intense, nearly obsessive until the last bit of the collection). Such  guilt and grief often manifests through memorializations of folks who were not as fortunate as Milosz, who were not able to escape the political turmoil or who did not desire to. Remembering these folks, trying to immortalize them and their pain in his writing, is the impetus (or one of them) for believing that the past is always present. Again, in “City without a Name,” Milosz/the speaker keeps wondering why the places/people of his youth “keep offering itself” to him, and argues that h e must remember, must write about them, “because except for me no one else knows that they ever/ lived”). There seems to be an inability to escape memory, and this is what produces a sense of haunting (I’m thinking of “Yellow Bicycle,” “Mister Hanusevich,” “Kazia,” “Classmate,”and of “Six Lectures in Verse” which bares, I think, striking similarities to Heaney’s “Station Island”). At times this memorializing seems similar to Heaney’s appreciation for where he came from, but at others, Milosz exudes a sense of being haunted by the past, by his role, or lack of one, in it, so that the writing of people/places/events becomes cathartic– an outlet for his personal demons (which I think is probably what makes reading his poetry for a sustained period of time emotionally exhausting). Another similarity to Seamus is Milosz’s relationship with language, or language (which one you choose to use) as political. It is, I think, significant that Milosz wrote his poems (even while at Berkeley) in Polish, though he had the ability to write in what, like 6 or 7 different languages? His dedication to Polish comes up several times (in “Capri” he blesses the rivers, but pronounces their “names in the way my mother pro-/ nounced them”), but certainly in what seems to be an ode of sorts to language, “My Faithful Mother Tongue,” in which it becomes god-like, with Milosz/the speaker offering “little bowls of colors” to it even when he is “a scholar in a distant country” (and his refrain of “without you, who am I”– again, not unlike Seamus, Milosz sees language not only as political but as part of his personal identity). I’m going to stop gushing now, and gushing I’m afraid I have been, but I must confess (and this is probably painfully obvious) that I found this collection one of the most moving we’ve read this semester.

SEAMUS, AS IN 'FAMOUS,' HEANEY, AS IN 'SWEENEY'

Literary culture has changed in America over the past three decades.  Or rather, literary culture hasn't changed so much--people still write, some still read, conferences are still held, books still published--but the context in which books are read has changed dramatically.  And since humans are sponges, of varying degress of absorption, their reading is affected by the changing contexts.  And so is their writing.   I had a conversation recently with an award-winning documentary film maker, and I felt the old excitement I had once in a conversation with Derek Walcott about Omeros:  scope, ambition, cultural definition, and comprehensiveness.  All of these qualities I felt when I spoke to Walcott, and all of these qualities I have found lacking in recent literary conversations, projects, and programs.  To be blunt:  I've felt a seismic shifting of creative energy recently away from the verbal arts and into the visual arts.  Particularly the visual arts that view music and language as the rich soil from which the images live and grow.

I bring this up here because Heaney used to introduce himself at readings, humourously of course, by saying, "My name is 'Seamus' as in famous and 'Heaney' as in Sweeney."  He did it with a kind of wry sensibility of who he was and who he had become:  a songbird fascinated with lyric, or Sweeney--the way he always characterized himself in private conversation--and a famous, politically engaged commentator on the Irish problem, or Seamus.  To a very large degree, these two names, and the roles they indicated, define his career.  Have a look at "Making Strange," one of the classic statements of Heaney's middle position.

Poems like "Station Island"," which we'll want to look at in some detail next week, and "The Haw   Lantern" reveal a poet attempting to weigh his "responsible tristia" against the long, hard pull of political commitment.  And then poems like "Postscript" show us the unfettered lyricist, the singer, and they remind us of the vital counterweight to political action; they remind us of the lyric's necessarily irresponsible buoyancy, its wish to escape the world's gravitational pull, and provide the long view on human suffering.  Seen from the moon, the earth is a beautiful blue-green orb that blows our heart open, to paraphrase Heaney, and it is the moon's-eye view that belongs to the lyric.

My point is that few poets nowadays face the questions that Heaney faced.  To write for his "country," however that might be defined, or to write for his lyric spirit, however that might be defined.  The poles here are politics and art, and their engagement is ever and always a contentious one, but in the hands of a strong writer, a productive one.

Why?  Because readers are innately drawn to subject matters of complexity and human force.  Complexity is most often seen whenever we have a look at the individual's place in the context of the larger culture . . . How and why do we live the way we live?  What or who stands in the way of our living the way we want to live?  And what can be done about these things?  These are innately political questions, but before they were labeled 'political' questions, they were human questions, and the poetry that engages these issues must be true both to its native genius--its melody--and to its larger subjects. 

It's a difficult balance to achieve.  When it tips toward rampant lyricism, the poetry is little more than navel-gazing, and we have more of that just now, I suspect, than we've ever had.  When it indulges too heavily its political appetite, it devolves to polemicism, and to my mind, we saw a little of that in Howl. 

As you read through the rest of Heaney (and as I said, have a good look at the long poem, "Station Island"), pay special attention to poems that chart out the territory of poetry and its dangerous relation to politics.  There are scores of them, but come to class with a quiver-full, and we'll begin to formulate some general ideas on Heaney's ideas.  Also, make certain to read very carefully Heaney's Nobel address, included at the end of the collection.  If you don't have it, it's available, of course, on line.   

HUNTING HUGHES

With our comments on Bishop echoing still in my brain (our discussions of poetry illuminating our own experiences and of my hesitant asking of “so what”), I read most of Ted Hughes’s collection from a deck overlooking a portion of the Gulf that is relatively free from tourist trade– a rather appropriate scene for digesting Hughes’s recurring glorifications of the natural world. On the particular afternoon I came across “Ghost Crabs” (I think originally collected in “Wodwo”), I was coincidentally recovering from a late night of crab-hunting. My Daddy and brother, two righteously committed sportsmen, pass up no opportunity to hunt down anything in their environs that might be tracked, caught, and either put to good use or released back into the natural habitat. And they convinced me to (uncharacteristically) join their expedition for crabs, particularly ghost crabs as they had spotted several already but were unprepared to capture them. Thus, with a trained labrador retriever leading the way, we set out with nets, and other implements they assured me would be necessary, to hunt down crabs by moonlight. Ultimately, we succeeded in catching only one– such a minuscule catch that everyone else deemed our effort a failure. Reading “Ghost Crabs” the following afternoon, however, I felt the hunt much more satisfying than the poem.

As any “good” graduate student would/does, I of course had to consider why, what accounts for this effect (or lack of it), and what are the implications of it, etc. Again, I was still mulling over Bishop so decided to use my response to her collection as a point of comparison. As you all know, Bishop’s poems I like best are those of South America (and also, “Filling Station” as I’m sure I’ve been to that exact one) because I can “see them better,” drawing on my own personal experiences to make sense of hers. This logic, however, doesn’t in any way account for my response to Hughes (Ted, not Langston), who produced a number of poems I can “see” without much effort but still left me asking, “so what” (though I’m certain I learned a little something about the reproductive habits of sheep and other livestock, and the mating rituals of insects). This set me about contemplating the inadequacy of language to convey our experiences to others: I would rather hunt for crabs myself than read Hughes’s poem about them (similarly, back to Langston, much as I adore his work, I would rather be on Beale Street than to read his poem about it). It seems that with Hughes (Ted) this inadequacy of language becomes particularly emphasized because of his subject matter.

Indeed, the (constructed) tension between the natural world and the written language we (not just Ted) try to impose upon it is introduced immediately with “The Thought-Fox” (at least this is the first selection in my edition, yes?). (I’m aware that this dangers on setting up a dichotomy between nature/culture, or something along those lines, and I don’t think that this is always the case. For all of my grappling with Bishop, she seems to reconcile the two adeptly; and of course the imagined presence of such a tension is a very “Western” idea.) Okay, so Hughes’s inspiration comes from nature, but is he caging it, or trying to, in the same manner he describes the effect of a zoo on the very next page (“The Jaguar”)? Hughes seems to be aware of this conundrum, as evidenced in “The Man Seeking Experience...” and “The Crow’s First Lesson” in which God’s attempts to teach the crow to speak result only in its vomiting. Hughes also often describes a sort of feeling-out-of-place-ness when fishing or engaging in some other outdoor activity (“Recklings,” “Earth-Numb,” “A Cormorant”). Significantly, in “Go Fishing” as Hughes/the speaker is describing a sort of transcendent union with nature, one of the effects of “Join[ing the] water” is to “lose words.”

But, interestingly, Hughes has the natural world speak (thistles are like “the gutturals of dialects” (“Thistles”), dandelions and cinders “cry” “‘Do not go’” (“Song of a Rat”)– though the rat can only “screech,” and of course the speaking produce, fowl, elements, etc., in “Leaves”– but with the addition of a tractor(?); similarly, the river has a conspicuously italicized speaking line in “Salmon Eggs,” and whale-speak occupies several stanzas in quotation in “Little Whale Song”). Other times, Hughes speaks for nature– assuming the perspective/persona of a hawk in “Hawk Roosting” or of a crow in “A Flayed Crow...” (There also seem to be an awful lot of poems entitled “Such and such’s Song” (replace the “such and such” with any animal you can conceive of), especially in selections from “Crow.”)

Despite his recognition of this tension, Hughes continues, over a period of thirty-plus years, to attempt to invoke it, evade it, resolve it, and I’m not sure he ever accomplishes the last– an issue which recalls this business about Eliot (T.S.) setting himself a task, accomplishing it, and then no longer feeling a need to write poetry. In other words, never reconciling the (constructed) tension between nature and language, perhaps Hughes couldn’t put the pen down so to speak.

Ultimately, I must confess that all of this prattling about Ted’s inability to reconcile a tension (I don’t necessarily even believe exists) between language and the natural world is mostly an attempt to evade another one of this themes– his presentation of gender and sexuality and an apparent fascination with Adam/Eve mythology. I wanted to give Ted “his due,” so I’ve avoided this last matter for now, though I’m sure I’ve a better understanding of why Sylvia put her head in an oven.

MY PROBLEM WITH 'HOWL'

I had a certain hesitancy about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" before I had ever even read the poem, which I did not do until my fourth year as an undergraduate. I'm aware that this pre-judgment seems patently unfair, but allow to explain:

For years, going back as far as high school, I suffered through my peers talking about the brilliance of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and the whole Beat movement. My fellow teens and undergrad would whimsically pontificate upon how illuminating the work was, and how it spoke to them. However, whenever I pressed them for details, they were unable to provide explanations. My theory was always that they liked the Beats because it gave them the encouragement and rationalization to take drugs.

A related anecdote: I recently had a brief conversation with my girlfriend about The Beatles. Referring to some friends who had said they didn't like the band, she asked, "How can *anyone* not like the Beatles? I mean, they're the Beatles? How can you not just automatically recognize that they're the best band ever?" I WANTED to ask her why exactly she was so positive they were "the best band ever,"--what was the criteria for making such a claim, and how did The Beatles fulfill it--but I've learned from past experiences with women that it's often best just to let those things slide. As far as I'm concerned, for every truly beautiful and timeless Beatles song, there's another borderline maudlin and conventional to match. So, I don't think it's the music itself that has made so many young people of my generation "automatically recognize" the greatest of the Beatles; I think it's because that's what they've been told since they could remember such things. And who has been telling them? Their parents, and all the other Baby Boomers--the rebels turned establishment who refuse to let go of their youth.

It's hardly surprising that the Boomers fawn over and exalt the Beatles every opportunity they can: for their generation, the Beatles really were more than just a band--they were spiritual, moral, and political guides. Unfortunately, even though the Boomers eventually cast aside their youthful ideals, they refused to cast aside their youthful obsessions. The defining characteristics of the Baby Boomer is self-absorption, and they have clung to the belief that what was important to them as youth is important to all youth. And, their indoctrination has been successful.

My impression is that most young people my age who speak of the brilliance of "Howl" weren't really moved by it; rather, they just thought they were supposed to be moved by it. Although the poem can be rightfully commended for its audaciousness, and does have genuine moments of lyrical beauty, I tend to find its self-absorption and presumptuousness frustrating. For me, the poem is an engaging, amusing, and even well-crafted artifact of the period, yet it now lacks some credibility and a legitimate contemporary relevance.

In many ways, "Howl" represents the worst the Boomer generation had to offer--though perhaps also the best. Ginsberg displays the petulant qualities of the Boomers--their smugness and self-centeredness--from the opening lines of his poem:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by / madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn / looking for an angry fix (9)

I cannot help but agree with Phillip Lopate, who--in his article, "Howl and Me"--finds it just a tad presumptuous of Ginsberg to declare himself the spokesman of "his" generation. It seems a bit unfair for someone to speak on behalf of everyone who, by mere coincidence, was born within the same fifteen year window. Not only does Ginsberg (and I will use "Ginsberg" rather than "the speaker") find it appropriate to appoint himself the representative of his generation, he manages to point out that he and his friends are "the best minds" of it. In "Footnote to 'Howl'" he goes as far as to canonize his comrades ("Holy Kerouac")! In many ways, "Howl" becomes Ginsberg's self-indulgent ode to the brilliance of his divinely-inspired clique, who speak for the less capable through idiosyncratic art and reckless behavior.

This presumption to speak for an entire generation is even more frustrating when one looks at the  behavior Ginsberg describes and, at least implicitly, endorses:

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly / connection to the starry dynamo in the machi / nery of night, / who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat / up smoking in the supernatural darkness of / cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities / contemplating jazz...who were expelled from the academies" (9)

Ah, the romance of dropping out and getting high! Of course, with the exception of those lucky few such as Ginsberg who could behave this way and succeed, this philosophy really is nothing more than a romance. Lopate--who does admit to enjoying the poem both as a youth and an adult--criticizes Ginsberg's romanticization. Lopate write:

What about all those working stiffs who would not end up raving lunatics, who could not afford to drop out, were we automatically judged mediocre, and condemned to a lower status than 'the best minds,' by dint of negleting or refusing to fall apart? (89)

I think Lopate helps illuminate a major problem of "Howl": in many ways, it is a spoiled teenagers fantasy. It is a shrieking cry for attention; an outburst. Tantrums are hard to ignore, and they can even be somewhat entertaining, but they're also irritating. I see "Howl" has something of a foot-stomping tantrum, even if it was borne of genuine frustration. I don't believe the legitimacy of that anger truly resonates with most young readers now, though. Perhaps they relate to the general sense of disillusionment in the poem, but I think it's more likely that teens enjoy the poem because they been told it's a teen's poem.

"Howl" is an interesting poem and not a poorly written poem. However, I do think that it has been unfairly exalted. In many ways, the Beats are a blip in the political, social, and artistic history of the United States. Yet, since it flourished during the youth of the Boomers--that period which forever defines them and they refuse to relinquish--it has been granted a prestige and importance it does not really deserve.

Posted by: Jack Ayres | February 29, 2008 at 10:51 PM

TIME, GODS, ASCENSION: ELIOT LEAVES THE WORLD

Regarding T.S. Eliot, I'm assuming that we agree on one point, that Eliot essentially wrote a single poem, a very long and evolving poem, that began with "Prufrock" and concluded with Four Quartets. Another way of making the same point:  Eliot had his subject matters, and they were presented and developed in an orderly fashion, and as a result, Eliot's poetic career is imminently "readable," patently interpretable.  It's as if he set himself a group of problems to explore as a young man, devoted his mid-career to exploring them, and having drawn satisfactory conclusions regarding these problems by 1942, when "Burnt Norton" was published and when Eliot still had nearly a quarter-century to live, he ceased writing poetry.  Problem solved.  Case closed.  Poems done.

I've always admired that about him, the way he used poetry to define and complete a task, and I think it's a defining quality of a superior mind.  Eliot never wrote out of habit, it seems to me, nor did he write because he was in a lyrical mood and wished to give vent to his lyricism.  No, Eliot wrote to solve solvable problems, and so the end of poetry was in sight for him as soon as he wrote his first line.

Eliot's defining problems are gathered together in Four Quartets, as if for a final assault.  It's a mighty poem, in my estimation, because it records the struggle required to achieve real clarity on a number of difficult issues.  Eliot is interested in the Christian notion of time, how it fuses time past, present, and future, at the moment of the incarnation, and how, properly conceived, "all time is eternally present," as he says, which is to say, every instant of our lives, again, properly conceived, is a moment of the incarnation. 

Except of course that Eliot was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy, particularly by the Indian practice of figuring forth psychological states as visualized deities:  "I don't know much about gods," Eliot writes, "but I think the river / Is a strong brown god."  Eliot learned from Indian philosophy a kind of lyrical dialecticism, a way of representing poetically the idea that it's difficult to speak of eternity without understanding, implying, and finally accepting the temporal in our lives, the ebb and flow over which we have no control.  To resolve this issue, Eliot ultimately returned to Christianity, a much worked-over Christianity, and found solace, as I read him, in a kind of salvation as figured forth in Christ's life.  Eliot's Christianity in some senses is a conservative Christianity, but in others highly synthetic and unorthodox.

Which leads us to the questions that we might discuss in class.  To what degree do we find Eliot's religious resolutions to be suitable to the contemporary world?  As you probably know, Eliot's stock has dropped somewhat since the heyday of the 40s and 50s.  But I wonder why it has dropped, precisely.  Of course he's conservative politically and artistically, and we tend to fancy ourselves very liberal.  But I think there's more to it than that. 

Eliot has a very distinct vision of art and its purpose, which is, to my eye, visible in his poetry from time to time.  How would you characterize it?  How does it structure his verse?  What are its social implications?  And how does Four Quartets that vision?  What are the poem's essential subjects, and do they engage us today?  Why or why not?  The back cover of my edition has Stephen Spender proclaiming the arrival of "ideas" in Eliot's verse, and what a bracing and much-needed innovation that is.  Agree?  Disagree?

How would you assess Eliot's accomplishment?

DUNCES IN THE CORNER

I sort of hate to start levelling charges of national ignorance and sinking intellection as we're in the midst of Wallace Stevens where national ignorance and sinking intellection seem to be the emotions-of-the-day, so I'll let Susan Jacoby do it in her piece in The Washington Post which appeared yesterday, Sunday, 17 February.  Have a look at it.  As I've been reading Stevens, I've felt strangely evidentiary in this argument that America is losing its collective intelligence.  You have to wonder:  the NEA report was one thing, this article is another, the level of political conversation on the television still another . . . books O books . . . that whole lament about the demise of print culture.  Is this more of the same sort of doom-saying prophecy that is as old as the written records or does this mark a new trend in a downward slide.  Note:  I did hear Toby Keith say several years ago that his foreign policy was real simple:  "You hit me, I hit you back harder."  And there were many hysterical cheers.  It obviously stuck with me because I still remember it.  I don't know why exactly except maybe it had something to do with a coarseness of thought that suddenly catches fire and becomes trendy so that . . . well, that's enough.  Have a look at the piece and see what you think.

THE EAGLE FLIES: EAGLETON'S IDEAS & WHAT TO DO WITH THEM

You have to like the cover of The Ideology of the Aesthetic.  That's Terry Eagleton staring down at the rest of us.  He's wondering how he might explain those ideas of his to the masses.  But seriously--the Introduction that you read this week in conjunction with the first of half of Wallace Stevens' poetry provides an accurate example of a lot of the British/Marxist/Socio-Political criticism that was prevalent in the 80's and to a degree in the early 90's.  It's deadly serious stuff, so serious, it puts your eyes out reading some of it, and you wake up realizing you've killed your father and married your mother.

There is some complaining here about the current state of socialist criticism, and the ways in which it has effaced its roots in the grand tradition of social engagement.  Exactly how much time do I have for that?  How much time do I have for a committed academic of great gifts to scold us about our own ideas and adventures into social-service work?   Right, not much.

I assigned Eagleton because he summarizes for us an essential idea that we don't spend a lot of time talking about in graduate programs--he's right, alas, to complain--because American doesn't have a prominent and well respected tradition of socialist commentary.  Here's a fundamental idea--fundamental to Eagleton and many others--that we need to discuss:

Conceptions of the unity and integrity of the work of art, for example, are commonplaces of an 'aesthetic' discourse which stretches back to classical antiquity; but what emerges from such familiar notions in the late eighteenth century is the curious idea of the work of art as a kind of subject. (4)

It is a very big deal, this notion of the work of art as a kind of subject.  Why?  Because it speaks to the tendentious relationship between the subject and the object, the perceiver and the perceived.  Later on in the book, in the Chapter on Kant, Eagleton amplifies his idea:

That the individual subject should come to occupy centre stage, reinterpreting the world with reference to itself, follows logically enough from bourgeois economic and political practice.  But the more the world is thus sujectivized, the more this all-privileged subject begins to undermine the very objective conditions of its own preeminence.  The wider the subject extends its imperial sway over reality, the more it relativizes that terrain to its own needs and desires, dissolving the world's substance into the stuff of its own senses. (70)

One of the points that Eagleton is making here concerns, in a sense, Hirsch's notion, which we discussed in class, of "validity in  interpretation."  We begin to view the work of art as a subject the moment we begin to view it as an opportunity for each of us to interpret it.  We seize this opportunity the way we seize any opportunity for self-aggrandizement or profit:  to reinforce through our interpretations--in this case of the work of art--our own view of the world, our own set of values, our own perspective on whatever it is that falls within the expanding penumbra of our existence. 

It doesn't matter, for the time being, that our interpretations are offered up for different reasons; it doesn't matter that we might finally deem some of these reasons more defensible than others; it doesn't matter because in determining which are the more defensible ones we are, once again, extending the domain of the subject in its essential act of interpretation and amalgamation.  So, interpretation, hermeneutics, belongs essentially to the realm of the subject, and it is this subject that Eagleton identifies in the new version of art that arises in the eighteenth century and with which we are still grappling.

You're wondering what in the world would do with a poem, for example, after reading it, if we don't interpret it?  Or rather, how in the world will I make a living as an English teacher if I don't find some persuasive way of  interpreting in a public forum the poem that I have just read?  One way of beginning to understand the answer to that question is to remember what Aristotle said about catharsis.  Aristotle claimed that catharsis, the purging of pity and fear while viewing a tragedy, was the primary function of literary art and one of the most important social functions that art serves.

While there is a great deal of debate about what Aristotle meant precisely, you will notice that nowhere in that formulation does commentary make an appearance.  Aristotle is certainly dealing with what we would recognize as subjective emotions, pity and fear, but he is not enshrining that subject by recognizing their expression in an act of criticism as somehow necessary to the complete perception of the work. 

Poets, of course, are aware of this, and no one is more aware of this than Wallace Stevens.  His work has attracted some high-powered theorists because his work is powerfully theoretical on the subject of art's perception by those who are perceiving it naively, those who are perceiving it professionally, and those who are perceiving it simply   . . . to perceive it.  Once the subject is given free reign in interpretation--within those standards and limitations set by Fish's "interpretive communities"--then meaning is brokered like stocks on the stock market.

This is a concern to many writers.  It was a major concern of Wallace Stevens.  Look for it as you go through his poetry.

CAUSES, CORRELATIONS, AND COMPLICATIONS

From May to August of 2005—during the summer before I began work on my Master’s in English—I worked in a screening factory in Lawrence, Kansas.  I’d spent the previous four and a half years as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, earning a Bachelor’s degree (double-major in Film Studies and Western Civilization, and a minor in English).  It was depressingly difficult for someone with a liberal arts degree to find rewarding work, and so I ultimately chose manual labor over retail—I’d much rather be paid to exercise than be forced to act friendly to rude strangers.  At this job I helped put decals and labels on sportswear and glassware, boxed the product, labeled it, and then wheeled out the stacked boxes on a shipping pallet for delivery.

This job was not the first time that I had done blue-collar(ish) work, or worked primarily with people who lacked college (and often high school) educations.  However, since my other experiences had been in telemarketing—where a certain level of reading proficiency is required—the factory job was the first time I’d really encountered functional illiteracy.  There was one co-worker in particular, a young high-school dropout, who would mark boxes before he sealed them, so he could look at the label on the glass and slowly copy the letters.  When I told my boss that I suspected this employee could not read he simply shrugged.  After that incident, I slowly began to realize that many of my co-workers (most of whom had children) could not read.  During my last week, another co-worker, who knew that I was returning to school and would be teaching for the first time, said to me, “Make sure you tell those kids to stay in school and to learn to read good, so they don’t have to work in a fucking factory for their entire lives.” (Incidentally, this co-worked was a 20-year old who had been at the factory for four years, since dropping out of high school at age 16.)

I thought of this experience and these people as I read the National Endowment for the Arts’ “To Read or Not to Read.”  Specifically, I remembered these people as I saw the NEA acknowledge that “the data in this report do not necessarily show cause and effect.  The statistics merely indicate correlations.”  Now, that qualifying statement should really be considered.  After all, just because there the height of a child over time correlates to the height of a tree in her backyard over time does not mean that they are “connected” in any way.  I mention this because the NEA study indicates a correlation between reading and civic participation, and (at least implicitly) argues that if a person were to simply read more he would be a better and more active citizen.  I can’t help but find this a gross simplification, for two interrelated reasons: first, “reading” is being used as a euphemism for “education,” and second, the acknowledged reality that reading or other arts participation is a leisure activity is largely ignored.

Even if my former co-workers read at an average proficiency and used breaks and lunch to get absorbed in literature, I find it unlikely that they would be volunteering, attending arts events, working on their own creative projects, exercising, or getting involved in political campaigns.  I have that doubt because all of those activities—valuable as they may be—are (expensive) luxuries that people with kids, who work multiple jobs, and who are classified as “working poor” have neither the time nor financial resources to enjoy.  It seems unfair to suggest that “reading more” is a cure-all for civic apathy when ticket prices for exhibitions and performances are simply out of reach for many (not to mention the unwelcome glances a factory worker would receive at an art gallery—as much as NEA spokespeople may deny, the cultural elite like keeping their world private).  In the end, for a person to be able to participate in the types of activities the NEA endorses, she must have available time and money, which generally means that she must have a good job, and that means she also must probably be well-educated.  So, we are talking about much more than just the inclination to read a story every once in a while, we are talking about the strong educational background that allows a person the freedom to read.

I should quickly backtrack: I do not want to downplay the importance of reading, especially the value of reading in gaining a strong educational background.  Certainly, reading is truly fundamental in order to be educated—even if one wants to be a mathematician, he must be able to read and comprehend complex instructions.  Reading is invaluable, and I do believe that the act of reading can stimulate the self-awareness and impulse to participate that the NEA report suggests.  However, it seems strange to treat reading as if it is an activity that exists in a vacuum.  The NEA report, whether its authors realize it or not, is talking about more than just the physical act of picking up a book and moving eyes across the page.  To really address the problems the report raises, we should consider how many people have the resources to attend cultural events—perhaps the NEA pollsters should have also asked their participants if they would like to attend such cultural events, rather than simply if they did.  Another factor that should be considered is the quality of literacy training people receive, so that they can properly grapple with literature, if and when they do so.  This point additionally raises the issue of content: does the reading material matter, or simply the at of reading.  How do the positive effects of reading differ for a person who reads online gossip for three hours a day versus someone who reads a chapter of Rushdie before he or she goes to bed?  After all, even though the NEA study shows that rates of reading were higher in the 1950s, the cultural elites of the time complained that the literature of the masses—detective, romance, and science-fiction novels—did more harm than good.

Once one asks if it is the mere act of reading that is important, or the interpretive and disseminating act of reading Literature that is important, other complicating questions arise.  For instance, why does it matter if the reading is done for pleasure?  The NEA disqualifies any reading that is mandated by school or work.  Why?  If reading literature provides the impulse for greater civic engagement, why does it matter if it is done in one’s spare time?  If just reading is paramount, wouldn’t a student who reads, discusses, and writes about several novels in a span of eighteen weeks more likely to participate in cultural events than an attorney who enjoys reclining with a good book in his spare time?  Other questions that could complicate the NEA study: how does functional (everyday) reading differ from reading literature?  What impact does a “community of readers” have on civic engagement?  What have been the various criteria for determining and measuring reading “proficiency” throughout the years?  The NEA findings are intriguing and could possibly be the foundation for a deeper understanding of the purposes and effects of reading, but without addressing the lattice of myriad factors that complicate and overlap with “reading for pleasure,” it reads a bit like the same-old lamentation for an activity that, in many ways, has always been something of a privilege.

RADIOS, TV'S, VCR'S, CD'S, iPODS, VIDEO-GAME PLATFORMS, COMPUTERS & AMERICAN LITERACY

You want to talk about a video eyeball?  "Reading at Risk" opines that in 1999, a study showed that the average American child lives in a household with 2.9 televisions (I have 4), 1.8 VCR's (I have none; 9 years later who needs them?), 3.1 radios (maybe I have one, but I don't know where it is), 1.4 video game players (that's sooo nineties; I have an XBox 360, PS3, and am regularly visited by my son's Wii), and 2 computers (we have 2 laptops, and are dreaming about one for the kitchen, and a gaming computer for my son's room.) 

My Utopian video-vision is straight from Any Given Sunday, where Al Pacino's house is crowded with huge flatscreens playing Ben Hur all the time (I'd play The Sopranos on a loop, and if Cameron Diaz wanted to hang around, that would be fine as well, and if I could just be Al Pacino for one day that would be even better).   My point is fairly mundane, but fairly important:  we are irrevocably a video culture.  I use "irrevocably" with some hesitation, but I don't see American business calling a halt to yearly more affordable, massive flat screens that now appear in McMansions over the mantel in the living room--now called the "great room"--where oil paintings used to appear.  The danger for us in the education business, particularly in the English education business, is that we tend to extrapolate from our own lives, lives that are perhaps not quite as techno-philic as they could be.  This might be a matter of taste and preference or it might be a matter of salary.  For me, it's pretty clear that it's a matter of salary. 

But what we do to make a living--read books, talk about them, and write about them--occupies a far different place in the daily lives of Americans than it did when English departments were created in the early twentieth century.  English Departments can change, but most often they do so at a snail's pace, and do so initially by "offering a course" that tries to wrestle with the new interests that are showing up on the horizon, courses like "The Language of Situational Comedy in the 1980's" or "Seinfeld Redivivus:  "Friends" and the Tevevisual Comic Tradition."  Nothing wrong with these courses, but they are vaguely troubling, an ill-fit, slightly embarassing both for the departments that offer them and the shows they attempt discuss.

"To Read or Not to Read" offers the usual battery of statistics to show us that reading is declining, the sky is falling, and we--readers and teachers of reading--need to do something to stop the decline.  If you look at page 8, you see that the older you get, the more time you spend each week reading.  And you see that the young people are multi-tasking, using other "media" to help them through a session with a book:  iPods, TV, whatever it takes to break up the monotony of holding and staring at a book.  And of course we're not spending the money on books that we used to spend in 1985, during the Reagan years.  But that's partly because of Reaganomics, which hit the middle class hard, and adjusting for inflation, as the report claims to do, will not fix this problem.  Fewer dollars today to spend, and hardbacks now costing $25.00 . . . that's one very real aspect of the problem.  Book-buying has moved out of some people's lives financially.

Our younger readers are not reading as well either.  Or so we are told.  From 1992 to 2005 the percentage of 12-th graders reading at or above the proficient level has declined 5 percentage points.  The gap between males and females is growing as well.  Young men are falling behind young women.  This is troubling not only for teachers, but for employers as well who understandably prefer that their employees be able to read proficiently, particularly at the management level.  Employers report, however, that increasingly they confront applicants who don't read proficiently.  Less advanced readers aren't promoted.  Those who aren't promoted don't perfrom as well as those who do, and so with more unskilled readers arriving in the job market, the problem of performance on the job is magnified. 

The report ends by stating, flatly, that "no attempt has been made . . . to delve into income traits of voluntary readers," and therein lies a problem.  Particularly when we arrive at the third publication, "The Arts and Civic Engagement."  Let me offer one in-depth response to the first of the "10 Key Findings:"  Literary readers and classical or jazz radio listeners attend arts events at higher rates than non-readers and non-listeners. 

In-depth response:  Checked out the tickets prices at the Walton Art Center lately?

So, we're trying to teach English literature to a group of readers who are increasingly becoming less readerly, year by year.  And we're doing this within a culture that is becoming equally more video-centric.  Who is to blame?  The young reader?  The culture in which the young reader comes of age?  Both?  Neither?

We can poke holes in the NEA's findings, as I've done, here and there.  We can agree with their findings in traditional ways, as many did.  We can vilify the technology.  We can vilify literary theory, as many conservative journals did when the NEA findings came out several years ago.  And we can take a middle path as well.

But what we have to do, as toilers in the vineyard, as the only real toilers in the real vineyard, is come to terms with what is happening to our students and to our potential students who might wish to undertake the advanced study of English and American literature. 

How do we teach the study of texts in a visually oriented culture?

And by the way, there are definitive responses to the NEA's report in the February Harper's by Ursula K. Leguinn (available to subscribers online) and The New Yorker (December 24 & 31 2007) by Caleb Crain, available to all here.