I’d like to imagine two distinct characters from two distinct poems in Wallace Stevens’ Harmonium talking to one another…  or perhaps exchanging  pleasantries with a postmodern brashness that couldn’t be mustered in the United States in the 1920′s.

My reason for casting this conversation has this goal:   to suggest that in 2012 we will have the opportunity of the century.

One hundred years ago, the Titanic sailed into posterity and sank in the cold Atlantic primarily because of  hubris and arrogance.   We wanted to cross the sea faster with as much fine china as possible, and we wanted to do it in a way that reinforced the stratification of upper, middle and lower classes.   Well, rather than seeing that all recounted in 3D, we might glance to the left and to the right and find on dry land a partner who longs for the humility of dialogue.   That is — not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill conversation, in which one party rehearses his jargon while the other is speaking…  Not a Reality TV meltdown with tears and dramatic fisticuffs, sponsored by Coke:  Drink Happiness!   Rather, a dialogue that gets at the muddled roots of an on-going theological, philosophical debate that simply will not die.   At issue is the existence of THE OTHER, and the problem I see is the polarizing tone of both a Newt Gingrich and/or a Bill Maher.   

First, we come upon A High-Toned Old Christian Woman, who is addressed like so:

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.  Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle…

You see, what’s at stake in this polite re-contextualizing of religion happens to be the institution, which is the thing that has been clearly crafted by folks with oppositional thumbs and therefore are handy at building walls with stained glass windows.   The poet infers that we are somehow impressed with the largeness of the peopled organization and like Sigmund Freud would side with those who believe God and heaven to be mere imaginative constructs… or a transference of the intentionality we experience in making New Year’s Resolutions to the Universe as a whole.

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if you asked my friends to identify the parcel of pop culture they think is most meaningful for me, you’d probably get a few (not totally inaccurate) responses: star wars (3-PO is atop my x-mas tree right now); batman (a frequently misunderstood/brilliant character); the music of the national, radiohead, or pearl jam; the mid-career novels of don delillo; or even the muppets.  but there is one pop culture touchstone which seems to trump them all: high fidelity.

it’s unconscionable how much time i’ve spent watching that movie.  yeah, i’ve read the nick hornby novel, too, but the movie (coincidentally?) set in chicago is the one i keep going back to:  when i learn something about actual relationships that i should have learned waaaaay back on my 57th viewing.  when i’m happily drunk.  when i’ve just been dumped by a girl.  when i want to hear to hear lisa bonet’s character cover peter frampton (the absence of which is a tragic oversight on the soundtrack album).

anyway, this week i returned once more to the adventures of my hapless hero, rob gordon (as played by john cusack)—primarily for his thoughts on what makes a good mix tape.  primarily because this past week i made a pretty damn good mix for someone, but (in the words of rob himself) “did not give it to them for personal reasons.”

(coincidentally?) a friend of mine who is a teacher recently received a mix cd from one of their students.  as in, the student presented the cd in the course of asking this teacher out to dinner.  before grades were finalized.  yeah—i know, right?  kids these days… nevertheless, i couldn’t help but reflect on the legitimacy of music mixes as a companion piece to communicating (like, you know, grown-ups do).  especially when using rob gordon’s opinion as a starting point:

the making of a good compilation is a very subtle art—many do’s and don’ts.  you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel.  this is a delicate thing.

obviously, even the best curated setlist is no replacement for real dialogue between people.  but is there still a place for a good mix when you’re talking about a developing adult relationship?  can a mix be thoughtfully compiled and presented as a meaningful aide to communicating?  or is it hopelessly juvenile to try sketching out real emotion by simply putting pop songs in a particular order?  maybe it should just be a nice gift to give to friends as they drive off into the sunset?

let’s take a poll.  use the comments section to describe the last time you made a mix for someone, including the relationship you had to this person, the occasion for the giving, and (if ye be so bold) the tracklist itself.  put it all out there for the world to see, you pathetic bastards.

Decisions.  Decisions.  Hmmm…

What would T.S. Eliot say about the financial crisis of the last few years, if not decades?   And what would he DO about it?   The answers are complicated and filled with dizzying contradictions.  Consider, if you dare, items one through five:

1.   T. S. Eliot worked in the finance industry.
2.   In April of 2011, the British Arts Council Arts voted to defund the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry which designates a whopping $23,000 for the winner each year.
3. Over one hundred British poets protested the resolution.
4. Aurum Funds, a hedge fund corporation, said that it would be happy to take over the bankrolling of the T.S. Eliot Prize.
5. Alice Oswald, who won the prestigious prize in 2002, has just recently pulled out of this year’s competition, saying, “I think poetry should be questioning and not endorsing such institutions…”

Indeed.  Perhaps “poetry” should be.

But, should poets be?   Should the actual flesh & blood & sinew creator of verse be…?

The moral imperative of Immanuel Kant would prevail upon us here to be very frank with both the avid readers and non-readers of the craft.   It would remind us in fact that poets ought not to cozy up with private for-profiteers, whether the companies in question are responsible for the financial crisis or not; and that poetry, with all its tools of the trade, would show us, rather than tell us, that to be free of these perverse entanglements is akin to making one’s self available to the muse.

However, let’s play the devil’s advocate and consider how “Satan,” in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, might tackle the dilemma.   Satan, to be precise, is the most interesting character in that political activist’s magnum opus, from the Pandemonium palace to the blessed environs of Eden.  He is much more than the one-dimensional figure of say “The Exorcist” or “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.”   No, this fallen figure wants to get even with the Deity and so devises a plan that might infiltrate and plunder the character of human beings.   You see, it’s all very subtle, slant and indirect something that poets might like to consider when receiving direct deposits into their money management accounts.   That is to say, we could assume the role of the provocateur in the corporate garden.  We could, with intact conscience and admittedly flawed consciousness, sneak a Trojan horse into the whole shooting match.

At a Dave Matthews Band Concert in 2007

MFA Land is a place where we refine our tastes. Here we talk Alice Munro and the Writer at the Desk. We like Bon Iver, Micro Brews and making disparaging comments about hipsters despite the pair of skinny jeans hanging up in our closet, the Sasquatch tickets we’re waiting to order and the American Apparel email updates we receive every other week. We use words like Kafkaesque, Sestina, and Media en Res far too often, and to us, the outside world is so fucking cliche.

I’m not here to argue that there’s something aesthetically pleasing about St. Vincent’s new album, or that Murakami is a fucking genius. However, I do think that higher learning in some way demands we give up old pleasures, or at least hide them from the light of world where no one can see them. It’s why during a break in classes you have a copy of “The Gunslinger” tucked inside of “In Our Time,” why the songs you once loved in the 1990′s have long since been deleted from your itunes library. In academia, maybe as a defense mechanism we bury these little, embarrassing pieces of ourselves and replace them with a sort of uniform grad school sensibility.

In talking to Sam Edmonds at the bar, who told me his guilty pleasure was listening to the Gin Blossoms (Sorry Sam, I love you), hearing an interview where Edward P. Jones admitted to watching Judge Judy religiously, or in driving with my girlfriend who listens to trashy dance music with the volume turned up high, these moments gave me the strength to come forward with some of my hidden pleasures.

Below I’ve included a full list of embarrassing music, television, movies and life decisions that don’t entirely cohere with high-brow sensibilities but that I very much love. What are some of your hidden pleasures?

1. I’ve seen the Dave Matthews Band in concert. Twice.

2. I know every word to the Nora Jones album, Come Away with Me, The Weepies, Say I am you, as well as several albums by Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Trapt. That one hurt a little to write.

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 This past week I watched Miss Representation, a film by Jennifer Seibel Newsom.  It’s a documentary about the portrayal of women in the media and the effect on political and feminist discourse.  Despite people always saying women have come such a long way in the entertainment industry, and in politics, the glass ceiling is a myth, and blah blah blah—forget that, it’s not true.  “The media treats the women like shit,” Margaret Cho says in the film, summing it up nicely.  Cho had a sitcom in the 90s, and she was pressured into losing weight for the show, only to be replaced by The Drew Carey Show, “you know, because he’s so slim,” Cho says, laughing at the absurdity.

Disappointing, MJ.

  It’s really not funny, though. Seibel Newsom frames the movie in a personal way—she has a daughter, and she wants better than a world where female politicians are called Mrs. instead of by their earned title, where Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ankles are more important than her ideas on foreign policy, and where a photo of Michele Bachmann eating a corn dog or making “crazy eyes” is national news.  I want this, too.  I cried, in fact, because my oldest child right now is a little girl who is confident in her intelligence, her kindness, and her equality.  Right now, she believes she is both beautiful and smart, both kind and capable.  I never felt this way as a child, that I can remember, and it feels like one of my biggest successes as a parent that all of my kids seem to.  I fear the time is coming, though, those years when girls turn from confident happy people into virtual strangers who obsess about their looks and appearance, forgetting all that made them proud to be themselves as children.  Read more »

Yesterday, I showed this documentary, Spoil, to my composition class. I like to use documentaries when teaching argumentation because 1) It’s cool for students to see different ways arguments can be presented, aside from just in academic writing and 2) Everyone likes watching videos in class. It was my intention, while Spoil played, to use those 45 minutes to write my Bark post for this week. But then I got totally sucked in by the film and didn’t write anything at all. So I figured I should probably just share it with you guys as well because 1) It’s good and 2) Everyone likes watching videos on the Internet.

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Which One Is You?

I went to The Muppets this weekend and it is clever, funny, creative, charming, and entertaining. But on the way to the film, my friends and I were trying to determine which Muppet each of us most resembled, and that is when I realized how few of them are female.

I’ve never been a Muppets fan, though I’ve sometimes wished I were. My favorite actresses and characters are generally women. I’m not proud of this fact. It seems a little superficial. I’ve noticed, however, that many men seem to suffer from a similar affliction, preferring male characters and actors. Books and movies in which women are prominent are often pegged as chic lit and chic flicks.

I suppose it’s a little late to revamp the Muppets characters. But what if you could, who might you add?

Or, what sex changes might you suggest? Would traits need to change along with sex? And what does sex for a Muppet mean, anyway? Is it determined by more than voice?

1. She has lived a mechanical existence, without love. Something happened to her in a field. In a supermarket. On a mound. Something like an epiphany, which led to logorrhea. Her mouth is not her own. Imagine! A slice of “Not I” by Samuel Beckett. Read more »

If making movies was my thing, I’m sure that Bruno Schulz’s writing would be the first thing I’d long to turn into a film. It’s exactly the kind of visual, magical, weird, dream-like, distorted and singular storytelling that I seek out.

That said, I was kind of offended for a second when I heard that it already had been made into a movie. Ten years before I was born, in fact. All the good stuff happened before I got to it. And sometimes books can feel so integral to your own inner world that you forget you don’t own those images and that the fact someone has reinterpreted them for all to see is not the same thing as ruining your childlike fantasies. Or something.

But then I figured those 1970s Polish filmmakers probably knew what they were doing when it came to Bruno Schulz. Read more »