Beyond categories

A student asked a smart question yesterday: if Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" is a demonstration of the power of metaphor -- which turns the poet's father into a constricting shoe, a "bag full of God," a Nazi, and a devil; turns another man (Ted Hughes) into a vampire-replica of her father; and turns the poet herself into their victim and assassin -- how does it fit the idea of a confessional poem? In other words, is the poet confessing, or displaying the power of her own imagination?

For me, that question highlights the problems of applying categories and labels to works of art. Like Duke Ellington, I prefer to think of works of art as "beyond category." One problem with artistic categories is that they are often merely shorthand terms of critical convenience. It was a critic after all (M.L. Rosenthal, I believe) who first thought of calling Plath and other poets "confessional." Such terms can be useful for highlighting resemblances as they begin to appear in the work of individual artists. But such terms can just as readily serve as epithets of pigeon-holing and dismissal -- "Oh yes, he's a [sniff] New York School poet." Makers of art who themselves promulgate such identities in earnest sometimes find themselves in a prison of their own devising -- Allen Ginsberg is still a "Beat," not simply an American poet.

Category-think too often leads to reductive understandings of art. I'm reminded me of the story of a student who wanted to write an essay "proving" that The Sound and the Fury is a modernist novel because it displays "the seven characteristics of modernism." But there aren't seven characteristics, or five, or nineteen -- there is only the individual work, with all of its complications, and with a broad range of similarities to and differences from other works of fiction. And calling Faulkner's novel "modernist" does nothing to tell you what those are.

Doing a weekly jazz program at a college radio station some years ago helped solidify my skepticism about categories. Back in the day, every record (yes, LPs) had to be labeled for the benefit of less-astute djs. Duke Ellington would be labeled "swing." ("Creole Love Call": swing!) John Coltrane, "hard bop." ("A Love Supreme": hard bop!) There were even (I don't think I'm making it up) records labeled "soft bop." Those labels no doubt helped give some coherence to half-hour sets (before the iPod Shuffle made chance juxtapositions an organizing principle). But to think of an artist's accomplishment being reduced to -- literally -- a label, 3.5" x .75", saddens me.

Geoffrey Hill on difficulty

Carl Phillips: What comes up often in reviews of your work is the idea of an overly intellectual bent; in recent reviews of The Triumph of Love, often the word difficult comes up. People mention that it's worth going through or it isn't worth going through.

Geoffrey Hill: Like a Victorian wedding night, yes. Let's take difficulty first. We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most "intellectual" piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are?

From an interview with poet Geoffrey Hill
(Paris Review 154, Spring 2000)

Simon Pettet

Simon Pettet’s More Winnowed Fragments opens with a poem of profound modesty:

      My Methodology

      I accrue hordes

      and then

      winnow away,

      It is a thankless task,

      tho not without

      occult comfort.

The tongue-in-cheek title suggests the jargon of an "artist's statement" or thesis prospectus. But then comes the poem, and the title's confident authority now stands in contrast to the patient Sisyphean labor of the poet -- who not only makes a heap of all that he can find (to paraphrase David Jones paraphrasing Nennius) but undoes it in the search for what has been there, not yet recognized, all along. The work of winnowing away and condensing is indeed "a thankless task," but it's also a steady job ("No layoff / from this / condensery," as Lorine Niedecker says in "Poet’s Work"). And the work may reward both poet and reader with "occult comfort" (not "cold comfort"), as in the sudden music of the poem's final two lines, in which each word turns into its neighbors' close relation.

Simon Pettet is a wonderful poet. Above, an excerpt from a review I've written for Jacket of his 2005 book More Winnowed Fragments. You can read the review by clicking on the link.

» Mysterious connective tissue (Review of Simon Pettet's More Winnowed Fragments, from Jacket)

Five websites for student-writers

Or four websites and the mysterious Alt+F4.

1. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing Michael Harvey's site is perhaps the most useful on-line resource for students who want to improve their writing. For Harvey, good writing is not reducible to zealous obedience to a handful of rules. Good writing is a matter of clarity, concision, and grace, key elements of what Harvey calls "the plain style." His sample passages and suggested revisions will benefit any writer who gives them careful attention. The book "version" of this site, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (Hackett), is the best book for student-writers I know, far more useful than Eats, Shoots & Leaves and similar titles.

2. A Demonstration of the Futility of Using Microsoft Word's Spelling and Grammar Check Sandeep Krishnamurthy's conclusion is that Word's spelling and grammar checker is "extraordinarily bad." See for yourself by downloading and checking one of the sample .doc files, and then resolve never to let Word do your editing and proofreading for you.

3. The Citation Machine The Landmark Project's Citation Machine creates APA- and MLA-style citations for print and on-line materials. You need to be careful of course in choosing the right kind of citation and in entering the relevant information in the right places.

4. Arts & Letters Daily Any writer needs good models, and they are not likely to be found in textbooks. Arts & Letters Daily, a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers a handful of links a day to worthwhile articles, essays, and reviews.

5. Alt+F4 Just a reminder — when you're writing, eliminate distractions. Close your browser and IM, and give the task at hand your full attention.

Aeschylus and RFK

Speaking to a mostly African-American audience in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy broke the terrible news that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you -- could you lower those signs please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight.

Cries and screams and shocked silence follow. Kennedy goes on to quote -- imperfectly, from memory -- words of the chorus from Aeschylus' Agamemnon:

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

RFK turned to reading ancient authors after his brother's assassination; his interest in the Greeks was, I gather, deep and real.

» Video of RFK's speech

» The Kennedy Family and Classical Themes (BBC)

Ta-da

Ta-da List is a free, wonderfully simple, online tool for making lists. If you're near a computer through most of the day, you might find it useful. You can also share lists with others and e-mail lists to yourself.

» Ta-da List

Welles' left hand

Browsing Joseph Cotten's autobiography Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (1987), I found a wonderful story of the scene from Citizen Kane in which Charles Foster Kane destroys Susan Alexander's room. Cotten of course played Kane's friend Jedediah Leland:

The camera rolled, the operator peered through his finder and whispered, "Whenever you're ready, Orson."

And Orson with his two hands started the destruction of the set. Crash. Bang. Split. Crunch. Chairs splintered, bottles broke. Chanel Number Five, Joy, Ashes of Magnolia, and other exotic scents filled the air and told us the property man believed in realism. Silk draperies slit and hung, limply defeated. Crash! More glass, more mirrors, more pictures from the walls. Suddenly, Orson was destroying the room with only one hand, wildly swinging away to kill any object still intact. The other hand was concealed behind him, hidden from the eye of the camera, but those of us who were watching from the side could see the blood and the long gash across the hidden hand. He looked around to be sure the job was finished according to plan, and then he made his exit from the scene and sat down near the camera. He was panting as he calmly said, "Cut." The assistant had called a car, and in the hospital Orson's hand was stitched by a doctor who admonished him for not stopping sooner, thereby diminishing his loss of blood.

"Blood," said Orson, "I've got plenty of blood. It was the perfume I was worried about."

I've heard less-detailed versions of this story before, always involving Welles' left hand, which he pulls out of camera range at the very end of the scene, when he picks up Susan's snowglobe. Peter Bogdanovich and Roger Ebert both refer to the hand-injury story in their separate commentaries on the Kane DVD. Bogdanovich mentions Welles' "hands bleeding," and Ebert notes that while there's no visible injury, Welles pulls his left hand out of view at the scene's end.

But when is Welles' hand injured? Welles tears up the room with both hands, all the way through the scene. At 1:49:53, at the very end of his rampage, his left palm is fully in view, free of any blood. Then the left hand swoops down and scatters perfume bottles on a tabletop. At 1:49:54, there's a glimpse of what appears to be a shadow (not blood) on Welles' left palm. Welles then pulls his left hand back, up, and out of sight as reaches with his right hand for the snowglobe, which has escaped the destruction.

So it seems that if Welles did injure his hand, it was at the very end of the scene. Perhaps he felt the searing pain of a deep cut, which could account for the odd, jerky movement as he hides his hand.

I still love Joseph Cotten's memory of this scene, and I certainly wouldn't expect Jedediah Leland himself to watch Citizen Kane to check.

Leave the bone alone

An interesting metaphor for musical understatement:

"When Bill Clinton was inaugurated," Alpert said, "they had ten saxophone players at the party. It was mostly the young guns, but Gerry Mulligan was in there, too. Afterward, he called me and said, 'Man, you know, these young guys, they know all the modes, they know all the chords, they can play high and low and fast, and they can do amazing things, but the one thing they don’t know how to do is leave the bone alone.'"

From a New Yorker item on trumpeter Herb Alpert and the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights.

» Whipped Again

Slugabed

From Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:

slugabed \SLUG-uh-bed\ noun
: a person who stays in bed after the usual or proper time to get up; broadly : sluggard

Example sentence:
Rather than be a slugabed for her entire vacation, Jeanne made it a goal to rise at 6:00 AM and go for a jog every morning.

Did you know?
The first known usage of "slugabed" in English can be found in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1592), when Juliet's nurse attempts to rouse the young heroine by chiding, "Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed!" The first half of the word, "slug," is a now-rare verb once used in English to mean "to be lazy or inert" or "to move slowly." Experts believe this word to be of Scandinavian origin, and the same thing can be said of the noun "slug," which can mean "sluggard" or "lazy person" as well as refer to the slow-moving gastropod. The second half of our featured word, "abed," is a word still used in English today to mean "in bed."

Personally, I think Jeanne needs to have her head examined.

Dinner

Something I wrote in a December 2004 end-of-semester post for a class reading Homer's Odyssey:

As you move away from your parents' oikos and toward making one of your own, remember the importance of sharing with family and friends the pleasures of meals and conversation. Sharing food and drink and talk is one of the practices that make us human. (Isn’t it sad that we need television commercials to encourage us to eat together at the family table?)

Some good news in today's New York Times:

After decades of decline in the simple ritual of family dinners, there is evidence that many families are making the effort to gather at the dinner table. A random nationwide survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found a recent rise in the number of children ages 12 to 17 who said they ate dinner with their families at least five times a week, to 58 percent last year from 47 percent in 1998.

Getting everyone around the table can be a huge juggling exercise for overworked parents and overscheduled children. But many parents are marshaling their best organizational skills to arrange dinners at least once a week.

"There's definitely an awareness that was not there a few years ago," said Miriam Weinstein, author of "The Surprising Power of Family Meals: How Eating Together Makes Us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier and Happier" (Steer Forth Press, 2005). "All the factors that have been working against family dinners are still in full force, but it's very much a subject on people's minds."

In my house, the dinner window, so to speak, is sometimes a mere twenty minutes. But we plan accordingly and, as the sign says, EAT.

» Families With Full Plates, Sitting Down to Dinner (New York Times)