Obsessions

These days my spirit is brittle as burnt sugar. As off.

Thoughts stuck to the dark rim of something that is probably not really an abyss, but a threshold that demands a bit of drama. 

Run On Sentence

When his face was upside down, when the world was upside down, when I flew under him like a comet heading toward another part of the galaxy, his anger was a kind of encouragement, a kind encouragement. And I shook my wrists and the bells clapped like insects trapped and bouncing their way out of a tin, knocking themselves silly against the cold, solid boundaries of their little worlds. Like moths tapping towards the light.

Dust Bathing

I overheard that the crocuses are up, though I haven’t bothered to look.  I see a square of pale blue, a reflection in the glass I face, the window at my back.

The occassional shadow that passes like a bird. Or a bird whose sillhouette passes like or as an occassional shadow. It doesn’t really matter anymore.

Today, on the first day of March, I saw the geese heading south. Their familiar, long necks.

Nothing follows the rules.

Who’d have thought I would miss the white noise? Will it to return. My slick skin.

All this sticks too well. In uncomfortable creases.

I want to get down and roll in the dust of this seasonless stretch of desert, the orange scour and needlepricks, so I can get up and say, “See: I am clean. Life is good.” 

All I have to say at the moment:

Home from what felt like an attempt to herd baby chicks through the city. Slept late, chatted with the kid for a couple hours (!), then, a bit reluctantly, I washed London out of my pores.

Changing gears now.

*

Home after ten days: ten books, a few book-binding toys, one lovely reunion with a good friend, two trips to the British Library, countless cafés and coffees, writing, and family time with K.

Overlapping twenty-one teenagers, one lovely colleague, six shows, two workshops and a bit of people-watching.

Two days running, followed by five days walking on a sprained ankle. I owe a lot to Ibruprofen this week. I owe a lot to Mastercard, too. 

*

Home to the news that French translations (by Alice Catherine Carls) of three of my poems have been unanimously accepted by the comite de lecture for publication in Le Journal des Poètes. 

*

Home with the white-noise echos of London, under the quiet in this empty house. Nordlendingen is out with the Old Lady, walking the beaches, no doubt. The roof across the street is bright orange with the setting sun, the birches' pink is fading into shadows. The windows need washing, but life is never perfect, is it? 

Wednesday Reminder:

Don't forget to check out the Next Big Thing this week:

Dying to know what Molly Fisk is up to, squeezed between all the mentoring work she does. 
Rachel Dacus (her Rocket Kids is a fab poetry resource) has a new novel in the works.
Cati Porter, founder and editor of Poemeleon, has a new poetry chapbook coming soon! 
Leslie F. Miller (loved her BOYGIRLBOYGIRL), photographer and poet always has something fascinating going on.

... And Kaaren Kitchell is doing the final editing of her new novel - I'm totally intrigued with her subject matter (I was clued-in over a wonderful dinner last year in Paris ). Check out Paris Play!

Regarding the Subjectivity of Quality in Art

A couple weeks ago I sent a copy of a photo to a friend of mine to illustrate my greatest fear: thinking that I am much better at something than I actually am; putting myself/my work out there before I am ready; finding the balance between striving for perfection and daring to say, “This is good.”

It really wasn’t intended as mean-spirited finger-pointing—though, clearly it could be interpreted that way. 

The photograph was carefully composed with an earnest intention of guiding the viewer to perceive the subject in a particular manner. And judging from the comments from the photographer’s friends, the intention was clear. The photographer was reassured again and again that she had managed to capture the artistic nature of the subject: the deep-thinking, sensitive poet.

The composition included standard reference for introspection: a mirror. But the overall composition, with its use of a small aperture, which brought into focus the details of the minutia of everyday life - soap and toothbrushes on the counter, towels hanging to dry - in combination with the subject's own narrow focus in their own reflection, made me think of Narcissuses. I didn't see a portrait of a philosopher poet, but a portrait of a self-absorbed poetaster.

My friend is a professional photographer and I wanted to ask her if my formal interpretation of the composition was correct. But her response was decidedly non-judgmental. “I think art is subjective.” End of discussion.

I felt the shame well up in my throat with its sour voice:

I really would like to be a nice person, a spiritually generous person, and agree with her. If the person who took that photograph, and the people who were moved by it believe it is quality art, then it must be.

"End of discussion, be nice, move on. Who do you think you are?" 

However, I can't believe that there is any purpose in discussing the quality of an artwork as a purely subjective experience. This is probably because I teach “the arts”, as opposed to creativity or self-development. It seems to me that even attempting to teach a work of art as a purely subjectively defined phenomenon would be ahistorical and meaningless. Alternatively, it would be deceptive indoctrination.  

A student recently sent me three scripts that she wanted to do in place of the Beckett piece I suggested for her final senior project. She’d found the scripts in an online database, and they were poorly written by traditional standards. I could not let her use them. As I see it, part of my job to teach her to recognize “excellence”.  I agree that criteria for excellence can be framed within subjective experience. However, I also believe it can only be defined meaningfully, collectively. Art is a cultural artifact, defined by each culture and each subculture. In this case, it is my job to teach her why Beckett’s piece is considered by theater historians to be excellent.

My student doesn’t have to agree that the Beckett piece is good. But she has to first recognize why it has been considered good by the subculture within which she is working, and then argue for her own point of view. She has to recognize that she is joining a discussion that is already in progress. It is the discussion that is fascinating, not her subjective experiences within the context of her own psyche.

Narcissus’ views are only interesting to us when we can see them and relate to them, too. 

Of course "excellence" is defined differently in each subculture. The democratization of the arts has allowed people to gather into subcultures who define and re-define art in exciting ways: I have colleagues who value process over product and believe it is more valuable for my student to work with the text that appeals to her; and all those people who were moved by the photo I disliked are a subculture that evaluates that photo as an excellent work of art.

But I can admit to myself that these are subcultures to which I do not belong. I can admit this out loud, despite opening myself up to accusations of snobbery.

Yeah, the truth is that I look to formal, traditional aesthetic "rules". I want to be accepted into a subculture that has been defined by dead men and women, and to whom I am looking towards as an external source for approval.

A lot of people find that kind of thing alternately pretentious and pathetic. But let’s not forget that the photographer is also looking to an external source for approval: the subculture that is "liking" her photo on facebook.

I know full well that I am neither a better nor worse artist than the photographer as a point of phenomenological fact. But I am not going to stop striving to meet the standards I have chosen to adopt. Nor am I going to stop teaching according to the traditions of the subculture I have chosen.

I am going to admit that it is damned hard to get dead people to like me on facebook.

Thinking is not Writing

I have this amazing little group of students who show up Fridays after school to write. Last year I noticed that we would easily spend more time talking about books than actually writing.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. I like talking about books. They like talking about books. But I pointed out that talking about books is a way to avoid writing, while still feeling writerly. 

This year we have started sessions with prompts instead of discussions. But when it has come time to share what we've written during the 2, 5 or 15 minute prompted sessions, I've noticed a tendency for them to describe their ideas rather than read what they actually wrote.

*

When I was six or so, I used to hang my head off the edge of the bed and imagine what it would be like to walk from room to room if the house had been built upside down. 

That didn't make me an architect. 

Or even a circus artist. 

*

I opened an old file today. Thinking I was picking up a project that was nearly completed. But what I found was no more than a few pages of notes and fragments of scenes. I had thought it all through. I hadn't written it all down.

*

File this under Practice What You Teach. 

Next Big Thing(s)

The Next Big Thing is writers answering simple questions about their work. 

It's a blog tag that has been active for a while, and I was tagged last week by the playwright and poet Rosebud Ben-Oni.

I'm thankful she sent an e-mail my way, because it spurred me to blow the dust off of my neglected blog list. I'm planning to follow tags backwards and sideways during my upcoming winter vacation, to find all the little treasures I've missed out on while my head has been in my day job (which I will no doubt need to hang on to in order to pay for all the books I am sure to wind up ordering). 

No doubt first on my list will be SOLECISM. I am new to Rosebud Ben-Oni's work, but am excited to have found a playwright/poet editing Vida. Can't wait, actually, to get my eyes on some of her stage work - but I will take that up with her privately. Right now, go to her poem "The Night Shark" on page 6 of the second issue of Sundog Lit. That is what I want to show people today. A poem I wish I'd written. 

Okay. On to what I have written...

What is the title of your book? The book released here in Norway in December is An Elastic State of Mind, which is an imaginative autobiography in formal and free verse. Three years of intense work with form, two years of historical research, and another two years with the translator: this baby was a long time in coming. The review that came out last week was positive, with the caveat that it was demanding of the reader. 

The book I am editing now, which will be finished in March, is Ewe in the Rain. It's more of a seduction than a demand. 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? The images in these poems, written over the course of year during meditative runs, aren't metaphors - the birches are birches, the sheep are sheep -  but they might show the reader that most of what we fill our days with is nothing more than metaphors for "real life". 

What genre does your book fall under? Poetry.

Where did the idea come from for the book? I started running without an iPod so that I could finally come to terms with the Norwegian outdoors. I set out to run (almost) every morning - the same route - through all four seasons. I wanted to really get to know this place, where I have lived and worked indoors, for twenty years: to give in to the slugs and the wind, the sunrises and the swans. And I did. Mostly. I'm still only a hostile acquaintance of the swans. 

I knew I wouldn't be able to take photographs on the dark winter mornings, so I decided to compose a short poem on each run and jot it down in a blog as soon as I got back to the house.

I saw it as a lesson in humility, too, I might add. 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? I kept the blog entries for 10 months. Then I put it away for a few more, before I began editing. I'm almost finished.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? I think this is the most narcissistic book I have ever written. It was a self-help project of sorts. I didn't start out thinking it would be a book. I was just wriggling out from under the academic work of An Elastic State of Mind and this felt... light. They are basically private love letters from me to the lake. 

Who will publish your book? I have discussed it with my Norwegian publisher Wigestrand, and he will send the manuscript to the amazing poet Eirik Lodén, who translated my last three books. And I will hold my breath. 

In the meantime, I will be hand making a limited edition of books with photo transfers. A few years ago I played with animated poetry, but then ditched it all to follow a desire to make books: objects with text and textures; smells like dust and glue and mold and time. I bought paper in Kyoto this summer and will do some editions with Japanese binding, and some with case binding. It will be my first Mad Orphan Lit. publication.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre? I didn't set out to consciously write in a genre. They are reminiscent of haiku in their brevity and subject matter. But I know that I owe a debt to the Norwegian writers I have worked with and translated over the years. Especially Tor Obrestad, Kolbein Falkeid and Odveig Klyve. This was their landscape first. Their love. When I reach to describe the white days, they are forever Obrestad's white days, though new to me. 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? I can see An Elastic State of Mind as a film, but not Ewe in the Rain. Unless it was screened in an open field at dusk. I would want Liv Tyler to play the "speaker". Just because I'm vain and she's pretty. We could dub Glenn Close's voice, like they did in Tarzan. Jane Campion could direct. 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? The title is taken from a silly conversation I had with a fellow runner about a new yoga pose I'd invented one morning while running past the sheep. In the rain, of course. I might just use a picture of myself in the pose as my author photo for the limited edition. 

THANK YOU, Rosebud, for tagging me. And for The Next Big Thing, Next Week: 

Dying to know what Molly Fisk is up to, squeezed between all the mentoring work she does. 
Rachel Dacus (her Rocket Kids is a fab poetry resource) has a new novel in the works.
Cati Porter, founder and editor of Poemeleon, has a new poetry chapbook coming soon! 
Leslie F. Miller (loved her BOYGIRLBOYGIRL), photographer and poet always has something fascinating going on.

... And Kaaren Kitchell is doing the final editing of her new novel - I'm totally intrigued with her subject matter (I was clued-in over a wonderful dinner last year in Paris ). Check out Paris Play on the 6th. 

Brave Acts & Kind Words

“There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love if you heard their story.*” …

This summer in Japan, I bought myself a ring—a cheap, silver band that I had inscribed with the words, “This choice is who you are.” The engraving is almost worn away already, only a few months later, but the lesson is worn into my subconscious now.

I started using this phrase as a mantra of sorts about three years ago. It was a way to get myself out of bed at 5 am each morning—early enough to write and exercise before taking the train to work. It was really quite simple: if I get up and do it this morning, then I am the kind of person who gets up and writes and exercises before her workday begins.

I am that person I aspire to be through each choice I make. I’m not in a process of becoming, I am: one day, one choice at a time.

^

Writing this is a brave act.

^

Two years ago I was saying goodbye to a graduating class with whom I had more than the usual ups and downs between teacher and students. I was holding on to anger and resentment in regard to several of them. So I made myself sit down and write a few sentences to describe the very best that I saw in each one. It took me six hours.

When I was finished, I loved every single one of them. And it didn’t matter than every single one of them would not love me back.

I read the little portraits aloud to the class, then I took scissors, cut up the paper I wrote on, and gave each of them their sentences. One of those scraps of paper found its way to settle in a frame, in a college dorm room in a foreign country. I think of it as evidence of a bit of good I unleashed in the world: a pretty decent return for six hours of compassionate meditation.

^

I took a photography course from Di Mackey. It was a gift to myself.

She was talking about taking portrait shots, about looking at a subject and finding its most beautiful angles and aspects before shooting.

^

I think every specific we learn is a larger metaphor to apply to our lives.

^

I recently read about how researchers found that people in their 40s look back on their 20-year old selves and see how much they have grown. And that people in their 60s look back on their 40-year old selves and see how much they have grown. I’ve grown – I’m not going to look up names and address to ask everyone for forgiveness—but, oh yes, I have grown.

I’m looking forward to looking back with compassion, and laughing at who I am now—how I thought I had so much figured out, but didn’t.

I will still owe some people apologies, I’m sure.

And it will be okay.

^

I’ve always been interested in photography. I worked at a camera store in college, learned all the theory and technical facts, but I didn’t dare take many photographs because I felt self-conscious holding a camera.

I’ve traveled to Kyrgyzstan alone. I’ve gone scuba diving despite a fish phobia. I’ve picked up and moved to a foreign country. I gave birth. Twice. But asking a stranger in a cafe in Genoa if I could take his picture was probably one of the bravest things I’ve ever done.

^

This year will be a year of Brave Acts & Kind Words.

It’s not about  having it all together, or offering anyone advice. It’s about framing the world: choosing—and sharing—a  point of view. It’s what photographers do. It’s what writers do.

 *Supposedly, Mr. Rogers carried this quote around in his wallet. I loved Mr. Rogers. I grieved for him as I would have an estranged uncle.

Dorking.

An essay for And I Ran.