Southern Bookman

Chaucer's Enduring Gift

Chaucer's small crypt in Westminster Abbey is a striking memento a mori. Standing there looking at the stone box that holds his remains, I thought about how alive he and his characters are in "The Canterbury Tales." In his verse narrative, a prototype for imaginative literature from the English novel to Milton's epics and Shakespeare's plays, he describes an energetic London whose spirit remains in today's swirling streets of sound and color. His bones have lain in the old cathedral for hundreds of years, but walking outside into the city's life, I could imagine him still a part of it, bustling around, hearing snatches of conservation, hurrying to a tavern such as the one he mentions, the Tabard Inn.

Now, with another April arrived, I reread the General Prologue to his famous book, his hymn to the month and the renewal of spring as current today as when he first wrote it in 1386. While his language is archaic, his poetic force surges on, his words still expressing the reader's excitement at spring's arrival.

Chaucer's work is one of the foundations of the English language. He says at the start of his poem "Whan that April with its showers soote/The drought of March hath perced to the roote./And bathed every veine in swich licour, of which vertu engendred is the flowr; ..." His work is the root of English literature.

James Howard Kunstler's "Too Much Magic" Exposes Technological Mantras

James Howard Kunstler in "Too Much Magic" convincingly smashes hopes for techological solutions to the U.S. energy shortage. Kunstler, although others dispute him, says the world has already reached the era of "peak oil," and that such panaceas as shale oil, shale gas (fracking), wind and solar, biofuels and so on won't provide sufficient replacements for petroleum.

Kunstler is thorough in providing reasons why even highly touted alternative fuels won't keep us from the collapse of our oil-based culture. One area he neglects - the book was apparently written late in 2011 - is new sources of oil in the melting Arctic. Shell Oil has begun exploring in the Arctic, although because of equipment problems, it's had to delay its work for a couple of years. So, the polar bears are safe for now, if they can find a patch of ice or two on which to float. The Arctic might provide a new bump in world oil supplies, at least for a few years. Overall, though, Kunstler makes convincing arguments that easily attainble oil is running out, and that such solutions as T. Boone Pickens' natural gas-powered cars are so much "magic."

A couple of years ago, I read one of Kunstler's books, perhaps "The Long Emergency," which devastatingly criticized the suburban auto culture of U.S. cities, singling out my own town of Atlanta as the worst of the bunch. I am also a fan of his weekly blog blasts on "Clusterfuck Nation," which take a more comically sardonic, apocalyptic tone than "Too Much Magic," which searches for a few fleeting rays of optimism.

It sounds as if all we can hope for is a more localized culture, something like a collection of 19th century villages. In his blog, Kunstler expects violent, revolutionary change, while the book leaves open the possibility of gradual change to the new post-oil economy. Unlike the high priest of global interconnectedness and rapid tecnological change, The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, Kunstler sees the world as eventually turning less complex and more localized.

One of the values of Kunstler's book is giving a good synopsis of the collapse of global finance that led to the 2008 recession, from which the United States and the world are still staggering in zombie half-recovery. The suburban-car oriented economy for which he delivers a post mortem likely has more life than he allows, but it will eventually crash. I still have a bit more hope in technologies such as electric cars and wind and solar power than Kunstler, but his book raised my skepticism. Kuntsler makes a persuasive case that both political parties' messages that we can achieve energy self-sufficiency are based more on wishful thinking and delusion than reality. At least President Obama mentioned climate change in his Democratic Convention speech. Kunstler shows that global warming deniers are charlatans exploiting Americans' refusal to face scientific facts. The Republican Party, which once subscribed to the reality of climate change even in the days of W.,  is now in total denial, as the world possibly heads to the point of no return.

"Too Much Magic" is a sobering look at the choices facing the United States and the world as the era of resource scarcity and climate change brings wrenching change. Despite its bleak prognosis, "Too Much Magic" raised my hopes that human beings can find ways to manage a new world, without depending on technogical magic.

James Lee Burke Shows Jarring Contradictions, Literary Skill in Latest Work, "Creole Belle"

James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books represent the most extended excursion I've made into the macho crime-novel genre. I've read one or two of books by Elmore Leonard and a couple by Carl Hiassen, and probably five by Burke, whose descriptions of western and southern Louisiana enflame my nostalgia for my native state.

I've just finished Burke's latest, "Creole Belle," finding it a mixed bag, as usual with his books. As with Hiassen and Leonard, the villains possess cartoonish evil natures. Burke enjoys violating crime fiction rules, memorably laid down by Leonard a few years ago. At times I wish Burke would hew more closely to Leonard's standards; Burke's frequent philosophical digressions make me long to get back to the plot. Unlike Leonard counsels, Burke is big on the weather, in Burke's books, it seems the rain is falling in every scene, or clearing up. HIs effects grow repetitive, a number of scenes begin with nearly the same wording.

Burke shows signs of wanting to be the serious literary writer he once was, which is one reason he goes against Leonard. I realize that Burke's descriptions of nature and Louisiana towns are a major reason I like his work. Burke overwrites, his words drifting deep into the purple, but when he's under control, he achieves a masterful, poetic depth.

In his latest work, Burke gives even more emphasis to Robicheaux's sidekick, Clete Purcell. He also introduces a couple of other characters, who are more outrageous cartoons than real characters. As with Burke's previous book, a prequel to "Creole Belle," he shows an end of life, elegiac wistfulness.

Burke strives to paint Robicheaux, Purcell and their families as more virtuous characters than the evil-doers. But, part amusingly and part dismaying, Purchell and Robicheaux reveal themselves as more sadistic and brutal than the evil guys they end up slaughtering. Much of this violence comes off as gratuitous, as if Burke enjoys showing how far he can go.

In "Creole Belle," Burke takes on the oil companies and the gulf oil spill, although he never mentions the perpetrator, BP, by name. While he blasts the oil companies for ruining the traditional Cajun lifestyle, he shows his characters driving from say New Iberia to New Orleans without forethought, a freedom that would be impossible without the oil companies. Thus, while painting big oil as evil, he presents a society irrevocably addicted to oil.

Burke again goes too far with his descriptions of violence; and his depictions of women are plagued by an combination of leering sexism and old fashioned paternalism. His dialogue can be clumsy and heavy-handed, along with his historical/philosophical musings. The best parts of the book are when he shows his talent as a literary artist, such as the finely imagined final scene of Clete Purcell and some Vietnamese children he befriends at a Key West beach.

Despite his contradictions, displays of careless writing and lack of consideration for the reader, Burke in the end transcends his weaknesses, presenting a tragic and artistically moving portrait of Louisiana culture under siege by environmental degradation and societal change.

Wendell Berry's Short-sighted Nostalgia for the Local

Wendell Berry's essay "The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford" in the winter issue of the Sewanee Review left me feeling let down. Berry at the end swerves to a discussion of the loss of "authentic local speech." In his essay, he portrays Williams as a poet of local speech, who based his work on the community of Rutherford. Berry builds his case well, to a point, but doesn't reach a satisfying conclusion before tacking on his coda about the loss of local dialects, and "also of a perhaps indispensable knowledge, propriety and sensitivity." I had a feeling of disloctaion at Berry's sudden switching of tracks, as if the first part of the essay had just been an enticement to a totally different message.

In the essay, Berry compares Williams to William Faulkner, saying that Faulkner, like Williams, was fated to write about the community in which he was born. They both were haunted by place, and crearted their special language to give witness to local history, culture and passions. Berry, though, doesn't consider how critical Faulkner was of his Mississippi home, its tragic prejudices and ignorance.He also contrasts Williams and Faulkner to a writer like Hemingway, who left home and wrote about the expatriate life in Europe. Of course, Berry is right about Hemingway, but I'll point out that some of Hemingway's most enduring work are his locally based Nick Adams stories, which I still love.

While Berry's nostalgia for local speech has validity, he romanticizes the local, embuing it with a presumed wisdom and care for the land. However, the insular and small-town South through the Depression was known for overplanting and ruining local land. Its communities were crippled by prejudice, violence and hostility for fresh ideas, as Faulkner shows. Disease and ignorance were widespread. Berry doesn't mention Flannery O'Connor, perhaps because her work, while vibrant in local dialect, shows the ruin of this stunted culture. Despite the emergence of local artists such as Faulkner and the Carter family, the local communties were more marked by inarticulateness than poetry, myth and music. Despite Berry's championing of local virtue, the achievement of the Carter family and Faulkner was the result of outside influences and education interacting with local customs and ways of living. Some of the best-known Carter songs were actually not local folk music, but Tin Pan alley works that had slowly come to the mountains. And Faulkner's work was enriched by his interaction with cosmopolitan influences.

Berry is right that value is lost when local language disappears under the influence of mass media and culture. Yet, the local communities of the past also imposed a loss of freedom and creativity on their inhabitants. And, local language was as impoverished as the land and economic opportunities. We should strive to recover what was valuable and enduring in local language and culture, but not over-romanticize the past.  

 

Yiyun Li's "The Science of Flight" Boosts New Yorker

I've been disappointed by stories written by New Yorker's chosen writers under 40. I generally must be drawn into a story by the opening paragraph, although I sometimes skip ahead to the middle and get hooked by a situation or piece of dialogue there. None of the stories had grabbed me at the beginning, and none had rewarded a leap forward.

On this balmy Labor Day afternoon, I was happy to be compelled from the start by Yiyun Li's "The Science of Flight," in the Aug. 30 issue. Yes, I was two weeks behind in reading the New Yorker. I sat in the Adirondack chair on the front porch with the issue of the magazine, drifting off to sleep from time to time in the pleasant breeze.

"The Science of Flight" pulled me in with the first paragraph, transporting me to a special place that was strange and different, and yet wholly believable. The story was so good that now I want to discover more of her work; she has a new collection of stories coming out this month, "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl."

I also read Jane Mayer's excellent examination of those krazy Koch brothers, "Covert Operations," my original reason for catching up with the issue. The piece on the billionaires who fund political groups fighting Obama adminstration programs and global warming and other environmental initiatives had been the talk of the chattering class when it came out. Mayer did her usual fine job in uncovering the brothers' funding of a number of right-wing, libertarian groups. Of local interest was her reporting that Koch Industries now owns Georgia-Pacific -- its headquarters are a downtown Atlanta landmark. GP, Mayer says, is a major manufacturer of formaldehyde, documented as a carcinogen, which the Kochs are seeking to dispute.

Reading about GP's role in the Koch empire brought me back to all of those times walking through downtown Atlanta when I would be fascinated by the GP skyscraper's optical illusion of lack of three-dimensionality against the sky. Mayer shows that the Koch brothers seek to construct a similar illusion with their schemes, in which their organizations with generic, progressive-sounding names churn out reams of right-wing propaganda that flow through the media. They are also funding the Tea Party movement, reputed to be a spontaneous, grass-roots phenomenon.

 

 

Barbara Ras' "The Last Skin" a Masterful Collection

Barbara Ras' "The Last Skin" (Penguin Poets) wanders along a changing landscape of moods, impressions and memories. Her control and mastery of material reveals a poet with a clear, strong conception and technical execution of each poem.

The dominant theme of the book is the poet's haunting by the death of her mother. Her mother is remembered with a mixture of grief, regret, sympathy, anger and acceptance. Along with her intense feelings about her mother, Ras also delves into political commentary, travel narratives, tender and humorous poems about love and marriage, and memories of experience.

She shows a variety of strategies. At the beginning of the book, the poems have the conventional framework of discrete, connected sentences. Toward the end of the book, poems are breathtakingly composed with single, disgressive sentences, giving pleasure akin to watching a tightrope walker. As a reader, I enjoyed walking with her through these poems, as if in midair. As with many contemporary poets, her work at times resembles prose broken into lines. At her best, her poems reach a deep poetic fusion of language and feeling.

Part II of the book is a series of poems about a trip to Lake Titicaca, described as a shimmering body of water between Peru and Bolivia.  While at times showing too much of a travelogue flavor, the poems pulse with a longing for the simplicity and innocence of a Third World culture. The complexities of her life, including her grief for her mother, intrude upon her desire to freely enjoy the lake's beauty and the native people's less encumbered lives. The poet sees the modern world's growing threat to the lake and the people's culture. She also recognizes her own need for contemporary comforts.

Following this, the book returns to personal poems of regular existence. The opening and closing sections serve as bookends for the Lake Titicaca section, with the first part revealing details of her personal life and the last one returning to these themes, with more of a turning toward the outside world.

The book finishes strongly, with an impressive series of poems that mix humor, regret and the endurance and comfort of love. "Exercising a Verb Seldom Used in the First Person" moves from the world and its objects to personal feelings about her parents. It's a strong poem that ranges from the wryly satiric to intensely felt extemes of anger and forgiveness. Also standing out are the amusing "Adjourd'hui," which looks at biology and marriage; "Ventriloquism," which examines the mysteries of consciousness and memory," and "Once the Ocean Takes You," a meditation on the contradictory fragility and power of the natural world. Closing the collection is "Washing the Elephant," the rich poem of metaphorical daring and emotional power that introduced me to Ras when I read it in the New Yorker.  

"The Last Skin" is the work of a poet who deserves widespread attention. Her third collection, following "One Hidden Stuff" and "Bite Every Sorrow," is the work of an accomplished, assured writer. I'll avidly look forward to reading her work in the future.

David Middleton's "Beyond the Chandeleurs" Illuminates Oil Spill's Threat

The heartbreaking oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the serious threat it poses to marine life on Louisiana and Mississippi's barrier islands recalled David Middleton's fine poem "Beyond the Chandeleurs," the title work in a virtuouso collection published by LSU Press in 1990.

The collection richly displays Middleton's mastery of the classical poetic techniques of rhyme and meter. Middleton writes on a range of subjects, from the profound to  the quotidian, showing a traditional belief in poetry's suitability for a variety of subjects of human communication.

The collection looks at a number of Louisiana places, suffused with a stong love and understanding of the state's northern and southern parts. Northern and Southern Louisiana are seen as cultural opposites, but Middleton finds their shared values while respecting their uniqueness.

The poem "Beyond the Chandeleurs" is colored by a complex understanding of the islands,a gulf estuary and  the nesting place for marine birds, now threated by a floating smear of oil. Middleton looks back at the French explorers' arrival at the islands, and their ecological, cultural and historical treasures. The poem's subtitle shows the islands' heritage and their irreplaceable value: "islands reached and named by Iberville, 2 February 1699."

The poem goes on to trace the ancient origin of the islands, their colonial history, and their sacredness  for us today. To show the poem's excellence, here is the second stanza:

"And now, three hundred years from Iberville
This frigid winter dawn the very day
Whose name he gave those shores toward which we sail,
We cross the sound to find the Chandeleurs
So luminous in moonlight, crescent dunes,
Bleak beaches without islands, miles from land,
Forever washed by waves that crash across
Their narrow breadth, channeling in the sand.
And as we pass by slowly, south-southwest,
We see in mingled gleams of moon and sun
Bubbling over the salt in windblown foam
The play of shape and chaos, our true home."

Barbara Ras' "Washing the Elephant"

All of us have special poems that speak to us with unusual power and insight. I discovered such a poem in the March 15 New Yorker, Barbara Ras' "Washing the Elephant."

The poem connects the striking image of "washing the elephant" to the loss of childhood innocence and the acquiring of knowledge through experience. With a captivating blend of rhetorical revery and concrete details of life, the poem succeeds in discovering similarities between subjects that on the surface lack anything in common.

The poem also marked my discovery of Ras. I'd not been aware of her before reading the poem, but she's had a strong career, not only as poet but as a publisher. She's the director of Trinity University Press in San Antonio, after a stint at the University of Georgia Press. According to Internet material on her, she's also an environmental activist.

Later this month, she will publish "The Last Skin," a collection of poems. I'll look forward to exploring her work in "The Last Skin," as well as other collections she's published.

'Bright Star' Honors Fanny Brawne's Loyalty to Keats

At last, we saw "Bright Star," Jane Campion's exquisite re-creation of the John Keats-Fanny Brawne love affair.  Keats scholars, particularly Christopher Ricks, blasted Campion's portrait of Keats as unrealistic and historically false. However, I found it engaging and respectful of the poet's literary stature, despite some clunky dialogue and implausible scenes.

The film certainly affords Brawnes a more sympathetic view than has been given her in the past. She's shown as passionate, creative, caring and highly sympathetic to the dying Keats. In posthumous writing by the Keats circle, especially those of Charles Armitage Brown, she received blame for the bitterness of his last days. In some accounts, she is shown as cruelly rejecting Keats. In some of his letters to her, which bring little credit to him, he lashes out at the girl. Her letters to him were destroyed after his death.

The film, taken from Andrew Motion's massive Keats biography, gives a contrary view to the traditional one inculcated by Keats' friends, showing her as deeply in love with thepoet until the end, even offering to go with him on his final journey to Italy. Brown comes off as repulsive and arrogant, a person who condemned Brawne after Keats' death to counteract criticism of his own callous treatment of his friend.

I didn't complete Motion's book, so I can't testify about how closely the film matches Motion's view of Brawne and Keats. Long ago, I read Jackson Bate's wonderful biography of Keats, and I rececently read Stanley Plumly's fine study of Keats' life and reputation, but the Keats-Brawne passion is not of central interest in these works. Plumly's portrait of Brown matches the one given by Campion.

My wife's and my enjoyment of the film was heightened by memories of our trip to London a few years ago. We traveled to Hamstead to visit Wentworth Place, the Keats house, where most of the action in the movie occurs. The film scrupulously adheres to the house's layout, including the primitive but appealing basement kitchen. The movie also accurately depicts the great Hampstead Heath, a London jewel, where my wife and I wondered along wooded paths once enjoyed by Keats, Brawne and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The film stars Ben Wishaw, who played Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in previous movies. I like his portrait of Keats, although he's a bit of the stock poet from central casting. Although he makes the attempt, Wishaw falls short of showing Keats' intellectual and philosophical depths. Abbie Cornish makes an admirable, fun-loving, vivacious Fanny, especially in her lovely costumes, designed by herself, according to the movie, but actually, we know, created by a designer who received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination.

With all of the lovely views of nature and 19th century fashion, the most sumptious part of the film is readings of Keats' poems, including "Ode to a Nightingale" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." The sonnet "Bright Star" is OK, but it's not among my favorites. To me, the overly wrought conventional love poem only shows the sadness of how Keats' powers declined at the onset of his illness.

A reading of the famed prologue to "Endymion" brought back my disgust of a few years ago at opening the fourth edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry to discover that "the prologue" had been removed to provide space for obscure women poets of the era. I support Campion's feminism in showing Brawne in a positive lght, yet still regret the loss of Keats' prologue in service of the feminist project of the Norton Anthology, edited by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallsworthy.

Beyond the look at Keats and his circle, the movie gives a splendid glimpse at life in early 19th century Britain, when nature was still fresh and teeming with wonder, and the Industrial Revolution had not yet irrevocably changed society. In some ways, that life is more appealing than ours in the 21st century. However, the first blood coughed up with the onset of tuberculosis was a death sentence. Our medical system might be flawed, but it's come a long way from those primitive days when a doctor's treatment only made death all the more certain. 

From New York to Atlanta and Home

An unexpected midwinter visit to New York City left me full of literary and spiritual longings.

At a memorial service for my late brother in law, the rabbi had read the beautiful verses from Ecclesiastes, "to every thing there is a season." Then, he'd chanted the Kaddish. Even though I didn't understand Hebrew, the words filled me with the beauty of music, while giving me an understanding of their meaning on a deep, visceral level.

In late afternoon, I walked through snow-covered Central Park, recalling the words of Holden Caulfield and others about the beautiful greenway. The park was full of people, enjoying the sunshine and the cold, crisp air. I walked over the St. Gaudens' monument to Gen. Sherman, recalling Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," inspired by St. Gaudens' statue in Boston honoring Col. Shaw's black regiment. St. Gaudens was also connected to another literary favorite: he did the tomb of Henry Adams' wife, Clover. Looking at St. Gaudens' Sherman Statue in the Grand Army Plaza, near the old Plaza Hotel, snatches of Lowell and Adams swirled through my mind. Of course, I couldn't help remembering that May afternoon, beaten down by a grueling tryout at The New York Times, when I'd walked to Central Park from Times Square and witnessed a beautiful woman walking down the sidewalk, one of the loveliest visions of my life.  

With dusk giving the city a crepescular afterglow, I took the subway downtown to the West Village to join my friends Tim and Pui for a poetry reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe. When I emerged from the West Fourth Street Station, I received that jolt of energy and excitement of the village, again recalling that first time long ago when I'd first visited New York. t the cafe's cozy downtown space, hearing Donald Lev read, I traced the Old Testament cadences, the hunger for the word and music, through his poems. "To Every Thing There Is A Season."

Headed back uptown, enjoying the company of new friend Norman  for part of the journey, I again felt the conflicting joys and sorrows of the great city. My wife's family's loss of Woody, the man who loved to knock down walls and rearrange the furniture. Language and memories. Art and change. Love and literature. I got out at 96th Street and walked to the hotel through the swirling snow. Through the mist, I could see the ice-filled East River, Robert Moses' FDR Drive, the towering edifice of the Triborough Bridge. In the hotel, I enjoyed a glass of red wine, served by the young Latino woman who'd been there every night. Her warm, bright smile reminded me of an old insight: God's greatest miracle is the human face.

Early the next morning, we left New York. As we sat on the runway at LaGuardia, waiting for our place in the takeoff queque, I looked out at the gray horizon, barely able to make out the Atlantic, across which so many had come seeking new lives of freedom. At last, the plane climbed into the sky.

Back in Atlanta, the snow that had covered the ground when we left had melted away. A few stubborn snowmen still stood here and there. By week's end, bright, cool weather had arrived. I'd discovered another reading adventure, "The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and The People Who Read Them" by a woman named Elif Batuman. Apparently, she'd been writing for some time for The New Yorker. Although I religiously read the magazine every week, I'd never read her pieces. I looked forward to delving into her essays on reading and how books enrich life.

Before reading Elif though, I wanted to finish Scott L. Mingus Sr.'s "The Louisiana Tigers in The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863" (LSU Press). In the bright afternoon sun, I sat on the front porch and read about the Tigers' valiant but ill-fated charge up Cemetery Hill in the dusk and moonlight of July 2, 1863. As I read, my attention was diverted by crows cawing and flying among the high treetops of the pines in our yard. Again, I returned to the exploits of Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays and his boys from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Alexandria and elsewhere, when I heard a splashing. A small bluebird was enjoying the waters of the birdbath. When it shook its feathers, the cascading water sparkled in the late afternoon light.