Southern Bookman

Poetry flowers during National Poetry Month

Another National Poetry Month is almost gone.

In April, publishers release new poetry books and publications heighten their attention to the genre all but ignored the rest of the year.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review recently devoted an entire issue to "poesy." The New York Times Sunday magazine now publishes a poem each week.

Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda Thursday proclaimed his love of poetry in lavishly praising new critical studies of the art by Guggenheim Foundation President and noted poet/critic Edward Hirsch and Johns Hopkins professor and formalist poet Brad Leithauser.

Both have been longtime leaders of the nation's poetry establishment. Hirsch in several books and a term as the nation's poet laureate has striven to raise poetry's popularity. Leithauser has spearheaded efforts to restore the use of traditional meter and form after years of "free verse" dominance.

Hirsch's "The Heart of American Poetry" is the latest entry in an increasingly prevalent format he pioneered: offering a selection of poems accompanied by brief explanations of each of them.

Leithauser's "Rhyme's Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry" joins a teeming collection of books on poetic technique. The title and subject echo the late John Hollander's small classic "Rhyme's Reasons."

Dirda cites Hirsch's inclusion of outsider works like Robert Johnson's song "Crossroads Blues (Take 2)" along with a variety of poems from across the American canon.

He commends Leithauser for unlocking poetic techniques for the general reader.

While I'm skeptical of the triumphalism of National Poetry Month, I'm marking the occasion with the long-awaited arrival of British writer Lucasta Miller's "Keats a Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph." 

Has I yearned to read the book when it was first published in Great Britain, and waited long months for its American appearance. At last, April brought the book's arrival, and I'm happily reading it each night.

After years of receding from mainstream literary culture, poetry returned to prominence after Sept. 11, 2001. Grieving Americans after the attack on the World Trade Center found solace in poems like W.H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939."  Readers are also turning to poetry after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially to work by Ukrainian writers.

Poetry lives whenever deeper human emotions must receive expression.

 

 

U.S. Grant defended by Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo in Wall Street Journal article

As evidence mounts that the Republican Party stands for insurrection and opposes the truth, the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday remembered U.S. Grant, who defeated the Confederacy's rebellion against the United States.

On the 200th anniversary of Grant's birth, Civil War historian Allen G. Guelzo defended the Republican's Civil War record and often disparaged presidency.

That followed Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan's recent praise of Grant for his magnanimity to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Va., on April 9, 1865, Palm Sunday. Grant allowed Lee's defeated soldiers to keep their horses and weapons, and ordered that they be given food.

Guelzo, now at Princeton after a career at Penn, wrote a well-regarded history of Gettysburg and a recent biography of Robert E. Lee, refreshingly simply titled "Robert E. Lee: A Life." The frequent WSJ contributor also drew fire for agreeing to serve on Donald Trump's dubious panel that sought to whitewash American history.

Countering long-engrained criticism that Grant's presidency was one of the most corrupt in American history, Guelzo pointed out that a probe at the time led to only one indictment, and Grant was never implicated.

While elitists like Henry Adams mocked Grant for his perceived lack of refinement, Grant like Lincoln possessed a deep understanding of the nation's core values.

Grant's critics accused the Union Army leader of slaughtering too many soldiers to win battles. Abraham Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, joined those who claimed Grant's tactics caused too high a death toll. Detractors view Grant as a butcher who defeated Lee in a war of attrition because the Union had much greater manpower than the South.

Guelzo admits that Grant's direct assaults at Cold Harbor pointlessly wasted lives, but that the Union Army suffered fewer deaths than Lee's. Lincoln also supported Grant's strategy after the discouraging performances of McClellan, Hooker, Burnside and Meade.

Advances in weapons technology raised the appalling death counts of Civil War battles as generals often resorted to the outmoded strategy of direct attacks.

Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain, Burnside at Fredericksburg and Lee in launching Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg engendered horrifying slaughter by sending troops directly at entrenched enemy positions.

Dismissing the familiar accusations that the alcoholic Grant was drunk during battles, Guelzo points out that an investigator found no evidence that drinking ever impaired Grant's judgment.

Guelzo also defends Grant's actions in support of Reconstruction, pointing out that midterm elections at the end of his administration cost him his Republican majority in the House. Grant sent troops into South Carolina to suppress the Klan, and suspended habeas corpus, as Lincoln had done during the war. But Guelzo doesn't mention that Grant failed to send soldiers into other Southern states.

Outside of the purview of Guelzo, the Hayes-Tilden compromise and the ascension of Democrat Rutherford B. Hayes following Grant's presidency brought the removal of federal troops from the South, and the end of Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws restored white supremacy in the old Confederacy.

Dying of cancer, Grant courageously wrote his memoirs, considered a classic of American literature. Guelzo doesn't mention that Mark Twain encouraged Grant to write his battle recollections, which financially supported his family after his death.

Grant, who was serving as a clerk in his father's store when the Civil War began, is one of the central American stories, a flawed and unpretentious man who rose to carry out Lincoln's mission to preserve the Union and end slavery.

While like many Southern boys, I grew up revering Lee, I've over the years gained deep admiration for Grant and less respect for the Confederate idol.

At low moments, I draw encouragement from Grant's statement to Sherman after the Union's Army's disastrous first day at Shiloh.

"Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman said.

Grant responded, "Yes, lick ’em to-morrow, though.”

 

 

 

Margo Jefferson's "Constructing a Nervous System" defends art's power

Margo Jefferson deftly weaves cultural criticism and memoir in "Constructing a Nervous System."

Deploying effective and exciting experimental techniques, Jefferson explores how art, film, music, theater and literature have intersected with her life.

Revisiting territory from her memoir "Negroland," she gives glimpses of growing up as the daughter of an upper-middle class black family in Chicago. She touches upon her career as a book reviewer and essayist, giving little attention to her Pulitzer  Prize-winning work at The New York Times.

The book glistens with humor, softening the angst suggested by the title. Yet she makes real the anxieties and racism suffered even by upper-class black families.

Her recollections of the pressures she and her older sister, Denise, felt to present themselves as perfect stylish "ladies" and her interactions with her socially ambitious parents contrast with the temptations of popular culture, white and black.

Denise is portrayed as a foil and inspiration. While Denise and Margo conform to family expectations, her sister also pushes her toward independence.

Jefferson recalls the toxic mix of shame and pride she experienced watching Ella Fitzgerald perform. Fitzgerald's angelic voice and musical genius didn't overcome her revulsion at the singer’s weight and copious sweating.

Nor can Jefferson repudiate her primal attraction to Ike Turner, serial abuser of his wife Tina Turner. Jefferson gives a compelling biographical profile of Turner, and his importance to black entertainment, along with an insightful account of Tina's rise to superstardom after leaving Ike.

White performers also influenced her. In an amusing high point, she speaks in the voice of Bing Crosby, whom she calls one of her "white minstrels." All but forgotten now, Crosby was a major entertainment presence from before World War II until his death in 1977.

Known for his easy-going crooner's persona, Crosby was influenced by black jazz artists, especially Louis Armstrong, with whom he recorded and made movie appearances.

Jefferson notes Crosby’s debt to black culture, while acknowledging his individual talent and appeal to her. She also mentions his dark side, which surfaced out of the public eye, and led to two of his sons committing suicide.

Willa Cather's novels appear as another source of social and artistic conflict. Her admiration for  Cather's novels is undercut by her awareness of Cather's racism and Confederate sympathies. In imagining teaching Cather's novels to her students, Jefferson upholds the books’ literary value over their flaws.

As a counterpoint to Cather, Jefferson examines the career of Josephine Baker as a flashpoint of race, sexuality and artistic expression.

Recounting white critics' obsession with Baker’s raw sexuality, Jefferson herself emphasizes the performer's erotic power more than her artistic significance.

The title "Constructing a Nervous System" doesn't quite fit. Jefferson sees art as vital in building a life.

Pamela Paul in first New York Times column fires a shot in cultural wars

Pamela Paul in her inaugural New York Times column Monday took aim at ethnic barriers on artistic freedom.

The newspaper's former books editor decried critics who claim that only a member of a particular minority group can legitimately represent its experience.

Paul notes that such cultural identity warriors corrupt the language by brandishing the term "lived experience." Such a restrictive phrase impugns the creative imagination's power to express the variety of human life, she concludes.

Her defense of artistic truth against those who decry racial and gender "appropriation" in the arts might shock progressive Times readers, perhaps signaling a shift toward the center on the page formerly known as the "op-ed." The opening salvo indicates that Paul could join former husband Bret Stephens and David Brooks as in-house conservatives.

The Brown University alum and former Economist correspondent made an early splash with her first book, "The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony," which dissected the dissolution of her marriage to Stephens. Now, she's the wife of a hedge-fund exec and the mother of three children.

Reading Paul's column, I wondered why the Times hadn't placed her in the venerated space on the Monday business front page recently vacated by Ben Smith and distinguished by the late David Carr. Paul's most recent book, "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet," showcases social media savvy equal to Smith's. The business page space would give her a more prominent platform and still allow her to cover a range of subjects.

With Paul moving to opinionating, and Joseph Kahn being named Times executive editor to replace Dean Baquet, the New York chattering class has turned to wondering who will replace Paul as books editor.

Under Baquet, Paul took control of the Times' daily book coverage as well as the Sunday Book Review. While Paul added reader-friendly features to the Book Review, the major literary arbiter's increased attention to conservative books and popular fiction upset the progressive intellectual elite. In contrast to her provocative opening column, the Sunday book reviews under her watch turned bland and inoffensive.

A recent Nation article about the Times Book Review being at a crossroads received high readership. Choosing the new leader of the Times' book coverage will be one of Kahn's most important early decisions. As publishing industry consolidation advances, and cultural conflicts rise in intensity, the Times book coverage will take a leading role in setting  the nation's cultural agenda.

 

 

 

 

Streaming era turns muddy as CNN Plus is subtracted and Netflix subscribers swim toward the shore

The vaunted CNN Plus streaming channel lasted only a little longer than the Minnesota Timberwolves' 26-point lead over the Memphis Grizzlies Thursday night.

Quickly following the Warner Brothers-Discovery merger, CNN pulled the plug Thursday on its streaming service.

Former CEO Jeff Zucker's folly cost the former leading cable news channel millions in promotion and the hiring of stars like Fox's Chris Wallace, NPR's Nudie Cornish and NBC's Kasie Hunt. CNN Plus would have raised more subscribers broadcasting a burning fireplace.

CNN Plus's subtraction followed news of a bloodbath at streaming giant Netflix, which announced a shocking loss of subscribers. The Netflix stock plummeted as if hit by that meteor in Netflix's "Don't Look Up," which like other Academy Award lauded Netflix films bombed with audiences.

Jane Campion's "Power of the Dog" didn't bark as loudly with Oscars voters as expected. Nor did the ponderous Western drama attract viewers to the streaming service viewed as crushing Hollywood a short time ago.

Netflix's expensive movies don't move audiences in the absence of new TV hits like former fan favorites "The Queen's Gambit" and "House of Cards."  Offerings like "Bridgerton" and "Emily in Paris" couldn't keep viewers from saying "au revoir."

The travails of CNN Plus and Netflix don't necessarily signal a shakeout of the streaming industry.

Amazon will undoubtedly cash in this fall from Thursday night NFL football. The announcing team of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit will add cross-generational star power to the NFL's juggernaut popularity.

Warner Brothers-Discovery's HBO Max, beefed up by revived CNN Plus projects, Disney+ and Peacock will keep hurling compelling  "content" into the arena. Netflix will come back strong.

As streaming hits a bend in the river, cable TV surges on the strength of sporting events like the NBA playoffs. Games like the Grizzlies' crazy comeback against the Timberwolves Thursday night on TNT keep cable vital.  

But baseball is a drag. ESPN's game between the World Series champion Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres during Easter Sunday prime time received a much smaller viewership than the premier of USFL football on Fox and NBC earlier in the day as Easter egg hunts and family meals commenced.

As a chorus of baseball Cassandras keep crying, analytics and glacial play are killing the former national pastime.

52nd anniversary of Earth Day raises urgency of climate change action

Bursting with spring beauty, LSU celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970.

Like Vietnam Moratorium Day six months before, also held on the Ole War Skule's Parade Grounds, Earth Day changed my worldview.

A freshman carrying out a misguided passive-aggressive protest against my ROTC class and close to losing my student draft deferment, I wandered through the Earth Day exhibits, instantly turning into an environmentalist.

Millions across the globe marked the event, protesting air pollution, species extinction and the destruction of the ozone layer. Climate change was an unknown concept, outside of a few academic research offices.

The Vietnam War still raged, dividing the country. But the environmental movement received nearly universal support, even in the Republican Party. The Environmental Protection Agency was created during the Nixon Administration, and action was taken to preserve the ozone layer.

That momentum waned in succeeding years, and the fossil fuel industry criminally impeded efforts to fight climate change. The world recently has begun action to reduce carbon emissions that should have been taken years ago.

The Biden administration, ambushed by rising gas prices and the Ukrainian invasion, recently retreated from its promises to move toward solar and wind energy. The climate change-denying Republican Party's culture war appears on course to retake the Congress and presidency.

On Earth Day's 52nd anniversary, the Earth is in greater peril than ever.

 

Joseph Kahn to pilot New York Times' speeding toward the future

Joseph Kahn will lead The New York Times far, far away into its digital future.

The Times made the biggest news among the New York/D.C. media elite Tuesday by naming the 57-year-old Kahn to replace Dean Baquet as the burgeoning media empire's executive editor. Baquet, who reached the exalted position's mandatory retirement age of 65 last autumn, will hand off the keys to the kingdom in June.

Kahn, a Times veteran who made his name covering China as the communist country began emerging as a global economic power, served as Baquet's managing editor during his eight-year reign, helping accelerate the Times from its print newspaper past into a new era of online video, breaking news alerts, newsletters, podcasts, puzzles and games and acquired diversions like the Athletic and Wordle.

Under Baquet, the Times' online news circulation soared, while the old print newspaper withered as aging readers headed into Baby Boomer heaven. Although traditional advertising plummeted, the online subscription boom allowed Baquet to multiply his staff, recruiting Internet-savvy technocrats as well as traditional international journalists in the Kahn mold.

The rush to online paradise was hampered by several staff insurrections and demands for greater racial and gender diversity.

Former exec-ed candidate James Bennett was jettisoned by taking too literally the Sulzberger dictim to add more conservative voices to the editorial page. Bennett was banished when employees revolted over his department running an incendiary op-ed by right-wing Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the military to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests following the George Floyd murder.

Articles in publications ranging from the Columbia Journalism Review to New York magazine and The Washington Post noted how the Harvard-educated Kahn represents a return to the white male establishment that led the Times for years. After the rocky tenures of Howell Raines and Jill Abramson, the newspaper turned to the genial Baquet, the first black to run the Sulzberger family's media empire.

The contrasts between Kahn and Baquet are striking. Baquet, a New Orleans native, grew up in an apartment above his family's restaurant, where he mopped floors and bused tables. Harvard-educated Kahn enjoyed a gilded childhood in Boston, the son of the founder of Staples.

As Politico writer Jack Shafer pointed out, the Times executive editor's job is often precarious. Baquet enjoyed a stable run, but Abramson was abruptly ousted after two and a half years. The cantankerous Raines was also forced out for upsetting the workers and displeasing the Sulzbergers.

A.G. Sulzberger, representing the family's new generation, presided over the end of Baquet's rule and named Kahn as his successor. Kahn like Baquet believes in traditional journalistic objectivity, often assailed by left-wing critics as giving too much credence to fact-challenged conservative views. Right-wing critics say the Times has allowed personal opinion to distort news stories.

In a relic from the past, articles about the Kahn appointment often referred to the Times as "The Gray Lady." That's a long-obsolete moniker from the days when the print newspaper ruled, embalming the news in black and white photos and swaths of gray type. The Gray Lady is long gone.

 

Freddie Freeman welcomes Braves pals to L.A.

The ball flew off Freddie Freeman's bat, slicing toward center field.

Freeman in his 12 years with the Atlanta Braves had made the same swing many times.

The home run, the trot around the bases, had not changed. But Freeman was now a Los Angeles Dodger.

Freeman greeted his old teammates to Dodgers Stadium for Monday night's game with hugs and tears. Freeman hadn't seen manager Brian Snitker and the Braves since the victory parade in Atlanta last autumn celebrating the Braves' unexpected World Series victory.

Any lingering bitterness over the Braves not signing their longtime team leader to a new contract had dissipated.

Freeman sat down for a long meeting of reconciliation with Braves General Manager Alex Anthopoulos, who failed to reach a new deal with Freeman, leading to his signing with the hated Dodgers. In a touching interview with Bally Sports' Kelly Crull, Freeman said his friendship with Anthopoulos remained strong.

Choking back tears, Freeman told Crull how much he'll miss Atlanta fans, whom he saluted for their support during the team's highs and lows. He called "Braves country" one of his favorite places on Earth.

In the first inning, Freeman smashed one of his signature opposite field home runs off Braves starter Huacar Ynoa, sparking the Dodgers to a 7-4 victory.

When the home run ball cleared the fence and bounced back onto the field, Dodgers fans rose to their feet and cheered.

Braves followers were happy for Freddie too, although he now wore Dodgers blue.

Imani Perry's "South to America" sees Southern states as key to nation's future

Imani Perry moved from her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., at a young age.

Although Perry grew up in the North, she claims the South as her home, from childhood visits and family ties.

The Princeton historian explores the South and  its violent legacy of racism and slavery in "South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation." At the end, she expresses fervent hopes that the South can redeem the nation.

Part geographical and historical study of different Southern cities and states, part travelogue and part memoir, the book struggles to find a consistent voice until its final chapters.

While avoiding academic jargon, Perry in her city summaries reverts to a pedantic, textbook tone. In Perry's early chapters on Virginia and the upper South, her personal reflections take a guarded, passionless stance.

A few times she’s hampered by her Ivy League education in misguided efforts to affect the Deep South vernacular. Yet her affection for tacky Southern food and culture is undoubtedly sincere.

Her chapter on Atlanta rc-cycles a familiar litany of the city's shortcomings. She dutifully cites Atlanta's commercialism, cultural superficiality and black poverty that counters its reputation as a center of black success. The chapter gives the impression that Perry based it more on Internet research than personal explorations.

As the travels farther South, her writing gains emotional power, based more on her experiences. A chapter on the Southern "black belt," with a revealing look at Richard Wright, uncovers the economic and cultural contributions of the anonymous African natives held in bondage.

Visits to Birmingham, Mobile and New Orleans, where she has deep family connections, rise to an intensity missing in the early chapters.

She finishes with a convincing argument that Caribbean islands with a history of slavery share a legacy with the American South. Her concluding chapter on a trip to Havana, based on her ruminations around the city, achieves the suspenseful power of a thriller.

In a conclusion written during the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, Perry passionately expresses her belief that the South can lead the nation to redemption.

The South has regressed in recent years from the progress following the civil rights movement. Yet Perry still believes the South can bring the nation to a new era of justice and freedom.

Good Friday brings thoughts of Urkaine's lost lives, and course of history

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, two days earlier than the 80th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

The deaths of both wartime presidents shocked the nation.

Soon after the end of the Civil War and his second inauguration, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865 - Good Friday - while watching a play at Ford's Theater in the nation's capital.

Booth entered Lincoln's booth in the theater and shot the president in the head. Lincoln died the next morning after being taken to a home across the street.

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union Gen. U.S. Grant on April 9, although Kirby Smith's  Louisiana-based rebel army wouldn't stop fighting until May 26. But the war was essentially over, and Lincoln and his wife, Mary, had enjoyed the comedy "Our American Cousin" until Booth carried out his assault.

Enormous technological and historical changes occcurred over the eight decades separating the deaths of the two presidents seen as America's greatest, along with Washington.

Reconstruction failed, and Southern states restored white supremacy by imposing Jim Crow laws.

After giving the Allies the winning edge over Germany with its late entry into World War I, the United States emerged as the world's leading economic power.

The Great Depression ravaged the global economy. The Russian Revolution brought the formation of the Soviet Union, and Hitler's rise in Germany and Japan's territorial aggression led to World War II

The prematurely aged Roosevelt died of a stroke at his retreat in Warm Springs, Ga. World War II continued for another month in Europe, and Japan battled on until September, surrendering after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, ordered the nuclear bombing, heading off a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland in which thousands would have died.

First taking office in 1933 in the initial shock of the Great Depression, Roosevelt was the only president many Americans had ever known. He'd led the nation through economic devastation, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, triumphs in the Pacific and near victory over Hitler's Third Reich.

History is packed with events that might have gone another way. If Booth's derringer had failed and Lincoln survived, would Reconstruction have succeeded? If Roosevelt had remained president, not diminished physically and mentally, would he have decided against the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Perhaps he would have asked for a demonstration of the bomb's power rather than the devastation of two cities.

If history had turned out differently, the Bolshevik Revolution would have failed, as it almost did. Russia could have developed into a liberal democracy and the Cold War never happened. Under that alternative history, Putin might have never seized power and Russia would have left Ukraine alone.

On Good Friday, reading John Donne's "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" as I do every year, I thought about the contingencies of history. What strikes me about the poem is Donne's presence; he was alive on that spring day, experiencing life's passage, the seconds flashing across his consciousness.

If Putin hadn't sent his bedraggled army into Ukraine, thousands of innocent people would still be alive today. Mothers now dead would be nourishing their newborn infants. Those babies never saw the sunlight.

Couples would be falling in love. People slaughtered by the Russian missiles would be eating in restaurants, going to concerts. Families would be celebrating Easter.

No man is an island, Donne wrote. The bell of Ukraine, and history, tolls for thee.