What's-the-Story?

Story: characters in action in a setting through time.

That's how I process everything.

Give me a poem, any poem, and I look for the story in the lines, behind the lines, and/or after the lines. Give me a photo, and where some see a static tablieau, I see dynamism, before-and-after, presence-and-absence. Give me a problem, personal or societal, and I look for the story in the same way.

On the upside, I look for motivation and context and nuance. On the downside, some people think I am wasting my--or their--time with this approach, with my concern for accuracy and understanding of plot, POV, and narrative shading.

I'll be 59 soon, but that mostly means I've had a lot of practice with stories and story-telling; I think I am (still) in tune most of the time. Yet I know I may be wrong in my emphasis in certain circumstances and with certain texts, and that encourages me to be humble, which is always good.

Still, what's the story is my favorite question.

Reverberation

Years ago I heard a federal agent describe his mistake in a major crime investigation in a way that broke my heart because that mistake had obviously broken his own heart. I also felt deep sympathy with the victims of the crimes committed, and I still do, as the agent did.   Compassion and pity and anguish for all involved.

I wasn't there in that original hell, but listening to such testimonies puts a burden on the listener.

I still haven't figured out how to share that story with my own students, though I ought to--and I mean that in the best ways.

"Why Should I Envy Such Freedom"

PENELOPE'S STUBBORNNESS

A bird comes to the window. It's a mistake
to think of them
as birds, they are so often
messengers. That is why, once they
plummet to the sill, they sit
so perfectly still, to mock
patience, lifting their heads to sing
poor lady, poor lady, their three-note
warning, later flying
like a dark cloud from the sill to the olive grove.
But who would send such a weightless being
to judge my life? My thoughts are deep
and my memory long; why would I envy such freedom
when I have humanity? Those
with the smallest hearts
have the greatest freedom.

--Louise Gluck

Clough: "In the Depths"

IN THE DEPTHS

It is not sweet content, be sure,
That moves the nobler Muse to song,
Yet when could truth come whole and pure
From hearts that inly writhe with wrong?

’Tis not the calm and peaceful breast
That sees or reads the problem true;
They only know on whom it has prest
Too hard to hope to solve it too.

Our ills are worse than at their ease
These blameless happy souls suspect,
They only study the disease,
Alas, who live not to detect.

--Arthur Hugh Clough

Reading Properly: All In Play and At Play

Ideally, reading properly
is much like living properly:

moment by moment,
responsively;
attuned to everything
but also with due consideration for weight and strength and flow patterns;
aware of the past without being chained by it;
aware of the future without being dismayed by it;
and with heart and mind and soul
all in play and at play.

Motley

She's a bit of a worrier these days, poor dear.  And we'd just spent about an hour together, she sleeping on my lap and me reading, but those eyes call for more and more, don't you think?

Exploration's Joy

When I first found and read Charles De Lint's "The Little Country" back in grad school--on the heels of De Lint's "Dreams Underfoot"--it felt as if I were rediscovering the best aspects of play and treasure-hunting and discovery itself. I was having a fine time as a Renaissance / Medieval / Restoration / Neoclassic / Romantic specialist--I kept changing my fields, for I'm a hungry and ambitious generalist at heart--but I was spending my days and nights bearing down perhaps too hard as a student, as a researcher, and not as the learner, as the adult-child, as the explorer that I am most at home being. I relearned to refresh my professional studies with such spirited and generous storytelling--and to bring such spirit and generosity to my professional duties in the classroom and in the carrel.

Encouraging Apt Engagement?

When I encounter art of any sort, 
I find myself with these questions: 

What am I feeling now?
What is the piece saying?
What's the story (and backstory)?

[Oh, and how is it made?
--among many, many others.]

Now, my students usually want to start with "What does it mean?"

(A fine, though often
misleading or reductive
question to get to know
something, someone,
anything at all.
Where to begin,
then?)

Artists (and fellow audience-members), 
what responses 
and what responsive questions 
would you encourage 
me to encourage 
in my students?

Rembrandt's Mirror; Facetious Echoes

I snapped this selfie to check the lighting from this direction at this time of day, and I both laughed at how that mask and I happened to echo each other here and found myself snagged in the rush of a memory-whirlpool.  The image pulled me towards something, someone, some other image . . . .

I had recently picked up Christopher Wright's Rembrandt: Self Portraits as a consequence of another memory-snag, though I have only flipped through some of the reproductions, haven't quite read the text itself.  I had obtained Wright's book because of my recently recalling, once again, how Prof. Andrew Griffin, one of my major influences at Berkeley, used to teach a unit on Rembrandt's self-portraits in his autobiography/biography seminar, and while I did not take that specific class from Prof. Griffin, he generously shared in office-time much about the subject.  (That the Dutch master had painted himself so often, so many times, over the course of his life was a compelling conceit to me, particularly caught as I was between Joyce's young Stephen Dedalus and my sense of the older Shakespeare-As-Lear, As-Prospero.)  I was drawn to these conversations by the professor's compelling and humorous delivery, but also by my own compulsions in the areas of self-representation and Rembrandt himself.  That Pocket Library of Great Art edition of Rembrandt pictured above was a book that just happened to be stuffed into the family bookshelves in the back bedroom I shared with my brothers, a book that I happened to discover in my childhood, far before I could understand the words or the images beyond the obvious, a book that I have puzzled over and studied from my earliest years.  I have carried that book from the family home to my first apartment and to every subsequent dwelling, though I can't say that I've actually looked into or, perhaps, even at this pocket volume for years and years now until today.

Still, once I looked away from my mask laughing in the background and thought, "What image am I aping (unconsciously) here?", well, "Rembrandt -- the cover portait!" was the immediate answer.  (I was then compelled to root out that specific volume, though that took two days.)  Now, reading this and comparing (contrasting?) the two images may not bring such an answer to your mind.  The link may be more emotional than anything else.  As a maker, I bow with the utmost respect from a station far far below the great Dutchman.  And, as a child, I was probably fascinated by the age, the agedness, in that cover shot, by the old, old man with the funny hat.  As an adult, Rembrandt seems steady, steadfast and sober, weighing himself in the scales of life, not entirely happy with the balance at hand; the artist doesn't seem near as old, either, as he must have seemed in my relative infancy.  But my peers will understand that shiftiness of perspective, I think.  (There's a key scene in John Fowles' Daniel Martin in front of one of Rembrandt's portraits, perhaps this one, and that novel was quite formative as well.  Another echo, another mirror.)  Even as a boy and a young man, I'll bet Rembrandt's gaze held me, for it certainly holds my own gaze even now.  Rembrandt's mirror, each of us looking at, looking into, this portrait, don't you think?

Maybe so; maybe no.  Hats, brows, noses, lines, chins, cheeks: I see likenesses, though differences too.  I could have dressed the part, certainly, to heighten the linkages, but that's an accidental shot, more or less.  Anyway, the way I'd like to see it, the Dutchman's looking back at me, back at us; and, I'm looking at him, at you.

Facetious echoes, as I've announced above.

The mirror, I'm forgetting: the mirror and the making.  Rembrandt is gazing into that mirror, that reflective canvas, into himself, weighing and balancing; and, therefore, he's a fine model for yet another painting; therefore, a fine model for himself and for us.

Two More From Brendan Kennelly

UNION

When salmon swarmed in the brown tides
And cocks raised their lusty din
And her heart beat like a wild bird's heart,
She left her kin.

A black ass brayed in the village,
Men ploughed and mowed,
There was talk of rising water
When he struck the road.

Words stranger than were scattered
Over the shuttered dead
Were faint as child-songs in their ears
When they stretched in bed.


THE SINGING GIRL IS EASY IN HER SKILL

The singing girl is easy in her skill.
We are more human than we were before.
We cannot see just now why men should kill

Although it seems we are condemned to spill
The blood responding to the ocean's roar.
The singing girl is easy in her skill.

That light transfiguring the window-sill
Is peace that shyly knocks on every door.
We cannot see just now why men should kill.

This room, this house, this world all seem to fill
With faith in which no human heart is poor.
The singing girl is easy in her skill.

Though days are maimed by many a murderous will
And lovers shudder at what lies in store
We cannot see just now why men should kill.

It's possible we may be happy still,
No living heart can ever ask for more.
We cannot see just now why men should kill.
The singing girl is easy in her skill.

--BRENDAN KENNELLY


P.S.  I feel I am going to, in Wordsworth's words and Heaney's echo, "singing school" with Kennelly.  And glad I am, indeed.

Remembering Rudi: A Gallery

Rest in peace, dear me-orange-boy-o:
You fought the good fight against cancer for many years.

April 1, 1995 - September 16, 2008.

Pictures of pictures.

Linda Gregg's "All The Different Kinds Of Years"

ARRIVING AGAIN AND AGAIN WITHOUT NOTICING

I remember all the different kinds of years,

angry, or brokenhearted, or afraid.

I remember feeling like that 

walking up the mountain along the dirt path

to my broken house on the island.

And long years of waiting in Massachusetts.

The winter walking and hot summer walking.

I finally fell in love with all of it:

dirt, night, rock and far views.

It's strange that my heart is full

now as my desire was then.

--Linda Gregg

(My pal Meredith sent me this poem years ago for my 45th birthday.)

Bob Mould's "Very Temporary": Very Intense

VERY TEMPORARY

If you want it to be, you've got to stand here by me
But if you wanted to leave, go on and make yourself free
If you want me to plead, you see me down on my knees
You can do as you like, but do you know where it leads?

When I wake from my sleep, outside my window I see
A little robin that sings a little sonnet for me
And every morning, I feel just like that bird in that tree
I'd build a nest out of weeds, but would you share it with me?

This is very temporary, but I can't do without having you around
If it's very temporary, tell me now
Just to please you, I'd blow my brains out, this is it
Cut my heart out with a razor now

You're the one in my dreams, how can I make you believe
It's all that I want, it's all that I want

Now I'm lonely, it's the yearning
You infiltrate my thoughts and places in my home
This is very temporary, I know that's all you want, I know, I know
You're the reason I keep breathing, and I'll give up the fight if you go
Cut my heart out with a razor now

--Bob Mould, lyrics from District Line (2008).

You really should hear the song, but I also like focusing on the words, as I do here.

"Stupid Now," "Again and Again," and "Old Highs, New Lows" are three other songs from this CD well worth digging into.

Surrey's "Green Waves"

COMPLAINT OF THE ABSENCE OF HER LOVER BEING UPON THE SEA

O happy dames! that may embrace
The fruit of your delight,
Help to bewail the woful case
And eke the heavy plight
Of me, that wonted to rejoice
The fortune of my pleasant choice:
Good ladies, help to fill my mourning voice.

In ship, freight with rememberance
Of thoughts and pleasures past,
He sails that hath in governance
My life while it will last:
With scalding sighs, for lack of gale,
Furthering his hope, that is his sail,
Toward me, the sweet port of his avail.

Alas! how oft in dreams I see
Those eyes that were my food;
Which sometime so delighted me,
That yet they do me good:
Wherewith I wake with his return
Whose absent flame did make me burn:
But when I find the lack, Lord! how I mourn!

When other lovers in arms across
Rejoice their chief delight,
Drowned in tears, to mourn my loss
I stand the bitter night
In my window where I may see
Before the winds how the clouds flee:
Lo! what a mariner love hath made me!

And in green waves when the salt flood
Doth rise by rage of wind,
A thousand fancies in that mood
Assail my restless mind.
Alas! now drencheth my sweet foe,
That with the spoil of my heart did go,
And left me; but alas! why did he so?

And when the seas wax calm again
To chase fro me annoy,
My doubtful hope doth cause me plain;
So dread cuts off my joy.
Thus is my wealth mingled with woe
And of each thought a doubt doth grow;
—Now he comes! Will he come? Alas! no, no. 

--Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Shadows of the Past: Advice

"Think harder; write better."
--from one of my favorite professors to the English 47B class as a whole; he was a tad frustrated with the first essays we had handed in . . . .

"Don't indulge your natural diffidence."
--from a professor after a mock-interview back in the graduate school days; spot on, by the way.

"Be wary of that tendency to idealize, to see the best qualities and to be oblivious to all others."
--note to self, echoed by a therapist

I'm finding myself reflecting on the advice, the possible wisdom or useful statements, that I've encountered or confronted.  These three stand out, though I have no doubt forgotten even better advice that I have failed to benefit from; to those advisers who meant well for me, I wish I'd been paying closer attention.

(I think that last piece of advice was/is meant to be applied to myself by myself too.)


P.S.  A good friend who was there corrects me:
'And, I think it was: "Think harder, write better, be smarter."'

Byron: "My Soul Is Dark"

I

My soul is dark -- Oh! quickly string
          The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
          Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
          That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there luck a tear
          'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

II

But bid the strain be wild and deep,
          Nor let they notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
          Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
          And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
          And break at once -- or yield to song.

--Lord Byron

Moya Cannon: "The Hidden Rhythms of the Wood"

SYMPATHETIC VIBRATION

          for Kathleen

'You never strike a note,
you always take the note.'

Did it take her many
of her eighty quiet passionate years
to earn that knowledge,
or was it given.

Music, the dark tender secret of it,
is locked into the wood of every tree.
Yearly, it betrays its presence
in minute fistfuls of uncrumpling green.

No stroke or blade can release the music
which is salve to ease the world's wounds,
which tells and, modulating, retells
the story of our own groping roots,
of the deep sky from which they retreat
and, in retreating, reach -- 
the tree's great symphony of leaf.

No stroke or blade can bring us that release
but sometimes, where wildness has not been stilled,
hands, informed by years of patient love, 
can come to know the hidden rhythms of the wood,
can touch bow to gut
and take the note,
as the heart yields and yields
and sings.

--Moya Cannon
from Oar

Yeats and Pound: "Lake Isle" Poems

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats      (1892)


THE LAKE ISLE


O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 
With the little bright boxes
               piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
               and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia
               loose under the bright glass cases, 
And a pair of scales not too greasy, 
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 
               or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 
               where one needs one's brains all the time. 

--Ezra Pound     (1915)

Reprise: Ophelia

Wordsworth and Byron: "The After-Vacancy"

Action is transitory,--a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle--this way or that--
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.

--William Wordsworth,
headnote to "The White Doe of Rhylstone"
(originally a bit of speech
from the suppressed drama The Borderers)


The world is full of orphans: firstly, those
Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase
(But many a lonely tree the loftier grows
Than others crowded in the forest's maze);
The next are such as are not doomed to lose
There tender parents in their budding days,
But merely their parental tenderness,
Which leaves them orphans of the heart no less.

--Lord Byron,
the opening stanza to the final -- and unfinished -- canto of Don Juan


I am not sure why I am putting these two passages together, but they rise up in my mind that way, often.  Of course, both pieces concern emotional loss and absence, concern consequence: "after-vacancy" As an exercise in grad school, I'd often ponder how one poet would speak another poet's words, how one poet would cast the same thought into different words, but I must said that I always felt that Lord Byron would have ended up with phrasing quite close to Wordsworth's original "Action is transitory" and so forth;  that was an invigorating insight since I'd mostly approached these two poets as poles in an agon, as antagonists in the Romantic Battle-Royal.  Much of Cantos III and IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage reveals Wordsworthian themes, Byronized (of course) . . . .