The Telling

The telling.

That's what I like best about anything: stories, essays, novels, plays, epics.  That's what I love.

How the makers create meaning sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, word by word, and sometimes morpheme by morpheme.  There's a wonderfully erotic ee cummings poem about bodies that has the phrase "I like its hows" and I'd apply that to every story, every essay, ever offered up to its readers.

The hows.  The telling.

I only wish I'd figured out in grad school how to craft that focus into an appropriate project.

Some might find that a shallow approach to literature, but there's a world of interest in that surface interface between teller and told, between player and audience, between maker and you.  

If you want to dive deep, you have to start at the surface and return to the surface.  There's more there there than we are often taught to understand and appreciate.  (And, frankly, most misreadings arise from lack of attention to detail, to the foundation, to the surface interface I'm calling attention to, to the there.)

Luckily, teaching intro to literature and intro to non-fiction at a community college allows me to delve so much into the telling on a daily basis.

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.

Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man"

THE TOLLUND MAN

I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country nearby
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

-- Seamus Heaney,

from his volume of poetry Wintering Out,
Faber & Faber Ltd, London, 1972.

Bog Man: stoneware; clear glaze.

2009 note: "Just fooling in art class; found myself with this fellow in my hands. (Of course, after all those years in the peat bog, his nose would not be quite so strong.)"

Rest in peace, Mr. Heaney, and thank you for your art, your voice, your compassion.

William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makers"

LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS

I that in heill was and gladness
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

The state of man does change and vary,
Now sound. now sick, now blyth, now sary,
Now dansand mirry, now like to die: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

No state in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker
So wannis this world's vanitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Unto the Death gods all Estatis,
Princis, Prelattis, and Potestatis,
Baith rich and poor of all degree: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He takis the knichtis in to the field
Enarmit under helm and scheild;
Victor he is at all mellie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

That strong unmerciful tyrand
Takis, on the motheris breast sowkand,
The babe full of benignitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He takis the campion in the stour,
The captain closit in the tour,
The lady in bour full of bewtie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He spairis no lord for his piscence
Na clerk for his intelligence;
His awful straik may no man flee. --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Art-magicianis and astrologic,
Rethoris, logicianis, and theologis,
Them helpis no conclusionis slee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

In medecine the most practicianis,
Leechis, surrigianis and physicianis,
Themself from Death may nocht supplee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

I see that makaris amang the lave
Playis is here their padyanis, syne gods to grave;
Sparit is nocht their facultie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has done petuously devour
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,
The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

The good Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
Ettrick, Heriot, and Wintoun,
He has tane out of this cuntrie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

That scorpion fell has done infeck
Maister John Clerk, and James Afflek,
Fra ballat-making and tragedie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Holland and Barbour he has berevit ;
Alas! that he not with us levit
Sir Mungo Lockart of the Lee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Clerk of Tranent eke he has tane,
That made the aventeris of Gawaine;
Sir Gilbert Hay endit has he: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill
Slain with his schour of mortal hail,
Quhilk Patrick Johnstoun might nocht flee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has reft Mersar his endite
That did in luve so lively write,
So short, so quick, of sentence hie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has tane Rowll of Aberdene,
And gentill Rowll of Cortorphine;
Two better fallowis did no man see: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

In Dunfermline he has tane Broun
With Maister Robert Henrysoun;
Sir John the Ross enbrasit has he: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

And he has now sane, last of a,
Good gentil Stobo and Quintin Shaw.
Of quhom all wichtis hes pitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Good Maister Walter Kennedy
In point of Dedth lies verily;
Great ruth it were that so suld be: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Sen he has all my brothers sane,
He will nocht let me live alane;
Of force I mon his next prey be: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Since for the Death remeid is none,
Best is that we for Death dispone
After our death that live may we: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

 --William Dunbar (1460?-1520?)


From The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900,
edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch.
Oxford : Clarendon Press ; London.

Howard Nemerov's "The Makers"

THE MAKERS

Who can remember back to the first poets, 
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus? 
No one has remembered that far back 
Or now considers, among the artifacts, 
And bones and cantilevered inference 
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets, 
So lofty and disdainful of renown 
They left us not a name to know them by. 

They were the ones that in whatever tongue 
Worded the world, that were the first to say 
Star, water, stone, that said the visible 
And made it bring invisibles to view 
In wind and time and change, and in the mind 
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world 
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers 
Of the city into the astonished sky. 

They were the first great listeners, attuned 
To interval, relationship, and scale, 
The first to say above, beneath, beyond, 
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine, 
Who having uttered vanished from the world 
Leaving no memory but the marvelous 
Magical elements, the breathing shapes 
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.

--Howard Nemerov

Mermaid: Pisces In Pieces

Rough draft.

Broken mermaid.

Clumsy maker; broken piece.

Should I fear a curse?

I'd meant well, meant better, meant best . . . but couldn't quite pull that off.

I felt regret; I feel regret.

Nick Drake plays in my head.

If you don't know, well, check out Nick Drake's "Five Leaves Left" and Sinead Lohan's "No Mermaid." Both albums, both CDs, should astound you.

Old rhyme:

"The head understands

What the heart won't.

Which is wiser?"

(Actually, I made that up in 2008, but it feels old, feels like an echo, feels dependent on my own antecedents, my own past reading.)

Older rhyme (and this is truly old, no rhetorical trick):

"Mind must be the firmer, heart the more fierce,

courage the greater, as our strength diminishes."

--"The Battle of Maldon" . . .

The Anglo-Saxon heroic poem, Crossley-Holland translating.

And, yes, I connect such a passage, such a poem, to efforts in clay, to efforts in the studio, to efforts in the classroom, to efforts in life, life itself. And, like the doomed warriors of the poem, I have my faith in perseverance.

So far, I've never quite succeeded at conveying or in capturing the beauty before me, in holding such beauty firmly enough to present it to you, or to anyone, at least not in clay, and that saddens me.

And so, in a melancholy mood, I replay Drake's "Five Leaves Left," and I try harder, the next time clay is at hand.