If being a Christian requires a belief in the supernatural, I am probably not a Christian. I have no mystical experiences to share—or none, at least, that propel me toward belief of a magic man in the sky or a magic hippie wordworker in ancient Palestine who drove demons out of pigs and slummed with whores and tax-collectors. Christianity is not really a pretty story, but the churches tilt toward opulence. I respect the smoke, the glass, the genuflections. I admire the hard-drinking priest.
Most of what I know about Medieval and pre-Medieval Christianity in England, I know through the French, by way of Middle English. The Breton Lays and the Arthurian tales and such—little inventions made to be recited alongside a lute, while ladies dumped chamberpots on the cobbled streets below. We're in the city now, understand, a few centuries past Lancelot and his comrades. They say the idea, the modern idea, of love originated in places like these; a fascinating tale it is and, of course, hogwash. I don't put much faith in truth, though. So perhaps I'm a Christian after all. What I have learned from the Lays, though, is this: if you are a beautiful high-born lass, do not, under any circumstances, take a nap underneath a tree. This I know.
The garden is teeming with cucumbers this year and some very hot chiles that grow upward, pointing at the sky. They are very spicy. The tomatoes are still green. The wildflowers are so wild, they've refused to show their faces. When I survey the backyard I am most afraid that the gigantic oak tree will be wrenched from the ground by an unseasonable gust and smash the shit out of my parents' house, the only house I've ever really been emotionally involved with. Maybe then, post-destruction, I could believe in God. Maybe if the house is smashed, my mother will be forced to re-decorate. I think in a former life I could have been one of those smartly dressed gay men who have home makeover shows on the DIY channel. My own apartment, though, is spartanly decorated. A few pictures of my daughter, a photo of the Clash on the fridge. A small print of a Greek statue of Odysseus' elephantine blue stone ass, placed at eye level next to the toilet.
I believe in poetry at least as much or as little as I believe in God. I don't like poetry that most people are supposed to like. At least not in this part of the forest. I find the idea of “beauty” and the notion of beauty as achievable through language both coarse and arrogant. If I ever have to read another Li-Young Li poem, I'd advise onlookers and passersby to find something to do that involves not being in my presence. Poetry, like God, is best when it is inscrutable. Once, several summers ago, I awoke mid-dream and stumbled out the back door. I was in the country and the sky was inky black. Crickets played their legs in the not-so-distant distance. I stood there for a long time. And then a glow emerged. Faint halos appeared around the oak tree, the rosemary bush, an ancient roto-tiller atop a mound of dirt. Then I turned. It was just the porch light.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
"The Moral Logic of Assholism"
Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has a new book called Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years.
On Slate's recently re-booted, or returned from hiatus, Lexicon Valley podcast, hosts Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield examine the A-Word with help from the author. Among other things, they discuss the curiosity that is the gendered use of "asshole." We almost always use it to refer to men. I won't go into the (rather provocative and interesting) analysis here, but this quote stuck with me:
*
When S. and I were careening toward break up, we had a few near-fights. By near-fights, I mean to clarify that we never really argued like I imagined other couples argued. There was no throwing objects and screaming, no dramatic Hollywood wailing and implications of violence or simmering tensions just about to bubble over. No. We didn't argue all that much. But twice, twice, I called her an asshole. I honestly don't recall what she had said to me to provoke me, but I remember feeling as if she was being mean, not being fair, and I told her to stop being an asshole.
That was maybe our biggest "fight" because I had never called her a name before. And she didn't forget it. A few weeks or months later, right before the split--or maybe it was months after--we had another very different argument during which S told me that I didn't love our child. I wish I remembered the details.
Visibly shaken, I sat down. Trembling, I sat down. Nobody, up until that point in my 37 years on the planet, had ever said anything to me that hurt that much. I don't remember if I spoke then or if I just walked out. But it came up again and I said "you told me I didn't love my daughter. You deliberately hurt me." She countered that I had been hurtful to her and cited the time, months earlier when I had called her an asshole.
And I then understood that she either didn't understand or didn't care. That was nearly three years ago and I don't blame her for reacting rashly. I am still puzzled though by the response. I answered her. I told her that the world is full of assholes. Lots of people can act like assholes. I've been an asshole plenty of times and I'm sure I will be an asshole in the future. I can live with that. I can live with being an asshole. And sure, there are a lot of people who probably don't care for their children, even people who don't love them.
"What would you rather be, S?" I asked. "An asshole or someone who doesn't love your little girl?"
*
I'm probably an asshole for posting this. That's all right. This was all what now seems like a long time ago. I've still got a long way to go.
On Slate's recently re-booted, or returned from hiatus, Lexicon Valley podcast, hosts Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield examine the A-Word with help from the author. Among other things, they discuss the curiosity that is the gendered use of "asshole." We almost always use it to refer to men. I won't go into the (rather provocative and interesting) analysis here, but this quote stuck with me:
"We will know who women have achieved some measure of gender equity when asshole women can be called assholes right along with asshole men."
*
When S. and I were careening toward break up, we had a few near-fights. By near-fights, I mean to clarify that we never really argued like I imagined other couples argued. There was no throwing objects and screaming, no dramatic Hollywood wailing and implications of violence or simmering tensions just about to bubble over. No. We didn't argue all that much. But twice, twice, I called her an asshole. I honestly don't recall what she had said to me to provoke me, but I remember feeling as if she was being mean, not being fair, and I told her to stop being an asshole.
That was maybe our biggest "fight" because I had never called her a name before. And she didn't forget it. A few weeks or months later, right before the split--or maybe it was months after--we had another very different argument during which S told me that I didn't love our child. I wish I remembered the details.
Visibly shaken, I sat down. Trembling, I sat down. Nobody, up until that point in my 37 years on the planet, had ever said anything to me that hurt that much. I don't remember if I spoke then or if I just walked out. But it came up again and I said "you told me I didn't love my daughter. You deliberately hurt me." She countered that I had been hurtful to her and cited the time, months earlier when I had called her an asshole.
And I then understood that she either didn't understand or didn't care. That was nearly three years ago and I don't blame her for reacting rashly. I am still puzzled though by the response. I answered her. I told her that the world is full of assholes. Lots of people can act like assholes. I've been an asshole plenty of times and I'm sure I will be an asshole in the future. I can live with that. I can live with being an asshole. And sure, there are a lot of people who probably don't care for their children, even people who don't love them.
"What would you rather be, S?" I asked. "An asshole or someone who doesn't love your little girl?"
*
I'm probably an asshole for posting this. That's all right. This was all what now seems like a long time ago. I've still got a long way to go.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Anxiety and the Five-Minute Poem
In February of 2011 I was living a pretty sad, besotted existence. Big surprise there, I know.
I hadn't written, really written, in a few years. Post-baby, post-breakup, post-job loss.
I "met" a girl. On the internet. We talked nightly for about two weeks. We gushed and were icky in fake love. Then one day she stopped calling.
But during one of our first conversations I wrote a poem about Tang and the Space Shuttle Challenger. After that, I wrote a couple dozen more, nearly all occasional poems for particular people.
Last night I attempted to revive that, and wrote a poem for David Wright. He, in turn, wrote one for me. His is here:
David Wright's poem for Anthony Robinson.
He used an actual postcard and is sending it to me via post, like in the olden days.
*
Here's my poem for him:
CHAIN
For David Wright
Between the backlit woman & the backboard
in the last gym for miles,
past 5773 years of a nothing we painted
an up smudge
of dodge & burn;
past the knowing & not
knowing, the filters of apple & honey;
there is a caustic unraveling, between us, poet of Midwest
Landscape, Polaroid &
me the endpoint of a horizon of errors—
Ours is a marriage of silences. Two trees.
the ranging forest floor, the small tomorrows.
I hadn't written, really written, in a few years. Post-baby, post-breakup, post-job loss.
I "met" a girl. On the internet. We talked nightly for about two weeks. We gushed and were icky in fake love. Then one day she stopped calling.
But during one of our first conversations I wrote a poem about Tang and the Space Shuttle Challenger. After that, I wrote a couple dozen more, nearly all occasional poems for particular people.
Last night I attempted to revive that, and wrote a poem for David Wright. He, in turn, wrote one for me. His is here:
David Wright's poem for Anthony Robinson.
He used an actual postcard and is sending it to me via post, like in the olden days.
*
Here's my poem for him:
CHAIN
For David Wright
Between the backlit woman & the backboard
in the last gym for miles,
past 5773 years of a nothing we painted
an up smudge
of dodge & burn;
past the knowing & not
knowing, the filters of apple & honey;
there is a caustic unraveling, between us, poet of Midwest
Landscape, Polaroid &
me the endpoint of a horizon of errors—
Ours is a marriage of silences. Two trees.
the ranging forest floor, the small tomorrows.
Friday, August 10, 2012
The Outsider's Field Guide to Real-World Trolls: The Evangelical Atheist.
I'll admit it: I spend way too much time engaging with various forms of "social media." There's an old saying in these parts (by "old," I mean, at least a few weeks old): Twitter will make you love people you don't know and Facebook will make you hate people you do know. I'm not entirely sure if this is true for anyone, but I get the point. Twitter is too small to do much damage, especially to strangers. Give me twenty minutes and a FB wall, though, and I can cause a lot of trouble.
Don't get me wrong--I don't mean to cause problems. I don't mean to be provocative. But I guess I sometimes piss people off. At the very least it sure seems like I do sometimes. The following is an expansion, revision of something I posted on FB this morning. Nobody got really angry or cursed each other (much). Still, I left the discussion feeling slightly less than satisfied, as if nobody (or at least the somebodies whose opinions I was interested in) seemed to be interested in listening, or at least attempting to answer some pretty basic questions. Let me explain.
I run with a fairly liberal crowd; by "fairly liberal" I mean that at least 60% of my FB friends (and a roughly equal number of my Real World friends)find themselves standing considerably to the left of our President Obama. Certain things are not just accepted in this circle but expected: pro-gun control, pro-abortion rights, pro-union, pro-gay marriage, pro-higher taxes for rich people, and so forth. Coming in just behind these tenets of our political and intellectual faith is a wide acceptance, and often embrace of "atheism."
I could write a lengthy treatise on why I've put the word in quotes, the difference between an Atheist and an atheist, and other fiddly things, but I'll try to be brief and clear: in this post, I'm not talking about the dictionary definition of atheist: "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings." If that's you, you're not my problem.
Hell, I'm just such an atheist. I don't believe there is a god. Or gods. I don't. But for reasons which should become clear, I usually don't call myself an atheist, as I believe that the term carries with it certain assumptions absent from the pure denotative meaning. As I see it, atheism has, in some respects, been co-opted by a particular brand of atheist I will call here the Evangelical Atheist (EA). Not simply content to not believe in God, the EA insists on actively pushing his non-belief system of beliefs on others. There are famous EAs and then there are my FB friends who call themselves atheists, post and repost spaghetti monster and yay science! memes, and who I'm guessing don't really think much about what being an atheist means or doesn't mean. I mean, aside from that god stuff. If you are one of those non-celebrity, non-evangelical atheists, let me be clear--I don't hate you. I don't wish ill will toward your family. I don't spend my days wringing my hands and my nights sleepless with rage and indignation over you. You're a lot like me.
It may seem that I'm spending a lot of time on definition here; this is a response to folks who read an earlier version of this post and accused me of being a "self-hating atheist" or of being unduly upset with atheists, or being a pseudo-intellectual with an ax to grind. To those detractors, and to you, the reader, I say this: I do not have a problem with people who don't believe in god. I simply dislike those who would take their atheist belief or position and foist it upon others in the spirit of combativeness while appealing to their own authority and who refuse to tolerate belief that falls outside the parameters of an empirical true/false binary. I think the good-intentioned EA fails to realize that a humane ethics cannot be derived solely from empirical observation and slavish adherence to that which can or cannot be "proved" with the scientific method. To assume otherwise is to rob human beings of a lot of their humanity, their creativity, and what Keats called "Negative Capability."
Once we move beyond our FB news ticker or our family and friends, the next place we are likely to encounter EAs is in traditional media outlets. I'll call these folks famous atheists. Famous atheists come in two varieties: the "Intellectual" and the "Celebrity." The intellectual atheists are well-known for their achievements in science (Richard Dawkins) or witty rhetoric in the realms of politics and culture (Christopher Hitchens). The celebrity atheist is a public figure, generally recognized in his or her capacity as an entertainer. Many of these celebrities also tend to straddle the line between politics and entertainment. Bill Maher and Penn Jillette are two especially vocal celebrity atheists. What celebrity atheists and intellectual atheists have in common is their reliance on a certain brand of specious and reductivist rhetoric that paints the Other (in this case, "believers") with such broad strokes as to render any meaningful engagement with them practically unnecessary. The believer, in the eyes of the EA is either a dolt, a wicked person or somebody who needs to be saved from their own woeful ignorance. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
So what's my problem with EAs? Why not simply ignore them? Well, I try to. But something about crusading under the auspices of "truth" and "critical thinking" while denying the potential for a multivalent concept of truth, and while consciously subverting or ignoring actual critical thinking tends to get under my skin. The careful reader may have noticed by now that I'm not opposed to atheists so much as I have low tolerance for sloppy thinking or, alternately, sharp thinking packaged as witty takedowns or cloaked in logical fallacy so as to make the "message" clear. In having to reduce their arguments to fallacious rhetoric and/or witticisms, the EAs show little respect for or trust in those whom they would wish to convince or affirm. Most EAs can quite handily and convincingly make an argument for the non-existence of God. What is often overlooked, though, is that in discussions of "atheism" the question being asked is rarely, "Is there a God." The question driving the rhetoric is "Should an intelligent person believe in a God or practice a religion?"
If EAs simply ended the conversation where the non-existence of God is either proved, or the existence of God can not be proved, then I'd have no disagreement.
The EA, though, is not merely content to maintain that there is no god; he or she insists on proselytizing a belief system dedicated to demonstrating (emphatically!) the wrong-headedness of believers, and to attributing most or all societal ills to the existence of religion, which they consider 100% folly and, if they are to believed, dangerous.
Of course the above formulation, with minor tinkering, (read "non-believers" for "believers" and "absence" for "existence" and you have a sentence that with fair accuracy describes most Fundamentalist believers, be they Christians, Muslims, or Jews. (Though, in all fairness, Jews don't actively proselytize.) My point is that when you reach beyond "this is what I know to be true" and extend the personal outward, that is, to insist that others either know it to be true or be branded as either heretics or idiots, you have stepped outside the realm of critical thinking and rational discussion and into the coliseum. We know who the Lions and Christians are, right?
In the realm of more or less academic or "formal" rhetoric, we are taught to avoid what the late rhetorician Wayne Booth called "motivism." Simply put, motivism is the practice of launching an argument against not what an opponent says, but rather what you believe to be the opponent's "secret motivation." The "secret" part here means what they're not telling you, what you believe they are withholding. (For some reason.) Booth's admonishment to avoid motivism does not deny the existence of secret motives, only that the best arguments are made against what we know or can expect to be true or reasonable about our opponent's position. Speculation regarding motives, then, is to be avoided in formal argument. I offer this disclaimer because I'm going to engage in some motivism in what follows. You've been warned.
If the individual atheist is secure and happy in his knowledge of "the truth," happy and capable and completely assured that "science" and "truth" are both sides of the same coin, and in fact are not simply better than "faith" and "religion" but completely obliterate the need for these concepts, then so be it. I don't have a problem with that. The EA oversteps his bounds when he projects his atheism at others.
Why pick on those who do believe? Why do your Dawkinses and your Hitchenses and comedy magicians go on television to proclaim the superiority of science and the infantilism of religion as if these two things are always and unequivocally in opposition, as if one can only be a believer in empirical scientific truth or a believer in superstitious religious mumbo-jumbo and never the twain shall meet?
(These questions I ask throughout are not strictly rhetorical, by the way. I'd love to entertain a thoughtful answer. I'm not simply trying to make a point but am actively seeking a response.)
To ask these questions almost requires that we speculate about motivation. So excuse me while I don my Motivist Hat. We'll start with the EA's enemy, the Evangelical Religious Person.
Though I don't agree with the fire-and-brimstone ERP, I can more easily understand what moves him than I can understand what moves the EA. The religious fundamentalist ACTUALLY THINKS that if you don't believe as he does, you are GOING TO HELL. No matter how misguided, he actually believes this and is, in his way, trying to help. What drives the evangelical atheist then? If he is happy and secure in his knowledge, in his superiority, then why does the existence of the very belief in a god so offend him? Is he also offended by Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy? Hanukkah Harry?
The primary motivation of the evangelical atheist, as far as I can tell, is hubris. (That was the motivism part! And to my detractor who accused me of name-calling, I guess this is about as close as I get in this post to name-calling, though strictly speaking, I'm not calling anybody names, I'm simply assigning a motive without citing specific supporting evidence.) While some EAs claim to preach atheism in order to save lives, or improve lives, or make the world better place, just as many do not. There is a lot of talk of critical thinking, of questioning accepted norms, of truth, of science. What's missing from these discussions is the sense that there is a compelling reason for atheism. How does it make the world a better place? My take on this is that it's a question that's avoided because it cannot be answered without making sweeping assumptions about what it means to be a believer, how religious belief plays out in the real world. It would also require the EA to acknowledge that religious people are not all the same. Doing so would expose the straw-man argument that paints ALL believers as fanatics for what it is--a logical fallacy. In other words, being forced to acknowledge the diversity of belief and opinion among a wide swath of religious people also forces the EA to venture out of his box of binary truth-value, and this is HARD. This, it seems, is why so many public EAs sidestep the real issue altogether, and instead revert to equating intelligence and reason with atheism, and faith or religious practice with superstition, simple-mindedness, and lack of critical thinking ability. Because it's easier than admitting that things are, you know, complicated.
[WHILE EDITING THIS POST, I LOST A FEW HUNDRED WORDS THAT WENT HERE. I'M ONLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO THIS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE ABSENCE AND MY OWN ERROR. I DIDN'T REMOVE THESE PARAGRAPHS ON PURPOSE. I RECALL THE GENERAL GIST OF THEM, THOUGH, AND MAY REWORK THE IDEAS FOR A FUTURE POST.]
To end, for now, I have no problem with the non-belief in God. I am a non-believer. I am irritated by sloppy thinking, specious logic, and disingenuous arguments that seem to do little more than aggrandize their inventors. If there are thoughtful EAs out there who truly are driven by a desire to teach, to have dialogue, to do more than demonstrate hubris and smugness, then please come out of hiding! Let's talk.
*
post-post question for self-described atheists:
Why is it important to you that others discard religion and/or embrace atheism?
Don't get me wrong--I don't mean to cause problems. I don't mean to be provocative. But I guess I sometimes piss people off. At the very least it sure seems like I do sometimes. The following is an expansion, revision of something I posted on FB this morning. Nobody got really angry or cursed each other (much). Still, I left the discussion feeling slightly less than satisfied, as if nobody (or at least the somebodies whose opinions I was interested in) seemed to be interested in listening, or at least attempting to answer some pretty basic questions. Let me explain.
I run with a fairly liberal crowd; by "fairly liberal" I mean that at least 60% of my FB friends (and a roughly equal number of my Real World friends)find themselves standing considerably to the left of our President Obama. Certain things are not just accepted in this circle but expected: pro-gun control, pro-abortion rights, pro-union, pro-gay marriage, pro-higher taxes for rich people, and so forth. Coming in just behind these tenets of our political and intellectual faith is a wide acceptance, and often embrace of "atheism."
I could write a lengthy treatise on why I've put the word in quotes, the difference between an Atheist and an atheist, and other fiddly things, but I'll try to be brief and clear: in this post, I'm not talking about the dictionary definition of atheist: "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings." If that's you, you're not my problem.
Hell, I'm just such an atheist. I don't believe there is a god. Or gods. I don't. But for reasons which should become clear, I usually don't call myself an atheist, as I believe that the term carries with it certain assumptions absent from the pure denotative meaning. As I see it, atheism has, in some respects, been co-opted by a particular brand of atheist I will call here the Evangelical Atheist (EA). Not simply content to not believe in God, the EA insists on actively pushing his non-belief system of beliefs on others. There are famous EAs and then there are my FB friends who call themselves atheists, post and repost spaghetti monster and yay science! memes, and who I'm guessing don't really think much about what being an atheist means or doesn't mean. I mean, aside from that god stuff. If you are one of those non-celebrity, non-evangelical atheists, let me be clear--I don't hate you. I don't wish ill will toward your family. I don't spend my days wringing my hands and my nights sleepless with rage and indignation over you. You're a lot like me.
It may seem that I'm spending a lot of time on definition here; this is a response to folks who read an earlier version of this post and accused me of being a "self-hating atheist" or of being unduly upset with atheists, or being a pseudo-intellectual with an ax to grind. To those detractors, and to you, the reader, I say this: I do not have a problem with people who don't believe in god. I simply dislike those who would take their atheist belief or position and foist it upon others in the spirit of combativeness while appealing to their own authority and who refuse to tolerate belief that falls outside the parameters of an empirical true/false binary. I think the good-intentioned EA fails to realize that a humane ethics cannot be derived solely from empirical observation and slavish adherence to that which can or cannot be "proved" with the scientific method. To assume otherwise is to rob human beings of a lot of their humanity, their creativity, and what Keats called "Negative Capability."
Once we move beyond our FB news ticker or our family and friends, the next place we are likely to encounter EAs is in traditional media outlets. I'll call these folks famous atheists. Famous atheists come in two varieties: the "Intellectual" and the "Celebrity." The intellectual atheists are well-known for their achievements in science (Richard Dawkins) or witty rhetoric in the realms of politics and culture (Christopher Hitchens). The celebrity atheist is a public figure, generally recognized in his or her capacity as an entertainer. Many of these celebrities also tend to straddle the line between politics and entertainment. Bill Maher and Penn Jillette are two especially vocal celebrity atheists. What celebrity atheists and intellectual atheists have in common is their reliance on a certain brand of specious and reductivist rhetoric that paints the Other (in this case, "believers") with such broad strokes as to render any meaningful engagement with them practically unnecessary. The believer, in the eyes of the EA is either a dolt, a wicked person or somebody who needs to be saved from their own woeful ignorance. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
So what's my problem with EAs? Why not simply ignore them? Well, I try to. But something about crusading under the auspices of "truth" and "critical thinking" while denying the potential for a multivalent concept of truth, and while consciously subverting or ignoring actual critical thinking tends to get under my skin. The careful reader may have noticed by now that I'm not opposed to atheists so much as I have low tolerance for sloppy thinking or, alternately, sharp thinking packaged as witty takedowns or cloaked in logical fallacy so as to make the "message" clear. In having to reduce their arguments to fallacious rhetoric and/or witticisms, the EAs show little respect for or trust in those whom they would wish to convince or affirm. Most EAs can quite handily and convincingly make an argument for the non-existence of God. What is often overlooked, though, is that in discussions of "atheism" the question being asked is rarely, "Is there a God." The question driving the rhetoric is "Should an intelligent person believe in a God or practice a religion?"
If EAs simply ended the conversation where the non-existence of God is either proved, or the existence of God can not be proved, then I'd have no disagreement.
The EA, though, is not merely content to maintain that there is no god; he or she insists on proselytizing a belief system dedicated to demonstrating (emphatically!) the wrong-headedness of believers, and to attributing most or all societal ills to the existence of religion, which they consider 100% folly and, if they are to believed, dangerous.
Of course the above formulation, with minor tinkering, (read "non-believers" for "believers" and "absence" for "existence" and you have a sentence that with fair accuracy describes most Fundamentalist believers, be they Christians, Muslims, or Jews. (Though, in all fairness, Jews don't actively proselytize.) My point is that when you reach beyond "this is what I know to be true" and extend the personal outward, that is, to insist that others either know it to be true or be branded as either heretics or idiots, you have stepped outside the realm of critical thinking and rational discussion and into the coliseum. We know who the Lions and Christians are, right?
In the realm of more or less academic or "formal" rhetoric, we are taught to avoid what the late rhetorician Wayne Booth called "motivism." Simply put, motivism is the practice of launching an argument against not what an opponent says, but rather what you believe to be the opponent's "secret motivation." The "secret" part here means what they're not telling you, what you believe they are withholding. (For some reason.) Booth's admonishment to avoid motivism does not deny the existence of secret motives, only that the best arguments are made against what we know or can expect to be true or reasonable about our opponent's position. Speculation regarding motives, then, is to be avoided in formal argument. I offer this disclaimer because I'm going to engage in some motivism in what follows. You've been warned.
If the individual atheist is secure and happy in his knowledge of "the truth," happy and capable and completely assured that "science" and "truth" are both sides of the same coin, and in fact are not simply better than "faith" and "religion" but completely obliterate the need for these concepts, then so be it. I don't have a problem with that. The EA oversteps his bounds when he projects his atheism at others.
Why pick on those who do believe? Why do your Dawkinses and your Hitchenses and comedy magicians go on television to proclaim the superiority of science and the infantilism of religion as if these two things are always and unequivocally in opposition, as if one can only be a believer in empirical scientific truth or a believer in superstitious religious mumbo-jumbo and never the twain shall meet?
(These questions I ask throughout are not strictly rhetorical, by the way. I'd love to entertain a thoughtful answer. I'm not simply trying to make a point but am actively seeking a response.)
To ask these questions almost requires that we speculate about motivation. So excuse me while I don my Motivist Hat. We'll start with the EA's enemy, the Evangelical Religious Person.
Though I don't agree with the fire-and-brimstone ERP, I can more easily understand what moves him than I can understand what moves the EA. The religious fundamentalist ACTUALLY THINKS that if you don't believe as he does, you are GOING TO HELL. No matter how misguided, he actually believes this and is, in his way, trying to help. What drives the evangelical atheist then? If he is happy and secure in his knowledge, in his superiority, then why does the existence of the very belief in a god so offend him? Is he also offended by Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy? Hanukkah Harry?
The primary motivation of the evangelical atheist, as far as I can tell, is hubris. (That was the motivism part! And to my detractor who accused me of name-calling, I guess this is about as close as I get in this post to name-calling, though strictly speaking, I'm not calling anybody names, I'm simply assigning a motive without citing specific supporting evidence.) While some EAs claim to preach atheism in order to save lives, or improve lives, or make the world better place, just as many do not. There is a lot of talk of critical thinking, of questioning accepted norms, of truth, of science. What's missing from these discussions is the sense that there is a compelling reason for atheism. How does it make the world a better place? My take on this is that it's a question that's avoided because it cannot be answered without making sweeping assumptions about what it means to be a believer, how religious belief plays out in the real world. It would also require the EA to acknowledge that religious people are not all the same. Doing so would expose the straw-man argument that paints ALL believers as fanatics for what it is--a logical fallacy. In other words, being forced to acknowledge the diversity of belief and opinion among a wide swath of religious people also forces the EA to venture out of his box of binary truth-value, and this is HARD. This, it seems, is why so many public EAs sidestep the real issue altogether, and instead revert to equating intelligence and reason with atheism, and faith or religious practice with superstition, simple-mindedness, and lack of critical thinking ability. Because it's easier than admitting that things are, you know, complicated.
[WHILE EDITING THIS POST, I LOST A FEW HUNDRED WORDS THAT WENT HERE. I'M ONLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO THIS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE ABSENCE AND MY OWN ERROR. I DIDN'T REMOVE THESE PARAGRAPHS ON PURPOSE. I RECALL THE GENERAL GIST OF THEM, THOUGH, AND MAY REWORK THE IDEAS FOR A FUTURE POST.]
To end, for now, I have no problem with the non-belief in God. I am a non-believer. I am irritated by sloppy thinking, specious logic, and disingenuous arguments that seem to do little more than aggrandize their inventors. If there are thoughtful EAs out there who truly are driven by a desire to teach, to have dialogue, to do more than demonstrate hubris and smugness, then please come out of hiding! Let's talk.
*
post-post question for self-described atheists:
Why is it important to you that others discard religion and/or embrace atheism?
Monday, August 6, 2012
"Old Girlfriends and Other Horrible Memories" revisited
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
writing through
A sensation fit for a backyard,
this way of being unlike a mellotron
& making it past the barricades
the incongruencies of barely living
is what I like about you & why
I give this small thing
like a piece of cake or a 3x5
gravely outlined, embossed someplace
in a room where one can strain a bit
to hear the background vocal &
this is safety, smooth, college-ruled.
this way of being unlike a mellotron
& making it past the barricades
the incongruencies of barely living
is what I like about you & why
I give this small thing
like a piece of cake or a 3x5
gravely outlined, embossed someplace
in a room where one can strain a bit
to hear the background vocal &
this is safety, smooth, college-ruled.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Yesterday I began a post on literary bullying, jealousy, and taking responsibility for one's own failure.
I failed at writing it.
I posted a bit of my failure here then deleted it because it was clumsily written and didn't really say what I had intended to say when I set out to write it.
*
I called out names. People I didn't or don't like. Then I realize that what I think is honesty may be perceived as whining or arrogance, or whatever. I'm not really afraid of judgment, but after awhile, dealing with negativity can be a gigantic pain, and an even more gigantic and embarrassing pain when you realize that it was your own negativity that started it all.
Confused? I am. Just a little.
*
Pop music is better at this than I am.
"Pretty soon now, I will be bitter." (David Byrne)
"We hate it when our friends become successful." (Steven Morrissey)
"Today I was an evil one." (Will Oldham)
Yes, they're all middle-ageish white men. How surprising. And, of course, they're all successful.
*
I failed at writing it.
I posted a bit of my failure here then deleted it because it was clumsily written and didn't really say what I had intended to say when I set out to write it.
*
I called out names. People I didn't or don't like. Then I realize that what I think is honesty may be perceived as whining or arrogance, or whatever. I'm not really afraid of judgment, but after awhile, dealing with negativity can be a gigantic pain, and an even more gigantic and embarrassing pain when you realize that it was your own negativity that started it all.
Confused? I am. Just a little.
*
Pop music is better at this than I am.
"Pretty soon now, I will be bitter." (David Byrne)
"We hate it when our friends become successful." (Steven Morrissey)
"Today I was an evil one." (Will Oldham)
Yes, they're all middle-ageish white men. How surprising. And, of course, they're all successful.
*
Sunday, July 22, 2012
An Old Blurb
Joseph Massey just reminded me of this blurb he kindly wrote for a chapbook I wrote a long time ago.
***
Ah, those were the days, huh?
Anthony Robinson's Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision is a lyric graph of the poet's heart moving through the turbulence of the everyday, under the pall & pang of love approaching the rocks, within the blur & blitz of alcohol (not on the rocks -- there's a lot of beer in these poems), from two very different climates (Austin, Texas, & Eugene, Oregon). But fuck all that. Anthony Robinson is a pimp who won't diddle your poesy hole with bad metaphors about guitars. This fucker is sincere.
--Joseph Massey, author of Ron's Panties
***
Ah, those were the days, huh?
Saturday, July 21, 2012
St. Louis, 2003 -- in which poems are born.
I spent the first weekend of December 2003 in St. Louis, MO. It was a dreary couple of days brightened by a reading I gave with Arielle Greenberg Bywater, which was hosted and part of a series curated by Aaron Belz. As I recall, Jonathan Mayhew was there as well.
The reading was at the City Museum and went rather well. I was rather bummed out, for personal reasons, and spent the rest of the weekend alone, wandering the streets through the wet snow, through the gutted downtown full of empty shopping centers and boarded-up buildings, looking for a Pepsi. That first night, though, after the reading, Aaron took me for a short drive and we stopped for a bit right across from the Gateway Arch, which looked yellow and pink in the weird light and snow. Aaron played for me the as-yet-unreleased Mountain Goats album, "We Shall All Be Healed." The music was appropriate to the mood: twitchy, meth-driven, but slow...
After, I retired to my hotel room, where I spent the next two nights holed up with a bottle of bourbon, room service, and hotel cable television. James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhal kept me company. And pizza.
Two poems came from that trip. The first, "MICHAEL JACKSON CAUGHT WITH WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!" was written that same night that Aaron dropped me off. The local news was on, the Blazers beat the Lakers, Sadaam Hussein was discovered in a spider-hole, and the title of the poem is something I swore I heard during the newscast. The other poem came about a month later. "Hash Anthem" was my poem for Aaron, which I wrote while half-listening to a lecture on Faulkner. That poem remains one of my favorites to this day. The former, as far as I can remember, has never been published nor seen by anybody. Maybe I'll send it out one of these days.
The reading was at the City Museum and went rather well. I was rather bummed out, for personal reasons, and spent the rest of the weekend alone, wandering the streets through the wet snow, through the gutted downtown full of empty shopping centers and boarded-up buildings, looking for a Pepsi. That first night, though, after the reading, Aaron took me for a short drive and we stopped for a bit right across from the Gateway Arch, which looked yellow and pink in the weird light and snow. Aaron played for me the as-yet-unreleased Mountain Goats album, "We Shall All Be Healed." The music was appropriate to the mood: twitchy, meth-driven, but slow...
After, I retired to my hotel room, where I spent the next two nights holed up with a bottle of bourbon, room service, and hotel cable television. James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhal kept me company. And pizza.
Two poems came from that trip. The first, "MICHAEL JACKSON CAUGHT WITH WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!" was written that same night that Aaron dropped me off. The local news was on, the Blazers beat the Lakers, Sadaam Hussein was discovered in a spider-hole, and the title of the poem is something I swore I heard during the newscast. The other poem came about a month later. "Hash Anthem" was my poem for Aaron, which I wrote while half-listening to a lecture on Faulkner. That poem remains one of my favorites to this day. The former, as far as I can remember, has never been published nor seen by anybody. Maybe I'll send it out one of these days.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
to get us started
I ganked this from Debra Gwartney, who got it from somewhere else. Now I'm putting it here. Thanks Debra and other guy.
Monday, June 11, 2012
A few more thoughts in response to AD Jameson's latest inquiry into sincerity.
I am again having trouble posting comments on HTML Giant, so I'm posting them here where nobody will read them.
*
Some Bits
1) I'll buy the Steve Roggenbuck connection, but I don't think Massey would buy it. You'll have to ask him.
2) If you examine the texts produced by Massey/Mister/Robinson as well as the Second Wave NS practitioners (Hart, Pritts, Lasky, et al), one thing becomes apparent. Massey's work seems the square peg here. That is, the tradition he is working in is decidedly different from where Andy and I situated ourselves. And even though I've made an effort to distance myself from the 2nd Wave, I'll admit that Andy and my work has more in common with these than Massey's even. Curiously, when talk of NS comes up, Massey is usually quoted--both his manifesto and his poetry. Joe is a good friend, and I say this not to cast aspersions but to point out the rather strange impression this gives of the poetry and the general thinking of the NS '05 as a whole.
3) Joe and I (and I'm guessing Andy) were weaned on Donald Allen's "New American Poetry" of 1960, and Paul Hoover's 1990 Norton Anthology of Post-Modern American Poetry. Far from rejecting Language or other "experimental" modes, I'd say we absorbed them, used them, learned from them. The objections we had toward the poetry zeitgeist of the mid-2000s was not simply the emphasis on artifice or experiment or text-as-text. It was against something harder to pin down--what we felt was a lack of feeling, of soul, behind the text.
4) I find the aleatory stylings of John Cage much more soulful than (insert name of mid-career 30-40something poet here). It's not the tools or the materials. It's the animating force behind them.
5) It's hard to quantify, to pin down "feeling" in a text. This poses a problem for the academic, who, trapped in a post-new criticism hangover that will not go away, focuses on the text itself to the exclusion of the context in which it exists or existed.
*
Some Bits
1) I'll buy the Steve Roggenbuck connection, but I don't think Massey would buy it. You'll have to ask him.
2) If you examine the texts produced by Massey/Mister/Robinson as well as the Second Wave NS practitioners (Hart, Pritts, Lasky, et al), one thing becomes apparent. Massey's work seems the square peg here. That is, the tradition he is working in is decidedly different from where Andy and I situated ourselves. And even though I've made an effort to distance myself from the 2nd Wave, I'll admit that Andy and my work has more in common with these than Massey's even. Curiously, when talk of NS comes up, Massey is usually quoted--both his manifesto and his poetry. Joe is a good friend, and I say this not to cast aspersions but to point out the rather strange impression this gives of the poetry and the general thinking of the NS '05 as a whole.
3) Joe and I (and I'm guessing Andy) were weaned on Donald Allen's "New American Poetry" of 1960, and Paul Hoover's 1990 Norton Anthology of Post-Modern American Poetry. Far from rejecting Language or other "experimental" modes, I'd say we absorbed them, used them, learned from them. The objections we had toward the poetry zeitgeist of the mid-2000s was not simply the emphasis on artifice or experiment or text-as-text. It was against something harder to pin down--what we felt was a lack of feeling, of soul, behind the text.
4) I find the aleatory stylings of John Cage much more soulful than (insert name of mid-career 30-40something poet here). It's not the tools or the materials. It's the animating force behind them.
5) It's hard to quantify, to pin down "feeling" in a text. This poses a problem for the academic, who, trapped in a post-new criticism hangover that will not go away, focuses on the text itself to the exclusion of the context in which it exists or existed.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Office
I'm sitting in the Junk Room, so called because it's full of junk. While Skyping with my daughter today, I carried the laptop upstairs and announced we were entering the junk room. This seemed to interest her enough to ask me to rotate 360 degrees and adjust the angle of the screen so she could see the piles of junk. Three feet to the left of me are several cardboard boxes filled with old LPs. Behind the boxes is a broken La-Z-Boy recliner piled high with dusty blankets, pillows, half-crocheted things. Against the wall in front of me is a makeshift bookhelf--cinderblock and unidentifiable wood-slab construction--housing a few dozen mass-market paperbacks, mostly genre stuff: sci-fi and fantasy that I must have read sometime two and a half decades ago when this was my bedroom. Did I mention I'm living in my folks' house? I'm rapidly approaching 40 and have come full-circle. I kept my room tidier than this, though.
On the top shelf, above the books, there's a haphazard collection of pint glasses, wicker baskets, and wreaths woven from twigs and such. I also spy a small can of butane and a cardboard box containing collector drinking glasses signed by Clyde Drexler and other early 90s era Trailblazers. I don't know or remember where these came from. I don't remember being an NBA fan back then. I don't remember a lot of things.
I've dedicated this room as a temporary office chiefly because it has limited distractions. Basically this means no television. No cookies. No window to peer out. Here is where I will get "work" done, whatever that may be. Tonight it's writing on a topic I know nothing about for a few bucks that I'll toss in the fund to get back east.
In two weeks it will be a year since I last saw my daughter. Things are different now. She reads books and espouses opinions and happily discourses on her dog's diet, the habits of crocodiles and other reptiles, and the general unsuitability of raw tomatoes for human consumption. She likes to show me her henna tattoo. I'm still "daddy" to her but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I've come to notice that recently, in the past few weeks, her mother has been referring to me not as "daddy" but as "Tony." Tonight E. asked me if I would read her another story and then she turned and said, "Mama, can Daddy read me another story?" Her mother responded, "That's between you and Tony."
"Tony? Can you read me another story?"
If I'm going to be slowly erased, this room full of junk, abandoned memories, manufactured memories, and just plain weird anti-nostalgia, is as good a place as any, I suppose.
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?"
On the top shelf, above the books, there's a haphazard collection of pint glasses, wicker baskets, and wreaths woven from twigs and such. I also spy a small can of butane and a cardboard box containing collector drinking glasses signed by Clyde Drexler and other early 90s era Trailblazers. I don't know or remember where these came from. I don't remember being an NBA fan back then. I don't remember a lot of things.
I've dedicated this room as a temporary office chiefly because it has limited distractions. Basically this means no television. No cookies. No window to peer out. Here is where I will get "work" done, whatever that may be. Tonight it's writing on a topic I know nothing about for a few bucks that I'll toss in the fund to get back east.
In two weeks it will be a year since I last saw my daughter. Things are different now. She reads books and espouses opinions and happily discourses on her dog's diet, the habits of crocodiles and other reptiles, and the general unsuitability of raw tomatoes for human consumption. She likes to show me her henna tattoo. I'm still "daddy" to her but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I've come to notice that recently, in the past few weeks, her mother has been referring to me not as "daddy" but as "Tony." Tonight E. asked me if I would read her another story and then she turned and said, "Mama, can Daddy read me another story?" Her mother responded, "That's between you and Tony."
"Tony? Can you read me another story?"
If I'm going to be slowly erased, this room full of junk, abandoned memories, manufactured memories, and just plain weird anti-nostalgia, is as good a place as any, I suppose.
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?"
Monday, June 4, 2012
More of that Old Sincerity: The Origin Myth
From the archives of Geneva Convention, August 2005.
* * *
Some More Notes on the NS
We're here, some of us are queer, and we aren't going anywhere.
The New Sincerity had its genesis in December of 2004. It began when I met Andrew Mister in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and proceeded to drink him under the table. He lost concentration during our last couple of rounds as he was trying to chat up a girl at the bar. I maintained focus on drinking my beer and whiskey. A photo-documentary of this event lives in the archives. After drinking, I had Thai food at a nearby all-night eatery. I left Andrew at the bar.
We talked a lot of shit about poetry we didn't like between drinks. We also sang David Bowie's "Life on Mars," though we couldn't remember all the lyrics. We watched a drag show. We almost broke a table. We also talked about what we wanted in contemporary poetry. Frank O'Hara said that only a few poets were more interesting than the movies. We believe that only a few poets are more interesting than David Bowie. At least right now. We're hoping to pull a few more New Sincerists out of the closet, those who are afraid of losing post-avant cred, or appearing too sentimental. Sentimental means "relating to sentiment." Sentiment means "feeling." We feel, dig?
Before our drinking battle, we exchanged manuscripts. The next morning, hung over and sipping Emergen-C, we read the poems and discovered that each of us was the other's favorite new poet. We seemed to see eye to eye on matters poetical. We wrote the sorts of poems that we wanted to read. We continued our correspondence and friendship. We began to notice other poets who seemed to want the same things from contemporary poetry--Joseph Massey, Charlie Jensen, Reb Livingston, Gina Myers, Laurel Snyder. Jeff Bahr, though not a New Sincerist, photoshopped a NS teeshirt on himself. Josh Hanson criticized us. Lots of other people just don't care. So it goes.
The New Sincerity went public in the late spring and early summer of 2005. I began writing little blips about it on my blog. In early July of 2005, Joe Massey wrote a controversial manifesto. Since then, not a day in the blogosphere goes by without a mention of the NS. I like this. It means people are paying attention. Not everyone agrees with us and that is okay. There are a number of skeptics. That too is okay.
We are not going anywhere. But we promise not to take over your town.
* * *
Some More Notes on the NS
We're here, some of us are queer, and we aren't going anywhere.
The New Sincerity had its genesis in December of 2004. It began when I met Andrew Mister in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and proceeded to drink him under the table. He lost concentration during our last couple of rounds as he was trying to chat up a girl at the bar. I maintained focus on drinking my beer and whiskey. A photo-documentary of this event lives in the archives. After drinking, I had Thai food at a nearby all-night eatery. I left Andrew at the bar.
We talked a lot of shit about poetry we didn't like between drinks. We also sang David Bowie's "Life on Mars," though we couldn't remember all the lyrics. We watched a drag show. We almost broke a table. We also talked about what we wanted in contemporary poetry. Frank O'Hara said that only a few poets were more interesting than the movies. We believe that only a few poets are more interesting than David Bowie. At least right now. We're hoping to pull a few more New Sincerists out of the closet, those who are afraid of losing post-avant cred, or appearing too sentimental. Sentimental means "relating to sentiment." Sentiment means "feeling." We feel, dig?
Before our drinking battle, we exchanged manuscripts. The next morning, hung over and sipping Emergen-C, we read the poems and discovered that each of us was the other's favorite new poet. We seemed to see eye to eye on matters poetical. We wrote the sorts of poems that we wanted to read. We continued our correspondence and friendship. We began to notice other poets who seemed to want the same things from contemporary poetry--Joseph Massey, Charlie Jensen, Reb Livingston, Gina Myers, Laurel Snyder. Jeff Bahr, though not a New Sincerist, photoshopped a NS teeshirt on himself. Josh Hanson criticized us. Lots of other people just don't care. So it goes.
The New Sincerity went public in the late spring and early summer of 2005. I began writing little blips about it on my blog. In early July of 2005, Joe Massey wrote a controversial manifesto. Since then, not a day in the blogosphere goes by without a mention of the NS. I like this. It means people are paying attention. Not everyone agrees with us and that is okay. There are a number of skeptics. That too is okay.
We are not going anywhere. But we promise not to take over your town.
Response to Adam Jameson and commenters.
Over at HTML Giant, A D Jameson continues his discussion of the old New Sincerity. Or, more properly, his discussion of 2nd Wave "New Sincerity" as exemplified by Tao Lin, Matt Hart, etc.
I tried to post a comment to the thread, but my internet is hamster wheel-powered so sometimes things don't work. So I'll try posting it here. To read the original piece, go to HTML Giant.
Andy, Joe, and I didn't invent the term. Its origins are in music, architecture, and some other shit I don't remember. And it wasn't leading anything--I think when Andy first suggested the term (to me, over beers, and not in any prescriptive way) he was talking about Joshua Beckman's book, the one with the poem "Block Island."
I tried to post a comment to the thread, but my internet is hamster wheel-powered so sometimes things don't work. So I'll try posting it here. To read the original piece, go to HTML Giant.
Andy, Joe, and I didn't invent the term. Its origins are in music, architecture, and some other shit I don't remember. And it wasn't leading anything--I think when Andy first suggested the term (to me, over beers, and not in any prescriptive way) he was talking about Joshua Beckman's book, the one with the poem "Block Island."
Here's what happened. In the summer of 2005, I was complaining on my blog about the poetic Latino Mafia that wanted me to write more poems about tortillas. I was also involved in a cross-blog conversation with Jonathan Mayhew concerning "period styles" of contemporary poetry. In a dashed-off post one afternoon I briefly talked about a few period styles, and joked that I should start or become part of The Tortilla School. Then, as an afterthought I mentioned that Andy used the term "New Sincerity" to describe the sort of poetry we thought we were writing or that we admired in others.
(He and I had just begun work on a series of poems that would be published as a chapbook by Boku Books in late 2005, called finally, "Here's To You" but at that point had the working title "Don't Get Me Started." It no longer exists, as far as I know--I guess poems there could be seen as early examples of this particular strain of "New Sincerity." We were clearly guided by Ted Berrigan, as the poems state. And I have the pills and Pepsi to prove it.)
Part of what I was interested in at the time was using the "innovations" of the past generation(s) to write poetry that was more than irony or distrust of language. There was of course, more to it, but that was where I had staked my little plot of ground.
A few posts followed my initial posts (mostly as responses to comment box comments). Then in early July, Joe emailed me his Manifesto (which I believe he also posted on his Livejournal at the time). We had a good laugh and thought that was it.
I continued to blog about the newly minted "New Sincerity" throughout the summer, and Joe did the same from time to time in his live journal. Andy didn't have a blog at the time. But he was still writing poems then--we all were.
Here's an important point. The main reason the NS became anything at all is that in 2005, poets read blogs. Blogging was the main source of online poetry community. Facebook, I think, really killed all that. Without the blogging culture of the time, this wouldn't be an issue.
Finally, as I ramble, I'd like to refer back to the last sentence of the paragraph before the paragraph before this one. The manifestos, the blog posts, all of that were, as you've noted, pretty ephemeral. I'd like to think that if folks want to talk about the "NS" they'd look to the poems at the center of all the talk. So far, that's not been done much--or, in my opinion, at least not enough.
Tony Robinson
**
Update @ 7:00 pm PDT: Aaron Belz tweets:
@bluecanaryruth It does too still exist. Nice piece, Tony. twitter.com/aaronbelz/stat…
— aaron belz (@aaronbelz) June 5, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
post-Sincerity poetics found here
I have resisted making this a poetry blog mainly because nobody reads poetry blogs anymore. They are like PDAs and pagers and 64 oz. bottles of malt liquor.
A dodo bird with a pager and half-gallon of Olde English? Priceless.
*
But, I had this to say about this thing I saw:
In this paper, Jennifer Ashton, Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, makes the common error of characterizing the New Sincerity (the short-lived "movement"--you decide if it's "fake" or not) as a reaction against Language Poetry. Of course it's nothing of the sort and a little research would have corrected this. It also would have complicated it, I suppose.
Thanks to Adam D. Adam D Jameson for directing me to this.
You know, they say the proof is in the pudding or something, and one thing I've noticed is that in the many papers that have been written about or that include the New Sincerity, the actual poetry of the originators is rarely invoked. Instead, the poet-critic invariably focuses on the work of what I'll term here (for the first time, I believe) Second Wave Sincerists. While the critic is free to do as he or she pleases, it seems that any serious study would want to examine all the documents available to them rather than cherry pick a few blog posts as an intro to talk about something else...
A dodo bird with a pager and half-gallon of Olde English? Priceless.
*
But, I had this to say about this thing I saw:
In this paper, Jennifer Ashton, Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, makes the common error of characterizing the New Sincerity (the short-lived "movement"--you decide if it's "fake" or not) as a reaction against Language Poetry. Of course it's nothing of the sort and a little research would have corrected this. It also would have complicated it, I suppose.
Thanks to Adam D. Adam D Jameson for directing me to this.
You know, they say the proof is in the pudding or something, and one thing I've noticed is that in the many papers that have been written about or that include the New Sincerity, the actual poetry of the originators is rarely invoked. Instead, the poet-critic invariably focuses on the work of what I'll term here (for the first time, I believe) Second Wave Sincerists. While the critic is free to do as he or she pleases, it seems that any serious study would want to examine all the documents available to them rather than cherry pick a few blog posts as an intro to talk about something else...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Old New Sincerity
Over at HTML Giant, A D Jameson talks a bit about "The New Sincerity."
I like that he more or less correctly describes (if in very abbreviated form) the genesis of this short-lived poetry movement, and gives credit where credit is due.
*
I have been away for awhile but will hereafter endeavor to post more frequently even though I'm well aware that nobody is reading this blog.
The Buggles noted that video killed the radio star. Well, as we all know, "social media" like Facebook and Twitter has killed the blogger. Poetry blogger and oncologist C. Dale Young recently closed shop at his long-running blog and in doing so, lamented the disappearance of what was once a thriving blogging community, chiefly among poets. I was a part of that for awhile. Now everyone just uses Facebook or tweets or texts their friends.
And alas, the center did not hold.
*
I'll stick around for awhile whether you like me or not.
I like that he more or less correctly describes (if in very abbreviated form) the genesis of this short-lived poetry movement, and gives credit where credit is due.
*
I have been away for awhile but will hereafter endeavor to post more frequently even though I'm well aware that nobody is reading this blog.
The Buggles noted that video killed the radio star. Well, as we all know, "social media" like Facebook and Twitter has killed the blogger. Poetry blogger and oncologist C. Dale Young recently closed shop at his long-running blog and in doing so, lamented the disappearance of what was once a thriving blogging community, chiefly among poets. I was a part of that for awhile. Now everyone just uses Facebook or tweets or texts their friends.
And alas, the center did not hold.
*
I'll stick around for awhile whether you like me or not.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Statement
An impulse toward poetry is an impulse toward friendship; it's a drive toward and away from complication and complexity.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Blogroll
Welcome Suzi Steffen to the blogroll, blogging on art, culture, food, and so forth in Eugene.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Socio-economics of Poesy, Pt. 1
About a dozen years ago, I ran into a now-famous poet in the poetry aisle of our local used bookstore. Or rather, he ran into me. I was paging through a copy of James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover when the fellow turned to me and began making small talk. After a couple of moments he glanced down at the book in my hand and said, "Huh. James Merrill. I won't read him. He was a millionaire. What does a millionaire know about life?"
*
Are there any poets you won't read because external details of the poet's life turn you off? Besides Ezra Pound.
*
Are there any poets you won't read because external details of the poet's life turn you off? Besides Ezra Pound.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Still Here
I've been away for ten days for no reason in particular--all 3 of you who read this blog may have noticed. Or maybe not.
*
Still working my through George R. R. Martin's Clash of Kings. I'm almost finished and look forward to discussing it with Bennet.
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It's been a pretty bleak week and a half here--a lot of slushy snow and rain. We're in the midst of that long winter stretch that always brings on the doldrums. That and my daughter's third birthday this past weekend have made for not a lot on my plate aside from brooding and too much sleeping.
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All that said, I hope to get back to my Dream Songs discussion with Bennet over the next few days. One of us is supposed to pick a poem to discuss next, though I'm not sure we are any further along in the process of setting down any actual "rules" than we were a week or ten days ago. If I have time this evening--or rather, inclination, I may attempt a look at Dream Song #28, one of the relatively few with an "actual" title: "Snow Line." Watch this space for it.
In the meantime, you can read my responses to Bennet's initial two posts in his comment boxes.
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Still working my through George R. R. Martin's Clash of Kings. I'm almost finished and look forward to discussing it with Bennet.
*
It's been a pretty bleak week and a half here--a lot of slushy snow and rain. We're in the midst of that long winter stretch that always brings on the doldrums. That and my daughter's third birthday this past weekend have made for not a lot on my plate aside from brooding and too much sleeping.
*
All that said, I hope to get back to my Dream Songs discussion with Bennet over the next few days. One of us is supposed to pick a poem to discuss next, though I'm not sure we are any further along in the process of setting down any actual "rules" than we were a week or ten days ago. If I have time this evening--or rather, inclination, I may attempt a look at Dream Song #28, one of the relatively few with an "actual" title: "Snow Line." Watch this space for it.
In the meantime, you can read my responses to Bennet's initial two posts in his comment boxes.
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