I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on New Years Day with my daughter, her boyfriend, and their friends. Yes, I enjoyed it. Director J. J. Abrams and co-writers Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan have crafted a wonderful balance between the wit and action of the first movie released in 1977 and fresh material that old fans and new can appreciate. But this post is not a review of this latest entry of the franchise.
This post revives Steven Hart's 2002 essay at Salon.com, "Galactic Gasbag" that slams any promotion of the original Star Wars movie as inspired by Joseph Campbell's works on comparative mythology. As I watched the new movie, I thought often of Steven, an investigative reporter, brilliant man, critic, fiction writer, and friend. He died last year on January 20, a shock and great loss to me, his family, and all who knew him.
According to Steven, Lucas never said anything about basing Star Wars on classics such as The Odyssey or consciously tapping into mythology and archetypes Campbell studied until the franchise had become "a pop culture milestone." The belief that Lucas had created Star Wars with ancient mythologies and literary classics in mind grew as increasingly more critics shoveled similar analyses, and Lucas pushed it further when time came to promote the prequels, Steven argues.
After turning Lucas over a gentle flame about his box office flops, which Steven perhaps implies do not reflect the mind of an scholarly thinker, Steven turns up the fire on Star Wars itself as being not original but a bricolage of old Science Fiction novel images and figures. "More damningly, the real roots of 'Star Wars' are obvious to anyone not blinded by snobbery or the need for self-inflation," he writes:
They lie not in “The Odyssey” or the “Upanishads,” but 20th century science-fiction magazines such as Astounding, Amazing Stories and Galaxy. The “true theology” of “Star Wars” was written not by Virgil or Homer, but Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, E.E. “Doc” Smith and a host of other S.F. writers.
The original “Star Wars” and its sequels are echo chambers of tropes and images from literary science fiction, used in ways that strike a careful balance between affectionate familiarity and outright plagiarism. The first glimpse of Luke Skywalker’s desert homeworld, Tatooine, evokes the setting of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel “Dune”; Lucas even throws in a shot of a skeletal desert serpent reminiscent of Herbert’s gigantic sandworms. The amazing visuals suggest an eye nourished by the magazine art of Frank R. Paul, John Schoenherr, Kelly Freas and Chesley Bonestell.
Even when he was alive, I didn't argue with Steven, so I won't start now. You may read the rest of Steven Hart's article, "Galactic Gasbag" at Salon.
In conjunction with the National Beat Poetry Festival, a New Orleans poetry event, Born to the Beat is in the works. The poetry and prose reading is set for Saturday, September 12, outside Morning Call Coffee Stand at City Park, New Orleans, 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (inside if it rains).
Some of the poets who will be reading are former Louisiana poet laureate Julie Kane, Dillard University professor and poet Mona Lisa Saloy, Kelly Harris-DeBerry, Carolyn Hembree, A Scribe Called Quess?, and John Gery. Local Indie band The Shiz will provide music, and Nordette Adams will be joined by Megan Burns and Alex Jennings as emcees.
It's free! So, if you'd like to attend why don't you let us know on Twitter (@BeatPoetry504) or Facebook.
I don't know what I was doing in November 2014 that caused me to miss Stephen Colbert's laugh-out-loud interview with great American novelist Toni Morrison. She is just as funny as he is when discussing her work. But they also discussed race as a social construct and her work's influence on President Obama before he was POTUS.
What intrigued me most is her admission that she had only recently read Beloved from beginning to end. Of course, she read it when she was working on it, but when she read it last year, she read it not as its author but as a relaxed reader. She saw nothing she'd change, she said, but she would make a change to the Bluest Eye if she wrote it again.
-- a giant swath of humanity and history. I don't think a human gets to see all of this before dying. But I want to see as much of it as I can. And here is the key thing--it thrills me to see it. I love seeing it. I love knowing. The knowing is its own reward. The ability to frame the question is it's own gift--even if you can't quite name the answer.
I think now, four years after watching that video, and having read A History of White People, that I am a writer. And that is not a hustle. And this is not my "in" to get on Meet The Press, to become an activist, to get my life-coach game on. I don't need anymore platforms. I am here to see things as clearly as I can, and then name them. --Ta-Nehisi Coates writing at The Atlantic, April 2, 2014: "The Blue Period: An Origin Story."
Coates opens his article with a video of Nell Irvin Painter discussing her book The History of White People and moves on to an examination of his own feelings and attempt to understand and reckon with the past and future of racism, of white supremacy.
I tried to make the title of this blog post as sensational as a Daily Prophet headline. Did I even come close?
While up past my bedtime, I came across the following status update last night on the Facebook page of author Anne Rice. Rice, a former resident of New Orleans and the author of bestsellers such as Interview with the Vampire and Wolf Gift, voices strong disapproval of another author's attack on Harry Potter novelist J. K. Rowling.
"If JK Rowling Cares About writing, She Should Stop Doing It," says novelist Lynn Shepherd in this vicious, cynical, resentful and thoroughly ugly article. It's appalling. Never have I seen anything this malicious ever directed towards an actor, a painter, a ballet dancer, an opera singer, a film director. No, this is the kind of petty, spiteful condescending criticism that is for some reason reserved for writers in our world. And that it was written by some one who is a writer herself makes it doubly nasty and shocking. I appreciate Jaclyn Qua-Hiansen bringing this to the page. My very best wishes to JK Rowling and to all authors out there as they face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in their creative journeys. In my life as a novelist, I've come to believe we are only in competition with ourselves when we strive to do our best; there is plenty of room for a multitude of successful endeavors in the ever changing world of books and readers, and there always will be. [Words of Anne Rice]
I have one question: Who in the hell is Lynn Shepherd and why has she offered herself up for Web execution? -- Publicity stunt. Publicity stunt. And an exceptionally dumb publicity stunt. Shepherd not only insults Rowling but also Rowling's fans:
"I didn't much mind Rowling when she was Pottering about. I've never read a word (or seen a minute) so I can't comment on whether the books were good, bad or indifferent. I did think it a shame that adults were reading them (rather than just reading them to their children, which is another thing altogether), mainly because there's so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds." [Lynn Shepherd writing at the Huffington Post]
File under suicide attempts and other self-inflicted pain.
Unusual for me, but I decided to participate in the Poetry Foundation's Audio Poems for Valentine's Day promotion, and I've embedded my reading in this blog post. The poem I've chosen is also unusual as love poems go. "A Lovely Love" by Gwendolyn Brooks is similar to Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun." Just as Shakespeare wrote of a love who did not fit the stereotype of a physically beautiful love (a woman with cherry lips and flowing hair), Brooks writes of a love born in far less than idyllic environment. You'll find no garden or starry night there, no Star of Bethlehem or royalty attending either as appeared at the birth of Jesus, the perfect symbol of love for many.
I saw the Poetry Foundation article encouraging people to record love poems and felt compelled to do so. Valentine's Day, however, is not a holiday I get into. I didn't even pay close attention to it when I was married. Perhaps I didn't want to be disappointed if my former husband forgot about it and didn't acknowledge me.
Furthermore, in elementary school, Valentine's Day was a horrible day for me because there were some people who used the day not to say I love you, but to make sure I knew they didn't like me or others they deemed outcasts. If you've experienced, that then you know what I mean--the popular girl comes in with cards for a select few and makes a production of handing them out, which then makes those who didn't get one obviously rejected. I was never allowed to do that. My mother made me give cards to everyone, and she probably did that because she was an elementary school teacher and had noticed the nasty gestures at her own school.
In fact, I think my mother's spirit may be the reason I recorded a poem for the Poetry Foundation on SoundCloud. She loved Gwendolyn Brooks, and Valentine's Day is her birthday. She passed way in 2008, and I miss her.
If you'd like the the text for "A Lovely Love," here it is at this link.
Beyoncé's recently been lauded for making history as the first woman to hit number one with her first five albums. However, both Walker and Morrison made history by being the first African-American women to win either of those prizes for literature, and their fiction, activism, and critical essays have helped shape societal views.
I suspect the answer to the question I posted in the title of this post is Beyoncé, but I haven't validated my suspicion. Nonetheless, can you guess which posts gets more hits according to my stats, the one about Beyoncé or the one about two literary greats? It's always been that way from what I've observed over the course of more than ten years blogging.
Which of the two links above are you most likely to click?
Is it possible that the younger Beyoncé fans of today will be the Walker and Morrison connoisseurs of the future? I'm trying to remain hopeful here, but my mind keeps returning to a disturbing thought. The problem is not that today's younger people may be more interested in sex, rap, and reality shows (that's kind of expected, right?), but that many of our schools may be the agencies that keep the next generation from ever being more than consumers of sex, rap, and reality shows.
Often it's school boards, supported by fearful parents, preventing younger generations from being exposed to Morrison and Walker's work. As this article at the Guardian discusses, "book bannings are on the rise" in the United States.
So, young potential readers will bake under the predictable rays of pop culture with little exposure to the literature that helps them think critically about the world or to have empathy for the other.
I have nothing against Beyoncé or her husband Jay-Z. I own some of their music, and I'm curious about what pop culture is saying about our changing world. Nonetheless, I wonder what it is that some people think they protect children from by banning books, particularly teens who already get exposed through television and the Internet to most of the "bad things" book banners aim to curb.
Are the book banners "protecting our young" or are they protecting themselves from having to tackle tough topics in the classroom or answering hard questions at home? And what will be the final outcome for the minds of tomorrow?
I didn't realize when I watched Beauty in Truth, the American Masters documentary on Alice Walker that aired February 7, had aired then because Ms. Walker's birthday was coming up. Today, February 9, is her birthday. Born in 1944, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author turned 70 today.
The PBS documentary is a loving portrait of the writer, educator, and activist. If you missed it, I recommend you find out when it will air again. I was unaware of all that she'd sacrificed to speak during the Civil Rights Movement, and there are other details of her personal life the documentary reveals that illuminate my understanding of her fiction.
As a result of the film, Ms. Walker's life and literary career have been examined in a number media outlets in the last week. While reading about her, I came across some of Ishmael Reed's criticism of her and her work again. Also, a clip of Mr. Reed railing against Walker and The Color Purple is included in the documentary. In that clip he notl only shows disapproval of Walker's prize-winning novel, but also of lesbians. One his objections to The Color Purple was its inclusion of a lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug. I don't know whether he's changed his mind about lesbians since then, but his attitude toward Ms. Walker remains the same
I remember all the backlash against the book during the 1980s, and the people who objected reminded me of those who command, "Don't air our dirty laundry in public." Today such objections get listed under "respectability politics." There's a long-standing belief among some black Americans that we'd be treated better and make more gains in society if we appear to be saintly in all behavior. Others argue that good behavior doesn't matter in terms of changing the minds of some people about black people: if racists believe people of African descent are inferior, then living above reproach probably won't change their minds. For me, there's a grain of truth in both positions.
I understand that as a people we, African-Americans, see more than our share of negative imagery of our kind in film, online, and on television, so one of the better arguments against books like The Color Purple or Sapphire's Push, to name another, is that they only add to the burden of negative imagery. I also understand why some black men are highly sensitive to negative portrayals of black men (a very specific complaint ).
Many white people don't know any black people well and those they do know represent a narrow segment of the black community. Consequently, whites often project the negative behaviors and attitudes of typical black fictional characters onto all black people, except that one smart black fellow they know. They see the one smart, honest black person they know as the exception to the obvious rule supported by negative tropes and pictures.
The great number of negative images and their repetitions should not be dismissed as "just pictures" because images have power. Pervasive and persistent scary or demeaning images and stereotypes have a rippling harmful effects. For instance, if hiring managers believe all black men are drug dealers and rapists, then they're less likely to hire black men.
However, one of the responsibilities of good literature is to tell the truth, to represent real experiences in the real world. Ms. Walker writes powerful stories that do that and that also give voice to women, especially marginalized women of color who have too often been silenced. She says she's done it because it's too easy to simply blame white people for every ailment. Some ailments, some bad behavior is the result of being born human and misguided, and we can work to change what we have the power to change. I'm of the same mind as Ms. Walker. It's true we face injustice and racism, but we still need to examine our own dysfunction if we want to recover and heal.
Furthermore, writers write what they know, and Walker said in Beauty in Truth that for The Color Purple she drew on stories about some of the men in her family and their friends (her grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' generation). So, there's a Mister and a Harpo somewhere. Can we fault writers for sharing their own experiences through their own authentic voices?
Opening this post, I said that when Beauty in Truth aired, I didn't know today was Ms. Walker's birthday. While I didn't know that, I did know about Mr. Reed's and others' hostility toward Ms. Walker and other female writers who are feminists. I have not commented on his issue much because Mr. Reed is also a literary light and award winner. He's entitled to believe what he wants to believe; he can only relate to the world through his own experiences and knowledge. Nonetheless, I won't give him a pass to misrepresent what other luminaries have said in order to lure people to his way of thinking.
I was disappointed to find that he'd misrepresented the words of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison in one of his columns regarding Ms. Walker. Therefore, a few days ago I took the time to set the record straight on that. You can read more about my finding at this link: "Now, hold up, brother: Toni Morrison did not blast Alice Walker."
A lot of people were really upset about Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Drunk in Love" performance at the Grammys. I knew it was all about sex. I mean, you'd have to be deaf, blind, and dumb not to see that just watching Beyoncé move and seeing how she was dressed. Other than that, I knew nothing.
For instance, I did not catch the references to Mike Tyson and Ike Turner in the song. But when someone brought those references to my attention, I watched the official music video and looked up the lyrics myself. Was it really that bad? Was there anyway to justify the mention of these two men? I asked a friend to explain.
You may read her explanation of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Drunk in Love" lyrics at this link. If you'd like to share your opinion on the meaning of the lyrics or whether you think the "Eat the cake, Anna-Mae" line and reference to Ike Turner and Mike Tyson are appropriate or not, then please do. You can also tell me on Twitter. Seriously, I'm just curious.
WARNING: The explanation at the link (click here) has some adult language such the actual meaning of slang words about sex.
I wrote "Amiri Baraka passes on" because I couldn't write "Amiri Baraka is dead." A poet such as he doesn't die, does he? Nonetheless, I accept his body is lifeless and his soul's moved on. The Star-Ledger and other news outlets report that the controversial poet, activist, and "prolific author, Amiri Baraka is dead at age 79."
Back in 2006 while living in New Jersey, I met Baraka at a poetry event at the Newark Museum and then saw him again reading at Rutgers. Somehow, I can't recall how, I ended up attending a salon at his home in Newwark where I talked to him and his lovely wife Amina.
I was so awestruck that night that I didn't even write about the experience later except to acknowledge that I had met him. Awestruck because as a teen I had a book with his poems in it, the 1968 edition of Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature. In the current edition, he's listed as Leroi Jones aka Amiri Barka, but I think in my old copy he was Leroi Jones. His poem "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" is in that collection with more of his work. I don't think anyone assigned the book to me. I just picked it up somewhere.
This anthology includes the works of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks--writers my mother revered (back when Zora Neale Hurston had fallen into memory almost unknown). So, to me, included among these other giants, Baraka was an important writer.
And there I was in his home, walking to the kitchen to get a plate of food from his wife, hearing stories about their old days in the New York theater, and seeing the poet stroll through rooms in his large but non-pretentious home like he was anybody else. The Web was only a few years past its novelty exploration phase then, so it was easier to become known simply because you had a blog and to be invited places where you strangely wound up standing among the famous and infamous.
I look back now at a defunct blog in which I mention meeting Baraka for the first time. I thought I'd taken the post offline (If ever you're online ranting about your divorce through poetry and crazy vignettes, you should probably take time later to get it offline, but so much has happened since then that the moment to delete got away from me. If you read my old stuff, forgive my errors.) . . . and now when I read my words, it's as though I'm reading about someone else's life.
That night at his home in 2006, I walked up to Baraka in his dimly lit dining room. It was perhaps an hour after he'd introduced his guests for the evening--African musicians if I remember correctly. He was alone, getting something off the table, not food. I think all the food was with Amina in the kitchen. I'd noticed the first time I met him at the museum that he wasn't particularly tall. Again, that evening, so close to him and alone, I observed that he was a small man, quite thin. I didn't know then that he had diabetes.
Something about him--his energy--intimidated me, and although he didn't look at me long, when he did it seemed he peered into me. His eyes said, "Don't come to me with foolishness. I don't have time for people playing around with life."
I don't recall how I asked him anything, but he agreed to an interview. Stupid me, feeling small, I never got the nerve to follow up. I let that opportunity slip away because I didn't know how to interview a man of such strong convictions and not reveal my idiocy. Perhaps such a conversation would show me that I was not as committed to battling injustice.
In any case, I'm not writing about me now, I'm writing about Baraka.
"Are these poems to Remember?" Vendler asks in her negative review of the collection in the New York Review of Books. Among her objections, the critic takes issue with the inclusion of one of Baraka's poems.
Later Dove defends the anthology in a reply to Vendler which was also published in the Review. Dove suggests that Vendler's critique of the anthology dripped with racial bias, and Dove writes:
"It is astounding to me how utterly Vendler misreads my critical assessment of the Black Arts Movement, construing my straightforward account of their defiant manifesto as endorsement of their tactics; she ignores a substantial critical paragraph in which I decry the fallout from the movement (“Against such clamor and thunder, introspective black poets had little chance to assert themselves and were swept under the steamroller,” I write in my introduction) and instead focuses on that handy whipping boy, Amiri Baraka, plucking passages from his historically seminal poem “Black Art” in which he denigrated Jews, thereby slyly, even creepily implying that I might have similar anti-Semitic tendencies. Smear by association…sound familiar? I would not have believed Vendler capable of throwing such cheap dirt, and no defense is necessary against these dishonorable tactics except the desire to shield my reputation from the kind of slanderous slime that sticks although it bears no truth. (I could argue equal opportunity offensiveness by having printed Hart Crane’s “A liquid theme that floating niggers swell”—but perhaps that makes me racist as well.)"
Oh, "Black Art" was not Baraka's only poem that some critics and activists have found offensive. His poem "Somebody Blew Up America" caused him to lose his New Jersey Poet Laureate title in 2002. The poem was written in the wake of the 9/11 bombing. As complaints against him swelled with accusations of racism and antisemitism, Baraka stood by his poem and responded with his essay "I Will Not Apologize; I Will Not Resign."
Here is video of the poet reading "Somebody Blew Up America."
This poem still offends some young Jewish people today. Just last spring I heard complaints from a few Jewish graduate students about having to read it in a poetry class.
I won't deny that this gifted poet had his share of anger issues, but I'm of the mind to let black poets who came of age in Baraka's era speak as they please. They had something real to be angry about as many of us still have today. Also, I object in general to people who are not black shooting down black protests with "You're so hostile and angry;" however, I do not support anti-Semitic rants (I stopped dating someone because he went off that way one day) or misogyny of which Baraka has also been accused. Furthermore, I don't think I have a right to define for Jewish people what is or is not antisemitic.
Was Baraka a hateful man? I don't think so (at his home I saw people of all backgrounds), and I've read that he had some regrets about negative attitudes he had in the past. In addition, he said in a 2013 interview with the Washington Post that being called an anti-Semite now seemed "bizarre" to him.
A better question is should a poet's biases make his or her work any less relevant? People of color know that if you answer "yes" to this question, then you must be prepared to eliminate many writers in the English canon of literature, the ideas of renowned European philosophers, and the symphonies of some lauded composers. The creative fields contains notable racists, anti-Semites, and misogynists.
So, I've given Baraka his space to speak as a black man and important poet, and I see him in his place among the gifted. His work rattles us in the right way, and rattling us is what the poet did best, hurling us between that rock and that hard place of outrage and fear, of our thirst for justice and our desire to keep our stuff. Baraka forced us to examine the darker chambers of our hearts--to ponder how easily we are broken and are willing to break others, to glimpse how quickly everything we hope we believe and stand for crumbles into myth or the void. So, this poet is not dead the way the rest of us will some day be dead. He lives on as other great writers live, through his work and the gut-punching energy with which he infused words.
Elmore Leonard had a good run, a career other writers can envy. He brought pleasure to readers with his crime novels and westerns, his sharp wit and edgy characters, his ear for the way Americans talk.
Born in New Orleans, October 11, 1925, Leonard, 87, passed away this morning. at his home in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. according to his website. The New York Times, CNN, and other media outlets have published his obituary.
He was a prolific novelist as you can see by his list of works at Amazon, and many of his books and stories made it to the screen. Some people know of him only through movies, Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma, Be Cool, Jackie Brown, and more. Perhaps others love his television characters, such as Raylan Givens of FX's Justified, but they haven't known that Raylan sprang from Leonard's mind.
I wasn't particularly shocked to hear of his death because Steven Hart posted a link last week or so to an article about Leonard suffering a stroke and given Leonard's age, I knew to brace myself. But I am saddened nonetheless. Hart, a novelists himself, has also posted links today to different Leonard obituaries, such as this one by novelist Thomas Pluck. He also posted this gem, a 2002 book review by Margaret Atwood of Leonard's novel Tishomingo Blues.
And I love this tidbit/photo I found, "So Elmore Leonard and Walter Mosley stopped by . . ." And this video of 10 Questions for Elmore Leonard from Time Magazine. In it he talks about growing up in Detroit and which movie based on his books that he liked the most. Also, he wrote all those books by hand and didn't use email or have a computer. What I found most interesting is that he said that the characters must tell their own stories: "I can't write in a literary way where my sound is what you're reading." That statement intrigued me because I know some MFA professors who would immediately say, "That' not what literary writing is!" The difference between "literary" and "popular" fiction is an old debate.
What more can I say? Leonard could write. I loved the way he used language. His dialogue crackled, and his characters make me laugh, wince, and sigh. Many of us are also familiar with his book Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Writing. Of course, lots of writers have rules for writing, but it never hurts to pay attention to writing advice from a man who's managed to earn a good living from his writing, pleased even critics, and written so many strings of words well. May he rest in peace.
The UK Telegraph reports, "Publishers have been left red-faced after discovering that they rejected the latest novel by J. K. Rowling, one of the world’s best-selling writers." Apparently, the Harry Potter author has written a crime novel under the penname Robert Galbraith, but despite her book, The Cuckoo's Calling, receiving good reviews while Rowling remained in anonymous, the novel hasn't been selling so well. Fewer than 500 copies had moved prior to the Rowling reveal, the paper says.
I believe Rowling when she says on her website that she wanted to keep the secret longer because, as we all know, "she doesn't need the money." But by now, in this digital age, we also know that it's hard out here for a book pimp. Publishing is first a business for profit. So, is it any surprise then that the Galbraith persona has been unmasked as industry phenom J. K. Rowling? The big reveal is a gift to Mulholland Books (Little, Brown and Company) sales.
Notwithstanding that conclusion, per the Telegraph, the Sunday Times "investigated" speculation that the unknown Galbraith had a writing style that seemed eerily similar to a certain famous female novelist. Uh-huh. Maybe, but I'd love to know who dropped that breadcrumb in the reporter's ear.
Rowling writes that being Galbraith has been "a liberating experience" for her:
It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback from publishers and readers under a different name. The upside of being rumbled is that I can publicly thank my editor David Shelley, who has been a true partner in crime, all those people at Little, Brown who have been working so hard on The Cuckoo’s Calling without realising that I wrote it, and the writers and reviewers, both in the newspapers and online, who have been so generous to the novel. And to those who have asked for a sequel, Robert fully intends to keep writing the series, although he will probably continue to turn down personal appearances."
She's always had, as we know from the Potter series, a keen sense of humor.
Naturally, some editors have admitted that they rejected the book and feel just awful about it. The book, while written well, they declare, did not seem unique. Editors have to "fall in love" with the work of new novelists in order to buy their work. Publishing industry experts assert that point often.
Well, this Rowling news is worth a weakly raised eyebrow, if that, because writers who pay attention to the publishing industry know that this kind of thing--the rejection of perfectly acceptable books--happens all the time. Why should Rowling's experience under a fake name be any different from that of thousands of unknown writers everywhere who pursue that elusive bird, the traditional publishing contract? David Vinjamuri's article, "Publishing Is Broken . . .," will shed light on this topic, if you're unfamiliar with this aspect of publishing and its evolution.
Slowly at this blog, I am working toward writing more about books, fiction, poetry, and writing in general. In other words, I am attempting to focus Whose Shoes Are These Anyway on a particular pair of shoes, that of creative writer and devoted reader. For reasons only a psychoanalyst would understand, I have avoided doing this in the past.
A feature at the New Yorker today pushed me closer to this focus. I listened to its podcast of novelist Gary Shyteyngart reading Lorrie Moore's short story "Paper Losses," a tale right up my emotional alley. It's about a couple heading toward a bitter divorce. However, that's not what drew me to the story. I listened and read along because I like Lorrie Moore. If you haven't read her work, you should. The first story I read by her was "You're Ugly, Too." She's funny and insightful. Her stories come alive through her exceptional observation and interpretation of human behaviors. (Get a .pdf of "You're Ugly, Too" here.)
A treat for writers: At the end of the podcast, Shyteyngar discusses Moore's work and his own with fiction editor Deborah Treisman. Treisman recollects that Moore writes the beginning of a story, then the end, and then goes to the middle and connects the beginning and the end. Hmm. Shyteyngar, who does not write short stories, says he's never tried that. He writes linearly.
Zora Neale Hurston, renowned African-American author, folklorist, and anthropologist, really knew how to put a spin on her life. I suspect her philosophy was never reveal vulnerability.
It's public knowledge that Zora died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave. (The beautiful Alice Walker went in search of her grave in the 70s and put a symbolic marker in the general area of Zora's burial.) It's been said that she was too proud to tell her family that she needed help.
As you can see from the clip below in the April 27, 1950, edition of the Anniston Star, Zora would not admit to prying reporters that she was in financial distress when it was discovered that she was working as a maid. However, I admire the spiritual truth she spun into why she, a black woman with an astonishing resume, was working as a domestic in a white woman's home.
'You can use your mind only so long,' she explained to the U. P. Reporter. 'Then you have to use your hands.'
'I was born with a skillet in my hand. I like to cook and keep house. Why shouldn't I do it for somebody else for a while?'
What Zora really liked to do was write, travel, study people, and network. Her answer to the reporter was a stretch, given that she was not particularly enamored of marriage, which in those days would have given her ample opportunities to cook and clean for someone if she really aspired to keep house. She was, after all, married three times.
In the documentary Jump at the Sun, scholar Valerie Boyd said that Zora "was afraid that marriage would only widen her hips and narrow her life? Her work was her master, and she followed its commands. And you know, she loved these men but they were mere men."
This adventurous woman worked as maid simply because she needed money. But like many writers, she probably rationalized to herself that she was also doing research for her next book while she worked as a maid, something she could never tell a reporter because what would her white employer do after that? The famous anthropologist/writer probably told herself she was observing white people more since she had spent so much of her life previously observing black people and writing about them. Writing about black people, however, no longer paid the bills.
Telling ourselves stories to help us cope with discomfort is what people do to hold on to hope or to manufacture happiness while in undesirable circumstances. They rationalize their choices and find purpose in their troubles. Nonetheless, it is true that it's good sometimes to rest your mind and work with your hands.
Another inaccuracy in the article, unbeknownst to the reporter, is that Zora was born in Eatonville, Fla. She was actually born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Ala. but fabricated a story about her birth so she could get a scholarship to finish her high school studies, I've read. She told people she was born in Florida in 1901.
Zora died indigent at age 69, January 28, 1960, in Saint Lucie County Welfare Home, Fort Pierce, Fla. I recommend Walker's essay "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale" to anyone contemplating this aspect of Zora's life from In Search of Our Mother's Gardens.
Richard Blanco, inaugural poet, delivered a beautiful poem for President Barack Obama's inauguration on January 21, 2013. The poem is entitled "One Day.
" On Twitter I described the poem as "beautiful, lyrical, expansive, inclusive." I saw others tweet about its strong imagery.
The poet discussed earlier with the BBC capturing the U.S.A. in verse. He told the interviewer that writing a poem about America naturally touches a topic that "obsesses" him, which is "Who am I?" In writng about the U.S.A., that question becomes "Who are we?"
Blanco said he decided to write with his "same sort of lusciousness and description and imagistic [aesthetic] and accessibility that I would use to write about the more familiar subject." He added that even before he received the inauguration assignment that he believed that it takes Americans all working together "to be the people we are in this country." He thinks of America's story as his story and vice versa, he says on the video.
Here is the full text of his poem, "One Today."
One Today One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches 2
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello| shalom,
buon giorno |howdy |namaste |or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound 3
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
Blanco is the first person of Hispanic descent and the youngest to write and recite the inaugural poem, and the first openly gay poet to do so as well. For President Obama's first inauguration in 2008, African-American poet Elizabeth Alexander recited her poem written for the occasion, "Praise Song for the Day."
BAD WRITING from Morris Hill Pictures on Vimeo. This movie, directed by Vernon Lott, is streaming for free on Vimeo the entire month of January, and it has a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/badwritingmovie. H/T to Paul Constant.
The documentary features interviews with well-known nonfiction and fiction writers and poets, including David Sedaris, Margaret Atwood, Nick Flynn, Steve Almond, and Louisiana's own Yusef Kumonyakaa.
According to an artilce at The Atlantic, "How Bad Writing Became a Great Movie," the project sprang from Lott finding "a group of boxes in his mother's basement (in 2009 when he was 34). He realized, with horror, what he'd uncovered: thousands of terrible poems he'd penned during his teens and early 20s."
The rating for this documenatry is 4.8 on IMDB, but I like it.
If you’re in the mood for a well-crafted, gritty page-turner focused on crime and punishment in New Jersey, then Steven Hart’s We All Fall Down is the novel for you. Hart spins a compelling story and shapes his heroine, Karen McCarthy, into a believable woman.
Karen McCarthy is the only female cop on a police force that makes misogyny its battle cry daily, but she holds onto her job and wises up as this mystery unfolds. Running from a fight is not her style. Readers will see quickly that Karen makes mistakes, such as seeking comfort in the wrong places from the wrong men, but they'll root for this young woman nonetheless; she is flawed but seeks justice.
While many of her fellow officers in the book's fictional Jersey town tarnish law enforcement's brass shield, not all the men on the force slip easily into blue-gang mentality and zero in on any evidence of female imperfection. Hart avoids painting a flat landscape of black and white in this dark crime drama, so Karen McCarthy’s world ripples with shades of gray and red. Lots of red. Bodies drop and drop in this thriller, but for the sake of humanity, the reader may nod that some of Hart's seedy characters deserve to die.
At other times, readers may feel themselves fearing for the lives of itchy thieves and risk takers like meth-head Charley Murphy and his loyal girlfriend Noorie. The writing will make attentive readers care. They will also laugh occasionally at the colorful words popping from these characters' mouths. Hart’s shady misfits, wannabe cop kings, and hard-working humans just trying to get by will suck police procedural fans in, and his characters' stories will stick with those readers long after they’ve read the last page of We All Fall Down.
Here is a video of Maira Kalman that I found through Poets & Writers Magazine. Kalman is a children's book author and illustrator, and in this video she talks about the importance of walking and physical movement to get her writer's brain read for new ideas.
Drama lovers love Scandal, Shonda Rhimes's hot, new drama on ABC, but many have no idea that the show's heroine, Olivia Pope, is based on a real black woman, Judy Smith. Smith is a Washington, D.C., fixer also known as a crisis manager.
In the video below, Smith says, "To be a crisis manager you have to be very calm." When clients come to her, they are already in the middle of a crisis and nervous. It would not help for her to be nervous and jumpy as well.
She also says that she and her staff sometimes work on cases a long time before they become public, and keeping the story from becoming public is often the best outcome. However, in some cases it's inevitable that a story will go public. For instance, her firm worked on the Michael Vick case for months before the story broke and nobody knew for a while that her company was working with the troubled athlete.
Smith is the show's co-creator and says that in preparing for the show, she and Kerry Washington "were pretty much joined at the hip." Washington is the star who plays Olivia Pope.
From Smith's WJLA interview:
The story isn't fictional — the real-life inspiration for the show still lives in the District, and despite working with household names for two decades, she typically stays out of the public eye. [...] "It's hard to be invisible now, but I'm still gonna try, but it's hard!" Smiths said.
Read the full interview with Smith at WJLA. They also have video, but it's not working at the moment.
According to Black Enterprise, Smith is "the former deputy press secretary for President George H. W. Bush." Viewers may struggle not to read anything into Smith's tenure at the White House because the show's main storyline is that Pope and the fictional Republican president on the show are having an affair. In her NPR interview, however, Smith says the television show is more exciting and dramatic than her real life.
Black Enterprise also lists five crises Smith managed and their resolutions: the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinski scandal, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s solicitation scandal, the Shandra Levy murder, the Michael Vick case, and the Marion Barry crack scandal. So much goes on while Americans are sleeping, feeding children, and working to keep a roof over their heads.
Smith is the author of Good Self, Bad Self: Transforming Your Worst Qualities into Your Best Assets. Amazon's description of the book reads:
They found out. It’s not working . They won’t listen. It’s all over. Now what ?
Whether the problem is debt, infidelity, indiscretion, or merely an embarrassing email sent to the wrong reader, we have all found ourselves in bad situations of our own making. And whether that puts you in a delicate position or a full-blown crisis, it can sometimes feel as if there is no way out. Enter Judy Smith. America’s number one crisis management expert, Judy Smith is on speed dial for some of the highest-profile celebrities, politicians, and corporations in the world. But though her business is helping her clients recover from widely publicized personal and professional setbacks, her expertise is applicable to us all. In Good Self, Bad Self, Smith shares her methods, gleaned from years of professional experience, for smoothing over a bad situation while providing the tools to prevent similar incidents from ever happening again.
The way to get through a personal or professional rough spot is by understanding the traits that can lead to our wildest successes and most painful failures. Smith has learned to identify high-risk situations that often lead to marital, financial, professional, or personal imprudence; her ability to anticipate potential personal disasters has allowed her to coach people prior to, as well as in the wake of, crisis. ... She has identified seven traits that are often found at the root of a crisis. These traits can be positive and extremely useful but can cause problems when they fall out of balance. ... (Read more at Amazon)
HURTADO (NPR): Actor Kerry Washington, Judy, plays Olivia Pope, the character you inspired. She's also the lead. You've mentioned that many African-American actresses auditioned for one role, and yet, as I watched, I thought, Olivia Pope is a strong, smart, tough-as-nails, successful businesswoman who happens to be African-American. Is there a reflection on barriers the series is breaking down?
SMITH: Here, it is exciting in the sense that you have Kerry Washington - who's African-American - myself and Shonda Rhimes. So it's one of those unique situations that I think hasn't happened since the '60s.
Smith says in her NPR interview that today's 24 hour news cycle, which includes bloggers and people tweeting information that may not be true but goes public instantly, makes crisis management more challenging.
If you haven't yet caught the show, you can watch full episodes of Scandal at ABC's website and also on Hulu.com.
Here are 10 Reasons from Roland Emmerich that explain why he would make a movie that questions whether the man history claims to have been William Shakespeare was actually the bard we know and love. The movie, Anonymous, opens this Friday.
