November 23: Reading with Rebecca Wolff at the Spotty Dog Bookshop, 440 Warren Street, Hudson, NY. 7PM.
November 24: Reading with Andrew Zawacki at Buffalo State University, room 210, Butler Library, Buffalo, NY. 4PM.
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So I think the first section (500-800 words) should be about money qua money—as distinct from commerce or trading or the current financial crisis, for that matter. The second section, which I want to call “The Heaven-Sent Leaf,” should include some examples of poems about money—for and against—probably one renaissance poem (perhaps John Donne’s “Love’s Usury”); one Romantic poem (Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much With Us” is a likely choice…); a Modernist poem (this one is harder—much of Pound’s Cantos deals with class, but it’s oblique… of course, the Modernist period was the great age of upper-middle class poets with professional jobs—eg Eliot, Stevens, Williams); probably the (eerily anticipatory—Spicer, Berrigan, etc. eat your hearts out) poem “Twenty-Four Years,” by Dylan Thomas (published in 1938); and then the poem “Money,” by Philip Larkin, published in the 70s. I think this is a good list—a good way to illustrate the ways in which money has figured (representatively or no) in poetry over the years.
Bused it back from Turners Falls this afternoon… a disaster as the Greyhounds weren’t running on time… Watched TV about hideous Rod Blagojevich… more and more this life seems like a drama by Shakespeare (comedy and tragedy both)… corrupt governor trying to sell off the senate seat of the recently anointed prince; there is a parallelism to it—a symmetry, even, in classic Shakespearean style… Or the attacks in Mumbai; just as the new regime displaces the old, so too does a new style of terrorism—terrorism 2.0—usurp the style that came before.
Everything menacing. People in the station at Springfield were menacing—across their weathered faces was a slavering, for money? Restaurants set up so you stand while you eat—you wouldn’t want them to sit down, those hungry people with no money. Money is a kind of poetry; is poverty a kind of prose?
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The day after the Stain reading, I trained it up to Providence for what would turn out to be one of my favorite readings of the trip (speaking of poems, of prose). I read at Ada Books. A nice woman named Kate Schapira hosted me along with Jeffrey Yang. Forrest Gander—who is an old teacher of mine—was billed as a sort of special “guest star.” At this reading, more than any other on the trip, I felt “received.” There was a drawing room feel to things—a kindly formality. It felt like a good part of the community was present. There were also some old faces—my good old friend from high school Annie White was there (I stayed at her house with her adorable husband and toddler), Gillian Kiley, who was a peer of mine at Iowa. Many of us went out to dinner afterwards. I was busy catching up with Annie, but managed to chat with Jeffrey and his wife, Forrest, Kate Colby (Kate Schapira and Kate Colby and I read a few months back in St. Louis as part of a reading called “Eight Kates”; the reading also included Katie Ford, Katie Peterson, Kate Greenstreet, Cate Marvin, and Kate Pringle… what a show), etc. It was lovely (though so awfully cold!). My iPhone broke that afternoon, so I don’t have any pictures.
The next day, I drove over to Hudson to read at the Spotty Dog with Rebecca Wolff. This was another favorite reading in that I was reading with and for old friends, the place was pretty packed, and I was feeling back at home, having come from Annie in Providence, and knowing I’d be staying that evening with Caroline Crumpacker, a co-editor at Fence and wonderful hostess. We all went to a great Italian restaurant after and devoured some spelt pizza.
Here is the audience in Hudson (photos courtesy of Monica Youn):
Here is Rebecca reading:
Me:
Here is Mark Wunderlich, who lives in that enchanted area:
The day after that, I drove up to Buffalo (I sped the whole way up to Buffalo the way I'm speeding through these readings) to read at Buffalo State with Andrew Zawacki. Here is Lisa Forrest, my wonderful hostess up there:
Andrew (more on him later):
And then… phew…. That very night, I drove to Rochester, about an hour, to crash at a hotel. There was a very large accident along the way. It was pouring down snow:
The next morning I guest taught a class of about 50 9-12 graders at the local arts high school. This was a real treat (no pictures, unfortunately). I read a bit and had them do two exercises. The first was to write a persona poem (these turned out great); the second was to write a “speech act” poem—basically a poem composed around a wish (these didn’t turn out as well). The kids were a little antsy as it was the last day before the vacation. Afterwards, I got to see BOA Editions’ offices:
Here is Thom Ward, who edited my manuscript; great guy:
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Money is a kind of poetry… poverty is a kind of prose.
Back to the New Yorker for a second: two corrections (never fact check when you’re speeding 80 miles down the highway on your way to Buffalo, New York);
I didn’t say “eros and vanitas”; rather it was “eros and thanatos.” This mistake is a little humorous as I remember the writer repeating it back to me when I first said it on the phone:
“Eros and vanitas?” she (must have) asked.
“Yes, eros and thanatos,” I (must have) replied.
“Eros and vanitas?” she (must have) asked again.
“Yes, eros and thanatos,” I (must have) replied.
Then I must have done the whole rigmarole again with the fact checker. Oh well. From Wikipedia:
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The life and death drives
Freud believed that humans were driven by two conflicting central desires: the life drive (libido) (survival, propagation, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive (Thanatos). Freud's description of Cathexis, whose energy is known as libido, included all creative, life-producing drives. The death drive (or death instinct), whose energy is known as anticathexis, represented an urge inherent in all living things to return to a state of calm: in other words, an inorganic or dead state. Freud recognized Thanatos only in his later years and developed his theory on the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud approached the paradox between the life drives and the death drives by defining pleasure and unpleasure. According to Freud, unpleasure refers to stimulus that the body receives. (For example, excessive friction on the skin's surface produces a burning sensation; or, the bombardment of visual stimuli amidst rush hour traffic produces anxiety.) Conversely, pleasure is a result of a decrease in stimuli (for example, a calm environment the body enters after having been subjected to a hectic environment). If pleasure increases as stimuli decreases, then the ultimate experience of pleasure for Freud would be zero stimulus, or death.
Given this proposition, Freud acknowledged the tendency for the unconscious to repeat unpleasurable experiences in order to desensitize, or deaden, the body. This compulsion to repeat unpleasurable experiences explains why traumatic nightmares occur in dreams, as nightmares seem to contradict Freud's earlier conception of dreams purely as a site of pleasure, fantasy, and desire. On the one hand, the life drives promote survival by avoiding extreme unpleasure and any threat to life. On the other hand, the death drive functions simultaneously toward extreme pleasure, which leads to death. Freud addressed the conceptual dualities of pleasure and unpleasure, as well as sex/life and death, in his discussions on masochism and sadomasochism. The tension between Eros and Thanatos represented a revolution in his manner of thinking. These ideas resemble aspects of the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, expounded in The World as Will and Representation, describes a renunciation of the will to live that corresponds on many levels with Freud's Death Drive. Similarly, the life drive clearly parallels much of Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy. However, Freud denied having been acquainted with their writings before he formulated the groundwork of his own ideas.
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I do believe speculative bubbles have something to do with the intertwining drives of eros and thanatos; the concept explains (or at least describes) in particular why people are able to exist in denial for so long during booms, in my view.
Then again, I don’t need Freud or wikipedia to tell me that “there is no such thing as a free lunch” and “what goes up must come down.”
Second correction is that I didn't pay for the entire trip. I did about 30 readings; for 7 of them (6 academic) I was paid an honoraria; all of these combined covered the costs, more or less, of the rest. I clarified this for both the writer and the fact checker, but I think they liked the narrative better the way it was (and it wasn't utterly inaccurate).
All of this said, I don't mean to dis on my profiler or fact checker. My profiler spent literally hours with me on the phone to get that little bit of text, and the fact-checker struck me as very thorough. What should be dissed, I suppose, is the quality one can get out of an iPhone connection, especially while driving. I wanted to mention the eros/thanatos correction somewhere, though, just for the record...
This is Bad Kitty angling for a pat. I must attend:
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