"Cuando Un Amigo Se Va" - Alberto Cortez (When a Friend Leaves)

Cuando un amigo se va /  When a friend leaves
queda un espacio vacío  /  only an empty space remains
que no lo puede llenar  /  that cannot be filled
la llegada de otro amigo.  /  with the arrival of a new friend.
cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
queda un tizón encendido  /  there only remains a bright light on
que no se puede apagar  /  that cannot be extinguished
ni con las aguas de un río.  /  with all the waters from a river.

Cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
una estrella se ha perdido  /  a star is forever lost
la que ilumina el lugar  /  that used to light the place
donde hay un niño dormido.  /  where a little child sleeps.
Cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
se detienen los caminos  /  all the paths close
y se empieza a revelar  /  and it begins to reveal
el duende manso del vino.  /  the gentle elf-spirit of wine.

Cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
queda un terreno baldío  /  a space is left barren
que quiere el tiempo llenar  /  that time tries to fill
con las piedras del hastío.  /  with the rocks of boredom.
Cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
se queda un árbol caído  /  a fallen tree is left dying
que ya no vuelve a brotar  /  that won't flower again
porque el viento lo ha vencido.  /  'cause the wind has defeated it.

Cuando un amigo se va  /  When a friend leaves
queda un espacio vacío  /  a space is left barren
que no lo puede llenar  /  that cannot be filled again
la llegada de otro amigo.  /  with the arrival of a new friend.

"The Anthologist" by Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is regarded by many people in literary circles as a quiet genius.  "The Anthologist" might just be the biggest proof of it.  Baker does not stand out outside of literary fiction circles as other massively popular writers; perhaps this is one of those immeasurable gifts to devoted readers of the genre.  I only knew Baker from a non-fiction perspective "The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber", despite having copies of "Vox" and "Fermata" that I have never gotten to.

"The Anthologist" is an intimate story.  Paul Chowder is a poet seemingly obsessed with proving to the world that the basis of all poetry is the four beat count.  He is struggling to write the introduction to an anthology of works that he believes will prove his theory.  Amid the daily ordinariness of his life, Chowder struggles with everything from procrastination to personal relationships, and the reader is taken for an intimate look at the psyche of a very (and I mean very) delicate individual.  Paul Chowder may be obsessed with his four beat theory, but he's one of those fictional characters that make us look at ourselves and the mass of inexplicable factors who make up personality and psychology.  The illustrations of absent-mindedness and never-ending rolling thoughts, the ease with which he branches off into a million different directions of distraction captures procrastination is like nothing I've ever read before.  This is just one of the many charms of this book, along with the numerous examples of poetry Chowder dissects to show his theories of rhythm.

Chowder also injects an incredible amount of information about literature and poetry into just a few passages of the book.  Nicholson Baker is amazing this way.  The intricate details of poetry and any other literary variables come into play in the narrative with powerful displays of what appears on the surface as "useless information."  To the "trained" eye, of course, these passages are the building blocks of making a genius come to life on the page.  Baker fleshes out Paul Chowder in just this way, and the result is simply perfect.  In regards to the popular latin phrase Carpe diem, Chowder explains, "Horace didn't say that. 'Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day--it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be 'cape diem,' if my school Latin serves. No R. Very different piece of advice.  What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things--so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was."  Of course many people would read this passage and complain about the unnecessary splitting of hairs, but there is something deeper here, and Chowder (through Baker) hit the proverbial nail dead-center on the head.  What is represented here is the thought process of genius at work, and the difficulty of getting it down on paper again and again through the novel is just what makes this novel so amazing.

There are numerous passages like this one, and they vary with the ordinary moments of Paul Chowder's life.  The bulk of the narrative feels like a train wreck about to happen, for Chowder is facing a great deal of unknowns with each passing day he does not complete the introduction to his anthology.  His lover leaves him, he is not writing poetry or submitting for publication, and things simply do not look good for Chowder.  The reader, however, is not just rooting for Paul Chowder... the reader becomes (and is) Paul Chowder in many, many ways.

The novel is charming due to its lovable character, but there is an under-current of meaning and literary detail here that goes beyond its 243 pages.  It is the core of its simplicity--the flow of a narrative full of descriptive detail, literary insight and even psychological perspective-- that makes Nicholson Baker a master of the form and a genius of a curious and rare kind.

Patti Smith's "Just Kids" - One of the Best Retrospectives and Studies (not to mention Love Story) of the late 1960s

This book addresses quite a few questions regarding the process of creation and artistry in general. The fact that these two--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe managed to accomplish all they did together (and separately) during the most challenging times in this country is a testimony of their collective commitment to art. This narrative of two lives destined to shine is blindingly beautiful prose, difficult to identify to anyone else but the author. It is obvious that Patti Smith put her soul and heart into this book; to do anything else would have been insulting to Robert and all the other great artists, poets, and musicians with whom she shares the stage of the narrative. I really didn't think personal accounts of this sort could ever reach a more poetic and musical form with words--Patti Smith is a poet, an artist, and a great musician. Her development as all of the aforementioned is neatly detailed with each passing page, and, more importantly, not losing the larger picture of her wonderful and loving relationship with Mapplethorpe. "Just Kids" is a wonder to read, and a lesson of love and art.

What impressed me the most was the wonderful pattern the book followed regarding Smith's lyrical style. Every single part of the narrative (not chapters, but simple breaks) ended with a wonderful poetic line(s) that invite the reader to continue reading and reading and reading. Some of the one's that really got to me were: "I wondered why he devoted so much time to me. I reasoned it was because we were both wearing long coats in July, the brotherhood of La Boheme..." and "There was something of us that he saw in a movie but I wasn't certain what. I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know." and "... I would someday hold his ashes in my hand" and "There was something about that jar. The shards of heavy glass seemed to foreshadow the deepening of our days; we didn't speak of it but each of us seemed inflicted with a vague internal restlessness." and "David Flavin had conceived his installation in response to the mounting death toll of the war in Vietnam. No one in the back room was slated to die in Vietnam, though a few would survive the cruel plagues of a generation." There many more I cannot continue to write here--go get the book and read it.

The books is peppered with photographs taken by Mapplethorpe. One thing that this book is full of is hope. It's amazing to me how confident of his (their) success Robert Mapplethorpe was. I think it does hold water that common dictum of dream big... but to have so much hope in an era of so much confusion and destruction is really a testimony to all Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe achieved together and in their own right.

There are mentions of the entire famous (infamous) crowd at the Chelsea Hotel in New York from 1968 to the latter stages of the decade and into the 1970s when the hotel lost its luster of artists and Bohemia. Nevertheless, those who are mentioned appear like a list of "Who's Who" in the late 1960s. Of particular interest to me was the person of Maxime de la Fallaise, a French model and later New York socialite whose photograph I first saw in an early issue of "At Random," a photograph I cut off and hung in my college dorm room because she looked exactly as my mother looked in her early 20s. Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan appear, but Patti Smith does a great job of not making it sound like a name-dropping episode in the narrative. One humorous story is that of how Allen Ginsburg bought Patti Smith lunch on account that she looked like "an attractive young boy," to the poet of the generation.

I got this book because, aside from being reviewed in the NYT, I felt I could learn quite a bit from it about the creative process. The book did not disappoint when it came to its didactic qualities. Again, how these two managed to be so assured of success, supporting each other through one of the most turbulent of ages of our nation is a testimony to the power of art, literature and music to overcome all.

Billy Collins, again...

I have a tendency to overblow things, exaggerate to a fault. I know this is the case with Billy Collins, but the more I look at it, the more I start believing in the genius of the man and his work. There is something absolutely distinctive about poetry that cannot be found in any other form of language use. That lyrical aspect, that musical temperament poetry presents to us only goes to show the reader that very same possibility of language. Reading Collins' poetry might be "topical" or even "conventional" to some, but to me Collins takes risks, make turns in the middle of a poem like no other poet alive today. Reading Billy Collins' "Sailing Alone Around the Room" was a definite treat. I was sad to even finish it. Poetry like this, really, should be core curricula for all students.


Many people ask me what I see in Paul Auster's work, and I can only answer with the hyperbole that Auster cannot write a bad sentence even if he tried. The same goes for Haruki Murakami's work; I often describe it as walking into a Salvador Dali painting. Now I have a new champion to receive my exaggerated praise. Here are some phrases, turns of theme and other lines from Collins' book that blinded me with their brilliance....



from "Plight of the Troubadour"

"My sentiments are tangled like kites / in the branches of her incomprehension..."


from "Winter Syntax"

"The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it / it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning / outside a drugstore...."

What speaks to the reader in these lines is the actual picture of the bicycle leaning... a picture of Any Town USA.


from "Schoolsville"

"The population ages but never graduates.... / Once in a while a student knocks on the door / with a term paper fifteen years late / or a question about Yeats or double-spacing. / And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane / to watch me lecturing the wallpaper, / quzzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air."

This is a good example of the topical/conventional made remarkable... as a teacher of literature, there's no doubt as to why these lines spoke to me.


from "Vade Mecum"

"I want the scissors to be sharp / and the table to be perfectly level / when you cut me out of my life / and paste me in that book you always carry."

All I can say about this little, short one is.... "experience, oh experience..."


I could, if time allowed, quote from every single poem in the collection, but I have to go and teach now. I not only recommend Billy Collins, I really think everyone should own at least one book by him; he should be "required reading for the entire human race." How about that for hyperbole! :-)

On Poetry, by Billy Collins...

I finished "Sailing Alone Around the Room" a few days ago, but I have been unable to post about it. Nevertheless, I absolutely adored it and the only thing that has kept me from coming here and spewing pseudo-idolatry praise about Billy Collins is the fact that work has kept me away. But before I begin to write my list of hyperbole about his poetry, I am going to let the man speak for himself. Believe me, if you listen closely, these will be the best 8 plus minutes you've ever spent in front of a computer.

Madame Bovary's Credit Rating

I've enjoyed Madame Bovary tremendously. One of my New Year's resolutions was to stop stressing out so much about work (I mean, after all, what ever is so stressful about teaching young people literature, poetry, history and philosophy?). I think I simply became obsessed with work, and imagined that if I didn't feel stressed out, I wasn't teaching right. So, I am much more relaxed now--even people I didn't get along with before seem to bother me little (or at least some of them, anyways). I've spent the last 30 days or so feeling this way--much less stressed and generally happy.

I am uncertain about what the terms of the credit arrangement between Madame Bovary and Monsieur Lheureux are. I find Madame Bovary signing away note after note in an effort, it seems to me, to cover one debt with another. I don't understand enough about French law to begin to imagine what the penalties (besides impounding of her property) would be. Did people still go to jail for debt back then? I might do a little research and find out. I am much more interested in the process of Madame's loss of Rodolphe and her renewal of the affair with Leon. Her rendezvous with Leon seem to me much more passionate and with that certain amount of desperation that--given enough of it--might drive a reader crazy imagining all sorts of outrageous promises and words whispered between lovers. I can understand clearly why Rodolphe leaves her: she becomes pushy and demanding, but he didn't have any intention to create a life with her to begin with. Rodolphe was just in it for whatever he could get at the moment. I like Leon better, but it disappoints me that even at this point (Book 3, Chapter 8), he is drifting away from Madame's desperation.

The writing is going well. I drew up a new beginning and it makes much more sense to me than the first one. I sent it to a friend who commented it was far more engaging, despite the fact that the protagonist is even more of a pig than the previous beginning. I had felt stuck for a while regarding this writing business. This past Friday, I went to see the Cleveland Orchestra (free tickets) play Dvorak's #9, and an assortment of other short pieces. I can truly say that the concert cleaned out my system. Saturday morning I wrote like no other weekend. It's truly refreshing!

Well, I have taken my time finishing Madame Bovary because my reading list is much shorter this year and I have "kilometric" books to read which will take far more time to finish. I will write about the end of Madame Bovary next, and my first collection of Billy Collins' poetry.

Struck by the Awesome Power of Melancholy

James Wright is a genius, and who ever says otherwise is itching for a fight. Presently, the reading of "The Selected Letters of James Wright" finds me in 1964 (all the letters from 1963 have been, unfortunately, lost). Wright is suffering from a tremendous depression, while at the same time putting out some of his best poetry ever! How this giant of a man is able to concentrate on the creative power of his own voice when only torturous thoughts about his past invade his peace is totally beyond me. But there he is, blessed Wright, with the soul of a Greek god, writing his heart out both in poems and letters. There are several letters to other people about Robert Bly that leave me wondering... did Wright really like Bly at all? At any rate, some of these letters are up for argument, and some of the things that Wright says about Bly to other people (for example, his hesitation at times to support Bly's journal "The Sixties), seem contradictory and two-faced. Never mind me... reading through some one's "selected letters" has a quality of voyeurism and one must not pass judgment while at it.

It is still happening to me, you know, that "writer feeling" I was talking about last week. I am going back to many things I read a long, long time ago about writing fiction... about how characters begin to do things on their own, about how Joseph Heller could think about his plot and work out problems while brushing his teeth... all those things that I previously considered "overly romantic and fake perceptions of the craft" are now happening to me seamlessly. I think (at least I am almost certain) that I solved a crisis moment in my novel while I was brushing my teeth this morning. So those things actually DO happen, and they have stopped being "over romanticized fakisms" of writers in general.

Other efforts are now brewing in the percolator... can't wait to get to them.