my fine willow reader
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.”
– Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus.
Redemption comes in many different forms. It is easy to criticize, especially when it comes to whole swathes of humanity, especially when I myself risk so very little. It is why shows like The IT Crowd or AbFab are brilliant; sure, they poke fun at corporate culture and the 1960s respectively but there is love in the humor that comes through which is why they work and I, re-reading what I posted last week, come off as a tad mean-spirited.
One movie I adore is Ratatouille (2007) and of all the characters in it the one that resonates with me is that of Anton Ego, the effete, slightly effeminate snob. If I am not careful my own Anton rises up and I fill my pages with bitter prose, thinking myself smart because I can point out the obvious about the failings of the poetic generation that came before me. That's easy and also, I must say, a bit cowardly on my part. Redemption for Ego came with such a realization. At the end of the movie, he says:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism; which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.
I would say that, equally as important as championing the new is honoring the old. After all, I reflected, if I truly am as disgusted with modern American poetry as I appear to be in some of my blog postings, why am I doing this? I say I do it because I love poetry and hate to see how it has turned out … which is a lie. I do it mainly because I feel alienated; I feel there is a whole conversation about modern poetry going on I desperately want to be a part of but have no idea how to join. It is far easier to sit in my corner and mutter dark things than stride out and make friends.
So let me start talking about poets I like. I use to have a long list but as Ego pointed out, we thrive on negative criticism, and seem to have misplaced it. I will start over. I went down to the library and checked out Jack Gilbert's new book, The Dance Most Of All (2009). In 2005 he wrote Refusing Heaven, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The poem that I carried away from his new book was Prospero Goes Home in which the old man returns to the island which has been stripped of the magic we found in The Tempest. Instead he finds an every-home, that place that exists completely private from the rest of the world; that memory of when we were happy and where every little job we did felt grand; “How dear the bare place looked. How good it felt/ getting the supplies up to the house” (46).
It ends just like that; leaving us in a world devoid of tricks of the hand and instead replaces magic with longing, with nostalgia, which has been horribly abused by critics such as myself over the years.
Thank you, Mister Gilbert, for making me happy.
And yes, where do we go from here? The pier
still stands, the boats still float. But no. Whose fault
is it that the storm has ceased? salt water
returning to what it always was, salt
water? Meh. “Fault” is no word I began
with. Words confuse me. I have no slaved djinn;
Prospero fled. Say this fast: “The Afghan
Caliban joined the Taliban clan in
Spokane.” But nothing happens. There is no
magic within words. Meh. Who said there was?
Willows hold more magic, be a willow
reader, willow sage. Soon I must stop, pause
and sleep, herr doktor. I; who talks to trees.
My grand deceit. Whose last word was not please.