Outbursts

I have no idea what to do with this blog. I'm like a bad mom. Should I rethink getting a cat?

I Hate Poetry! Or Do I?

I was at a book club last night and one of the members said something that intrigued me. He said he didn't like short stories because everyone thought they were capable of writing one and as a result there were a lot of really really crappy ones floating around out there. He said that with novels he felt like the time investment involved prevented the truly horrific writers from completing a book and getting published. Now I've encountered plenty of books that were clearly written under the influence of some amazing hallucinogen and published with the author's eyes firmly closed to all defects in writing, plot, and style, but aside from that, I thought he made an interesting point on a broader scale. When you reduce writing to a kind of playdough-molding activity, where people just play with words and sentences and ideas, you're inevitably going to get some really bad eggs (I feel like I can say this with impunity since I fall into the same trap).

And I feel like this is more true (I definitely almost wrote truer - who am I to set myself up as a critic anyway?) in the world of poetry than anywhere else. I've sat in on my fair share of poetry and writing classes, and most of it is just friggin' awful. I mean, did you hear that inauguration poem? Don't get me wrong. I can enjoy modern poetry, and I feel that free verse in poetry isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it has to be poetry; by my definition, that means it needs a certain feel for literary technique, rhyme, and sound. It needs to sound good when read out loud, and it needs to be read by someone who doesn't pause after every 3rd word for no apparent reason. As I'm looking at it now, I can enjoy it Elizabeth Alexander's poem on the page, but her reading made me want to strangle something. (Not her. Maybe a stuffed animal. I'm secretly nonviolent.)

Where did we go wrong? When did poetry stop being something that the masses or rather, the reading masses, wanted to pick up, buy in stores, memorize, carry around with them on their persons and in their hearts? When did forms become something to be shunned, and disciplined art something to avoid? If I ever create a poem with a rhyme scheme, I show it to my dad, shuffle it away, and never show it to another living soul, because that's "outdatded" and "funny-sounding". Strange that I still don't hear that about Frost's poetry. I'm not saying there aren't awful poems out there with a fixed form. I'm just saying that somewhere along the line free verse - or Something Else - has caused poetry to become so horrifically boring or so fantastically obscure that no one wants to hear it and poetry simply "doesn't sell." And don't feed me bull about being all great art being misunderstood - if no one will buy your work there's a possibility that it's a lack of skill on your part and not the system's fault.

A lack of discipline, that's what i'm trying to get at in my bumbling, roundabout way. I fear that the advent of free verse ended with destroying the conception that a good poem should be built with literary tools and people began trying to knock houses together with nothing more than sheer determination and a blunt rock.

And that's clearly not what good free verse is about! You can see the work in William Carlos Williams, and yet that poem is so simple and easily understood. But someone needs to lay down the whats and whys. Perhaps someone with more skill than myself could write a semi-definitive stylebook at least explaining what good free verse could include, so we could all stop fumbling around in the dark like blind men describing an elephant. I want to see a more definitive free verse than this:

"Free verse is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using strict meter or rhyme, but still recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.^[1]

Free Verse poetry does not have a strict pattern of rhyming. It does not have regular meter, rhyme, fixed line length, or a specific stanza pattern." - Wikepedia (yes, History Husband. I used it as a reference point)

"still recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another"???? Doesn't that just sound like a euphemism for something that should be more clear? Shouldn't there be a way that a higher power can step in (as in the old days) and say, "This poem is foul, and here is why in plain, angry English!" Instead, in classes we sidestep bad language with "I really like your controlled voice" and a lack of rhythm with "great use of free verse!" I enjoyed the Robert Frost quote I found on Wikipedia; he remarked that free verse was like "playing tennis without a net".

I guess when it comes down to it I'm just a damn lowbrow. I want art to be enjoyed, intelligently enjoyed, by more than 20 people who have advanced degrees and can laugh at obscure independent publisher jokes. And often, modern poetry simply doesn't connect - doesn't even try to connect - with the people who should be reading it for enjoyment. And I guess in the end I'm not even sure if it's the fact that everyone thinks they can write poetry or some more obscure reason beyond my ability to comprehend. But I know that art requires some discipline, and if you're not willing to learn some to write poetry, you should probably stick to your diary. Or your blog. ;)

Piss-Poor books

I have this theory about some of the books I read. You know, that trend book you pick up at kroger and breeze through in a few days and then end up donating 2 years later when you realize you'll never read it again. Or even that book that you know has no intrinsic value, but that you still go back to year after year until the cover lies in shreds and you have to get a new copy or use copious amounts of clear tape to hold it together. Beloved by the masses, hated by English professors, these are the books that shoot people to the top ten lists and then dump them back into their original tax brackets a year later. These books, my friends, are like cheap beer.
Cheap beer is the kind of thing you pick up because you're bored, tired, or too poor to buy the nice stuff. You buy it because you don't feel like agonizing over the flavor it will impart to your taste buds and you don't want to spend a lot of time and effort on keeping it at just the right temperature. And it doesn't require that of you. Cheap
beer is exactly what it promises to be on the box - a fast high that won't break your wallet and can leave you miserable the next day. So you buy it and
you drink it all as quickly as possible, not paying attention to
anything but the growing pleasant fuzzy sensation and pushing to the back of your thoughts the mounting queasiness you feel as you continue to drink... until you're finished.
And many novels are the same way, at least if they're being
honest with themselves. They don't want to fundamentally change your
thinking or your lifestyle. They're simply there to do the best they can to give you a
story, a cheap high that you can enjoy 'guilt-free' as it were,
requiring financial but not mental investment. And that's a great
thing - if you ask most people why they read they'll say they do it to
escape and some of the best literature has been written with no
greater prospect than pleasing the masses and making a buck.
So the next time someone tries to feed you bull about how a novel
has no "literary value," ask them to define what their literary values
are. If great literature has to be utterly incomprehensible, impossible to sell, and end tragically or at least with an impending sense of the hopelessness of life, then chances are you're talking to a literary tool. Avoid them, and get back to your copy of Twilight.

Masculinity Asserts Itself Early

*No babies were harmed by fire in the making of this post.

I went to my brother's house this weekend. I would show you pictures but I still don't have a digital camera at my disposal - he has an incredibly cute son named Nate. Nate takes after his dad in many ways; I can already see the macho welling up in him (and the intelligence to use it well). This is a one year old who will already make a muscleman pose if prompted by Mom and Dad. I love him.
So at one point in the evening I see Nate fixated on a gallon jug of distilled water. I figure he's just going to maul the purple cap (I mean, if I were a one year old that's what I'd do) but he just stands there and stares, like he's trying to understand this new creature at its deepest level. Then, with the intense focus one usually only sees in Olympians, he squats into a perfect lifter's stance, grasps the base of the jug and lets out a wild "Ay-yi-yi!" war cry as he attempts the lift. He was a little disappointed that it was beyond him but comforted himself by gnawing messily on the delicious-looking purple cap.

Heating, Lead Paint, and General Silliness

So yesterday Ben rushed home from school so he could be there when the gas got turned on (MUCH more exciting than it would be normally since it's November and our hot water heater is gas-powered). To understand what happened next I will need to give some horribly boring and realistic background, so prepare to snore!
When we originally made an offer on the house, it was with the understanding that a) everything would be up to code and b) all the chipping lead paint would be painted over, since we have a government loan that doesn't want us to feel gradually worse and worse until we die of lead poisoning. Reasonable enough. The lead paint got taken care of after some fighting and shuffling between the realtor and then the seller hired a man to bring the heating up to code, which he claimed he did. An inspector came in and said he couldn't approve it but our realtor and the man who "fixed" the heater produced a signed document saying it was up to code and the inspector didn't know what he was talking about. Being young and naive, we accepted it.
So when the gas man said the heater wasn't up to code, Ben quietly became very angry. (He doesn't do anything loudly except teach, which he apparently does at full volume with great animation. I'd pay to see that.) Anyway, long story short, the seller will pay for our repairs to the heater. But it again will take 10 calls to our realtor to have her call the seller and have them call her back and forth and so on and so on.
Which brings me to the point of all this nonsense. Our sellers seemed like reasonable, calm people to me. It makes sense to have a realtor in place to broker a home selling (even though we made the mistake of not getting our own, but having the realtor play dual roles). But it seems a little ridiculous when both parties have agreed on what needs to be done to continue to have a go-between. Seems like it just creates more anger than just speaking with each other would at this point. And i'm not saying it's always like that - I can think of many personality types that need that buffer between tempers. Damn bureacracy.
In other news, today I get to go stand in line to vote! Yaay! Ben's been in line for about 15 minutes and says he'll be there for awhile.