Angel Island (part two)

America's issues with immigration go way back before Joe Arpaio. In fact, they could be said to have started right here in California. And, really, for all of the same issues. In a nutshell, the Chinese and other Asians flooded into California during the gold rush, much like people from the rest of the world. And there was plenty of cheap labor for them, especially with the construction of the transcontinental railroad. However, when the gold rush died down and the railroad was complete, there was a glut of available bodies in the labor market, and white dudes got scared of losing their jobs, which was the same sort of fear as it is today, considering the Chinese generally did the kinds of low-paying jobs that whites wouldn't take.

But fear is fear.

Or something like that.

All of this lead to the Chinese Exclusion Act which lasted for six decades. Sixty years! During that time, because the Chinese Exclusion Act lead to discrimination against all Asian immigrants, Asians trying to come to America were detained at Angel Island. For weeks. At least. For comparison, European (white) immigrants coming into the United States through Ellis Island had a processing time of a few hours; Asians coming in through Angel Island had a processing time of almost a month. The men were detained in the building pictured above and WERE NOT ALLOWED TO GO OUTSIDE for the duration of their "detention." Now, while I said that the processing time was generally about a month, it was often quite a bit longer than that. Months. Sometimes more than a year.

It wasn't so bad for the women and children... unless you count the part where they were taken away from their husbands and fathers and kept somewhere else. But, hey, they were allowed some brief moments outside.

To deal with the loneliness and depression, the men carved poems into the walls of the detention center.

And here is a translation of one of the poems:

"It's useless to be friends with those of narrow mind."

And, you know, narrow-mindedness is a hallmark of conservatives. It's a fear thing, actually, because fear makes people narrow minded, unable to see possibilities, and conservatives tend to live on fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of others.

That's not an opinion, by the way; it's what research shows.

One of the things that's been said quite a bit by those on the Right who support all of Trump's #fakepresident racist immigration policies (not to mention the Nazis and white supremacists) is, "It's not like we haven't done this kind of thing before." As if a past misdeed makes a future misdeed okay. In fact, the acknowledgement of a past misdeed, like Angel Island or the Japanese internment centers during WWII, should be motivation to not repeat the same mistake.

It's to cut out all of this white supremacist and Nazi bullshit.

Angel Island (part one)

If you look closely, you can see him.

Day 24 (a future history)

Monday, February 12, 2018

Mrs. Madison still isn’t back at school. They said she’s having a sabatical. Or a cebatical. Something. I’d look it up to find out what it means if I could, but I can’t google it, and we don’t have a dictionary.

That seems weird to me, now, not having a dictionary, but I don’t think I’ve used one since, probably, 2^nd grade. I think that’s when we learned about alphabetizing and using a dictionary, but you don’t need a dictionary when you have the internet.

I want to talk to her and find out what really happened to her, but I don’t know where she lives. I tried asking in the office, but they wouldn’t tell me, just kept saying “it’s policy” blah blah blah. Which, fine, I understand that about not giving teachers’ addresses to students because they’d get egged all the time if everyone knew where they lived, but this isn’t like a normal circumstance!, and you’d think they’d make an exception. But, no! It’s policy blah blah blah.

Which leaves the internet… Oh, wait, it doesn’t! Fucking Trump and the internet. What I need is a dictionary for people and where they live, but we don’t even have a dictionary, so I’m sure we wouldn’t have one of those, either, even if they made them.

So we’re having subs in her class, a different one every day. Some old lady who used to be a teacher who just wanted us to sit quietly and nothing else. Some young college guy who was an IT major or something but doesn’t have anymore, right now, because, basically, there are no more computers. I haven’t touched my computer in over a week. What’s the point?

He was funny, though, and told a bunch of stories about his friends getting drunk that he would probably get in trouble for telling us if they knew he had. And I suppose he was cute, but ALL of the girls crowded around him at the end of class and it was SO stupid because he had to be, like, I don’t know, at least 22 or something, but Gretchen swears she got his phone number, but she wouldn’t show it to anyone because she didn’t want anyone else to use it. I bet he gave her his cell phone number, so a lot of good that will do her!

Today’s sub was a black guy who wanted to know what we’re studying, or what we WERE studying before Mrs. Madison “left,” because there was no lesson plan. We told him we’re studying poetry but it didn’t matter because the soldiers had taken all our English books.

He asked us what poetry we’d learned and no one could answer. Or no one wanted to. After all our books were taken, it was pretty clear no one wanted to talk about books. I certainly hadn’t told anyone I had a copy of Fahrenheit 451. I even kept it hidden when I wasn’t reading it. Again. Because it’s the only book I have, and I don’t have a lot else to do, so I guess I’m kind of trying to memorize it, just like in the book. Which is kind of funny, I think. And ironic. I think. I think the word is ironic.

I flipped through my English notebook, but the only things I had written down were

Walt Whitman

Emerson

Thorough

I still think Thorough is a weird name for someone to have.

I was thinking about saying something when Abi said, “Walt Whitman.” Then, without really stopping to think, I said, “Yeah, something about leaves and grass.”

And he started laughing! He started laughing and I could feel my cheeks turn red, and everyone else started laughing, too, but I know they were just laughing because he was laughing, not because they knew what was funny. It made me mad which made my cheeks burn more.

But the sub knew, too, and started asking some of them why they were laughing and none of them could answer, which made more people laugh, even me, and it was okay after that.

Then he explained that it was Leaves of Grass and that he would bring his copy from home if he gets to come back.

He talked about poetry for a little while after that and quoted some poems to us that he had memorized, which I thought was cool and was like Fahrenheit 451 and the way I was starting to remember that back, but he did it just because he wanted to or liked to or something not because he didn’t have anything better to do. I never met anyone before who had memorized poems and books and stuff.

Then he told us that poetry isn’t about just poems, and we talked about music for a little bit, and he quoted some songs to us and told us to yell out the songs as soon as we knew what they were, which was funny because it was harder than it sounds like it would be and just because there was no music to go with the words.

At the end, he said poetry can also just be beautiful language, and he quoted some speech my Martin Luther King. I don’t really know who he is other than that he has a holiday and everyone jokes about it being milk day. Oh, and he was killed by someone. His speech was really good, though, but it was a little long. I wanted to write it down, but I got too far behind and gave up. I wish I could look it up, but I have no way to do that at home or anywhere, really. I do remember one part:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low.

The Leaf Dance (a sonnet for my wife)

The Leaf Dance

The brown leaves rustle in the wind,

slowly crawling along the trail,

beckoning us to follow them.

“Fall is in the air.” Chimneys send

off'rings of scents into the pale

Autumn sky as the light grows dim.

Your shins flash in the dusk as you

expose your calves, lifting your skirt

and dancing through the crunching leaves.

I take your hand and pull you to

me, stealing a kiss as you flirt

away into the falling eve.

I chase after, pulled in no small part

by the cords that bind our hearts.

copyright 2015

** ** **

I'm not going to offer much in the way of explanation for this. I will say only two things:
1. Fall is my wife's favorite season.
2. She loves, with a child's delight, to step on crispy, fallen leaves.

So this is for my wife.
Because I love her.

Parcivillian -- Part 4 (a local color post)

Technically, I know the above photo does not qualify as a successful photo, but I really like how it looks, so it's the one you're getting. Well, and the one below, too.

The photos are from a recent performance by Parcivillian and, whereas I would love to talk about that performance and talk about the rehearsal session I sat in on (which was fascinating!), I need to finish up the interview. The part I skipped over. See, being a writer, I felt compelled to ask the guys about, well, what kinds of things they read. In relation to that, I found it really cool that the name of their band comes from a book (see last week's post).

Me: The next question I'm going to ask is going to seem, possibly, weird or offtrack because it has nothing to do with music.

Elliot: How many pets do you have?

Me: No... [And that did make me laugh.] I'm a writer, and a lot of the people who follow my blog are writers, so, as a writer, do you read and what do you read?

Someone, at that point, said, "Oh, boy!" but I can'd tell who it was.

Me: Or have there been any influential books you have read? Even if it's like The Monster at the End of the Book.

Delek: John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite writer. I've read every book he's written.

Me: What's your favorite Steinbeck?

Delek: Actually, Cannery Row. Or, no... I always forget the name. The one about the pirate. That's my favorite one. [There followed a discussion where we (Delek, Elliot, and I) tried to figure out the book, but none of us could come up with which one he meant. I'm still not sure, because I haven't read whichever one it is.] Bukowski, too. I love Bukowski. [I redirected back to Steinbeck through some questions about Steinbeck's King Arthur stuff, so the next comments are about Steinbeck.] Mainly the things about California. And people. How he writes about people. His knowledge of what makes people human is probably what attracts me to his writing.... He's probably my all time favorite writer, but I've read countless books, and I'm still reading countless books. Some stuff in science, some in history. I just read this incredible biography about Benjamin Franklin. It's like music; I read a lot of stuff. I used to read a lot of fantasy.

Me: I went through high school reading fantasy.

Delek: Do you know David Eddings?

Me: Oh, yeah! The Belgariad, after The Lord of the Rings, I think is the best fantasy series ever written.

Elliot: I read that, too.

Delek: I liked that. I liked that actually better than The Lord of the Rings. I liked his writing a lot.
[There was some more discussion about Eddings (during which I do entirely too much of the talking), after which Delek turned to Stav and said, "What do you read?"]

Stav: That's the weird thing; I actually don't read that much. And it's weird because I love writing lyrics to songs but, as far as books and novels, I just don't do it.

Me: They're completely different beasts.

Stav: Yeah, that's right. I did read the Harry Potter books when I was a kid, of course. Those, I loved. They were great. Read books for school. But I'm a very slow reader so, as far as school goes, I kind of struggled through the books, so that's kind of where I'm at. But I love poetry, even though I don't know many huge poets. In school, I loved analyzing and studying the poems. As far as literature, I love poetry, and that's what I try to do when I write songs.

Me: As a song writer, I'd be surprised if you didn't have some kind of attachment to poetry.
[There was a bit more general talk of poetry before we moved on to Elliot.]

Elliot: My all time favorite book is The Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck.

Me: I haven't read that one.

Delek: That one's amazing.

Elliot: It is. It's the most incredible perspective I've ever seen on the human being. [There's some discussion about Pastures and what it's about.]

Me: Y'all are going to make me have to pick back up on Steinbeck after this.

Elliot: Lately, I've gotten into more novels. Actually, this is a funny story [points at Delek]; he taught me how to read.

Me: Yeah? That's cool!

Elliot: He gave me the first Harry Potter book and worked through about the first chapter with me, I think, and said, "You're on your own." Then I read the whole thing.

Delek: That is a funny story.

Elliot: Yeah... I got into David Eddings. I got into Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett...

Delek: Yeah!

Me: Good Omens.

Elliot: Exactly. [There followed a back and forth discussion of Gaiman and Pratchett.] Somewhere after eighth grade, I got really into Shakespeare, including the poetry. I love that stuff. [Then, there was a discussion of Hamlet.]

Interestingly enough, this all moved into a discussion of the book Parzival, which is the book they took they name from (which you know if you read last week's post (link above)), but they didn't mention the connection at that point. They (Elliot and Delek) just went on and on about how good it is. Stav will have to read it this year, so he hasn't had that experience of it, yet.

Elliot: Of course, I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Actually, I like The Hobbit better. I've read [it] three times.

There was some other discussion about The Hobbit during which I talked way too much, and that's where we left the discussion of reading and went back to music. It was great for me to talk to them about what they've read and what's influenced them, and, really, I may have to pick Steinbeck up again. It's actually something I've been meaning to do anyway, so...

And that's a look inside an up and coming band. I hope great things for these guys. They're music is great, and they were a pleasure to meet and hang out with. I'm sure you'll hear a bit more about them from me in the future. They have a concert coming up, so it's not too unlikely that there will be a post about that. Until, then, check out "Lonely Road."

On Poetry (part 3)

Many of you may be wondering, at this point, why I'm bothering to talk about poetry at all; after all, as I already pointed out, "Only poets read poetry." What does it have to do with everyone else? Well... honestly? Nothing.

And everything.

Just for the aesthetics, I think everyone who is a reader, which should be everyone even though it's not, should learn how to read poetry. Not the new stuff, either. I mean really learn to read poetry. I'm fairly convinced that learning to read poetry broadens our minds to the beauty of language, saying things elegantly, and allows us expand upon the types of things that we read. I'm sorry, but I don't care if you read 500 books last year if 498 of them were romance or light fantasy. That's the equivalent of only eating candy. Okay, I'm not really sorry. None of which  is to say that you need to always be reading poetry; I don't spend a lot of time with poetry anymore, but I used to, which is part of why I don't spend so much time with it, now, because, as I've said numerous times, I'm not much on re-reading.

There are also some great stories that ought to be experienced in the language and form they were written in as much as possible. Thinks like Beowulf and Gilgamesh. Heck, I've even read Le Morte d'Arthur, and, my gosh, there is so much more there than in any modern interpretations of Malory. Not that I'm suggesting that everyone run out and buy a copy of Malory, because, man, that was a tough read, and it took me a year to get through it. The point is that we miss so much by just discounting older, poetic works.

But writers... well, I don't really understand why any writer would discount poetry, especially classical poetry, as something not worthwhile to, at least, read. To be a good writer, a writer must write, but a writer must also read, and the more broadly the writer readers, the better his writing grows. Poetry is certainly not something that should be discounted just because it's poetry.

Of course, I think authors should also write poetry. And I don't mean author's should write prose in verse form and call it free verse, either. Authors can only benefit from learning the structure and flow of poetry and practice at writing it. It's like a football player taking ballet, and I don't think you'll find any that have done that who will tell you that it was a waste of time. Personally, I think the sonnet works best, because it has such a rigid structure. If you can write a sonnet, you can write anything.

And, no, I'm not much of a poet. I tried for a good long time at it though. Back when I was 15 or so, I had it stuck in my head that you couldn't be a "real" writer unless you wrote poetry. That was the dividing line between being a "writer" and being a "real writer." But, then, teenagers always have strange ideas. I wrote a lot of poetry back then. All of it bad. I probably still have it packed away somewhere, but I don't think I'd want to read about 99% of it. I focused on poetry early on in college, too, until one of my professors famously told me, "This is great prose, but it's lousy poetry," a statement that really opened my eyes to everything that I've been talking about in these posts about how poetry is not (and can not be) just prose written in verse form.

So, yeah, from time to time, I play with poetry. I have sonnets. And, at some point, I'll share some of them. I have some project notes for some more substantial pieces of poetry, too, but poetry requires a lot of time and effort on my part, that whole what is stressed and what is not is really difficult for me, always has been, so I end up pushing those projects down the list in favor of things I can finish more quickly. But, so as not to leave you empty-handed and to prove that, yes, I stand by what I'm saying here, I'll give you a sample of something I wrote a few years ago. Right before I started House, I think. Or, maybe, right after I started it. A few years ago, at any rate. No explanations this time, because it's always better to see how the reader interprets these things rather than just spelling it out, but I might be willing to answer some questions, depending upon what they are, if anyone has any.

The Dissolution of Love

The snow fell hard and heavy the day we

met, covering over that old empty

field. Filling in the holes, hiding the roots

and broken glass from our crunching boots.

The snow grew deep, blanketing all in white

and hiding all that was wrong from our sight.

In this pristine place, we would meet and play

in the field of snow until the day

was gone. And the days, they passed, and the snow

continued to fall and deepen and grow.

Until one day, we did decide to make

a snowman and, on this, put all at stake.

So we set to work upon the base

piling up the snow with all due haste.

Upon this base we placed the body that

Together we rolled into being, patting

the snow down hard and firm. Then the head

settled at last upon the top and wed

to the body below. Now complete but

for the details. Two rocks for eyes we put

upon the face and then for the nose and

mouth we added more. Our gloves for the hands,

we each gave one, joining our naked palms

to keep them warm. Our hearts, as one, grew calm

as we placed our last tokens: my hat, your

scarf. In our knowledge that all was secure,

we walked away to other things, other

pursuits, sure that our snowman would be safe.

Hand-in-hand, enjoying one another,

we left him alone like a long lost waif.

Forgotten, he stayed as we went on our

way, until we reached a time when joined hands

became a burden. So in that hour

we returned to where our lonely man stands

and retrieved our gloves so that we could act

independently. One eye, we found, had

fallen loose. Recognizing, then, the fact

that left alone he would not last, in gladness

we made a vow to watch over him

together. But quickly tiresome that chore

grew and, so, we forsook that very whim

and the promise that would have held us more

tightly bound together. Alone we left

him, once again, to brave the coming storm.

The rains and winds came as he stood bereft

of care and then the sun to rob his form.

The sun, more frequently, would show its eye,

driving back the snow and breaking the frost

that held the little field in grip. The sky,

cleared to blue, loosed its wind and winter lost

its battle. With no snow left to hold us,

we parted ways without a backward glance

for our poor creation. The wind’s last gust

lost my hat. Your scarf left, muddied, to dance

in the wind, caught in the last patch of snow --

the dirty heap of snow left behind from

our joint endeavor. But how could we know

that this would be all that that would become?

copyright 2013 Andrew Leon

On Poetry (part 2)

I mentioned last time that people don't read poetry anymore, which is a true thing. Not that no one reads poetry, but, if you're not being made to do it for school or something, there's not a very strong likelihood that you're ever going to bother with poetry again. Less than 5% of you, in fact (and, maybe, by "you," I don't mean the "you" of you reading this blog, because that you reads more than other people, but the "you" of people out there isn't reading poetry, or reading much at all, for that matter). But... why? Why don't people read poetry anymore? It used to be that everyone read poetry. [And if, by chance, you want to read an exceptional bit of poetry, a piece (and a post) inspired by part 1 of this series (link above), just click here. Briane actually does a great job explaining his thoughts on why poetry requires structure, and he does it much more eloquently than I did. And he did it with a poem that he wrote in, basically, an afternoon, and that just blows me away, because poetry, writing it, is not my strong suit.]

I think the biggest reason people no longer read poetry is that people don't know how to read it. Any of it. And I think that the rise of free verse in the 20th century has played a big part in that. It has, in effect, untaught us on how to read poetry. Free verse tends to be fragmentary in that each line contains a complete thought, and you read it line by line. Now, let me be clear, this is not all free verse, and it certainly isn't the way free verse was when it was first becoming a "thing," back when actual poets were writing it (yeah, that sounds derisive of everyone else, but when you look at the free verse of, say, Walt Whitman, and, then, look at the free verse of the guy down  the street, well, I'm sure you understand what I mean (but, then, maybe Whitman's poetry is a little too structured to really be free verse? At least, free verse as it's become)). I'll just throw in at this point that it's not free verse as it was that I don't like but free verse as it is. [Just like it's not "modern art" as it was when Picasso was doing it that I don't like, but modern art as it is now (as Elizabeth Twist said, "after a while it's just so many paint splatters on canvas.").]

Let me just illustrate the point with a story:

Way back when I was junior in high school, I was one day standing around outside of the cafeteria (which are now, inexplicably, called lunch rooms) talking to my English teacher. No, not about anything in particular. Yeah, I was that kid that liked to hang out and talk to my teachers when they weren't busy. Which wasn't often, so we took those opportunities whenever they were available. [At my school, this wasn't actually an uncommon behavior.] So we were chatting, and another guy walked up with his English text in his hand which meant there was a question coming. We were doing some Shakespeare play or other at the time, and the guy, whom I will call Calvin, said, "I don't understand any of this, can you explain it to me?"

Now, I just want to say that not understanding Shakespeare was a pretty common occurrence, even at my school, but I'd never really understood why people struggled with it so. My teacher, though, knew what the problem was, and he said, "Read to me the part you don't understand."
[I'm choosing a piece from Macbeth for this example 1. because it doesn't really matter what I use as an example (it's still valid) 2. because, by the time I'd graduated from high school, I'd already had to read Macbeth three or four times, so there is every likelihood that this was the play in question.]

Calvin read:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me," [And, yes, I can't help reading that line without thinking of John Wayne.]
No problem without one, right? But he went on after a pause,
"The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee."
We're mostly okay, still, at this point, and the next one was okay, too.
"I have thee not, and yet I see thee still."
However, then, we get to
"Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible"
You have to understand, here, that, with each line, he's pausing and starting a new "sentence" every time he started reading a new line, so, as he went through
"To feeling as to sight? or art thou but"
and
"A dagger of the mind, a false creation,"
and
"Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"
to
"I see thee yet, in form as palpable"
and
"As this which now I draw."
His face grew more and more confused the farther along he went, because, face it, "Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" doesn't make much sense as a complete thought.

And I, because I was shocked at his reading, said, before I realized what I was doing, "You're reading it all wrong!" Calvin gave me a look that communicated something along the lines of "You're saying I can't read?" and said something like, "If I'm reading it, how can I be reading it wrong?"

My English teacher took the book from his hands and handed it to me and said, "What do you mean by that?"

"You have to follow the punctuation," I said, "not read it line by line."

"Go ahead and read it," my teacher said.

So I read:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw."

As I read, Calvin got a minor look of amazement on his face as he suddenly understood the meaning of the passage. My teacher took the book from my hands and said as he handed it back to Calvin, "You were reading it wrong."

Which is nothing against Calvin, because, like I said, evidently, this was a pretty common issue, and it was still an issue when I was in college majoring in English even amongst other English majors. And it continues to be a problem, a steadily increasing problem, as far as I can tell. Not just with Shakespeare but with any poetry at all. We've, culturally speaking, forgotten how to read poetry, and it keeps people from understanding it, so they can't derive any enjoyment from it.

But, wait! That's not exactly correct, because you can read almost all free verse poetry, especially stuff from the past half century or so, in this precise line by line manner. The problem, then, is that most free verse poetry just isn't that good because it's written by people that have no actual ability to write structured poetry, so it ends up being thought fragments on paper. Or, at best, pretty prose written in verse form. In the end, though, the option for the "common man" is to read poetry they don't understand or read poetry that just, on the whole, isn't any good. Stuck between the veritable rock and hard place, most people just don't read it at all.

The whole thing is kind of sad. Makes me sad. There's a lot of great poetry out there. Personally, I'm partial to Wordsworth, Shelley, the romantics in general, actually, Burns, Frost, even Tolkien (because he wrote more than a bit of poetry, himself). Well, I could go on, but that's not really the point. The point is that if more people knew how to read poetry, maybe more people would write poetry. Real poetry. Not just emotional vomit on a piece of paper. Or, maybe, if more people took the time to learn how to write actual, structured poetry, more people would read it.

Or, maybe, we should all just be satisfied with the poetry that pop music offers us? But I don't think so...

On Poetry (part 1)

What is poetry?

You'd think that question would have an easy answer. Really, you would. I bet you even think you know what that answer is. Probably, you'd be wrong. Believe it or not, what, exactly, poetry is is a hotly (in some circles) debated subject (most people really don't care). And the definitions extend from the end of "anything created is poetry" to "creative acts employing language" to the other, more restrictive, end of "language using rhythm and rhyme." This disagreement is not new. It's so old, in fact, that Aristotle tackled this whole debate in his book Poetics around 2500 years ago. Yeah, we haven't made much progress.

What we do know is that poetry began in song. Well, we almost know that. We're fairly confident of it, at any rate. I find that somewhat fitting considering that poetry has ended in song (but more on that in a moment). It's likely that poetry went beyond song and into oral story telling as the rhythm of it assisted in remembering the tales.

Some of the oldest poetry we have, and the oldest epic poetry, is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Our oldest (partial) copies are nearly 4000 years old.

None of which gets us any closer to the answer to "what is poetry?"

And that's not a question I'm even going to attempt to give a definitive answer to, because what poetry is has been and meant different things to different cultures all throughout history. So much so that I doubt there is even a definitive answer anymore (or ever (see Aristotle)), which is why people are still arguing over it. For our purposes, though, I think there are two significant points, maybe three:

1. Rhythm. The root of poetry has always been rhythm. It came from songs, remember? And it's the rhythm, the cadence, that made it useful for early man and lead to its evolution.

2. Prose split off from poetry. Literary prose has only existed for a few hundred years, almost no time at all in comparison to the length of time poetry has existed. There are specific reasons for the evolution of prose from poetry, but one of the biggest was its lack of structure. The lack of structure made it easier to translate. [There's a lot more to this, but that's all that's important for this discussion.]

3. Which brings us to structure, which is really the issue in all of this.

I'm just gonna say it and get it out of the way: on the whole, I dislike "modern poetry." I dislike it as not being poetry at all, because so much of "modern poetry" has no structure. It's prose written in verse form. Taking a piece of prose and writing it as if it's poetry does not make it poetry. I don't care how good the prose is. Most of our actual poetry that's being written today is found in pop music. Poetry has ended in song. See? That's where it finds its structure. Beyond that, poetry is mostly dead. As has been said, "Only poets read poetry."

And that's almost exactly true, too. The statistic for Americans that read poetry (and Americans are far more likely to read poetry than anyone else in the world) has fallen below 5% as of a couple of years ago. Even online! Seriously, when stumbling across a poem online, basically, having it shoved in your face, less than 5% of people will bother to read it even with it right there in front of them.
Unless it's lyrics to a song they like, then they might... but, then, we don't consider that reading poetry.

And why is it that people no longer read poetry? I'm going to say that it's because people no longer know how to write poetry. And I'm gonna blame that on free verse. Here's where we talk about Picasso again. Free verse did to poetry what Picasso did to painting. It made anyone think they could do it. Free verse arose from the desire for something new, just like cubism and surrealism for Picasso. Other people looked at those paintings and thought "I can do that," only they couldn't. Not really. Picasso could do it because he was trained. And free verse suffers from the same fate; all people think they can be poets just be writing in verse form.

And it's just not true.

John Livingston Lowes said in 1916, "Free verse may be written as very beautiful prose; prose may be written as very beautiful free verse. Which is which?"
That's kind of where I come down on it, and where you can see that I don't reach all the way to the end of that spectrum I mentioned where anything is poetry or, even, anything using language is poetry.

Robert Frost said that free verse is like "playing tennis without a net."

And T. S. Eliot said, "No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."

So here's the thing:
Prose split off from poetry so that we can have writing without structure. Isn't, then, free verse the same thing? Poetry without structure? Yeah, it is, and we call that prose.

That's as close to a definition of what poetry is that I'm going to get: It's structured writing. It has a rhythm of some sort. It has some form it has to follow. Some of it rhymes. Free verse, like prose, has none of these things. The beauty of poetry, though, is found in its structure. Like a great architectural achievement.

The Struggle for Confidence (an IWSG post)

This post is part of Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group blogfest thing. Click the link for more information.

High school is a time for two kinds of people: those with superiority complexes (the jocks and cheerleaders) and those with inferiority complexes (pretty much everyone else). There's not a lot of middle ground there. Go watch pretty much any of the 80s high school movies by John Hughes to get a good look at what it's like. At least, what it was like in  the 80s. Or Better Off Dead (which is not by Hughes but still gives a good look at the chasm between the superior and the inferior).

However, the general consensus in psychology is that the superiority complex is just an act. Basically, at the root of both inferiority and superiority complexes, we find vast insecurities. Questions of worth. Belief in inadequacies. It's a hard thing to deal with. And, really, as much as we'd like to think we do, writers do not corner the market on any of those things.

Dealing with one's insecurities is a tremendous task, and it's a task that we are more and more sabotaging in this current day and age. That, also, is not just something that writers do, but I think it can be clearly seen amongst the blogging community of writers.

But let's back up a moment. What is the answer to feelings of insecurity? What do you do to make those pesky things go away?

Confidence.

Yeah, that's easier said than done, right?

I mean, what is confidence? I'm gonna keep it simple, so we'll just say that (self)confidence is a belief in one's own abilities.

Insecurity undermines confidence, and the thing that makes insecurity so common these days is the lack of reliable feedback from, well, everywhere. We live in a positive feedback society, and it makes it impossible to know if you're really doing well or not. [All of this ties into what I said here and all of the related stuff I've been saying since then. And before then.] If everyone is busy saying "you're doing great!", how do you know if you really are?

There are two responses:
1. the traditional: I must really suck, and no one wants to hurt my feelings.
2. the new-fangled: I'm awesome! (if you read yesterday's post, you'll have heard that this response is on the rise in the good ole USofA, right now (as in, it's becoming an issue in the American workforce)).
Both of these come out of an inability to judge our own performance because of a lack of reliable information due to faulty feedback.

You know, I get it. It feels so much better to surround yourself with people that say "oh, you're so great! you're so awesome! I love it and I love you!" It makes you feel better, and it makes them feel better, too, because they don't have to deal with any fallout from saying something negative. But, really, it's just like a diet of constant sugar. Sure, it tastes good, but, ultimately, it's gonna kill you. And, on the way to killing you, it will make everything else taste just godawful bad (see this post for more on how sugar ruins taste (or, actually, how much taste you will discover without sugar)). You will never develop confidence, actual confidence, surrounded by people who only say how great you are.

I mean, face it, how many people do you know that are actually made of AWESOME? Now, how many people do you know that think they are? Or, at least, espouse to that belief.

The thing is, confidence comes from within. It comes from knowing, I mean actually knowing, that you're good at something. Knowing it objectively, not feeling like you're good at it. All that feeling like you're good at something doesn't mean a thing if you actually suck. The problem is coming to an objective knowledge, and you can never come to an objective knowledge of something if you surround yourself with people who only ever tell you good things about it.

So I'm hearing some of you out there right about now protesting that there are no objective measures in something so subjective as writing, but that's where you'd be wrong, because there are objective measures (which I discussed, in part, here), and that's why we get books that a vast majority of people can agree are good and some that people will agree are bad. Sure, it's hard to pinpoint the specific things within a work of art that make it objectively better than some other work of art (do any kind of research on the popularity of Star Wars to see this), but that doesn't mean that those objective things don't exist. When a vast majority of people can agree that something is better than everything else, you can bet there is something objective behind it even if you can't measure what that objective thing is.

We all want to feel confident. We all want to have some ability to judge ourselves. Unfortunately, this starts with having people around us that are willing to tell us where and how we are screwing up. After that, it comes from repeated reliable feedback. Sometimes, as with an athlete, this comes from actual objective, indisputable data: "you ran this race in x seconds, the stop watch says so." Sometimes, this comes from people that are skilled in a particular area and can just tell you where you're falling short: "you're not bending your knees enough." Whatever the source, we need it. We need that thing that is willing to be honest with us about how we are doing if we want to get better.

I actually think that some of us don't want to get better. It's too hard. We'd rather just have people around us telling us how great we're doing and keep right on being sub-par for, well, forever as long as we can keep people around us to tell us we're great and awesome. I guess what you have to decide is whether you do want to get better, and, if you do, find those people that will help you to get there.

And just to give you some personal insight (that I don't think I've previously shared (although I could be wrong)):

For me, all of this started back in college. Well, really, in high school. Or before that. Anyway... I've known, on some level, that I was a good writer since elementary school. It was in high school that I figured that writing would always be a part of my life. It was in college that I decided, somewhat pretentiously, that real writers are poets. I spent my personal writing time (meaning non-assignment related) working on said poetry. I was in this writing group (not just any writing group, but a school group that you couldn't join without first... well, let's just say it was prestigious to be accepted into the group), and I was really pumping out the poetry for it, because, as I said, real writers are poets. The writing group was presided over by the English faculty, so it wasn't just a bunch of students patting each other on the back. We had people with experience in there. Anyway, one day I had this piece that I was particularly proud of that I'd read to an adequate response, meaning what usually happens with poetry, the ones that didn't "get" it said it was good, because they didn't want to be seen as not "getting" it, and the ones that did get it said it was pretty good. Well, except for one professor (the one that all the students feared and dreaded having, but who was the best English prof around). He didn't say anything specific during the meeting, but he did ask me a lot of pressing questions about the piece, questions about why I'd done particular things in my writing, etc, and it wasn't very comfortable, because, at 20, I didn't always have good answers for those things. After the meeting, he pulled me aside and said something to me that caused me to re-evaluate everything about my writing. He said, "This is great prose, but it's horrible poetry." I was too shocked to even be mad or upset about it. I'd never had anyone say anything like that to me before. He went on to tell me that that was often his response to my poetry, that it would be so great if it wasn't poetry. He suggested that I go back and re-write it as prose.

See, the thing is, he was right. I did go back to my room and read that piece again. And again. And again. Later, I wrote it out in paragraph form and read it again. I tweaked bits and parts and filled it out to make the language work, and it was great. When I took it back to the next meeting as a paragraph of writing and read it that way, no one had issues with understanding it, and everyone loved it. It was because he was honest with me, though. What's more, he allowed me to look at my own work from a more objective viewpoint because he had been honest with me about it. As much as I'd like to be, I am not gifted in poetry. I still work with it sometimes and, occasionally, come up with some things that are decent, but it's not my strength. I only work with it as a writing exercise that makes all of my writing stronger.

The point, though, is that we all need someone who can speak to us like that. Someone that will say, without fear, "this is horrible." Someone that we trust to be saying that out of a desire to help rather than put us down or just to make us feel bad. Yeah, that person can be tough to find, but we all need at least one of those.

The path to confidence requires courage. The courage to be honest and accept honest feedback. I hope you all find the strength to walk that path.

No help or bad help?

Have you ever been in one of those situations where you need help with something, you actually know what you need help with, yet people insist on giving you some other sort of help because they think they know what you need better than you do? Do you hate that? I hate that. I mean, I really, really hate that.

Let me give you an example:

A couple of years ago, my mother-in-law needed help with some yard work. It really wasn't a big thing she needed help with, but my mother-in-law was (she died last fall of pancreatic cancer) very independent. Preferred to do everything herself. She had enough tools in her garage to make men salivate. A drill press. A table saw. She built things. She gardened. She never went by "Mom" or "Grandma" or anything like that, because she had a name, and that's what she went by. Yes, she kept her maiden name when she got married. The fact that she asked for help at all was pretty significant.

The problem, though, was that the whole thing got turned into this big, yard work party. In and of itself, that would have been fine, but the event got out of hand. People were doing things that my mother-in-law didn't want or need help with. Being a very gracious host, though, she didn't say anything and allowed things to just progress. Until it became apparent that the thing she actually wanted help with was not going to be addressed at all.

A couple of hours into all of this, she approached me and asked me if I would help her with something. Sure. I wasn't enthused about whatever it was I was doing, anyway. Of course, I'm never really enthused about yard work, so doing one thing was as good as another. There was a large branch in her backyard, a fair sized portion of the tree it fell from, that was too big to drag off for disposal. That's the thing, the one thing, she needed help with. She needed it chopped up into small enough pieces to go into the yard waste disposal. And, yet, there it sat in the backyard receiving no attention at all. I got an axe and started chopping away at it while she cleared the smaller branches that I chopped off.

And she talked to me about being frustrated by everything that was going on. She didn't want to offend anyone, but this branch was the only thing she had wanted help with. She hadn't wanted to need help with that, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to do it by herself. All of the other "help" was actually depriving her of several weeks worth of gardening that she found enjoyable.

At the end of the day, there was talk from a few people about making yard work at my mother-in-law's a monthly event. People were kind of excited about it. They'd thought they'd really helped, and they felt good about it. Fortunately, in this instance, people, being what they are, failed to follow through with that threat, and her gardening space wasn't invaded again.

When I was a kid, my mom often gave me "help" that I didn't want. It was very traumatic. Like this one time when she cut up this Star Wars poster that I had colored so she could put it in a frame because "I would like it better that way." I didn't like it better that way. I liked it the way it was, and she took scissors to it. No, I never did get over that.
And then there was my very first poetry assignment from school. I was in 4th grade. We had to write a poem that had something to do with food for some contest. We were allowed to have help. I didn't write that poem. I stood next to my mother protesting as she wrote this two page poem, but she wouldn't listen to me telling her that I didn't want her to do it for me. Did you get the part where I was in 4th grade and my mom wrote a two page long poem? She instructed me to tell the teacher that I wrote it. I hadn't learned to say "no" to my mom, yet, so, when the teacher looked at what I'd turned in and asked me if I wrote it (and, yes, she asked me in front of the whole class), I said "yes." I felt horrible about it, but I didn't know what else to do.

I could go on...

But I won't, because I'm sure everyone has their own experiences with this. Maybe it wasn't your mother, though. Or, maybe, it was.

I'm sure part of the problem is that parents tend to train their children in the understanding that "help" actually means "do it for you."
"Here, let me help you with that," as the parent takes whatever it is that the child is doing and does it for said child. So children learn that asking for "help" is equivalent to asking to not to have to do it.

Of course, when you're dealing with children, actually helping them takes oh so much longer than just taking it and doing it yourself, so there's a great temptation there.

I think, though, that we carry that expectation on into our adult lives. Both sides of the coin. We still mean, "will you do this for me?" when we ask for help. And, when people ask us for help, we expect that they mean that very same thing.

I'm wondering if writing makes me more sensitive to this issue than other people, though. Well, I'm already sensitive to it in the same kind of way as my mother-in-law with her yard work. If I'm asking you for help, I'm not asking you to do it for me. I mean, if I want something done for me, like unloading the dishwasher, I'll just have one of my kids do it. That's what they're for, right? But only unloading, never loading, because there is that other kind of help where you have to go back and re-do the whole job and it takes longer than it would have to begin with. Kids are especially good at that kind of help. Which isn't to say that you shouldn't let the kids help sometime, just make sure you have time to re-do the job if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to.

With writing, the thing that I've found most difficult to get "help" with is feedback. Even when I'm specific. "Read this and tell me what you think of it" and a lot of "do nots." Like "do not correct spelling." "Do not correct grammar." "Do not tell me how you would write it differently." Invariably, I get all of those things back. Sometimes with correctly spelled words "corrected" incorrectly. These things don't help me. If I'm asking for feedback, I'm not asking for an editor. That's a completely different task. What I want to know is story and flow. How it makes you feel. Did you get bored? Do you want to know what's coming up? Did it make you care? The details (spelling, grammar, all of that) will get worked out, but I don't care about those at all if the story isn't working.

Is it better to have bad help or no help? Sometimes, it's really hard to know. I hate having to re-do something because of bad help (like when I had to re-type a paper that someone "helped" me with, but there were so many errors in it that the teacher handed it back to me and said to re-type it), but are there times when the bad help is better than no help?