My audience two obedient teddy bears a technicolor cow and an obsidian frog from the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán
Outside my window the listening trees clap their leaves beating the wind with their branches
Flowers lend deaf ears for they are dead dried and broken by this deathly drought
In the next room TV ads blare in an effort to silence my voice
Absence and presence of water the garden dry fall foliage crisp and complaining useless tears flowing down my cheeks
Audience
So important, the audience. But is what the poet writes what the audience hears? With an audience like mine, who knows? What does a teddy bear know about tears, drought, or doubt? Does a multi-colored cow suffer, like I do, when he hears the adverts on the television set? What does an obsidian frog, from the Temple of the Moon know about life in Island View? Carved in a desert, surrounded by volcanoes, some dormant, some liable to break into activity, does he understand the morse code words tapped out by the branches of trees?
How do we understand the pathetic fallacy in terms of the inanimate stuffed animals that sit upon my table? I talk to my teddy, the one that sleeps beside me in my bed upstairs. I talk to him, but he never replies. Opposite me, at my desk, sits Hairy Fred, my favorite teddy bear. He used to be an overcoat, until his creator bought the coat, cut it into fifty pieces and grew fifty teddies from the wreckage.
I guess he should know more about humans than most teddy bears, having wrapped them and kept them warm in a previous life. Alas, he too is silent. As in reality are the trees, the leaves, and the flowers. Silent, in the human sense, but full of a different sort of life that overflows with another set of languages, that creative people can hear, but seldom speak.
A weathered canister releases galaxies, gears, symbols, and handwritten notes into a star-filled universe.
Original Question –
Roger I have a question for you. Recently I purchased a book by Forrester- The African Queen. I enjoyed the movie years ago and thought I would like to read the story. The main actors were great. The book highlighted that it showed what it was like being a female during the war, (1) which when I look back on now is one of its main points.
My question or thought on this book is tied around the library system. When I lived in Fredericton I wanted to give a bunch of books to the library, their first question to me was, “How old are the books? I told her and she said anything over five years in not being accepted. (2)
I wondered about this and the fact that many books in school are being removed, (3) how can we tell how much we have progressed? (4)
I don’t like predjudice but it seems we are throwing out too much. (5) Any thoughts on this. I don’t mind some of the history being trashed (6) because for Canada the consentation is for Quebec and Ontario.
Roger’s Response
(1) It’s also about the role of the nun in society. How do ‘holy women’ function in a male society? It sets the questions but doesn’t really give the answers. It’s a long time since I saw the film. I don’t think I ever read the book – the themes might well change in print. They are present (some of them) in The Handmaid’s Tale.
(2) The library system seems to have rules and an etiquette all its own. When I donated books to the library, they accepted some for their collections, but set others up for sale on the book tables by the door. My guess is that certain books are ‘best sellers’ and will be read, others are ‘dust gatherers’ and won’t be. They want the former, not the latter. They also have specialized collections. If the books fit the specialized collections, great. If they don’t, then they hit the unwanted category and are moved on. This is particularly true of the UNB Library System.
(3) This is an entirely different question, and one with very deep roots. It deals, in part, with the question of control – quis custodiet ipsos custodies – who shall guard the guards, who shall program the programmers? By controlling what people read, you control their thoughts. One of the worst signs of this was the book burnings of the Spanish Inquisition (16th – 17th centuries). The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. (And the Arabs / Moors, in 1609). Prior to that, they were ‘processed’ by the Inquisition. The original Inquisition was Papal, and was aimed at instructing the priesthood in Rome. It was corrupted in Spain by the Spanish Inquisition, a sort of secret police, which worked rather like the Gestapo in WWII. One of their jobs was to ensure that people who had converted, stayed converted and didn’t revert to their old religion, even in secret. Another was to ensure that reading material, religious material, and cultural material, particularly after 1527 (Martin Luther and his 97 theses) when the Reformation started, were all in line with the accepted thoughts of the time. All books were sent to the Censor who vetted them and either approved them or asked for changes, if he (they were all men) saw the slightest sign of dissent or heresy. Don Quixote, Book One, Chapter Six (DQ,I,6), deals with the book burnings of DQ’s personal library. In certain of the States (down south) books are already being banned. One that touches us closely is the banning of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
(4) “There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1635)
Descartes expresses this much better than I can. It is one of the major dangers of the age in which we live. How do we distinguish between reality and alternate realities? Which reality is the real reality? What is or isn’t fake news? How do we tell? Who do we believe, and why?
(5) Part of the problem is that ‘certain people’ – who don’t believe in science and who exploit people’s ignorance to their own advantage – are willing to destroy the foundations of our knowledge. Burn everything down. And start again. And the new starting point is to impose what they believe upon everybody around them. This is a huge and crucial question that threatens us, as individuals. It also threatens the foundations of our knowledge, as well as the very world in which we live – climate change vs denial of climate change – profits over people. Once one starts looking at the AI systems with their immense persuasive powers and their seemingly uncontrollable spread of Mis-information and Dis-information, then we start to realize how serious the problem is.
(6) Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it – Santana (I think). However, we must, in certain circumstances, adjust our current beliefs to current realities. Immigration is a major issue – as is how we deal with people, like me, of different cultures and beliefs? Not everything written in the past suits our current world view. I have been looking at old Westerns – “The only good injun is a dead one” (John Wayne). Really? I know some wonderful people in our first nations communities and I have taught them and worked with them and been taught by them. “Shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” Really? I won’t comment further on that one… and there are so many others.
All of this comes down to the big question – freedom of information or the release of just enough information to persuade other people of what we believe and what we want them to believe. Power and Control. Knowledge is Power – Michael Foucault. Control that knowledge and you have power over the people. Noam Chomsky has written widely on this – and his books have been banned in the USA. Bertrand Russell too – The Meaning of Meaning, for example, and his establishing – along with A. J. Ayer – of the doctrine of logical positivism – the removal by means of mathematics of all the emotional content of words.
My friend, you have opened a can of worms.
Long may they wriggle.
Comment:
A series of questions that have recurred throughout the centuries. Well worth re-asking them and rethinking them. Times change and the answers often change with them. The image, incidentally, is AI generated, based on an examination of my written words.
I love the way the light rises in the morning, stands still and stately at noon, and fades as day slips into night.
Each day I watch the berries on the mountain ash changing color as daylight strides strong across the sky then slopes away to the west.
A long time ago, in Paris, I saw Monet’s paintings of the Cathedral at Rouen – morning, noon, afternoon.
Seurat, Monet, and Sisley taught me to appreciate the multiple ways in which light fragments and scatters into many colors the cloak of berries on my tree.
Comment:
Moo thought this would be a lovely painting to accompany today’s poem. “Red berries,” he said, “and faces amongst the glowing foliage to match the low fires of the westering sun.” Sometimes Moo has a trick with words that is even better than his tricks with paint. Not that he would ever claim to be a poet, as I would never claim to be a painter. That said, by chance or fate, we sometimes luck out.
I saw those Monet paintings at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris, 1963 I believe it was. A long time ago. I remember standing in a circular room surrounded by water lilies – and I stood there, amazed, floating like a cloud in a floral paradise. Funny how those moments can linger, stamped on the retina, and recalled in the strangest of ways. I like the works of all three painters, but I must admit that Seurat, the founder of chromo-luminarism, also known as pointillism, can drive you dotty until you work out how all those little berries join together to make a perfect image.
Sisley, to my mind, is more akin to Monet – except for the actual choice of subjects, but that might just be my misinterpretation of their combined talents. No matter – what I see when the light hits the berries on my tree is a combination of creative memories that gift me with an insight into the multiple meanings of the structure of the evening light – the magic hour – as my friend Tony Bear calls it – that brings joy and delight to my garden each sunny evening, as it fades into night.
We need to see each person as an individual needing exclusive care, a unique style.
We must let them know that they are not lost and alone, that they will be approached individually, each and every one.
Treated equally, yes, but each in his or her particular case and cultural situation.
A dream? Perhaps. But the alternative is a nightmare.
Comment:
An interesting chat over the dinner table – de sobremesa – led us to the meaning of equality and treating people equally. The kernel of the discussion – I said I believed in treating all people equally, Moo’s guest for the evening, his Plus One, said that treating people equally was no longer right. It was necessary to treat each person as an individual, with different needs, and we must therefore go beyond equal treatment to individual treatment. A word to the wise from the wiser.
Treat other people as you would have them treat you. The phrase goes back a long, long way to Socrates, Seneca, and maybe beyond. It ties in with the ideals of Buddhism and also of early Chinese philosophers.
It centers on the meaning of ‘equally’ and is a wonderful topic for discourse analysis. If by ‘equally’ we mean one size fits all, then we merely drop the grid down upon the targeted individual and tick the boxes where the pieces fit. However, if we agree that such ‘equal treatment’ is in fact potentially discriminatory, then we must break ‘equally’ down and give it the extended meaning of ‘with equal care and attention‘ according to their individual needs and cultural, social, medical, educational, or religious beliefs.
So, here am I, sitting over the dinner table, musing with my family and friends on the meaning of meaning and learning that old ideas can be renewed and that yes, even an old dog like me, eighty plus years old and still counting, can learn a new trick or two [or several], from those who are brought up in a different, younger, more diverse world, and whom are consequently more habituated to this world than I am. It’s a good lesson – and I hope, well-learned.
“And that,” said Moo, “is why I painted Who’s Who Zoo. Look carefully before you label who is who and where they stand in the Who’s Who Zoo.”
A hand holds a pen poised to write on a blank notepad next to a coffee cup AI generated
Frustration A Jackpine Sonnet
Hand hovering pen poised a black shadow hangs over the blank page threatening to erase any ink marks that may emerge
Eyes and mind blank no butterfly kiss delicate in its touch of nib to page a black cloud of nothingness damns creativity at its source
Who can prise the worm out from the chrysalis gift wings to the pupa change it from slug or snail into that glorious moment when sunshine’s beauty stutters into fluttering flight
Comment:
The top photo, AI generated, was based on the wording of the poem. The bottom one was a Moo choice from his pre-painting selections when he claimed to be a photographer. I like both, but for different reasons.
The first one emphasizes the fear of the blank page, the blank canvas, the blank mind, the overnight snowfall that is awaiting its first foot or hoof print, its first instant of inspiration, its first splash of paint, its first letter or word. And yet, according to many with whom I have spoken, artistic creativity is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. So, why hesitate? Get on with it. Make those first marks. Take that first step. And remember, even the longest journey begins with the first step.
The second photo expresses the duality of creativity. At the front end of the butterfly, its poised, fragile beauty. At the rear end, the fearsome face it assumes if approached in the wrong way from the wrong direction. Front end – the moment of creation. Rear end – the fear of that first step and the consequent sense of frustration.
So – at the moment of creating, we must consider several things – the fear of failure. But the only way to never fail is to never try. Each failure, however bad, is not a crime, it is a stepping stone on the way to ultimate success. The fear of the first step – this ties in with the fear of failure. Will we slip on the first damp stepping stone across the stream? How long will we permit our selves to search for a safer passage? Is there really a bridge around the bend, a bridge that will stop us from getting our toes wet? And what’s wrong with wet toes anyway?
When we dip our toes in the sea, we feel the cold of the water. When we take the plunge, dive in head first, we feel the full force of the ocean. And that ocean is the creative energy that yes, can sweep us away, can carry us up, can pull us down. Is that what we are afraid of, being overwhelmed by the creative powers within us? Of losing the meagre control we hold over our lives? I truly believe that in many cases it is just that element of being swept away by our own unleashed creativity that fills us fear. But if we never take that first step we’ll never know who or what we are, nor will we understand what we are afraid of, nor will we be able to conquer that fear and accept our creativity for what it is.
Our world is spinning on its edge, placed on the perimeter of space, going who knows where.
Specks of dust, we float around and contemplate night’s wonders wondering what might happen.
Out there, in the vastness that surrounds us, worlds without end will never know we existed.
Bleak and blank our names, our deeds, our status, the monuments sometimes raised in our praise.
And what of our thoughts, those sparks of electricity that link us mind to mind?
Is each of our actions determined by a dance performed by circling planets that shape us?
Are we nothing more than a code of virtually meaningless dots and dashes?
Are we then pinballs bouncing between a million trillion strings of flashing lights?
What star god plays trivial games of snakes and ladders with our lives and names?
Commentary:
Moo’s painting is called Grey Sky with Bear Claws. He thinks it is a great companion to the poem. Actually, I rather think he likes to have his paintings published online without the necessity of lifting a finger to help. Oh dear – he heard that and just lifted his middle finger in my direction. “I am helping,” he said. “I also lift paint brushes. Remember that, you philistine.”
Philistine? Me? Now why would I be a Philistine? And what is a Philistine anyway? That’s where AI comes in. Thank you, Don Ryan. I wouldn’t know about AI without you. “And you wouldn’t know about painting without me,’ says Moo. “So tell me what a Philistine is,” I said to him. “Go look it up,” he scowled, wagging that finger in a menacing way. So I did.
AI to the rescue. A philistine is a person who is hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art, culture, and intellectual pursuits. The term typically describes someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture.
Well, I don’t think that’s fair. Let’s see – hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art – no, that’s not me. I love Moo’s art, and he knows I do. I am not hostile to it at all, though I might be just a little teeny weeny bit hostile to him when I think he is lazy and doesn’t appreciate me. More – someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture – no. I refuse to accept that. Purely materialistic? I give my poems away, free of charge, to my friends and anyone else who wants to read them. Moo isn’t materialistic either. He gives his paintings away to his friends. I know he does, because I have seen him do it. Come to think of it, I don’t think either of us is practical. We wouldn’t be living in Penury if we were.
Sorry. I won’t go any further. That’s all Isle of Wight Ferry, as they say in Hampshire. Well, I won’t call you a Philistine if you don’t know what they say in Hampshire. Okay – here goes. “What’s hot, black and smelly and comes steaming backwards out of Cowes?” Why, it’s the Isle of Wight Ferry, of course. Well, it was until they replaced it with a hovercraft. Now the joke [Cowes, the port / cows] doesn’t work any more. So, here’s a couple of questions at Philistine 100 level for you – (1) What have Margo and Reg got? If you don’t know, you’ll have to ask Stomping Tom Connors. And (2) what did Reggie give to Margo? Okay, okay. I give in. I’ll tell you.
Answers – (1) Margo’s got the Cargo and Reggie’s got the Rig. (2) A cowsy dungsy clock, of course. Made only in Canada. And you can check that one on AI too. And look up the song on YouTube while you are at it. Canada Day – July 1 – and Stomping Tom Connors is one of the best adverts for Canada. Go, check out his songs.
The boy in the kitchen bare legs held to the fire ‘this is what hell will be like’
The cupboard under the stairs cold dark locked from the outside an oubliette the young boy left there forgotten
Running upstairs to safety beneath the bed hands grasping at legs and ankles pulling him back down for appropriate punishment
The belt the stick the little red brush that cleans the fireplace with its foretaste of hell beating battering an avalanche of blows the boy buried beneath them
Commentary:
Another unsigned painting by Moo. He told me that he calls this one Orange-U-Happy. Well, it is a happy painting, until you read the poem that goes with it and discover that all the stones of the avalanche are floating around in Moo’s painting, including a nice selection of sticks.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” But names do hurt. Names can be cast like stones, and the thrown stone, like the spoken word, can never be recalled. Liar. Cheat. Thief. Little Lord Fauntleroy. Bite the hand that feeds you. Are you laughing at me? I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. I’ll shake you until your teeth rattle.
Stones can be thrown into ponds. When they are, the ripples reach out, spread further, spread far and wide. Thrown words can enter the soul, ripple through the blood, and they can lodge in heart and brain, forever memories that never fade and never fly away. Heart stones, they are, that strike at the stroke of midnight and leave the victim suffering, gasping for air.
So many silent memories, buried deep, only to rise and parade around in dreams at night, revenants come to haunt and hunt, sharp words made even sharper than flint or obsidian to cut and fracture, and splinter, and slowly, slowly wear down the prey. Words – the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch. Think twice before you throw, speak, wound, injure …. then think again, bite your tongue, stay your hand, drop the stone, think rather of the hand of friendship, of comfort, the feathered wing of the guardian angel that consoles and brings succor.
Succour (or succor in American English) means assistance or support given to someone experiencing grief or hardship. It is a formal, often literary term used to describe help that offers actual relief or comfort to people in difficult situations, such as disaster victims or those struggling emotionally – Wikipedia.
And remember – many words have double meanings – spare – to forbear: deciding not to hurt, destroy, or punish, such as “sparing the life” of a captive or sparing the the rod. Spoil – to indulge: to treat someone, such as a child or pet, with pampering. It can also mean treating oneself to a luxury or relaxing day.
So, what does spare the rod and spoil the child mean? Clearly it is a phrase with a double meaning. Choose which one you will. But remember – “Let us pray” is a better prayer than “Let us prey“.
Alebrijesstep out from dried wood and stand in the shower of paint that falls from the brush’s tip. Yellow flash of lightning, pointillistic rain, garish colors that mirror those of the códices. The carvings take the form of fantasy figures, anthropomorphic animals, and mythological creatures.
Sometimes one individual selects the wood, carves it, then covers it in paint. Occasionally an entire family takes part in the work of making the alebrije. One person collects the wood and prepares it for carving. Another carves and sands it. A third works on the undercoat, and a fourth applies the final patterns of paint.
The great debate: does the form in the wood reveal itself to the carver or do the carvers impose their own visions on the wood? In the case of the team, do the family members debate and come to a joint conclusion?
These thoughts, exchanged with wood-carvers in Oaxaca, all with different opinions, have led to a series of interesting conversations. What exactly is creativity? Where does it come from? Do we, as artists, impose it upon our creations? Or do we merely observe and watch as new ideas float to the surface of our minds? How does the creative mind really function? And, by extension, how much of the sub-conscious creative sequence can be placed into words?
Alebrijes
Are they half-grasped dreams that wake, wide eyed, to a new day’s sun?
Or are they alive and thriving when they fall from the tree?
Does the carver fish their color and shape from his own interior sea, or does he watch and wait for the spirit to emerge from its wooden cocoon to be reborn in a fiery block of color?
Daybreak: in a secluded corner of my waking mind, my neighbor’s dog greets the dawn with sparks of bright colors born from his bark.
My waking dream: dark angels with butterfly bodies, their inverted wings spread over my head to keep me warm. In the town square, the local artist plucks dreams from my head and paints them on carved wood.
me crossing the bridge shaking sand from my sandals
a rare event Swansea Bay Station Cline Valley Line a train at the platform
the station master blows his whistle doors close slowly the train goes under the bridge
I stand in a cloud wrapped up half-blinded in huge puffs of smoke
filling my lungs assaulting nostrils and eyes with the sting of cinders the stench of burning coal
sting and stench and that short sharp whistle
they linger and cling unforgettable in my mind’s dark corner
Railway Bridge
2
walking away from Swansea sands
me crossing the bridge shaking sand from my sandals
a rare event Swansea Bay Station Cline Valley Line a train at the platform
the station master blows his whistle doors close slowly the train goes under the bridge
I stand in a cloud wrapped up half-blinded in huge puffs of smoke
filling my lungs assaulting nostrils and eyes with the sting of cinders the stench of burning coal
sting and stench they linger and cling unforgettable cobwebs in my mind’s dark corridors and never forget that short sharp whistle
Comment 1:
Me and my writing buddy also discussed linked poems. This is simply a chain in which each poem links back to another one. Yesterday, we wrote about Swansea Sands and how the poem was generated. Today we can look at the linking between that poem and this one, the old railway bridge that crossed the railway lines by Swansea Bay Station, and led back into Swansea, a town in those days, and the Civic Centre. Note, now, that each of those names could generate further links, further poems in the chain.
When we think of the great chain of being, we think of how all things are linked. From the Great Western Railway (GWR), to the Mumbles Railway, to the Cline Valley Branch line, and beyond. Each poem a railway station along the way. Main line, branch line, express train, goods train … links everywhere, and each link encapsulated in a memory of one kind or another. How could we not write poetry about such things?
McAdam Railway Station, in New Brunswick, Canada. 60 trains a day used to stop here. Now the station is a landmark, a memory, a place where ghost trains run and shadowy figures run wild up and down the grass grown tracks where the sleepers sleep, their dreams undisturbed. I could write a book of poems about this station. Wait a second, I already have and Geoff Slater, my painting buddy, decorated it for me with his wonderful paintings and drawings. What more can I say? Each link in the chain, a potential poem. Each stop along the way, material enough for a painting, a poem, or a book.
Comment 2:
So, what happens when we change the photo? What if we add a branch line or two to the original poem? How does this affect our idea of creativity, poetic creativity? What happens when we add a different sketch from my painting buddy’s wonderful set of drawings? Oh-oh, that’s not my painting buddy – that’s a set of graffiti on a passing railway car. Sorry, painting buddy, please forgive me. But hey, wait a minute – de gustibus non est disputando – there is no arguing about taste. Somebody painted that box car and enjoyed doing it. Where does art begin? Where does it end? How formal can it be? How informal? How many railway stations do we stop at? I guess it depends on the length of the journey. But one thing I know, don’t get off the train until you reach your destination!
