The Unbearable White Outside

Dean Young and Tony Hoagland also addressed suffering and art ... but only because it was a question from an audience member. Even if suffering creates some or all of one's art, it is still nothing one tends to ponder as an artist. At least my experience has been pondering the fact that I created something that may be worthwhile ... whether or not it was conceived out of suffering.

Actually, my art is typically conceived out of an elation ... suffering is like lard in a vein ... it blocks, threatens to destroy.

Dean Young and Tony Hoagland basically said that though suffering exists it is not necessarily a fodder for art. A way to art and creation. Hoagland mentioned that moment ... that wonderful and inexplicable moment when a poem walks up to you, the poet ... and then creation happens. That feeling to me is better than anything else but it may be close to being in love ... that desire for something and the constant threat of it not being there anymore.

But I am taking my "best wishes in April snow" as far as they will go. Herman Hesse wrote: Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else. My aversion is mostly my fear ... suffering is an unpredictable emotion. It is easy for a well-adjusted and wise Herman Hesse to say this ... but who is really strong enough not to flee? Not me, definitely in this April snow.

Best wishes ...

Hopefully I Will Be Back to Earth Soon ...

I have nothing to say really today. I feel again like I am somewhere else. But I have read many books the last couple of days so I have a lot to say about them when I again feel like talking ... or writing. Anyway, since someone did post a comment (thank you!) I decided to do a plug of my so far very basic website:

www.carriemcgath.com

But worry not, I have teenagers on the job ... the site will be filled with wonderful -- and very techie -- things no doubt very soon!

Here's the Lowdown for You, Aaron ...

While awaiting anxiously and likely creepily watching Tony Hoagland and Dean Young before the reading at the Chicago Public Library, I decided to make it kind of like you were sharing the experience with me, Aaron ... so I did a little freewrite of my thoughts and feelings in the moments leading up to THE READING.

Here Tis:

Tony Hoagland's wearing a bright-colored, button-down shirt -- swimming pool blue -- and a vest, brown, maybe corduroy. He's looks cute, wise, and sweet but shorter than I ever would have thought he was.

Dean Young's sporting a vest, too. Like a suit vest with the satin along the back ... and jeans ... he looks a little like a displaced cowboy. Maybe a banker who lost his pants and shoes but still had to show up in something at the banquet. Something ... I like it.

It's quite wonderful, Aaron ... I look around me now and everyone's reading poetry. This makes the world soften to me. At least right now. I will enjoy completely this coming hour or so.

Dean Young looks exactly as he does in his author photos. And so does Tony Hoagland, just shorter. I wish you were here. But I know each of us have glorious days coming, many of them, and we will likely enjoy some of them at least in the same time zone.

And I wonder why this girl sat down right next to me when there were lots of empty seats ... so now I battle for the elbow room I need to write this and now have that need to do that hide-with-hand thing ... hiding what you've written while you write so no one can read it.

Li Young Lee is also here. I saw him read in Kalamazoo at The Little Theater. I think I told you about it -- how sensual I felt after hearing his long and lux poem about furniture and erotic visions. He was beautiful that night and even the smirks from a clique of former colleagues could not stiffle me, or ruin me that night. It was like some post-coital moment ... unwieldy and wondrous. And I wrote so much that night ... a curdled and commingled love and fear and passion in the upper right corner of my heart and the lower left of my spleen. I know this reading will be at least that but maybe more.

Your time right now is 4:00 while mine is 6:00. Real time.

So many (I mean a good 30 out of a total of 60-70 people) women have super-curly, untamed hair ... why is that, Aaron? So many "literary" women now have super-curly hair ... it is a strange and tiny trend.


Later I will write about the fascinating things they both had to say about the craft of poetry and the writing life in general ... but here is a little taste.

Hoagland said people come to poetry for different reasons, and the main two reasons are to seek a truth and deep meaning while the others come to it for a love of language and a desire to have fun with it. He said, and I agree, that the Truth-seeker readers (me) need to do more of what the Language-lover readers do (you?) and vice versa. Tonight I plan on some big fun with Dean Young's Embryoyo!

Aaron, Be loved and Be an infidel ... well, if you want to.

Meds

Happy National Poetry Month to everyone ...

I will be going to the Chicago Public Library tomorrow to see Tony Hoagland and Dean Young read from their truly witty and genius poetry. I think the only thing that would trump seeing them and then meeting them would be John Berryman giving me a cross-dimension reading of The Dream Songs in my kitchen.

This is just what the doc ordered ...

Milwaukee had a beauty all its own ...

This was not my first trip to Milwaukee ... but my third. The first time was in 2003 for the Women and Creativity Conference at Marquette and the second time was to see Sonic Youth in a big dark lounge (it was so hot only the poetic luring of SY would have kept me around). And the third time was this recent trip ... to go again to the Women and Creativity conference.

The tavern that became my friend and I's hang out for the week, Von Triere, was truly wonderful. But the conference? I kept thinking ... So what's the point? What's the point of men and women possessing the common goal of scholarship and enrichment in the women's studies field if no one pushes the envelope all the while taking themselves as seriously as a heart attack?

Writers and academics like to hear themselves talk ... of course. This is not a surprise since writers and academics seem to be lonelier people and often seem to always be working on something. And after thinking about something, researching it, and writing about it, one has a desire to share it. I have written another paper about the role of wife in Robert Lowell's Life Studies since the Bellmer one. Of course I want to share it with an audience ... conferences are a great place for that.

This same conference in 2003 was interesting and enriching, the talks causing a discussion, even some fury at times. That is a GOOD THING! This year's was dry, seemingly pointless, and full to the hilt with women seeming not to be having that much-desired scholarly dialogue, but feeling instead the sickening and insatiable need to one-up each other. It was very disillusioning ... and my reading from Small Murders was simply ... weird. As I was reading ... deadpan faces that appeared to give a shit were followed by I really liked your poems at the "reception." What? Could've fooled me! I sold one book (better than zero) ... to a Reverend. That merely added to the ever increasing strangenesses of the conference.

But Milwaukee was truly wonderful and to be there with my best friend Anna made it even better. I am on a mission in finding 312 beer in Kalamazoo. We shall see.

As far as what I am reading ... the usual of course (Berryman, Lowell). But for fiction I am reading Clown Girl by Monica Drake. I will no doubt finish it in the next day or so and have to discuss it here. FYI to Palahniuk fans ... he does the Introduction to the book. He writes that Drake was a part of his 1991 Portland writers group that took place in someone's kitchen. Monica should be very proud of his very admiring words regarding her writing. I am almost halfway through and I am not at all disappointed. Go Monica! For nonfiction I am reading The Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.

I am spent with this day ... ta da! (that's a Monica Drake homage!)

Happy Belated Birthday, Hans Bellmer ... Milwaukee Nears ...

So I am feverishly getting together my final musings on Hans Bellmer for the Women & Creativity Conference in Milwaukee. The trip draws near ... I leave Wednesday and excitement has begun to build. Looks like there are some fascinating papers being presented this year ... I am very much looking forward to the Mrs. Dalloway panel and also about the "Women and the Act of Writing Panel" with a paper about Joyce Carol Oates' You Must Remember This. That book simply transfixed me and will always hold a special place in my heart since it was the first book I read the first night I was 5 hours away from home for the first time in a dormitory at Ohio University. The striking thing was that I read it only because it was Joyce Carol Oates (I didn't know what it was about) and it ended up being a novel of about a family in the 1950s and I was missing mine.

I am also anxiously awaiting the discussion of sexual politics in The Wife of Bath. I will no doubt have a lot to write about after this conference ... I hope to learn a lot from other scholars and meet some exciting people. And Anna ... can't wait to hang out with you again ...

It was Hans Bellmer's birthday last Tuesday, March 13th. I have often had a party for him ... making a cake with doll parts strategically placed all through it. No party this year, though I did toast him and read his love letters (the ones he wrote) aloud. But this is the "big gift" ... perhaps giving him an audience at the conference ... more of one. I am very curious how this paper of mine will be received to a roomful of feminists and women's studies scholars. This just wasn't a worry when I presented my paper on New York School poet, Barbara Guest in 2003.

So here's to nerdy fun in Milwaukee!

This image included here is from Therese Lichtenstein's beautiful book about Bellmer. Citation information follows.

Lichtenstein, Therese. Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer. University of California Press, 2001.

"and there is a glowing orb emanating from your little heart"

I am simply loving Berryman's collection, The Dispossessed. I cannot stop reading it ... after reading and rereading The Dream Songs for so many years, it is nice to find that "new." I am sure I had read this collection at some point in my hours of reading Berryman, but it seems so new and absolutely beautiful. I am constantly transfixed. He frees me. "The Spinning Heart" and "The Ball Poem" are joyous musings on love and loss and the often jaggedly difficult unavoidables of the human spirit and condition.

And I also feel real again. I had a good visit with myself last night while listening to Lucinda Williams' new record, West. The lyrics as well as the music is truly superb. And I feel again a freedom in being happy. Someone makes me so happy so often and constantly now: the day before yesterday, yesterday, and today and every moment. And I am not talking about Berryman ... but a real, living breathing person who may be in possession of Berryman's very soul. I said to him: and there is a glowing orb emanating from your little heart. A knowing smirk endearingly followed.

But I digress. And I am finding it tough these last couple of days to wipe the knowing smirk off of my face ...

And for all of those knowing smirks everywhere, here's a little J.B.:

The Traveller
by John Berryman (from The Dispossessed)

They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
"That man has a curious way of holding his head."

They pointed me out on the beach; they said "That man
will never become as we are, try as he can."

They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.

I took the same train that the others took,
to the same place. Were it not for that look
and those words, we were all of us the same.
I studied merely maps. I tried to name
the effects of motion on the travellers,
I watched the couple I could see, the curse
and blessings of that couple, their destination,
the deception practised on them at the station,
their courage. When the train stopped and they knew
the end of their journey, I descended too.