The Beautiful / Palace Prayers

OLD MOONS

Old moons now are dried and crusty
Brittle and as uninteresting as history is
To my fingers and lips.

And yet also, it cannot be denied
That each man
King of his home-throne
Misses something of eternity
When he chomps down on lamb chops
(Which are his reward
For winning the bread)

Each of us misplace the universe
And lose the word
When we get our desires
On plates before us.

There is a grain of rice on the table.
Around it, oil has bled
And spreads

In this way does our egodeath
Halo around us
  And puncture the beauty
    Of clouds
- Yusuf Misdaq

Two years ago this month, I highlighted the poet, musician, artist, and author Yusuf Misdaq's Palace Prayers project. August 21st - September 19th, 2009, was Ramadhan, and Misdaq, a practicing Muslim who, as I noted at the time, "shares my universalistic mystical inclination," created a new work of art for every day of the month-long fast and period of Muslim introspection.

Some months later, Misdaq invited me to contribute a forward to a book of his poetry, prose, and lyrics. That book, The Beautiful / Palace Prayers, was published this year. Visit Misdaq's website for more information.

+++++

"Dissolution Is The Whole Show"

When Yusuf invited me to contribute a foreword to The Beautiful / Palace Prayers, I was at first surprised. Although I enjoy reading poetry, my education in literature is wanting, and my tastes run to work that most "serious" critics and scholars deem pedestrian. Who am I to comment on this young artist's latest collection? With characteristic enthusiasm, however, Yusuf's invitation quelled my self-doubt, insisting that The Beautiful is made up of poems "for normal people who do not normally read poetry." Well, in that case, it is a privilege and a joy for this normal person to introduce a collection of poems, verse, and prose written "for normal people"!

        They are a good species.
        Clean and caring;
        Made mostly of water and forgiveness
              - from "The Beautiful"

Normal people are very much in need of poetry, and perhaps especially so today, when the art is generally neglected. Words are powerful entities, every one an invocation, yet we too often use them carelessly. Poetry, like prayer, can serve as a corrective, reminding us that words conjure meaning and that they have a felt, physical component. As critic and philosopher George Steiner writes, "the meanings of poetry and the music of those meanings...are also of the human body." Appropriately, Yusuf refers to the italicized and apparently random words that he includes in some of his poems as "body echoes." "Carbunkle. Crellis. / Pulse-if. peaces." or "Que Que" are not intelligible formulations but, when read aloud, they aren’t exactly jibberish either. They supply somatic meaning, as do the poems’ rhythms. Yusuf's strongest poetry or verse has a perceptible pulse; in some cases, I notice my head slowly bobbing as I read. This is not insignificant. Beat and rhythm are primal properties, manifestations of the infinite, unfathomable being within which we reside and of which we are composed.

        Echoes
        of the original
        Voice
        From the original
        Breath
              - from "Ramadhan 26"

Ludwig Wittgenstein insisted that earnest philosophers should "descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there" if they expect to produce worthy work. I extend the same requisite to artists. Yusuf draws pictures, makes films, and writes poems, novels, and songs, but he is, above all, a mystic. And mysticism, in its quest to directly experience elemental truths, necessitates Wittgenstein's appreciation of the primeval and the chaotic; ancient disorder is at the root of everything. In most cases, the mystical perspective is merely an uncommon one; mystics survey and respond to the same earthly, material realm that the rest of us do. But they disregard accepted classifications and train themselves to mindfully observe and reinterpret their surroundings. They locate the extraordinary in the mundane. As Henry David Thoreau, a 19th century mystic, lamented, "All this [splendor] is perfectly distinct to an observant eye and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most." Mystics reawaken their capacity for reflective wonder and, in doing so, experience a kind of rebirth into a vaster dimension of human experience.

        On perfect Spring mornings
        God puts a clear blue sky in our pockets
        Pats us a few times and says
        'On your way!'
              - from "The Merciful Cheerful"

So reborn into sublime beauty, mystics strive toward the transcendent. Both Wittgenstein and Thoreau can be described as transcendentalists; Yusuf qualifies, too. Like the two philosophers, he finds in his observations of the world cause for a fundamental optimism. Unlike them, his writing is generally informal and devoid of pretension. His poems give readers the impression of a devout Sufi Muslim happy at play in our waking, sensual dream. In the collection's title poem, Yusuf writes "Awake in this dream / Where abstract clouds calmly keep us. / Where birds secretly make love in public and / Give voice to the current of joy which / Slices through us in a day." Again, in "Back Amongst Men (Drowned)," he references this dreamed life: "Or as I have also interpreted it / .God is a laughing dream." No doubt, the poems’ author, laughing, singing, eyes wide and sparkling, would appear mad to many of his fellows. This is to their discredit. They have forgotten (or failed to learn) how to look. Mystics, like many philosophers and artists, are too easily dismissed as lunatic or eccentric. Yusuf's ability to see through the veil of our cultural forgetfulness informs his aesthetic imagination and invigorates his art.

        Silk veils, dark and weightless
        Are being removed from her countenance
        Time after Time

        Each day I ready myself to know her better
        Each day, closer
              - from "Wahad"

But not all that Yusuf observes is felicitous. The most biting poem included in The Beautiful, "Ramadhan 23: Only To Be With You And No-one Else," is a reaction against the politicization of Islam and a celebration of his intimate relationship with Allah. After rejecting the "bloody bridge builders / Shmoozers or politicians" and others who "come to the Mosque smiling in your suit," Yusuf writes, "I wish to be alone / And serious / And deeper in love / With the only one who ever matters." The striking seriousness of his personal communion with G-d is important; discipline is one of the central currents running through the poems included in The Beautiful. In “Waiting (A Song for Guitar),” Yusuf writes, “I do believe in magic but first you gotta work at it.” Hope and love, he reminds readers, are nurtured through dedicated ritual and practice.

        Understand, thee
        That tenderness comes not of softness
        But of a firmness
        And of a discipline

        Understand that of discipline
        -Say, the discipline of prayer-
        Comes an enjoyment of that same thing.
        Discipline to run breeds a love for running
        Discipline to practice ones instrument brings forth a love
        for playing it
        Discipline to speak good breeds a love of horses
        And love of all refined things
        Whatever you may find them to be.
              - from "Ramadhan 12: The Vows Revolve"

A visual artist, I appreciate the centrality of discipline in a life committed to aesthetics. Like Yusuf, though, I am also mystically inclined. Paintings, sculptures, and other hand-crafted objects are among my adored icons but, if I work at it, I can find occasion for worship in every place, in every form, in every moment. The European starling that paraded on the sidewalk in front of me this morning warranted exaltation. In his iridescent dream coat and brilliant yellow bill, I see cause for startling, smiling celebration. For some other pedestrians, the bird, a representative of a despised species, may be ignorable or irrelevant. For others, my viewing the starling as a manifestation of the Divine amounts to idolatry. So, too, might the dirty, discolored Queens sidewalk be deemed a cement calf by unimaginative or close-minded "believers." Yet, striding on such a sidewalk today, my thoughts range through eons of geologic time to consider the ancient rock and mud, precursors to and components of the concrete that I now tread upon, from which our kind eventually emerged on crude limbs as a gasping, fish-reptile thing.

        The salt-pepper sugar mills on this table look like planets.
        I want to know the word for planet in as many different
        languages as possible.
              - from "Celestial"

Doubtless some of those who consider themselves religious don't share my enthusiasm for our scaled, long-snouted ancestors. But I'm not concerned with narrow definitions of religion. I believe that humility, wonder, gratitude, and communion are the four pillars of genuine religious practice, and the mental stretching engendered by the work of scientists, philosophers, and artists is an integral part of any intellectually rigorous, honest religious life. And, love, too, is a bit like religion. The same four pillars are fundamental to it. As Douglas Thorpe writes, "[love] demands of us a new way of being in our old world." Religious mysticism is a love affair with The All. It's not always easy, but religious attunement can turn each day, each hour, or each instant, into "a new way of being." Reading Yusuf's poetry, I'm reminded that every step is a psalm, every directed gaze is a prayer.

        Dot-Dot-Purple and Palaces
        Says the starling in approximate translation.
        Star-Star-Chandeliers and
        Bread on the wind-ind-ind.
              - from "The Beautiful"

I'm also reminded that we both enjoy watching starlings.

- Christopher Reiger, May 1, 2010

At Dawn I Have Birds

Walton Ford
"Visitation"
2004
Six color hardground and softground etching, aquatint, spit-bite aquatint, drypoint on Somerset Satin paper
44 x 30 7/8 inches

"Often, lately, the night is a cold maw
and stars the scattered white teeth of the gods,
which spare none of us. At dawn I have birds,
clearly divine messengers that I don't understand
yet day by day feel the grace of their intentions."

— from "Age Sixty-nine," by Jim Harrison

Image credit: ripped from the Paul Kasmin Gallery website

Listening

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, 2004
"The sound of the water so softly battering
Against the shore is decidedly sexual,
In its liquidity, its regularity,
Its persistence, its infantile obliviousness.
It is as if it had come back into being
A beginning, an origination of life."

-from "Lake Water," by David Ferry

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2004

Note: This is a repost, originally appearing September 2, 2007.

Rootedness

Amy Talluto
"Blue Pool"
2009
Oil on canvas
40 x 52 inches

Reading Mary Duenwald's recent New York Times article "The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown," I was particularly charmed by the following passage.

From time to time over what she has called her '40-year conversation' with Ms. Cook, [Ms. Oliver] or the couple together would go off to places like Sweet Briar, Va., and Bennington, Vt., where Ms. Oliver would teach poetry writing. But their home base was always Provincetown.

'People say to me: wouldn’t you like to see Yosemite? The Bay of Fundy? The Brooks Range?' she wrote in Long Life, a book of essays. 'I smile and answer, ‘Oh yes — sometime,’ and go off to my woods, my ponds, my sun-filled harbor, no more than a blue comma on the map of the world but, to me, the emblem of everything.'"

I'd like to accurately claim, as Oliver does, a deep familiarity with one landscape and ecology. Although I'm romantically rooted in the sulfurous soil of Virginia's coastal salt marshes, like many Americans, I've lived a relatively transient life, so far calling three states (and more houses or apartments than I can count on both hands) home. Still, the ascetic aspect of my temperament is moved by the notion of staying put, of refraining from travel in order to better cultivate continuity, peace of mind, and sense of place. The terms "provincial" and "parochial" have pejorative associations, but I believe there is a lot to be said for those individuals who appreciate their home ground as only a true local can.

If Oliver is right, rootedness is especially significant for artists. Reading some of Oliver's poetry last night, I rediscovered this early work, from 1963.

No Voyage

I wake earlier, now that the birds have come
And sing in the unfailing trees.
On a cot by an open window
I lie like land used up, while spring unfolds.

Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them
Did not board ship with grief among their maps?--
Till it seemed men never go somewhere, they only leave
Wherever they are, when the dying begins.

For myself, I find my wanting life
Implores no novelty and no disguise of distance;
Where, in what country, might I put down these thoughts,
Who still am citizen of this fallen city?

On a cot by an open window, I lie and remember
While the birds in the trees sing of the circle of time.
Let the dying go on, and let me, if I can,
Inherit from disaster before I move.

O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,
And my wounds leap with impatience; yet I turn back
To sort the weeping ruins of my house:
Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.

-Mary Oliver

Image credit: courtesy, the artist

Tipping

Steve Mumford
"Pool of Oil"
2003
Watercolor on paper
From Baghdad Journal

"The dog yelped constantly,
Tipping our canoe.
Silly dog."
- Dorothea Tanning

Photo credit: Artwork reproductions ripped from ArtVitae

Top Soil and Red Ink

Raymond Meeks
"January 9, 2008 2:14 p.m."
Gelatin-silver print

I edit compulsively, reflexively.

Reading a recent issue of The New Yorker, I came upon a poem by W.S. Merwin, entitled "Near Field." In it, I found much that I liked...and much I felt unnecessary, even distracting.

Last night, as I prepared to toss the issue into my recycling bin, I revisited my edit. Ridiculous though it may be to flense the words of another, I do find my version more dream-like and ambiguous, and therefore more haunting.

Every writer or poet needs an editor; keep the red pen handy.

"Near Field"

This is not something new or kept secret
the tilled ground unsown in late spring
the dead are not separate from the living
each has one foot in the unknown
and cannot speak for the other
the field tells none of its turned story
it lies under its low cloud like a waiting river
the dead made this out of their hunger
out of what they had been told
out of the pains and shadows
and bowels of animals
out of turning and
coming back singing
about another time

-W.S. Merwin (edited by Christopher Reiger)

Photo credit: Raymond Meeks photograph ripped from Candace Dwan Gallery site

That Time of The Cycle

"And from that torment I will free myself,
Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry 'Content!' to that that grieves my heart.
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I'll drown more sailors than the Mermaid shall.
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk.
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor.
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,
And, like Simon, take another Troy.
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?"

- Act III, Scene ii; Shakespeare's "Henry the VI"

Photo credit: image ripped from AFSCME site

Wanting Sumptuous Heaven

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

- Robert Bly

Photo credit: Evening sky above Heron's Foot, Eastern Shore of Virginia; Hungry Hyaena, 2006

Nightwalks

"This is thy hour O Soul,
thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art,
the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars."

-Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "A Clear Midnight"
(from "Leaves of Grass")

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2007

Listening

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, 2004
"The sound of the water so softly battering
Against the shore is decidedly sexual,
In its liquidity, its regularity,
Its persistence, its infantile obliviousness.
It is as if it had come back into being
A beginning, an origination of life."

-from "Lake Water," by David Ferry

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2004

Straight Talk

"I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den."

- From "Straight Talk From Fox," by Mary Oliver

Photo credit: photo of little Perdido by Hungry Hyaena, 2007

Concert

A young black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) flies over as we move through the river rookery (Pantanal, Brazil)

"...the zigzag cacophony
of a kingfisher's rattle -
here and gone -

passing into three caws
of a crow as if every sound connected
to another, or as if one sound
were making itself completely new
again and again,

even this deerfly's buzzing vibrato
one of the voices
that slide into or under
or over each other, and take place
all at once and at every moment,

though I hear it all
for no more than thirty seconds
before the self's
deafness returns."

-from "Thirty Second Concert (Orcas Island, Washington),"
by Robert Cording

Old Mud Blood at the Banshee

"And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead
children out of the fields into the text
of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better
than the grass."

-Mary Oliver, excerpt from Rain, originally published in "New Poems"(1991 - 1992)

A year or so ago I met a friend for drinks at The Banshee on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Sitting next to us at the bar was a poet, in his early fifties, who had recently moved to New York from Los Angeles. Feeling uncharacteristically social (after sufficient lubrication), I got into a conversation with the man. He had experienced some critical success within west coast poetry circles but had grown frustrated with "the scene," and opted to try on NYC for size.

After a half-hour of talking, he announced, "Well this is really great. You're the first person I've met since moving that's really got me feeling like there is that creative pulse you always hear about New York." He insisted on giving me his card and asked for information on my website and future exhibitions. I've lived in New York long enough to view his gushing with some skepticism; still, I'd enjoyed the chat and exchanged information with him agreeably enough.

As the gentleman prepared to depart, he paused, cocked his head quizzically, and asked, "So who are your favorite contemporary poets?"

It was an easy question to answer. "At the moment I'm enjoying collections by Mary Oliver and Galway Kinnell. I've always..."

I couldn't finish my reply; the poet broke into a peal of laughter. I was understandably taken aback by this reaction. After regaining some semblance of self-control, he exclaimed, "And the whole time you had me thinking you knew good poetry from bad poetry. Mary Oliver is garbage. Kinnell is little better." I stared at him blankly. He laughed a little more, shook his head, and continued, "I mean, that's like me telling you that my favorite painters are Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell. You'd be appalled. That's not even art! That's illustration!"

I wasn't quite sure what to say. I shrugged and finally said, "Well, I read a fair amount of poetry, so my landing on those two isn't just chance. I think they're good."

He appeared genuinely crestfallen. It was as though my bad taste sapped New York of the intellectual and creative energy he believed he had just become acquainted with. He may have pegged me for an appreciator of mundane poetry (guilty as charged, I suppose), but his explosive dismissal of Oliver and Kinnell, both gifted and rewarding poets, and his use of Hopper and Rockwell as parallels reveals inherited (or adopted) prejudice.

Hopper and Rockwell painted with reproduction in mind and, indeed, both worked as professional illustrators for a time; this being the case, labelling them illustrators isn't entirely inaccurate but, as Peter Schjeldahl wrote recently, "If 'Nighthawks' is an illustration, a kick in the head is a lullaby." Hopper and Rockwell aren't favorite artists of mine, but their work is not deserving of the lambasting it receives from so many art world experts. (The unintentionally comical Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, comes to mind here. In the documentary, "Who The $#%& Jackson Pollock?," Hoving dismisses the opinion of someone outside the art establishment by wagging a finger and saying, “She knows nothing. I’m an expert. She’s not.”)

The truth is, many critics and connoisseurs build upon the existing scaffold of criticism and connoisseurship to such a degree that, generations down the line, their tower of opinions is an esoteric curiosity, shaky and too tall to be buttressed by the masses. I'm not suggesting that experts don't have a place nor that populist art is superior to "high" art, but merely that it is unfortunate that so many members of creative communities are eager to demonstrate their "expert" status by espousing those ideals or ideas most removed from the general consensus.

I sometimes struggle to explain Mary Oliver's value to non-believers. One acquaintance described Oliver as "the Thomas Kinkade of poetry." The comparison is ludicrous. Oliver writes of the "live animal," of a becoming with the natural world that impregnates experience with a meaning distinct from reason. Kinkade is the master of commodifying kitsch. They are worlds apart.

At any rate, I was all too happy to read Bioephemera's recent toast to Oliver. Cicada observes, "Some critics grumble that [Oliver] is insufficiently challenging or unsurprising, but she leans so heavily on the sense of wondrous recognition fed by nature, I wonder if a failure to be moved isn’t primarily a failure of that wonder-sense." Or, in the words of Oliver herself,

"I don't want you just to sit down at the table.
I don't want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing."
-from Rice, "New Poems" (1991 - 1992)

Later in her post, Cicada describes the sense of belonging, if you will, that an Oliver poem provides. "...her poems make me feel rooted in humanity, grounded in my own body, aware of this lumpy, piecemeal tangle of cells which is somehow, miraculously, taking pleasure in language. Oliver’s poems are spiritual experiences for those who would not necessarily describe themselves as spiritual." But why take her word for it?

The Fish
The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.
-from "American Primitive" (1983)

I guess it's true that one man's "garbage" is....

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2002

Hungry Hyaena updates aren't appearing regularly of late. This lull in posting can be attributed, in part, to my renewed efforts in the studio - preparation for September shows - but I've also found myself with little to say or, at least, little desire to say anything.

As I've observed before, my more productive painting periods are usually marked by a turn from prose to poetry. As I drift into the more abstract, emotional medium, I also become relatively inarticulate. In this mode, I more closely resemble the hackneyed artist stereotype, a dreamy, emotionally guided beast.

Perhaps I'm more sensitive, too. In fact, I fear I'm a little afraid. I'm afraid of squandered potential, of what a forgotten writer once described as "the long, melancholy roar" that is a life devoid of hope. I'm not afraid for myself, really; I've been blessed with a steady disposition and the ability to adapt, happily enough, to almost any circumstance. I'm afraid for us, the global populace. What incentive do we have to strive for betterment if we lack faith and hope, which are inextricably bound to one another?

In Cat Power's lovely cover of the Velvet Underground song, "I Found A Reason," she sings, "Oh, I do believe in all the things you say. What comes is better than what came before." The song is included in the Wachowski's brothers' recent movie, "V For Vendetta." Hunched over his jukebox, listening to the song, the film's protagonist, V, a silver-tongued, impassioned terrorist (cough, freedom fighter) who lives alone in an underground bunker cum library of antiquities, comments that he has listened through his music collection hundreds of times, but has never danced to it. This seemingly straightforward observation betrays V's waning faith in the moral superiority of his cause.(1) It also indicates how much life experience V has sacrificed to pursue his ostensibly noble, if murderous ambition. An idea remains just that, a notion, until it is made manifest through action. Similarly, listening to music is merely appreciation, an intellectual activity. To fully experience the songs, V will need to move with the music.

The filmmakers' choice of "I Found A Reason" interests me. The lyrics suggest that a lover has provided the speaker/singer with a reason to go on and, indeed, the romantic subplot of "V For Vendetta" echoes this theme, but the title of the song could just as easily be "I Found Reason." Reason itself represents a sort of intellectual romance; she is the bedmate of most idealism and revolution. Humanity has repeatedly emerged from dark and troubled times by placing faith in Enlightenment values, then striving to implement them. Reason, in essence, is hope which is, as I said above, bound to faith. This is why so many religious fundamentalists shrink from science and why so many moral, rational idealists - Galileo, Spinoza and their ilk - are excommunicated or persecuted. The moral and ethical considerations are relevant, to be sure, but modern man's faith in progress is viewed as competing with his faith in God (even though the two are not mutually exclusive). Through reason, we gather the conviction to believe that what comes can be better than what came before.

As my own paintings, themselves responses to our curious, unsettling times, turn more to magic realism, to the realm between natural and supernatural, I ask myself, if we're to right the myriad wrongs of our day, should we not be turning in the other direction? There is, of course, no simple answer...certainly not a satisfying one, anyway. In the meantime, I'll continue to turn over the issue in my work. I've included images of two recent pieces. The painting, "This Now, Like The Beginning, Again And Again," is currently on display in Cleveland, Ohio, at exit (a gallery space). It will also be included in my solo show, "Mongrel Truth," at AG Gallery next month. This show will feature a number of drawings, too, one of which is pictured here.


Christopher Reiger
"this now, like the beginning, again and again"
2006
Watercolor, gouache and marker on stretched Arches paper
25 x 25 inches


Christopher Reiger
"Ursus americanus (American bear)"
2006
Sumi ink on Arches paper
7 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches

I hope everyone is doing well and perhaps, sometime soon, I'll enter again into a mode where writing is more central to my practice.

(1) The film manages to raise some pertinent questions about progress and morality despite the Wachowskis' stubborn devotion to a red pill-blue pill, good guy-bad guy approach.

Image credit: "V For Vendetta" image ripped from DC Comics website

Reading Mary's Vultures

When I'm in the midst of a studio surge, essay ideas often gestate for months. Jotted notes and fragmented Word documents evidence my intention to write, but I find it difficult to commit. Reading, by contrast, remains an essential activity during these periods and, curiously, poetry often trumps prose, perhaps because it is more like visual art, more open and sensuous.

I've recently been enjoying collections of Mary Oliver and Czeslaw Milosz. Much of Oliver's work compliments my own. Reading her poems, I feel a reciprocated embrace; she often channels a wonderful existential experience. Frankly, if I could get away with submitting "Vultures" as my artist statement, I'd happily do so!

Vultures

Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to, demonstrating
each time the earth’s
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.
No one
moreover,
wants to ponder it,
how it will be
to feel the blood cool,
shapeliness dissolve.
Locked into
the blaze of our own bodies
we watch them
wheeling and drifting, we
honor them and we
loathe them,
however wise the doctrine,
however magnificent the cycles,
however ultimately sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings.

Deceptively straight-forward, the poem will open, for readers of a certain disposition, to complex interpretation. For me, "Vultures" is an insightful tracing of a complicated relationship with religion and a paean to the contemplation of death and awesomeness of the universe's messy abundance.

Photo credit: "Soaring," painted by Andrew Wyeth (photograph by Ken Burris, for Shelburne Museum)

Selling Atheism and Myth

When transferring from the A/C/E subway line to the N/R/W at 42nd Street in Manhattan, passengers must walk down a long, underground tunnel. If they happen to look up at the tunnel's low ceiling, they'll notice three or four word excerpts on signs mounted to the ceiling reinforcements. If one reads the signs as he walks the length of the tunnel, he'll realize that each sign is a "piece" of a poem. The subject matter is mundane, literally, and the poem rather bleak. In short, the uncredited writer asks why we wake and go to work, day after day, our lives spiritually empty and dull. In the context of the smelly, humid subway tunnel, crowded with commuters, the poem resonates.

This past Saturday afternoon, as I made the E to W transfer, a group of teenage girls walked just behind me. Half listening to their conversation, I realized they were discussing the poem. They mocked it. "It's so stupid," one of them giggled. "What the fuck? I mean...," another girl trailed off. To some extent, I can sympathize with their reaction; the poem doesn't convey the most original sentiment. "You know what I don't get?," said a third girl. "What's it even advertising?"

Oh...my...God.

What is it advertising?! What is this MTA commissioned public poetry advertising?! Burma Shave, this ain't, babe.

I should know better than to be surprised. These girls, roughly seventeen years of age, are plugged into consumer culture. Theirs is the generation of the spectacle and the billboard. They were thirteen when the World Trade Center fell (on television, again and again and again) and they represented America's youngest consumer demographic, parental parasites, during the economic bubble of the late nineties. The third girl's question is, from their perspective, a fair one. Why isn't this poem an advertisement?

I didn't know whether to laugh or shudder. I slipped into a brooding mood. These are dark times, I thought.

But it's not enough to criticize, break down, and dismiss. Even constructive criticism, that much celebrated will-o-the-wisp, which can be invaluable to the artist, politician, and athlete, provides little reward for the critic himself. He may be able to pinpoint a conceptual contradiction, a fatal weakness in policy, or an unfortunate quirk in form, but how useful is his ability to notice the negative? Is the critic able to turn his judgment inward to correct his own failings?

I enjoy reading good criticism, be it social, literary, or aesthetic, but even the most capable wordsmiths can't make criticism complete unless they prescribe some balm. A batter who has fallen into a slump will not be helped by a coach who only cites what the batter does wrong. The good coach - the complete coach - recognizes the failing and attempts to correct it, explaining to his player not just what is wrong, but also what might work.

Incomplete though most criticism may be, negative noise must be made before there exists any serious striving for improvement. I regularly talk with people who share my sense of disillusionment and betrayal. I see folks shake their heads when reading the day's newspaper headlines and I often hear folks complaining about the administration or about the passing of a particular bill, but our overall complacency is noteworthy. There is some noise being made, of course, but the majority of protests lack focus - people shout 'No blood for oil!' while wearing PETA sweatshirts - and the political plays made by those brave politicians - republicans, in the traditional sense of the word - resisting the red tide are far too esoteric for most of America to rally behind. (Thoughtful, politically savvy bloggers may seem ubiquitous, but they remain a tiny fraction of the general populace.)

Why are we so quiet? Has the barrage of bad news made toadies of us all? When I do get worked up about the "general state of things," I feel as though my outrage is excessive. Perhaps vehement rants about the current administration are considered passe, but does this make them any less vital? Is resistance possible in the current culture of distraction and fear? What does it take to reach "every man" in the era of spectacle?

Ronald Aronson has a good review in the most recent Bookforum, entitled, "Faith No More? Against the Rising Tide of Rejuvenated Religion, A Number of Writers Make the Case for Disbelief." In it, he suggests our contemporary apathy results from the unrealized promises of a better future.

"It's safe to say that the future didn't turn out as anyone expected. Scientific and technological progress has been relentless, but its promises of liberation have gone flat. Few still believe that their children's world will be better than theirs. We live after Marxism, after progress, after the Holocaust - and few imaginations are stirred, few hopes raised by our world's long-range tendencies. Indeed, the opposite is happening as terrorism becomes the West's main preoccupation. In countries like the United States, Britain, and France, there has been a turning away from improving societies and toward improving the self."

Aronson, reviewing seven recent books dealing with the decline of atheism, convincingly argues that the return to God and otherworldly authority figures increases the power of those who already hold the reins, and therefore represents a weakening of The Republic, a collapse of democratic ideals. Near the end of his piece, he writes,

"The rational and constantly self-questioning and self-correcting world view is essential to democracy and its ongoing public discussion about everything under the sun. Those disasters of history not explicitly tied to religion in fact still reflect starting points of authority and unquestionable dogma. Democracy, after all, is congruent with freedom, which is in turn congruent with the world view that presupposes little and questions everything. 'Democracy proceeds by one set of principles. Religion by the opposite.' Atheism is 'one of the natural allies' of democratic societies."

As an atheist, I agree with Aronson and the writers of most of the books he reviews. (To feel as I do, you must believe that moral living is better served by non-believers who recognize that an ethical core is "part of the furniture of the universe," as Plato put it. Moral acts or laws - the Ten Commandments, for example - designed to ingratiate a believer to their respective God or gods are necessarily less virtuous and, above all, self-serving.) However, Aronson needs to ask himself why so many atheists are content to revile religion without offering a thoughtful alternative. Such alternatives do exist, but atheists have a hard time making them attractive to the majority because the absence of an afterlife is too troubling for most people to accept. Unhappy in their own narrative, disappointed by the once promising future, they place their trust in a different sort of "future," an altogether supernatural one.

The recent surge in popular interest in aliens, ghosts, supernatural storms, elementals, and any number of other vaguely mystical beings - check the local TV listings if you don't know what I'm referring to - is proof enough that we are a culture living in fear of ourselves. As Pogo, Walt Kelly's philosophical cartoon opossum, said decades ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Aronson, trying to salvage some sense of hope, concludes his review with a recipe for a happy, secular society.

"A new atheism must absorb the experience of the twentieth century and the issues of the twenty-first. It must answer questions about living without God, face issues concerning forces beyond our control as well as our own responsibility, find a satisfying way of thinking about what we may know and what we cannot know, affirm a secular basis for morality, point to ways of coming to terms with death, and explore what hope might mean today."

Given the current climate, accomplishment of the goals set forth by Aronson seems highly unlikely at the societal level, though it remains possible for individuals. More importantly, listing what must be done without addressing how it can be done is, like negative criticism, altogether easy and almost pointless.

Underlying the fear and the increasingly fascist feel of the United States is an absence of myth. This is not new. Mark Rothko, the twentieth century painter, wrote extensively on our search for a "master narrative." He was convinced that the loss of myth, so much a part of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was responsible for the violence and break-down that led to both World Wars. Though Rothko glossed over some of the more repugnant realities of both these eras - and ugly they could be - the loss of myth, of a central story and purpose - did contribute to what so many have deemed the "decline of Western civilization." Religious fundamentalists argue that this decline occurred as a result of loosening morals and a "turning away" from god worship, but the corruption and violence of the first half of the twentieth century is more accurately moored to the industrial revolution and the myriad temptations of free-market capitalism, both of which forced societies to become more focused on the individual good. I agree with Rothko; a myth is needed where a god is not. Star Wars is a myth - this is only true of the first trilogy, before Lucas introduced the idea of genetic superiority via metachlorion count - and so is The Lord of the Rings. Both sagas weave together the universal myths, those elements that can be found in all theology and everyday life, to create timeless narratives of self-worth and social obligation, reminding us that the little man can make a difference and that good can and will triumph over evil, but not without a lot of heart and courage. The philosophical problems with the concept of "good" and "evil" aside - postmodernism and relativism must take a back seat here - myths rarely grant power to a very few and, when this does occur, the powerful are inevitably overthrown and made examples of.

Without livable myths, most of us turn to the Abrahamic God, abandoning mythical narrative to the realms of science fiction and fantasy. But that god, at least as it is usually conceived of, is a pale shadow of myth for "He" is without practice, only ritual and faith. Faith is a virtue, but it is too easily coopted and dubbed loyalty. Scared by the world we inhabit, we turn to television in the hopes of being frightened further by spectres, aliens, and possessed girls. Dissatisfied with our "little" lives, we celebrate garish displays of wealth, influence, and sexuality, turning all three into absurd caricatures of themselves - reducing them in the process, which ultimately makes them that much more easily abused. But wait! There exists a narrative we can all identify with, a truth all contemporary Americans can rally behind.

"Overworked
So Tired.
If Late
Get Fired.
Why Bother?
Why the Pain?
Just Go Home
Do It Again."

But I don't get it. What's it selling?

Photo credit: 1971, Walt Kelly, "Pogo"

Hung-over and Thinking

For the most part, New York City’s subways are subterranean, but some lines in the outer boroughs are elevated. The Queensbound N/W subway line emerges from under the East River and rises over the rooftops before turning north up 31st Street to Astoria, where I live.

Yesterday, as white sunlight made unnecessary the green fluorescent glow of the subway car lighting, I looked up from my magazine and noticed a young Colombian boy playing with his father’s cell phone. Standing by a window, the boy had selected the phone’s camera mode and was captivated by the cityscape, pixilated and bleached, as it cruised by on the phone's small viewfinder.

'There is something here,' I thought. Is this a nice metaphor for our First World disconnect, I wondered? Does a preference for a digitized interpretation of the world suggest a break with the unmediated rest of it? Is the child really exhibiting such a preference or is this cigar just a cigar? For that matter, is the “real” world anything more than a neurological interpretation itself, our own personal computer translating strings of chemical 1s and 0s?

Suddenly, I found myself recalling something Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, wrote in 1945.

“It seems to me that something new is in formation on our planet. The material progress of modern times has indeed linked mankind by a sort of nervous system. The contacts are innumerable. The communications are instantaneous. We are materially bound like the cells of the same body. But this body does not yet have a soul. This organism has not yet grown conscious of itself. The hand does not feel itself a part with the eye.”

His observation still rings true today, at least to psuedo-luddites like myself.

Hung over and splintered, my mind made a seemingly disparate connection between the Exupery quote and a poem I wrote five or six years ago.

Sunset is chilly
on the shores of Southampton,
the water creeping closer
to the foundations of second or third homes.
Hiding in a tangled mass
of beached seagrass,
the tiny coffins of unborn skates
catch our attention.
Tearing open one of the leathery wombs,
a yolk falls into my palm.
Still attached, still feeding,
is a squirming embryo.

Next morning now,
The clouds heavy with rain
sag and burst like
too full mammaries.
The rain chases my train
to New York City.

The father reached over and pried the phone out of the boy’s hands. The boy looked up in protest before turning his attention to his shoes.

Photo credit: 1995-2001, Chao-Hwa Che