Category Archives: poets and writers

emergency shelter

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Old friend and fellow poet Joseph Gallo writes of a long dark night of survival in the face of the Gap Fire, on Yarblehead.

Facing the flames, I have no idea what I would try to save. But I must say that Joseph has admirably more apparent respect for his creative work product that I have for mine. I think I would be more concerned for things I have inherited from others.

That their ancestral contributions to the product of human presence in our transitory realm has ceased, but that my own effluent might continue for a time, despite any covenant to that effect, is my point.

living amazed

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Back in 1976, I went to Santa Barbara for a reading and lecture by a monk and writer named William McNamara. The occasion was the publication of his book, “The Human Adventure: Contemplation for Everyman.” I came away with a copy of this book, which now rests here beside my computer. I am a bit concerned that its structure may not survive its first opening in a long time: it is brittle. (It was still the 1970s when last I opened it.) I note that the cost, printed on the cover, was $1.95; the hardcover was originally $3.95.

As three decades and change have flickered by like magic lantern hummingbirds, I have often quoted – apparently misquoted – the admonition of this book to live my life, “steeped in radical amazement.” Here’s what this brittle little book really says:

It is this spiritual life, as well as my prayer life, of which contemplation is the highest expression. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is a life grounded in radical amazement, steeped in wonder, and full of awe, immersed as it is in mystery and engaged in intercourse with God. Contemplation is, above all, the loving awareness of God, the invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source of everything.

Over thirty years, and I keep coming back to this, to one afternoon in a church when I was 15, to one man from the woods of Nova Scotia. I remember, without risking damage to later pages, that he lived in a log hermitage with his dog and ate oatmeal at dawn. I have remembered many times to try to find that amazement in the short days of my finite life. Perhaps more important, I’ve kept watch for a vision of that amazement – the wish to perceive it – in others.

Last week, a friend told me how much he likes the word amazement; I believe I see that wish in him. And in the past few days, I’ve found it without a doubt in the newest blog in my blogroll, camera-obscura. Anyone who dances with her horses is truly living steeped in wonder.

The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

— TS Eliot, Four Quartets

an end to the strike?

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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — The three-months-long Hollywood writers strike could enter its final chapter Saturday when guild members gather in Los Angeles and New York to consider a proposed contract.

If writers respond favorably, the walkout that has devastated the entertainment industry could end as soon as Monday.

Writers were wavering between hope and skepticism as they prepared to learn details of the deal for the first time.

Oh, it would be nice. I’d love to know they’re all snugly back at their computers, tack-tacking away at the keys. I’m so sick of reruns I could just spit. Though to be honest, Netflix has taken good care of me these 3 months.

I really wish the WGA writers all the best; I hope they get what they wanted, for all their trouble.

I believe that someone who creates something should share the profits; in fact, the creative talent should have the lion’s share, as compared with those who merely transmit it. I realize that’s a vast oversimplification of the matter at hand. I’m just saying, don’t muzzle the ox that threshes the grain.

tough guy could write

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Well, my computer tells me that Normal Mailer is dead, and I’m sorry to see it. He was a good writer; maybe not as great as he imagined himself but certainly top shelf. A lot better than yours truly, and frankly that is saying something. I mean, I’ve got some game. But this post is about Mailer.

I was introduced to his writings in college. I took a course in his work. A whole semester of his moderately self-absorbed, sometimes violent and misogynistic, occasionally onanistic stuff. I was impressed, if not well entertained. He was insightful, prolific, and courageous with words. What’s more important, he was idiosyncratic – a real individualist. You could tell that he wrote what he wanted to, as he wanted to, critics be damned. And in my book, that counted for a lot.

It counts for even more now, in our troubled times, when we are under the power of men who are at once moral relativists and fascists. We need more writers like Normal Mailer.

Seamus Heaney Interviewed

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Discourse with the great poet, from the Telegraph UK:

“‘The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.’

… Heaney is always saying something: it is just that his yearning for precision, his wariness of misrepresentation, means he is supremely careful how he says it.

As I leave, he is offering advice on where in Dublin to eat good mackerel, and asking, ‘Have you euros?’ while preparing to rummage in his pockets, just in case I have stumbled up without the currency to make it back to the city centre.

A generous poet, then, and most generous of all is his parting benediction: ‘Write whatever you like!'”