Teaching · Writing

Crystals and Flames: The teaching edition

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Italo Calvino’s essay on “Exactitude” exhorts tight, vivid writing and the continual quest for the mot juste. In each of his Six Memos for the Next Millenium, he presents a pair of contrasting qualities literature can have, and then he comes down on one side as being closer to his own practice and of most use to readers in the 21st century. So in the essay on Lightness, he also considers weight or gravitas, and says he simply “has more to say about lightness”(Six Memos 3).

This pattern holds for the remaining four essays—Quickness, not lingering; Exactitude, not vagueness; Visibility, not abstraction; Multiplicity, not singularity. He died before writing the sixth: Consistency.

Today a student expressed frustration with his even-handedness. If he’s going to argue for one side being better, why not stick to that? The short answer is because it’s complicated (as everything important is). The longer answer is because he sees the value of both traits in different contexts and in the interest of living a rich reading life. The deeper answer, I think in retrospect, is that while he chooses the side he most naturally leans toward, he admires and even envies those who occupy the other side. Today it came up in terms of teaching styles and professors.

The crystal: “the self-organizing system” (71)

When Calvino argues for the Party of the Crystal and the Party of the Flame, he conceives of placing authors in camps who favor structure over stream of consciousness—intrinsic order over associative, digressive, descriptive texts.

As I was explaining this dichotomy, I put it in terms of pedagogy. When I was in college, I had two professors who taught entirely differently. One came in every day and put a list of topics on the board, and no matter how esoteric the subject (I took themed courses entitled “Philosophy of Love” and “Philosophy of War” from her), we marched through those topics, in order and in detail. When I left, I knew what I had learned. I felt like there was significant content added to my brain every day.

The flame: “order out of noise” (71)

Another professor in the same department delivered content completely differently. I thought of him as a juggler of ideas. He came in and brought up one subject, which led to a discussion of a related subject, which led to another, like a juggler adding balls without your noticing. All those balls seemed to float in the air above us, one idea connecting to another, with students questioning and adding and variously contributing to the aerial show until it was time to wrap up. And when he did wrap up, all those topics seemed to fold back in on each other like Chinese puzzle boxes, and I sat in awe of how many disparate subjects and ideas seemed seamlessly connected in his lectures.

The juggler was a flame. The list-maker was a crystal.

When I realized that, I recognized the pull in Calvino’s essays toward the opposite side of each binary. He is a crystal, but he admires those who embody the flame in part because he could never pull it off. Every impulse he has directs him toward structure that builds meaning and reveals order. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t marvel at the apparent magic and mystery of the flame and those who embody it.

I know because as I was talking about my professors, I found myself envious of the list-maker. I can start with a list, but when I’m done, if we’ve hit 40% of those items in a class, I’m doing pretty well. I more often follow the interests and experiences of my students, so every class goes where they are more than where I guide. I would never compare my classes to the virtuosity of my idea-juggling magician, but I’m no crystal when it comes to teaching, and I stand in awe of those who are. Students respond well when they can leave with that feeling of having completed a list of tasks and mastered a body of knowledge, and I wish sometimes that I could give that to them. I can’t. I do something else which I think also has value, but I totally get where Calvino feels compelled to do justice to both sides, even though he favors one himself.

If I’m honest, it’s probably why I love him. I am a happy flame, but I remain fascinated by the crystal and its particular beauty.

Living

Honey Magic

Alison Baker1 Comment

We interrupt National Poetry Month blogs with an unexpected bit of wonder. I recently became a bee foster-mother.

I care about bees. In recent years, as they have been victims of pesticide and other carelessness, I may have become sort of a bee-zealot. Some of this is because our eco-system and our food supply depends mightily on them. Some of it is that I have a sort of Moomin-like affection for All Small Creatures, and some of it is purely Alison aesthetic—they’re cute; they buzz; they produce honey.

We know that honey lasts a long time because we have found edible honey in Egyptian tombs. We know that honey has particular medicinal traits because it has been listed in healing handbooks for millenia. My favorite story about honey is the Finnish Kalevala’s account of its role in the resurrection of Lemminkainen.

There is a scene in the Kalevala where Lemminkainen is killed and dismembered, his body parts tossed in to the river of the dead. I’m not one to advocate for that sort of behavior, but this kid, in epic terms, really had it coming. He ignored sage advice, disobeyed his parent, and went off half-cocked on a crazy, invasive, revenge-fueled spree.

The upshot is that his mother can heal him. When she gets the right honey, she fishes his parts out of the river with a copper rake commissioned for that job, and sticks him back together with the healing goodness of honey. Lemminkainen awakens, thanks his mom for her knowledge and actions, and vows not to be such a big jerk next time.

So the honey, man. The honey is liquid gold. A panacea An antiseptic, antibacterial, antioxidant, wound-healing magic. And the reason I’m so excited about it today is that I had 20,000 bees removed from my front yard yesterday.

I knew when we realized that we had a “bee problem” I didn’t want an exterminator, but to relocate them. Through a friend, I found a hobbyist bee keeper and a professional bee handler, and they came to my house, sawed through the stucco on my front porch, and removed by hand (and by bee-vacuum) somewhere around 20,000 adult bees, eight 8” x 12” frames of eggs and larvae, and three buckets of honeycomb.

There are people who work with bees, and someday I may be one, but this was my first encounter, really. For them, this was just another day at work. For me, it was something of a revelation.

The bees were relocated, along with their queen, and will be re-homed on land away from city zoning and nervous neighbors. But they were nice bees, and I was delighted to have hosted them temporarily.

I was left with a sizable chunk of honeycomb to do with as I please. Today it pleases me to fish through internet videos and watch people employ different methods of honey extraction and wax rendering—to filter out some fresh honey made by bees in my yard, from flowers in my neighborhood, and eat it with all the atavistic delight of some pioneer woman living off the land, grateful for the bounty of the earth and the magic of bees.

I’ll make some toast and as I drizzle fresh, super-local honey on it, I’ll toast the bees who gave it to me. I’ll make some lip balm for sure, and maybe a candle or a stick of sealing wax. And I’ll make a poem about bees—probably a short one, but an earnest one. But I’ll leave you tonight with the image of the noble, little bee getting its quest from Lemminkainen’s mom:

“Honeybee,” she said once more,
“Bird of air, fly a third time,
Fly up to the highest heaven,
To the very ninth of heavens.
There the honey is overflowing
To the height of your desire,
With which once the great Creator,
Jumala himself made magic
For the healing of his children
Injured by an evil power.
Dip your wings into the honey,
Pinions in the liquid nectar.
Bring the honey on your wings,
Fetch the nectar in your mantle
As a medicine for the wounded,
An infusion for the injured.”

Words of magic worthy of the bees–and today’s piece of a poem for National Poetry Month.

Living · Picture Books · Reading

Three for National Poetry Month

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Today my daughter accused me of being a large 5-year old. She was talking about how excited I get around holidays, so I let it slide. She’s not wrong. I also love children’s books and poetry written for children. In honor of National Poetry Month, here are three poems by Edward Lear, the 19th century British writer and illustrator who often gets credited with inventing the Limerick. In all his anapestic glory, I give you “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “The Pobble Who Has No Toes,” and “The Duck and the Kangaroo,” which inspired a certain tiny boy’s Hallowe’en costume about 15 years ago. Timballo!

I 

“The Owl and the Pussycat”

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea 
   In a beautiful pea-green boat, 
They took some honey, and plenty of money, 
   Wrapped up in a five-pound note. 
The Owl looked up to the stars above, 
  And sang to a small guitar, 
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, 
    What a beautiful Pussy you are, 
         You are, 
         You are! 
What a beautiful Pussy you are!” 

II 

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! 
   How charmingly sweet you sing! 
O let us be married! too long we have tarried: 
   But what shall we do for a ring?” 
They sailed away, for a year and a day, 
   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows 
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood 
   With a ring at the end of his nose,        
His nose,             
His nose, 
   With a ring at the end of his nose. 

III 

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling 
   Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” 
So they took it away, and were married next day 
   By the Turkey who lives on the hill. 
They dined on mince, and slices of quince, 
   Which they ate with a runcible spoon; 
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, 
   They danced by the light of the moon,             
The moon,             
The moon, 
They danced by the light of the moon.

“The Pobble Who Has No Toes”

The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we;
When they said “Some day you may lose them all;”
He replied “Fish, fiddle-de-dee!”
And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink
Lavender water tinged with pink,
For she said “The World in general knows
There’s nothing so good for a Pobble’s toes!”

The Pobble who has no toes
Swam across the Bristol Channel;
But before he set out he wrapped his nose
In a piece of scarlet flannel.
For his Aunt Jobiska said “No harm
Can come to his toes if his nose is warm;
And it’s perfectly known that a Pobble’s toes
Are safe, — provided he minds his nose!”

The Pobble swam fast and well,
And when boats or ships came near him,
He tinkledy-blinkledy-winkled a bell,
So that all the world could hear him.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,
When they saw him nearing the further side –
“He has gone to fish for his Aunt Jobiska’s
Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!”

But before he touched the shore,
The shore of the Bristol Channel,
A sea-green porpoise carried away
His wrapper of scarlet flannel.
And when he came to observe his feet,
Formerly garnished with toes so neat,
His face at once became forlorn,
On perceiving that all his toes were gone!

And nobody ever knew,
From that dark day to the present,
Whoso had taken the Pobble’s toes,
In a manner so far from pleasant.
Whether the shrimps, or crawfish grey,
Or crafty Mermaids stole them away –
Nobody knew: and nobody knows
How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!

The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark,
And they rowed him back, and carried him up
To his Aunt Jobiska’s Park.
And she made him a feast at his earnest wish
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish, –
And she said “It’s a fact the whole world knows,
That Pobbles are happier without their toes!”

Please note the tiny duck riding at the end of the kangaroo’s tale. This child is a walking poem.

“The Duck and the Kangaroo”

I

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,
    ‘Good gracious! how you hop!
Over the fields and the water too,
    As if you never would stop!
My life is a bore in this nasty pond,
And I long to go out in the world beyond!
    I wish I could hop like you!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

II

‘Please give me a ride on your back!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.
‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,”
    The whole of the long day through!
And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee,
Over the land, and over the sea;—
    Please take me a ride! O do!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

III

Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,
    ‘This requires some little reflection;
Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,
    And there seems but one objection,
Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold,
Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,
And would probably give me the roo-
    Matiz!’ said the Kangaroo.

   IV

Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks,
    I have thought over that completely,
And I bought four pairs of worsted socks
    Which fit my web-feet neatly.
And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak,
And every day a cigar I’ll smoke,
    All to follow my own dear true
    Love of a Kangaroo!’

V

Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready!
    All in the moonlight pale;
But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!
    And quite at the end of my tail!’
So away they went with a hop and a bound,
And they hopped the whole world three times round;
    And who so happy,—O who,
    As the Duck and the Kangaroo?

These poems were written by Edward Lear (1812-88) and found on the Poetry Foundation site (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems) except for the Pobble, which I found here: https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/pobble.html

Living · Reading

A Poem A Day

Alison BakerLeave a comment

National Poetry Month rolls around once every year, and some years it slips by without my notice amid the bustle of an academic spring. I try to remember Poem in My Pocket Day (April 18 this year!) because I adore the idea of carrying words of power with me in my pocket, like a spell that no one suspects I bear. I usually enlist my daughter in this happy conspiracy, and we have had wonderful, serendipitous moments like her having the poem in her pocket that a teacher referred to and she shouted out, “Hey! That’s in my pocket!” to the amazement of her teacher and the annoyance of her gobsmacked peers.

This year I’m celebrating by posting a poem every day of April on my choice of social media. (It’s Facebook. I’m old). But I’m excited because it feels like taking part in the same magic mojo of Advent or a gratitude journal–a small, lovely thing that builds toward something substantial and rewarding.

I know it’s small. But it’s really also lovely. I promise.

It means I have to think of thirty poems. The first couple I pull right out of my head. They’re short. I own them. I have swallowed them like Zeus swallowed Metis—whole, so they can still advise me. I carry them everywhere.

Some poems I associate so strongly with people, that I can’t think of or read the poem without an accompanying memory of the person. E.A. Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy” is the first poem I remember my dad reading to me. He was extolling the virtues of a set of books he’d owned as a child and was passing on to me, and he proved their worth by plucking “Miniver Cheevy” out of the pages like a flower, reading it aloud, holding it up to the light for me to look at.

How much happened in that moment for me is hard to gauge. It may have been the first time a poem was presented to me like a gem. Was it the first time I thought about someone being so enchanted by the past? The image of Miniver dreaming while drinking certainly stuck with me. It is a tragic poem, but an incredibly evocative image.

Some poems are locked in my memory as emblematic of a certain time in my life. I know it’s cheesy, but Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is probably the first grown up poem I memorized, and it’s absolutely due to my watching of the movie The Outsiders in about 1984 on HBO. I can see 12 or 13-year old me on the couch in the family room thinking to myself, “something big just happened there.” So I memorized it and kept it with me. I vowed to stay golden, like Ponyboy, but not by dying young. I started looking at flowers as something with an expiration. I let it change me.

35 years later, many, many more poems have changed me.

Because some poems are like people. Once you encounter them, they offer you a new perspective you never considered. They open up a window on the world that you hadn’t had access to before. Some friends have introduced me to Buddhism and homemade tamales. Some poems have introduced me to reincarnation and sugarplums.

So in anticipation of when I run out of poems in my head, the commitment to produce a beloved poem a day is an occasion to sift through books of poetry looking for treasure. I know the internet exists, but I prefer to start with books. So I’ve just set myself a reading assignment. Part of me thinks I may go beyond the month. Probably I’ll let myself slip back into the mundane world where my daily responsibilities outweigh my self-indulgent word-love, but one can always, always hope.

Poetic Poppies for attention.
Living · Reading · Teaching

Mr. Palomar’s Blackbirds: How couples’ private language is both more cryptic and more elaborate than is reasonable

Alison BakerLeave a comment

So I’m a closet linguist. I’m interested in language—how it changes, how it works, how it feels in my mouth, and how it paints pictures without your standard art supplies. I’ve probably spent more time on how it changes from a historical perspective, but I’m no less intrigued by how it changes in contemporary slang or in my own usage. Today I’m thinking about the language my partner and I use to communicate.

The catalyst for today’s ruminations is Calvino’s Mr. Palomar. In the chapter entitled “The Blackbird’s Whistle,” Mr. Palomar is sitting on his terrace, working , while his wife waters plants, and they both remark on the presence of the blackbird couple who visits. The chapter opens:

“Mr. Palomar is lucky in one respect: he spends the summer in a place where many birds sing. As he sits in a deck chair and “works” (in fact, he is lucky also in another respect: he can say that he is working in places and attitudes that would suggest complete repose; or rather, he suffers this handicap: he feels obliged never to stop working, even when lying under the trees on an August morning)…” (22)

…and we’re done. I’m in. I prepare for class on my patio, listening to bird songs and trying not to get distracted by the wind in the peach tree and the light on the mountains. And to a teacher, every book you read, every movie you watch, every place you go might someday be worked in to a class, so you’re always sort of working.

But that’s just why I love and identify with Mr. Palomar. This is a blog about language.

As he sits on the patio, Mr. Palomar listens to the birds. They seem to him to be communicating, and as Mrs. Palomar bustles about commenting on them, the human couple’s communication mimics the blackbirds.’ She comments absently that the flower bed is dry again, and:

“…from these remarks Mr. Palomar derives a general picture of tranquility, and he is grateful to his wife for it, because if she confirms the fact that for the moment there is nothing more serious for him to bother about, then he can remain absorbed in his work (or pseudowork or hyperwork). He allows a minute to pass; then he also tries to send a reassuring message, to inform his wife that his work (or infrawork or ultrawork) is proceeding as usual: to this end he emits a series of sighs and grumbles—’…crooked… for all that… repeat… yes, my foot…’—utterances that, taken all together, transmit the message ‘I am very busy,’ in the event that his wife’s last remark contained a veiled reproach on the order of ‘You could also assume some responsibility for watering the garden.'” (26)

When I teach this book, this is the point where some sweet, sensitive student worries about him. Why is he not communicating well with his wife? He must be so lonely, isolated even from those who love him. He’s not communicating. She’s talking, and he’s not listening.

I have to explain that this is just a conversation between two people who have been married a long time. They don’t need very many words, just like the blackbirds don’t need many sounds. They are enjoying a summer morning together, companionably parallel-playing, my husband and I would say. He’s doing his thing; she’s doing hers. They’re not interrupting each other, but they’re keeping one another on their radar. He’s alert to potential guilt about never watering the flowers; she’s aware that he’s working and trying to preserve his time while still being present. It’s a delicate dance. But it’s not loneliness.

As we approach our 28th anniversary, Rob and I have begun making jokes about what kind of eccentric old people we’re going to be. I’m certain no one will have any idea what we’re talking about. We talk in movie quotes (“Inconceivable!”) and expressions our children coined when they were little (“Put it in the fridge and save it forever,” which my son said about a train-shaped Jell-O jiggler when he was three and gets hauled out whenever anyone wants to hold on to something long past its prime). We use more Monty Python lines than any ten people should, and we refer to new people with old names, grafting names with personalities—some of people we knew, but others of characters from books or movies we’ve seen together. We have developed our own language.

Our kids understand most references, since we’ve spent years repeating the same stories. (They’re teenagers, so they’re quick to point out when we repeat ourselves. I hope as we age, their patience increases with our propensity to repeat ourselves.)

But to a stranger, I’ll bet we already don’t make much sense.

I’m ok with that. We communicate just fine. We understand each other. Our words carry more meaning because of our shared history. This kind of thing happens whenever two or more people share experiences, inside jokes, and adequate time together. We use language to communicate, but also to reassure, to comfort, to cheer, to share, to love. The birds may do all of that with their series of chirps and trills and silences too, but they’ll never understand the importance of knowing that “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”

A group of blackbirds isn’t a murder, right? Maybe a manslaughter? A misdemeanor?
Living · Reading

Life Hacks from Ancient Myth #2: How to treat a chest wound, or “Harold wasn’t always allergic to bees.”

Alison BakerLeave a comment

At my house whenever something unexpected happens, you’re liable to hear someone say, pensively, “Harold wasn’t always allergic to bees.” It’s a line from the 1993 rom-com Sleepless in Seattle, from the crazy dinner conversation full of crossing narratives and non-sequiturs, and it struck us as so random that it stuck, and we’ve been variously applying it and misapplying it ever since.

Today, as I write another installment in the Life Hacks from Ancient Myth, I have a lesson that seems less broadly applicable, but is still surprisingly relevant from time to time, so we feel like it’s a truth that no one sees coming: If someone takes a spear to the chest, don’t just pull it out right there. Resist the temptation to relieve your comrade of the stabby thing that seems to be paining them. Be calm.

This is, believe it or not, a recurring lesson throughout literature. I know it from two pretty dissimilar texts—one Roman, and one Anglo-Saxon. It comes up more often than that, really, but these two are very vivid for me.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, completed in the year 8 CE, he parodies the Trojan War material with a raucous wedding scene where a centaur tries to steal the bride. (That hilarious parody and Ovid’s neat reduction of the Trojan War to a couple embarrassing moments for Achilles is the subject for another blog.) Today I’m interested in the tragic love story he drops in the middle of the ‘red wedding’-style brawl.

As humans slaughter centaurs in defense of the bride, and centaurs rise (or not) to glory in self-defense, the narration pauses to hold a light on perfect love: Cyllarus and his beloved Hylonome have come to the wedding as a happy couple to celebrate another happy couple. They are described as almost nauseatingly sweet—“she honeys him” at 12.411, and just as we’re imagining this loving centaur couple (for me, thanks to the Disney animators of Fantasia, I have a very clear image), Cyllarus takes a spear to the chest.

We’re told that it did not pierce his heart, but it’s close, so for a moment the possibility of his survival fills our hearts. Then Hylonome, crazed with fear and grief, rips out the offending projectile.

Oh, Hylonome.

Did she not take War Time Triage 101? When she pulls out the spear, hoping to help, she instead rips his chest open, and his lifeblood pours out. She tries kissing him to stop his soul escaping with his breath, but she’s already lost him. She runs herself through with the same spear, and the tragedy is complete.

So what have we learned? Centaurs are terrible wedding guests; they arrive drunk and only get worse. But also, beware of chest wounds. They need special care.

A later example of this type scene comes from the Old English poem ”The Battle of Maldon,” wherein the defending earl of an English tribe is hit with a spear from an invading Viking ruffian. Byrthnoth, the lord, has exhibited tremendous arrogance in allowing this battle to take place at all (he gave up a position of advantage out of pride). And to prove his manhood, just seconds before the fatal chest wound, he had wrenched a spear out of his own shoulder and sent it back at the Sea Dog who threw it.

So perhaps we forgive poor Wulfmar, who at fifteen years old is fighting his first and last battle. He sees his lord go down and rushes to help. But our narrator reminds us it’s his inexperience that is to blame. You can almost hear a chorus of seasoned warriors scream “NO!—Don’t do it!” as he slides the spear head out and Byrtnoth slumps to the ground.

Why wasn’t this covered in basic training? In both tales someone pulls the blade who didn’t know any better—a woman, a new soldier—because everyone else knows not to do that until you can treat it carefully.

But now we know. If you or someone you love is ever pierced by a spear, don’t try to remove it on the battlefield. Or in the classroom. Because Harold wasn’t always allergic to bees.

In a Texas elementary school in October of 2000, six-year old Destiny Lopez was trotting back to her desk when she fell on her newly sharpened pencil, and it pierced her heart. A pencil is just a small spear, after all—wooden shaft, sharp point.

Her heroic and self-possessed teacher did not act rashly. She lay down on the floor with Destiny as the pencil pulsed with the beat of her heart. She did NOT remove the weapon from the wounded warrior’s chest.

And that little girl lived.

So let that be a lesson to us. And go get some first aid training, or at least read some good battle poetry.

Here are two articles about Destiny and her teacher:

https://journaltimes.com/news/national/girl-recovering-after-pencil-pierces-heart/article_11048467-e2dc-5209-967c-194a02858e88.html

First-grader of Near-Fatal Pencil Accident Celebrates 15th Anniversary

Nora Ephron, screenplay and director. Sleepless in Seattle. 1993. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan starring.

Living

The Mild Mania of Loving Languages

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Can one be addicted to learning languages? If you can, aren’t there worse obsessions?

It’s not like I do it thoroughly. I know a fair bit about a number of languages. Most of them aren’t spoken anywhere (hands up if you know anyone who speaks Gothic or Old French?), so there’s no immersion program where I can relocate for six months and come out the other side able to converse with Alaric the Goth.

Mostly it’s about reading. I do like to be able to speak, but my fear of sounding like a jerk or an idiot overcomes my desire to communicate most of the time. It has taken decades to get better at–not over—that. But I really like to read in different languages.

When I was wending my way through graduate school, trying to pin down a field of study, I embarked on a linguistics program. I told my advisor I wanted to focus on historical linguistics. He told me that wasn’t done anymore, that it was just a relic–something non-linguists think of when they think of linguists. What I should have told him was that I wanted the keys to the kingdom—the secret to learning languages. Because the real reason was that I didn’t trust translators. I wanted to read Beowulf and Vǫlsunga Saga and the Romance of the Rose without an intermediary.

That’s pretty close to what I got. I got a chance to study language and language change in the abstract and I got to know a few languages in very concrete, “this text and one other are all we know of this language” terms. Perhaps most importantly, I learned how I learn, and that did me in. I swear it’s addicting. Like Bubble Pop or crosswords, languages feel like puzzle games, and I will be that old, weird little person trying to figure out what dragoncello means in Italian.

Discovering how you think and learn is both empowering and baffling. I know I see words in my head as I hear them, that I parse them, search for cognates, and am genuinely annoyed if I can’t figure out how something is spelled. It makes me good at deducing meaning from words, and good at slipping in to rabbit holes mid-conversation (which is usually not good). In my case it means that I have the same sense of wonder about words as I do about cloud formations, genetics, and how they cram music between the ridges of a record.

It means I recently spent a disconcerting amount of time wondering whether there was a corresponding opposite to the Latinate word “crepuscular,” which means ‘growing dark’ as in twilight or dusk. There was a word in Latin, “clarescere” which meant ‘to grow clearer and brighter’ but English didn’t steal  that one, apparently, and I haven’t found a cognate in other modern Romance languages.

This is all to say that thinking in words is a way of thinking, as is thinking in images or concepts. And as the world continues toward global community, it’s not a bad one to cultivate.

Reading · Writing

In Praise of Prose

Alison BakerLeave a comment

If I am a lover of form in verse, I am no less enamored of poetic prose. I don’t know why more people don’t write prose poems. Some poems, in fact, I think would lose none of their charm if we just let them be prose instead of forcing line breaks that can seem arbitrary.

So tonight, on what social media has just informed me is World Book Day, I offer some baby books for the harried, along with a brief introduction.

Prose poems are compact, usually a paragraph to a page or two. Shorter than most fiction, they tend not so much to tell a story as to convey an evocative image. The density of their language and their use of figurative language often used in poetry make them seem like a verbal inoculation against sloppy writing—they remind us that language can be precise and powerful without meter or rhyme, and they leave us with an image or idea that we can carry in to the world.

They are perfect for evenings when you just have a little time and want to indulge in something like candy for your brain. My choices tonight hearken back to where I first encountered the prose poem—a French literature class in college—so one is from the 19th century Baudelaire (who is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe, even by himself) and the 20th century Francis Ponge, who became something of an icon in prose poetry, known for minute description and crystalline imagery.

Enjoy.

“Be Drunken” by Charles Baudelaire

BE DRUNKEN, ALWAYS. That is the point. Nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that sighs, of all that moves, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”

“Rain” by Francis Ponge

The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different 
rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest. A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one. Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles. Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies. Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface. From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.

Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter. Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism 
as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.

The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.

Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop. It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates. It has rained.
 

*The Baudelaire poem was printed in Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems and translated by Joseph M. Bernstein. Citadel Press 1990.

*The Ponge piece was translated by Joshua Corey and Jean-Luc Garneau and is available on The Poetry Foundation website at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/francis-ponge.

Reading

Life Hacks from Ancient Myths, volume 1

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Sometimes in the middle of unpacking a myth’s metaphoric meanings, the story can seem pretty wild and ridiculous, and if I’m still looking like I think it’s cool, my students start to look at me like I’m slightly cracked. That’s when I try to make it relevant. Today’s handy lesson was “When you’re grappling a shapeshifter, just hang on until they run out of forms.”

We read the myth of Erysichthon, the sacrilegious cretin who chops down a giant oak sacred to Ceres (goddess of grain and fertility and motherhood). Inside the tree is a nymph, so it bleeds when he chops it down. Ovid’s treatment is wonderful: in response to this crime, Ceres seeks out her opposite, Famine, and sicks her on Erysichthon. Famine breathes want in to his bones, and he gets hungrier as he eats.

                Just as the sea receives
                the rivers of the earth, but then can drink
                still other streams that flow from distant parts;
                and just as a devouring fire will not
                reject more fuel, but feeds on countless logs,
                becoming ever more voracious with each gift:
                so for the sinner Erysichthon’s lips,
                each banquet only adds to what he’s missed.
                For him food calls for food, glut calls for glut;
                his being full amounts to emptiness.
(Metamorphoses 8; Allen Mandelbaum, translator)

And here we have a doodle of the tree Erysichthon mutilates. It was big enough for fifteen nymphs to dance around, hand in hand, and decorated with ribbons and votive tablets.

When it gets very bad (which doesn’t take long), Erysichthon tries to sell his daughter for food. However, in an offscreen back story, she had been previously raped by Neptune, and in compensation he had granted her the ability to shape-shift. So every time Erysichthon sells her, she transforms in to a different animal and escapes her new master. Eventually he eats away at his own flesh.

That message seems clear. Don’t willfully challenge the gods, or they will respond in kind. Erysichthon’s greed is magnified until it consumes him. It’s not even reciprocal justice; it’s just turning up the volume.

But we were talking about shapeshifters. Erysichthon’s daughter sparks comparison with other shapeshifters: Proteus, who is name-dropped in this same book of the Metamorphoses and Thetis, mother of Achilles, who will come up later.

Both these shapeshifters are gods, so the boon to the mortal girl had been to make her godlike. Proteus and Thetis are both compelled to do something against their will, and their shapeshifting turns out to be a detriment. When Menelaus, the king of Sparta, is trying to get home from the Trojan War, he learns he needs to get directions from Proteus to do so. He must sneak up on Proteus as he’s sunbathing and hold on to him no matter what he turns in to. If he can keep his grip until Proteus grows tired and runs out of ideas and returns to his original form, Menelaus will have power over him.

The same thing happens to Thetis, the sea goddess whom Peleus overcomes. In her case she’s trying to avoid rape, so she turns into a literal hellcat (ok—tiger) and some other scary things in order to get away. She does get away the first time, but the second time, Peleus gets some coaching and learns he just needs to hold on. It’s still a rape narrative. If you don’t like that, and I don’t, it helps to think of Thetis bearing the child Achilles who will be the greatest warrior the Greeks ever produce. He is so great because he’s a goddess’s son, but no goddess would submit to being dominated by a mortal willingly (except Venus), so she needs to be “won.” Still not awesome by 21st century standards, but if we read it mythically and remember that she is the sea, we see Peleus wrangling the ever-changing sea and that power is channeled in to Achilles.

This is what happens for Menelaus too; he conquers Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, so metaphorically the sea itself. What he gains from that conquest is power over the sea—the ability to navigate it safely and get his crew home. And it reveals our life hack for the day: hang on.

No matter what crazy things happen, no matter how fast things change and how overwhelming or even terrifying they seem, don’t let go. Don’t give up. Every fight teaches you something, so if you fight ten things in quick succession, you learn ten times as fast. Grappling a shapeshifter is like taking a two-week winter session course instead of the whole semester–not for the faint of heart.

Reading · Teaching · Writing

In Defense of Form in Poetry

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Confession: I love sonnets. I love villanelles. I love heroic couplets.

I love words that have been wrought, not just lined up. I love rhyme, alliteration, and meter. Especially meter. That’s where the music lives.

Not that I don’t love free verse. I do. Not that I don’t love prose fiction. Of course I do. But I adore the extra intensity delivered by metrical verse, and I relish the extra engagement it takes both to read it and to write it.

Today I’m thinking about sonnets. Generally speaking, a sonnet is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter, the marching, grave meter of ten syllables in an alternating pattern of weak/strong, weak/strong, weak/strong (five times, so pentameter) is the favored form for serious verse in English since the time of Chaucer. As an “iamb” is two syllables, a weak one followed by a stressed one, like ‘about’ or ‘before’ or ‘Denise,’ a line of iambic pentameter can feel as regular as a drumbeat: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”

Sonnets come in two varieties: the English or Shakespearean and the Italian or Petrarchan. Shakespearean sonnets, made famous by his prodigious ability and volume, divide the fourteen lines in to three quatrains and a couplet. These stanzas are often bound by rhyme, and the couplet at the end feels like a punchline or a conclusion the poem has been building up to with each stanza adding a different facet. It’s the “five paragraph essay” of the poetry world, and the thesis is the couplet at the end.

Italian sonnets work differently. Divided in to two stanzas of eight and six lines (an octet and a sestet), they lend themselves to different content. The first, longer stanza often sets a scene or makes a statement, and then the second, shorter one responds in some way—sometimes showing the flaw in the first image, or its faulty reasoning, or maybe just digging deeper in to it—questioning, exploring, or reflecting. This type of sonnet feels more like a debate than an essay, with the first position of the octet countered in the sestet.

So it’s a little form. You can read them quickly or linger over their construction. But they pack a big punch. They have to. They don’t have the space of a novel or even a ballad—just fourteen lines in which to make you sigh or wonder or weep.

Here’s one for the road. Christina Rossetti’s vision of an artist’s model. Enjoy.

“In an Artist’s Studio”

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel–every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Color palette with brushes in studio from iStock