Lingual Tremors

Lingual Tremors is 3!

Happy 3rd Birthday Lingual Tremors!

It's hard to believe, but we've been in the blogosphere for 3 years!  Wow!  To celebrate, here are a few of my favorite posts (so hard to choose, but here are a few nuggets...!):   

• Lingual X interviews...
• The Quixotic Tremor's New Career
• Warrior Wombs and Radical Training Wheels
• Charlotte Simmons:  A Feminist Call to Reform Academia
• Dr. Mardge Cohen and We-ACTx:  Heroes of the Week
• The Lysistrata Campaign to Save Roe v. Wade
• Urban Ataraxia

Linky Linky

Read Sally Thomason's sad post on the last speaker of the indigenous Alaskan language, Eyak.  Makes you wonder what else is disappearing around us. 

Learning To Listen: Musings, Ramblings, Spirituality and Writing

The other night, Lingual Y and I were talking about the creative process.  As some of you know, I am working on a major new writing project, something that has begun to consume all of my "free" time and energy.  As we were talking about our writing processes, I realized something interesting:  the older I get, the more my spirituality and my writing are connected.  In short, I've started to actually listen in those deep moments of silence.

I've always been a relatively good listener;  I like listening to people and I like to try and help.  I think, often, that's where I connect best with my students--in those private moments in my office when they unfold their worries and joys like delicate flowers that need attention to unfurl and grow better and brighter. 

But when I think about my own development, as both a person and a writer, I'm also aware that I spent a lot of time in my 20s being angry.  I wasn't angry at the "usual" things.  I had a wonderful and privileged upbringing.  I have an incredible relationship with my parents.  I have a wonderful, loving partner who has grown into adulthood with me.  My life has always been pretty great.  Yet I have been incensed by injustice, infuriated by social and cultural "wrongs," and apoplectic about the state of the world.  This anger worked its way into everything I wrote and into the way I thought about the world;  I was always ready for a fight.  Even in my spiritual life, I have always been consumed by the politics of the temporal church, the institution of religion;  I have fought to make that a place that looks more like the kind of church I want to be in.  So, I think my 20s and very early 30s were characterized by a kind of seething fury, just beneath the surface.  It was a righteous anger.  It was a fulfilling anger.  Because, when you're that angry about the state of the world, it also becomes numbing in a sense.  You can't stop to feel anything other than that anger.  And you most certainly can't hear anything other than the sound of your own fury, constantly throbbing like the incoming rush of the tide. 

So what happens when that thrum subsides?  What happens in the quiet moments along the seashore?  The great discovery of my 30s has been how to find some balance between that righteous anger (because really, how can a person of conscience NOT be angry about George W. Bush?) and another way of seeing the world.  The great discovery of my 30s has been that it's simply not productive to be angry all of the time.  I've discovered a time and a place for righteous fury.  But I've also discovered that powerful place of quiet within.  And there, in the deepest depths of quiet, I've found the stuff of creativity that I forgot was there.  I've stopped writing poems about being angry and in that quiet, I've found another project entirely.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this discovery has been born in a time when I've spent more time meditating, have begun to embrace the structure and the release of the labyrinth as a spiritual practice, and as I've become more spiritual. 

I'm amazed at the ways in which I now see a very clear path between quiet and creativity, between quiet and strength, between quiet and feeding those parts of me that need to be fed.  It's perhaps not all that surprising that as I began to be comfortable with my own silence that I found something deeper.  I'm certainly not suggesting that I will be any less political, any less aware of the need for writers to speak about our society and to give voice to the unspeakable.  But I am suggesting that perhaps that might begin to take on a new sophistication, and new measure of profundity as I allow myself to think and feel more deeply. 

Hmmmm... Word of the Day

Eisegesis:  "reads into the text what the readers want to hear instead of seeking to hear what the text actually meant in historical context."  Hmmmmm....

~C. Joseph Sprague, Affirmations of a Dissenter (24)

Seriously: Crucio Curse for Ron Charles (or maybe Imperio)

So, in about 10 hours, I will be queuing up, along with the rest of the world, to procure my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  This will be preceded by a day of making pumpkin pasties and butterbeer and decorating our apartment with potions, Mandrake roots, torches, and Gryffindor banners, all in the celebration of reading.  Since the third book, it has been the Lingual household tradition to read the books aloud (so it takes us just a little longer than everyone else...).  Did I mention that we don't have kids? 

In a lovely little piece called "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading" in last Sunday's Washington Post, literary critic Ron Charles takes aim at the popular Harry Potter series. 

But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling's books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over "Harry Potter" with nary a child in sight. Waterstone's, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," may be read by more adults than children. Rowling's U.K. publisher has even been releasing "adult editions." That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don't worry. They're the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. And when we're not horning in on our kids' favorite books, most of us aren't reading anything at all.

Now Charles' op ed has a larger point:  he's worried about the future of writing and publishing in the face of corporate media in the 21st century.  And, I would argue that all of us who are writers, readers, and thinkers, share a similar concern.  As a working poet, I can testify to the fact that I never, ever thought I would be able to make it financially as a writer.  So, into academe I went.  Call it poetry as a profession, with a little academe on the side. 

But, Charles' op ed would have convinced me more if he hadn't struck such a low blow.  His piece is filled with the kind of literary snobbery that drives me wild.  Charles is hoping for the American & British public to read higher literary fare;  although at the end of his piece he talks about books like Jonathan Strange and Mrs. Norrell, the work of Philip Pullman, and other high end fantasy and fiction, I think he's being disingenuous.  In the hallowed halls of literary academe, Strange & Norrell didn't get a second glance.  It was dismissed at "Harry Potter for adults."  In short, it's not the "stuff" of literature.  In fact, nothing that smacks of genre is (one need only to look at the derisive early reception of magical realists in this country to see the ways in which American literature is more the realm of Steinbeck and Hemingway than of Borges).  No, instead, I'd hazard a guess that Charles' is actually the stuff of deeply dark and sorrowful contemporary American literature in which a sadly troubled protagonist comes to some larger epiphany about the harrows of contemporary life.  Or, as Harold Bloom would have us read, the stuff of the literary "masters."

But here's the thing:  these critiques overlook one of the oldest obligations of literature--the giving of pleasure.  Rowling truly offers something that those writers don't.  She builds a world that different and exciting.  I've written before about the wonders of writer Michael Chabon (who, I would argue, is the best contemporary American writer) and artist Matthew Barney for their incredible world-building.  Rowling does the same.  Hers is a world, call it the "alternative real," that readers want to enter and explore.  She creates a world by naming and description that is enthralling and captivating.  Haven't butterbeer and Hippogriffs and the "crucio" curse all become a part of the Harry Potter lexicon and something just a little bit "real" in your imagination?  Who hasn't dreamed of their own four poster bed in Hogwarts?  And to me, the mark of a good book is one that takes you away from everyday life.  And when you leave it, you feel just a little bit homesick.  Rowling does that for her readers.  Or maybe I'm just the victim of a 10 year love potion.

The thing is, a lot of contemporary "literature" just isn't good at that kind of world building and myth creation.  While I am a HUGE fan of contemporary American literature (and in my day job, also a scholar of said field), much of it is stuck in the stultifying present.  There are of course many exceptions to this statement, but by and large, a lot of contemporary literary fiction pushes its readers towards wider revelations about a character or place (anything that makes a political or social revelation is still dismissed in elite circles as some kind of muckraking) and it doesn't speak of any sense of wonder (and remember, here critics of Rowling aren't talking about any kind of genre, pulp-fiction.  They talk about "literature."  That's capital "L" with no room for the likes of pot boilers or derivative fiction).  I've long held that American literature has a lot to learn from Latin American magical realism in its truest sense.  Many (not all) contemporary American writers dread straying from the oppressive real.  The most recent novels of Tom Wolfe to Philip Roth to Jonathan Franzen to Jeffrey Eugenides to Cormac McCarthy (wow--that's a surprisingly male list!) all reveal a kind of deep, morose and desperate contemporary moment.  And not that we're not in a deep and desperate moment.  I believe deeply in literature's important role as social commentary.  I also believe in the beauty of language and prosody.  (Quick side note:  I would like to also say that I think this lack is precisely the void that women writers like Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Julia Alvarez, Carole Maso, Michael Chabon, and others have filled.  Charles also bemoans the loss of "biodiversity" in literature. But, that's been the whole point in the struggles for multiculturalism in the literary canon in the 1980s and 1990s.  Give me a break: nothing says homogeneous like the male, white writers who overwhelm American literary studies [not to mention Western European literature].  It's been hard for anyone else to get a place at the literary table).

It's more than just world building and myth creation with Rowling, however.  She's also a master of character development.  Anyone studying fiction writing today should be required to read the series to learn how to deftly "grow" characters from childhood into adolescence.  The changes in Harry and his friends have been remarkable.  Rowling has captured them, and those around them, with a deft and compellingly compassionate pen.  In the last book, who knew that we might feel sympathetic towards Snape or Malfoy?  Rowling has not only taken the most celebrated boy of her universe--Harry--and made us all fans, but she has also rescued the least and the last of her own world--outcasts like Lupin and Dobby and Black--and made us love them.  When Dumbledore died at the end of the last book, readers truly grieved the loss.  When was the last time you cried when reading a book?  There's a lot to be said for a writer who is so skilled at the affective.  There's also something remarkable about a writer who can command her readers' devotion to such a host of characters.   Rowling has created something akin to a "collective" hero in her books, making Harry a protagonist whose success is always linked to those around him.  (I seriously wish that I cared about any one of Philip K. Roth's characters as much as I care about Ron, Hermione, Harry, Dumbledore and the gang.  Instead, I usually want to slap his characters into a stupor.)

Which brings me to my last point.  Rowling has also achieved something extraordinary in her writing.  She has created a generation of readers linked by their love of Harry Potter, and because of the changes in our modern world, with the auspices of Net 2.0, she has created a Harry Potter community.  Before, the idea of communities devoted to a writer was the stuff of the most elite academic circles.  Think Shakespeare scholars and the Folger library.  Think of Victorian literary scholarship.

While children's books have often served to make children fans of a particular character (Nancy Drew, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, etc.), the Harry Potter phenomenon is something altogether distinct and I think it has something to do with that previous idea of world building.  People so desperately want to be a part of the Harry Potter world that they are finding more ways than ever before (yes, yes, I know fan fiction preceded Potter) to extend Harry's world into our own.

To wit:  last night I had an extraordinary experience.  The Harry Potter Alliance, which aims to connect the idea of "doing good" in Harry's world to fighting injustices like Darfur in our own world, hosted "Wizard Rock" at the Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens.  Three bands, paying homage to all things Harry, played book-inspired songs in celebration of Harry Potter.  We heard Harry and the Potters, Draco & the Malfoys, and The Hungarian Horntails. What a hoot!   

Draco & the Malfoys:  (Press photo from Evil Wizard Rock)

It was a raucous evening, reliving the different episodes in each book from 3 different perspectives.  Fans from 3 to 80 showed up with hats, wands, scars, school colors, and a rambunctious attitude.  Despite a threatening summer storm, the crowd braved the rain to "Party Like You're Evil" and to celebrate the love that fans hope will bring Harry through the next book.

Now, I know that many sci-fi and fantasy writers have their own followers (ever been to a Trekkie convention?).  But, this is something different and larger because it cuts across so many different kinds of readers and ages in our society.  Think about it:  how many other books do we share as a society?  While the much embattled literary canon sets out a list of writers that people "should" read and we are exposed to in our schooling, how many kids have opted out via Cliff or Spark notes?  Harry Potter is a literary phenomenon because so many people have willingly sought it out on their own.  And what's more, as a testament to Rowling's creation, they've stayed through 7 books.  Critics like Charles want to accuse the literary public of some kind of capitalistic stupidity.  Buy an iPhone, buy your Harry Potter, drink your Starbucks.  But really:  marketing doesn't account for everything.  There are millions of products, including books, that we're told to buy everyday and we don't, or that we do buy and then we're disappointed about having given into the hype.

But tonight, millions of readers are showing up at midnight not because they are stupid, not because someone told them to, not because they don't know anything about literature.  They are showing up in droves, dressed like wizards and muggles alike, because Rowling has achieved something extraordinary for her readers.  She's created a world where they want to be and that they care desperately about.  Tonight, millions of readers around the world, myself included, are lining up to go home to the enchanting world of Hogwarts and the world of Harry Potter.  We've been homesick for two years.  And, we will relish the journey, live each step with Harry, and dread the inevitable end of what has been one of the most amazing, epic literary journeys any writer has ever invited us on. 

A Little More on Wizard Rock

• Wizard Rock (with a complete list of all bands--I just highlight a few below)
• Harry and the Potters
• Whomping Willows
• Draco and the Malfoys (Hilarious!  My definitive favorite.  Listen to "Party Like You're Evil" and "Voldemort is Awesome)
• The Remus Lupins
• The Mudbloods
• The Moaning Myrtles
• Harry Potter Alliance
• The Weird Sisters/Switchblade Kittens

Other posts on reading Potter

• Amanda at Pandagon on leisure time

Creative Writing and Virginia Tech

I was stuck in traffic on the L.A. freeway when I first heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech. It was almost unimaginable, but when I got back to the hotel, that sense of unreality all too quickly diminished as I saw the first footage of the day's horrific unraveling.

Like everyone, I've been thinking a lot about the events that unfolded and have been haunted by the tragic loss of life. On my college campus, faculty and students alike are visibly unsettled, raising questions about campus safety. Nikki Giovanni, who is a favorite poet of mine, is a poet-professor at VT and had Cho in one of her writing classes. She has been referenced in several articles on the VT killings (as has professor Lucinda Roy) in saying that Cho's writing was disturbing and intimidating.

Several list servs I am on have been asking about how we should respond to students who write disturbing material. People have been sharing their "disturbing writing student" stories; anyone who teaches creative writing or composition has one--it's the nature of personal writing. And, in each iteration of the "disturbing student writing" people are questioning the relationship between creative writing and counseling in the university.

I don't have any clear answers to these questions; on the one hand, I tend to stand firmly on the side of encouraging students to explore the depths of their feelings and emotions in writing classes. On the other hand, it seems that Cho's deeply disturbed state of mind was evident on the page, as well as in person. I don't want to overreact to material my students write (and all too often, for beginning writers, genres like horror or fantasy come too easily to hand when they try to create plots. Over the years, I've read a lot of chainsaw stories); I don't want to censor them. But, I am going to think more carefully about whether I should be referring them to counseling based on what emerges from their writing and trying to determine the line between fiction and fantasy.

Returning to the World of Poetry--Reluctant Joy

Lately, I've been doing well on my solid 10 hours of sleep a night gig. I feel happier, better able to deal with everything life throws my way, and well, just damned-well adjusted. So, this is a rare return to early morning blogging. I've been up since 2 filled with anxiety and expectation.

When I first started this blog, it was as an outlet for my writing. I thought (thus the tag line from Nikki Giovanni in my banner) that I would use this as a forum for talking about my life as a writer. Along the way, it's turned into more of a feminist political (and funny New York) and personal blog. I never anticipated writing many of the things I have or connecting to such a powerful community of feminist writers. Blogging is among my favorite things to do these days. It's a time when I feel like a writer. Differently than any other kind of writing I do, I have the immediate sense that people are reading my ideas and responding to them. It's a welcome respite from the usual practice of writing while staring at the wall.

It's been an interesting journey for me; I think somewhere along the way towards tenure, I wanted my poetry for me and not part of an official record of my worthiness (since I do not have a job that depends on publishing poetry, per se.). But as I made decisions to reflect that inner sense, I also made less and less time for my poetry and along the way, felt lost as a poet some days. So, of late, I have made a very conscious decision to return to the world of poetry. I am reading publically twice this month. The first time is this Saturday and I'm already feeling both excited and anxious. But it's a good kind of anxious, like things are getting back to my idea of normal. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Everyday Orwellian: The Iraqi War, Again

4 years is 4 years too long.  1984's replacement of Eastasia with Eurasia is slightly reminiscent of today's Iraq/Iran debauchle.  Orwell reminds us:

Oceania was at war with Eastasia:  Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.  A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete.  Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound tracks, photographs--all had to be rectified at lightening speed.  Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

Tell a Love Story in Six Words

Inspired by Fabulosa Mujer:

1.  The door opened:  she kissed me.

2.  For no reason, they danced slowly.

3.  The ventilator stopped.  He stopped crying.

FFF: Funniest Film of the Fall

Okay, at this point in the semester, any film that has the following one-liner:

I'm teaching 5 classes this term, advising 2 doctoral students, and I'm the faculty lifeguard. ~Dr. Jules Hilbert

gets my vote for funniest film of the fall!  How can film get any better than wet literary critics?

The Quixotic Tremor and I took in Stranger Than Fiction over the weekend.  In the vein of Adaptation, The Truman Show, and Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction delights with its hilarious take on "reality."  Emma Thompson is fabulous as a histrionic, chain-smoking, novelist with writer's block.  That woman looks horrible fabulously.  And, she excels at the art of getting over writer's block, complete with staking out an emergency room to find "the really sick patients."  That is, the ones who are dying.  Will Ferrell is less annoying than you'd think, given his usual comic shtick.  But Dustin Hoffman steals the show as Dr. Jules Hilbert, the literary critic and contemporary fiction specialist who tries to assist Harold Crick, the narratively-disabled protagonist (Emma Thompson's Kay Eiffel narrates IRS agent Crick's dismal life and predicts his early demise).  From reading his books in plastic bags while in the lifeguard chair to trying to determine the plot of the novel Crick is in, Dr. Hilbert is a hilarious anecdote to the end-of-term blues!

Writer's Block: Do Not Enter

I was out and about with my camera today on my way to work and I started thinking about my recent crankiness with regard to poetry.  I've always been a boom or bust poet.  My writing is both deadline and emotionally driven.  I write because I have to--literally for a workshop or a class or because I just don't know what to do with what I'm feeling.  Lizzie West's song, "Take These Demons," certainly serves as one articulation of why I write: 

Take these demons from my brain;  I can't get caught in that thought again.  And all these patterns seem the same.  First my mind begins to slip.  Then I fall and lose my grip.  And it all comes back to this.  Take these demons from my brain;  I can't get caught in that thought again.  And all these patterns seem the same...

But lately (oh, say, the last two or two and a half years or so...) I've taken to avoiding writing poetry at all costs.  And, this blog is certainly yet one more distraction in the search to avoid writing.  And, probably, at the end of the day, while I enjoy blogging, I don't consider it "writing" in the same sense I do a poem or an article.  My blog posts tend to be immediate thoughts, reactions, and reflections written as first drafts.  My poems, on the other hand, suffer through endless revision after revision after revision.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I am not writing, and why poetry seems like the only form of "legitimate writing" to me.  I certainly spend my days immersed in words--from articles to editing to blogging to work-related writing--yet none of that seems to "count" for my writer identity.  Even my scholarship doesn't feel like real "writing" in the way that poetry does. 

Poetry, for me, is ultimately a task of housekeeping.  It's how I make sense of the world and how I organize it.  Poems allow me the opportunity to compartmentalize and order an often chaotic world.   I won't die if I never write another scholarly article, but I don't know what would happen if I never wrote another poem.  It's not a "hobby," or a "past-time," it's a vital part of who I am and how I interact with the world around me.  Poetry makes more sense to me than anything else.

So, then, why do I avoid it?  This morning, as I was meandering my way towards work, I saw this "Do Not Enter" sign and realized it's the perfect metaphor for why I am avoiding writing.  For the first time in my life, I am censoring my writing, deciding that there are topics I just "can't" write about.

Fact and Fiction: What's all the Hullaballoo?

I started this yesterday, but gave up in a postmodern haze of fever dreaming and exhaustion.  Yes, dear readers, I have been sidelined by the evil flu, a fever, and a total loss (!) of my voice (!).  So, I have been quarantined by Lingual Y to the couch for 2 days (and counting) of feverish napping, popsicles, and t.v.

Yesterday, I book ended my day with fact and fiction, and was trying to decide if I was living on the edge of a fever dream or if I actually saw what I did...

So, while I settled onto the couch yesterday, I was distraught to find that Ellen's birthday bash was interrupted by a press conference by President Bush for no apparent reason!

During the press conference, Bush weighed in on the now infamous wiretaps calling them "legal" and done "to protect civil rights".  He looked at the camera and said "legal" and "to protect civil rights" without blinking.  Oh, and the legal wiretaps, to protect your civil rights, are also "necessary." 

It was one of those "get down with the President" moments when he tells the American people (whoever is home at 10:30 in the morning) the "truth."

I book-ended my day with the live evisceration of author James Frey on the Oprah Winfrey show as Frey faced accusations (now widely published) that large portions of his memoir are not true.

So, since when have Americans become consumed with the idea of truth? 

New Good Bad Sex Contest

It's the weekend!  Let loose a little!  Head on over to Shatter for the New Good Bad Sex Contest (rules follow below, as well as at the original link):

The Contest

A. You don't even have to write a complete scene. Give me a sentence. A sentence fragment. Like that one. Or this one. Just make it reek to high heaven, okay? It's like the Bad Hemingway contest without the machisimo. Or maybe with the machisimo, if that's what floats your boat.

B. Two hundred words or less. Don't get carried away or I'll hurt you.

C. Use this post for entries only. I will post a chat thread below this one for comments and questions.

D. The prize: a $20 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble books, BUT: if you promote this contest on your blog or website, AND if you win, I'll make it a $30 gift certificate. (When you post your entry, tell me where you have posted your promo.)

E. Entries will be judged by my ten-year-old son Jake.

F. Just kidding! Jeez, that would be a total buzz kill, eh? No, we'll judge this like we do at the Writers BBS. Email me your votes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. You may not vote for yourself. Scoring will be based on a point system: 1st place is 5 points, 2nd is 3 points, and 3rd is one point.

G. Multiple entries are allowed. In fact, multiple entries are usually necessary to achieve optimal results. *um, sorry, couldn't help myself*

H. Contest begins: NOW!

I. Contest ends: Midnight, Pacific Standard Time, Tuesday, October 18th.

J. Voting begins: immediately after the contest ends.

K. Voting ends: Midnight, Pacific Standard Time, Thursday, October 20th.

L. You must enter the contest to vote. Sorry, but if any of y'all are as Type A as I am, you'll probably end up paying winos to go to their local libraries, hop on the computer, and vote for you, just so you'll win some dumb gift certificate. And besides, I'm trying to encourage entries.

New!!! M. You may enter as many times as you like.

Shatter's contest is inspired by the Guardian's 2004 contest (the award went to Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons).  Here's my entry:

Are You A Binger? I Am!

In Favor of Thinking has a great post today on Binge Writing, "the intense bouts of writing performed by those of us hooked on the adrenaline of a deadline."  In Favor of Thinking writes that the practice of writing, for many of us in academia is "the definition of tenure-track is Working For a Deadline.  A Huge Deadline." 

Like many others, I am definitely a binge writer.  I am putting the editing touches on a manuscript that started out as my dissertation, and then I will be launched into the world of "what's the next book"?  I have lots of ideas about this;  but I, too, am still having trouble breaking with the mildly romantic practice of staying up all night, pounding away against a deadline.