Archive for October 2009

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The Twilight Amorality of Edward Cullen – What Does It Mean?

October 15, 2009

Maybe it’s the stress of the bad news (that horrible moment when the balloon landed and the first responders realized that the six-year old boy was not in it), or relief at the good news (the wonderful moment when it was discovered that the little boy wasn’t ever in the balloon, that he had been hiding in a box in the garage)—

Or maybe it’s the fact that the Dow’s close above 10,000 and Goldman Sachs’ good earnings report have been called by some at Fox, the “Bush” recovery, and  by others as  no recovery at all (apparently Goldman would have done better if it had simply invested in an index fund and the economy is certainly not out of the woods yet)—

Whatever—it’s all made me decide to write about Twilight again, the phenomenally successful series of books by Stephanie Meyer – 70 million sold and counting.

Specifically, I want to write about the amorality of Twilight, and to wonder what this amorality, or really, the audience’s acceptance of this amorality, may mean.

First, for those who don’t know the series, the Twilight saga, written by Mormon Meyer (a graduate of Brigham Young University), has typically been considered to be an anachronistically moralistic series of books.  This characterization has resulted primarily from the fact (spoiler alert) that the sexual consummation of the passionate love affair between vampire Edward Cullen and human Bella Swan (even full frontal nudity) is pointedly delayed until marriage.   Then (double spoiler alert), once they do get married, Bella nearly instantly becomes extremely pregnant.   (It was a good thing they waited!)

Edward is repeatedly characterized in the last three books, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn¸ as a “perversely moral vampire” with very old-fashioned ideas.  His “family” is also characterized as amazingly moral because, by and large, they feed only on the blood of wild animals.  And, although they do seem to take particular pleasure in certain endangered carnivores, they try to avoid having an unduly negative impact on the environment.  (At least it’s not Aunt Susie.)

A closer look at the books (which I must confess I’ve taken, repeatedly) shows the vampires’ morality to be very one-sided, i.e. it’s all about sex and very little about money.   (Yes, the vampires, who are rich due to prophesy of stock market trends, do give their old clothes to the werewolves, but even they admit that they only wear things once.)

Not only are the vampires amoral, they are also incredibly solipsistic:  they (Edward in particular) only care about their own (Bella.)

In scene after scene, mayhem occurs just offstage.  In New Moon (the movie about to come out),  a large tourist group is fodder for the “Voluturi”, the vampire leaders.  Edward hurries Bella away so she won’t be upset by the sounds of the mass slaughter, but makes no effort to save even one tourist.  (Okay, they’re tourists….)

Similarly, when vampire mayhem stalks Seattle (of all places) in Eclipse, Edward’s main concern seems to be the negative attention the slaughter may bring.  In a hypothetical plane crash in that book, he talks, hypothetically, of reaching out to save only Bella from certain death.  (Doesn’t he have two hands?)

In the fourth book, Edward and Bella even stand passively (if uncomfortably) by as their vampire guests roam the countryside feeding on humans (granted, the guests go out of State.)

I know, I know.  There’s only so much a person…errr. ..vampire… can do.  Maybe Edward is right to focus his energies.  But what’s amazing to me is is the shift this represents from the classic romantic hero.

When did Superman even abandon a kitten up a tree to save only Lois Lane?  In nearly  every opera you can think of (Aida, Il Travatore, the Magic Flute), the hero must part from his love for the sake of Truth, Duty to  family, society, or gypsy clan, and some really heart-wrenching singing.   Romeo (yes, a hothead) forsakes Juliet to avenge Mercutio.    Even Harry Potter (who is a classic, if modern hero) leaves Ginny to save Hogwarts.

Edward’s solipsism is especially misplaced since he is supposed to be a World War I kind of guy.  It’s hard to imagine another generation so bound by duty.

So what does Edward’s amorality, and more importantly, fan inattention to it, say about modern culture?  (And please don’t get me wrong, I still love both him and his portrayer, Robert Pattinson.)

Certainly, we live in a country with a lot of fellow feeling.  I think about all the wonderful first responders who chased down the balloon today in which the little six-year old was, thankfully, not lodged;  I think of all the millions of Americans who undoubtedly hoped and prayed for that little boy’s safety.

But then I also think of the health care debate, the intense furor over the “public option”.

And, forgive me, but I also think of the outrage over Obama’s comments to “Joe the Plumber”; the casual ‘spreading wealth around’ remark that drew so much ire and concern, and that were raised with such anger (and comparisons to Stalinism) by my taxi driver in Florida.  (See earlier post re incredulity in Florida.)

Goldman Sachs’ outsized bonuses also somehow come to mind.

Hmmm…..

Categories: news, Twilight Saga
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After the Sestinas–Why Bother?

October 14, 2009

As I wrote down the rules for a sestina in the last couple of posts, I have to confess that the question “why bother?” went through my head with the regularity of the six repeating “end words” of that form.

Why bother writing formal poetry?  (Much less blogging about it?)

Seriously, isn’t poetry supposed to be about free expression?

So why bother with all the restraints and requirements of a poetic form?  Why not just write free verse all the time?

Ten reasons:

1.         Writing formal poetry limits your choices.  (If your form requires rhymes, you are limited to words that rhyme.)  This is a big help if you don’t know exactly what you want to say (and if it doesn’t involve oranges.)

2.         Writing formal poetry defines your choices (i.e. once you decide to write a villanelle, you know your poem will have two repeating lines that have to work as a couplet at some point, and will probably not end in “orange”.)

3.         Writing formal poetry terminates your choices.  (If you write a sonnet, you’ll be done by line fourteen.)

4.         Poetic forms provide inherent music and, if you can manage it, rhythm.  This is great if you don’t have a good ear; even greater, if you do.

5.         Sometimes the music of a poetic form, and the cleverness of its dance, can substitute for profundity (which is wonderful if you never found out what exactly you wanted to say.)

6.         Writing formal poetry is fun; there is a game-like quality to it.  (It has rules!)

7.         Even failing at the chosen form makes you more conscious of language, and, it is to be hoped, a more musical and adventurous writer.  (Oh Orange!)

8.         Even bare success at the chosen form puts you in the company of some of the greatest poets of all time.  You, like Shakespeare, will have written a sonnet; like Dylan Thomas, a villanelle; like Elizabeth Bishop, a sestina.  This sense of camaraderie, and the understanding that arises from even a brief turn in the trenches of prosody, will make you a more appreciative and attentive reader.

9.         Finally, it must be understood, and grudgingly accepted, that a good sonnet, sestina, villanelle or pantoum is not good because it follows the rules, but because it’s a good poem.  That said, it’s hard to write a good poem.  Maybe you don’t have it in you one day, maybe not any day.  However, if you follow the rules, which can be done by simple diligence (if not always inspiration), you can write what qualifies as a sonnet, or one of the other forms.  You may not have achieved a good poem, but you will have achieved a sonnet, a sestina, villanelle or pantoum, which itself deserves a modicum of pride.

10.  “Orange” is supposed to be one of the few words that, allegedly, has no perfect rhyme in English.    But it works just fine in a sestina (or mid-line.)   And, if you do manage to rhyme it, well….

If you prefer counting elephants to counting syllables, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above.

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First Sestina (Posted as Encouragement) – “Vacuum”

October 13, 2009

In this morning’s post, I explained the rules of writing a sestina, a fairly complicated 39-line poem, which involves six repeating “end words” in a rotating/interlocking stanza form.   I also posted what I consider to be my best sestina.  (See, post re “Changing Gears – a Sestina – “Pink” both for the better sestina and an explanation of the intricacies of the form. )

As encouragement to beginning sestina writers, I’m now posting the first sestina I ever wrote (and definitely not my “best” one.)     Although the poem follows the form, you can see the compromises I made – choosing generic words  – “talked, over, up, mother, vacuum, when” as my “end words” so that I’d be able to easily repeat them in accordance with sestina rules.   (The two posted sestinas are on different subject matters, but I wrote them one after the other, so there is a kind of relationship.)

A tip here:  if you are ever doing a writing or poetic exercise, and need to choose a prompt, and you’re feeling dried out, burned up, and  stumped for inspiration, try something like “mother” or “father”.   Believe me, the words will flow.

As always, pause only where punctuated.

Vacuum

When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out.  She only smoked when

her sister came, then she became like a teenager when
folks are away; her gestures sullen, she talked
with a thoughtless sneer, the kind that filled the vacuum
of her youth, a time she thought she’d never get over
all the obstacles they’d set up, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.

She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there.  Farm life.  Especially then, when
owning land was something but not, like her mother
thought, everything.  You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum,

nor nice clothes, nice furniture, nice rugs to vacuum.
Though the time they remembered that night when they stayed up
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm, a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land; and they talked
of joining him, but only when their grandmother, my mother’s mother,

was stronger.   She was a favorite of my mother,
and favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the one who talked
in such maddening ways, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.

They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care, my aunt, my own grandmother, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked suddenly, “when
she died?”  My mother thinking, “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that.  I pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother, smoking hard as she talked.

“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.”  But slowly my mother spoke, the smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Changing Gears – The Sestina – “Pink”

October 13, 2009

 I am retreating from the world of politics today  to the more ordered world of formal poetry. The sestina is an extremely “ordered” form of poem with a strict line structure that focuses on six repeating “end words,” (that is, the last word in each line.)  Thankfully, these end words do not have to rhyme.

There are six six-line stanzas, and six repeating end words.  At the end of the six six-line stanzas, there is a three-line stanza (the “envoie”), in which the six repeating words are used again, two per line.

The hard part is not just repeating the six words, but repeating them in the right order; each stanza turns itself partly inside out for the next one.  The music of the poem comes from the shifting, and sometimes surprising, echo of the repeating words.   If the meaning and tone of the words can also shift through the poem, a kind of irony can be found.

Here’s how the form works:

For notation purposes, I’ll assign each end word a number  – 123456.  That is the order of the first stanza.

The second is 615243.   The third is 364125, the fourth 532614, fifth 451362, and finally 246531.    You’ll notice that the last line of each stanza becomes the first of the next, the second- to-last line, the third, etc.  It helps to think of the stanzas as interlocking or clasped hands, with the clasp between the fingers moving up the hands with each stanza.  (I guess they’d have to be Anne Boleyn-style hands – six fingers.)

There are different forms for the order of the words in the last three-line stanza;  my favorite puts the words in reverse of their original order, meaning 65,43,21.

The form is hard, yes.  A tip:  once you’ve decided on your repeating words, write them down in the prescribed order for the entire poem.  (This means that you’ll have a nearly blank page or so, with just a column of numbers and words on one side.)  This list will not only help you keep your focus; it will also avoid the frustration of having a nearly finished poem that, you suddenly realize, did not quite follow the rules.  (If it’s a great poem as is, terrific.  But if you wanted to write a great sestina, this can be upsetting.)

It is useful to pick end words with flexible meanings and usage (meaning words that can be either nouns or verbs, even homonyms).   Commonplace words are easier, but less interesting.

I have to confess I have only written a couple of  sestinas.  They are long poems;  beginning one is a big commitment.  But a completed one is really quite satisfying.  Here’s one of mine:

(As always, keep in mind that pauses are intended to be taken only at punctuation breaks, not at line or stanza breaks, unless punctuated. )

Pink

Trees full of blossom, the night smells pink
though it’s black, a thick summer darkness
barely held back by window screen.
I hear dishes in the sink, a familiar clatter,
and think of the summer kitchen
of my youth (my grandma’s), where the women wiped

the dishes, too many for the rack, wiped
the oilclothed table too; the men, skin pink
from glossy food, escaped the kitchen
glare, slinking into the darkness
of the den, the chatty t.v. clatter
a sound fluorescence against the dim screen.

There too, we were protected by a screen
from bites, buzz, wing, and the wind that wiped
that stretched-flat land, a soft clatter
of night and grass and damp that blew towards the pink
edge of dawn, an engine of chill darkness
that was only truly blocked by the glow of kitchen

yellow.  I watched one aunt in the kitchen,
amazed that she never even tried to screen
her keen sense of life’s darkness.
When she looked at my grandmother, she often wiped
her eyes, and sniffing, face too pink,
cleaned with a banging clatter.

Though she was always a center of clatter,
that aunt.  She had a kind of two-walled kitchen
in her own house, open; and wore hot pink,
played jokes, charades, a half-hearted screen
of despondency, still, the good housewife, she wiped
the smallest speck from her counters.  Her own darkness

seeming inevitable, it was a darkness
she hurried towards, smoking, drinking hard, the clatter
of uncertainty (as to timing) wiped
her out.  In the meantime, she cleaned-—my grandma’s kitchen
after her death, and, at the Funeral Home, made a quick screen
of the corpse.  “That lipstick’s way too pink,”

she hissed, then wiped my grandma’s lips like a kitchen
stain.  Despite the clatter in my brain, I served as screen,
a guard in the blossomed darkness, as she rubbed off pink.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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What Obama Hasn’t Done

October 12, 2009

A host of hosts – commentators, TV newsmen, talk show operators, comedians, bloggers – have argued, especially in light of the  Nobel Peace Prize, that Obama has had no accomplishments; that there is nothing that can be said to have been done in his nearly nine months in office.

I agree that Obama’s campaign set up bloated expectations.  It was a political campaign.  But I am amazed that more people do not remember the circumstances of O’s election and inauguration, particularly the fact that the country was at the very epicenter (we hope) of the largest financial collapse since 1929.  In addition, Obama inherited two long-standing and intractable wars, a bruised and devalued national reputation, and an overextended military.

Some have argued (probably with accuracy) that the financial problems were a long time coming and should have been foreseen.  Yes.   However, if the financial collapse was so clearly foreseeable, it is unlikely that so many people and institutions would have lost the huge amount of  “value” (I hesitate to call it cash) that was lost.  It is certain that, during his campaign, Obama did not anticipate that so much of his early presidency, and so many of the country’s resources, would be spent on giving CPR to a gasping and nearly brain-dead U.S. financial system.

One of the fundamental precepts taught to emergency medical service providers is primum non nocere – “first do no harm.” (I always thought this was part of the Hippocratic Oath, but apparently the phrase there is “abstain from doing harm.”)  Given the emergency state existing when Obama came into office, I’m going to stick to the EMS version.

So in response to all the many people harping on O.’s lack of accomplishments, I’d like to point out, first, all the harm he hasn’t done.   (Given the potential for disaster at the time of his assumption of office, this alone is pretty amazing.)  Some specifics:

1.  Obama has not allowed a collapse of the U.S. banking system.

2.  He has not presided over the complete collapse of the U.S. financial markets.  (In fact, the stock market has been recovered remarkably well over the last few months.)

3. He has not entangled the country in an additional war.  (Some may think I’m setting the bar low here, but, given the fact that one of our current wars was begun during the first nine months of his predecessor’s administration, I think it’s a point worth making.)

4. He has not presided over a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.  (Frankly, I don’t believe that any president can completely safeguard the U.S. against such attacks.  However, it’s interesting that O. has received virtually no credit for the lack of attack, thus far, while the absence of a post-9/11 attack during Bush’s presidency was continually cited as proof of his keeping us safe.)

5.  He has not turned the U.S. into a communist or fascist country, or even tried to.  Civil liberties remain in force.

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Food Rules – Not Quite Michael Pollan’s

October 11, 2009

I have long been a careful eater.  Some might call me picky.  This isn’t really fair, because my refusal to eat certain foods has never arisen from finicky taste buds, but from strong ideas about health, morality and the environment.    I won’t burden you with these here, partly because it would take too long, and partly because, unlike the classic picky eater, I try to stay fairly quiet about my no-no foods, and to graze among the acceptable possibilities.

This pickiness, combined with the wish not to be a pain (especially when a guest), has sometimes exposed me to hunger.  And ridicule.   For years, for example, I was the subject of jokes among office mates due to my bringing carrot sticks and plain yogurt to a Yankees’ baseball outing.  (I have recently learned that the new Yankees’ stadium actually serves hummous and carrot sticks as one of its standard offerings.  Which just goes to show that my eating habits were not ridiculous but simply ahead of the curve.)

Last week, The New York Times published twenty rules for healthy eating chosen by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food.  These were rules that Pollan had gleaned from readers, promoting among other things, the eating of apples when hungry, and the un-multi-tasked meal.

I’m not sure I’m capable of eating the un-multi-tasked meal on a regular basis, though I do love apples.  Still, after reading these, I came up with ten eating rules of my own:

1.  Avoid foods that are fire engine red, flame orange, any kind of blue, or electric green, unless they are unadulterated products of the vegetable kingdom.  In other words, yes fruit, nix Loops.

2.  Learn to say no to anything deep fried.  (This is relatively easy for me since I was raised by a mother who made all around her peel the skin off fried chicken, even her own 88-year old mother who used to groan “but that’s the good part.”)   If you have to have something deep fried, get your dining partner to order it, then sneak the occasional bite off of his or her plate.

3.  Ditto with dessert.  Get your partner to order it, and then sneak spoonfuls.  If you have dessert at home, refuse it at the meal, and then have small careful wedges standing at a counter or in front of the open fridge.   (Such wedges, eaten at midnight and intended to “even out” the dessert’s edges, have the advantage of being absolutely calorie-free.)

4.  Don’t buy things you can’t resist.  You will not be able to resist them.

5.  Don’t buy baked goods that come in packages that are easily stacked.  Actually, it’s probably advisable to generally avoid stackable food, especially if raw.  I make an exception here for crates of clementines (even though they are probably horribly sprayed) and those plastic cartons of organic salad (which are environmentally awful, but awfully convenient.)  (I would avoid non-organic salad mixes if stackable.)    This rule does not apply to cooked or dried foods – i.e. cans of beans, cases of plain yogurt (yes, yogurt has been heated), and any kind of whole grain.

6.  As a cook and mother, you basically have two choices:  either give in to the urge to taste constantly while you are cooking, serving, and cleaning up, and don’t eat anything during the actual meal; or steel yourself to taste absolutely nothing (not even that bit that will go to waste otherwise), and sit down and eat from your plate with the rest of your family.

7.    Here’s a couple of travel rules, learned, thankfully, not from my own experience, but from watching a husband: when traveling,  pay attention to the cues of waiter or waitress:  i.e. (i) do not order the “meat sandwich” in India, if the waiter tells you at first that they are out of it, and (ii) do not order a dish, even a “regional specialty,” if the waitress, shaking her head, keeps trying to dissuade you.

8.  Learn to like vegetables in all forms and varieties.  (I make an exception here for okra.)

9.   There are two fairly unadulterated, high antioxidant, foods that are (either one or the other) generally available in almost any establishment:  (i) tea; (ii) red wine.  (White, if not red, though lower in reservatrol).   In situations where the food is either doubtful or deep-fried, stick to one of these.  Unless–

10.  Unless, you are really really starving, already jittery and/or tipsy, and not in hummous-filled Yankee Stadium.   In that case, go for the scrambled eggs.

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Talismans – Go Yankees!

October 10, 2009

Last night, I heard news of the first nine innings of the Yankees game only intermittently as various men in my family returned periodically to the dinner table to report, conversationally, “one-all”, or terribly, “down three to one,” or amazingly, “A-Rod tied it in the Ninth!”

I missed Mariano.  (Dishes.)  But sat through some of Aceves’ inning.  (He was the second Yankee closer, who also did an admirable, if nail-biting job.)

I am sometimes concerned that I’m not good luck for the Yankees.  This is probably just grandiosity on my part.  But I worry, when they are down and when I am watching, that my own insecurities pass in a reverse osmosis through the television screen, and endanger their efforts.

So after a few minutes  in which nothing good was happening, I left the TV room and helped the Yankees in the only way I could think of, that is, putting up a “Go Yankees” post, with a repeat elephant baseball picture, hoping for luck.

Silly, sure.  Except that a few minutes later (even with me watching), Teixera hit his wall-scraper home run!

Aha!

I’m not taking any credit.   But I’m reminded of the man in South India who put salt around his porch to ward away tigers.  When told that no tigers had ever been sited in that part of India, he nodded at the salt, “effective, isn’t it?”

Few people know that I have protected New York City from further terrorist attack by wearing a certain silver-balled necklace every single day since 9/11.

My mother wards off car accidents among family members by wearing the color blue.   (This can be quite difficult when it is too hot in Florida for a certain favorite periwinkle jacket, and her cerulean short sleeve shirt is dirty.)

My husband keeps loved ones safe through three knocks on the vehicle that holds them.   (He sometime has to do this on the trunk of the cab to the airport since it’s pretty hard to get close enough to airplanes to knock on them these days.)

I can’t really speak for my mother and husband.  I can only say that I don’t just adopt any object or action—the talisman has to proven to work.   This means that I don’t pick a lucky object, rather the object presents itself to my notice after the magic has already started working.  In the case of my silver necklace, for example, I conveniently realized, after several weeks of just happening to wear it, that no further terrorist act had happened in NYC.   (In this sense, I am quite different from Charlie Chaplin, who seemed, at least in City Lights, to adopt talismans in a rather desperate ad hoc way that proved comically inefficient.   I’m thinking here of the scene before his boxing match, in which he sneaks a rabbit’s foot from a very brawny professional-looking boxer and rubs it all over himself only to see the boxer carried out on a stretcher.  Then Chaplin tries frantically to rub the rabbit aura off .)

Oddly, one reason that I like the Yankees is that their success does not seem to depend on luck.   (Yes, they have good luck, and their own little talismanic rituals to keep hold of it.)    But, of course what the Yankees really rely on (aside from Mariano) is skill.   (Yes, this skill was bought with multi-digit figures I don’t want to think of.)   But what impresses me even more than the Yankees’ skill, is their endurance–the way they just keep going– beyond bad luck, beyond bad odds, beyond even those times when their skills have failed them and their prior innings’ performances have been embarrassingly bad (especially considering their pay).  They just keep trying until the very last out.

Probably even without silver necklaces.

If you liked elephant baseball, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above.

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Go Yankees!

October 9, 2009
Go Yankees!

Go Yankees!

I’ve posted this picture before, but am hoping it’s good luck!  Hurray New York!  (Sorry Minnesota!)

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Obama – Peace Prize and Possibility – Now Keep Him Safe

October 9, 2009

Obama  wins the Nobel Peace Prize.  I am so happy for him, and so happy for the world.

Yes, it is early.  Yes, it’s hard to point to results.  But I’m not sure that those Peace Prize winners who are major political leaders (and not leaders of  more containable movements and organizations) can ever point to lasting results.   That’s one of the age-old problems of our world—the endless wars and rumors of wars.

The committee has even admitted that the award was given to Obama to support and encourage his efforts as well as to reward them.

But it’s ridiculous to say that awarding the prize to Obama somehow cheapens the prize or is undeserved.

The fact is that Obama, even by the act of getting himself elected (before he even became President),  has radically changed the international climate.  These changes were not just made in diplomatic relations but in the hearts and minds of billions of people.  A sense of possibility opened.  It’s clichéd, but still true.  All over the world—Arabs, Africans, Asians, Europeans, South Americans, even Americans themselves—were shown that what had seemed unthinkable in the not very distant past was not only thinkable, but actual, real, had happened.   A black man was elected as President of the United States!  A man with an African father, a unusual (some might say, strange) anthropologist mother, and a very strong very American black wife was elected President of the United States!  A man who’d made money, not in business or through his family, or (God forbid) in politics, but as a writer was elected President of the United States!   A man, with an international background and outlook,  who understood (even before a presidential briefing) the difference between Sunni and Shia, was elected President of the United States!

I say this not to minimize Obama’s efforts as President, but to point out that Obama’s accomplishment of  becoming President itself promoted a greater sense of the possibility of peace in the world, of the progress of justice and fair play, and, perhaps more critically, of the importance of the individual.  His election brought a sense that an individual could accomplish great things.

His election also almost immediately created a more benign image of the U.S. in the world;  (the country was suddenly seen more as earnest good guy than self-righteous bully, or at least as trying to be earnest, trying to be good.  I, for one, count that as a step forward on the road to peace.)

It’s true that since his election, it is easier to point to Obama’s efforts rather than accomplishments.  The types of accomplishments that he is trying for are beyond the achievement of one person (despite the importance of the individual!).   But he openly recognizes that these accomplishments demand the cooperation and agreement of other parties, and he is working hard.

I don’t think awards go to Obama’s head.  I think/hope he’s more balanced than that, and more realistic.  (He also has that strong wife I mentioned before.)   The only thing that worries me is whether this kind of lionization will attract even more enemies to him, more crazies with guns.  Here, I think all Americans, even those on the other side of the political camp, could work together to absolutely condemn the crazy-talk, the heedlessly violent terminology, and hope and pray that Obama, and all about him, are kept safe.

Categories: news, Obama
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“Home”

October 8, 2009

Home

Her cheekbones, Cherokee, she’d told me
when we were younger, have
reasserted themselves.  Last visit
her face was swollen, foreshortened by
pink scarf, but hair has grown
what with the end of the chemo
into small feathery clumps,
and her features, that web of
intent-filled bone, have resurfaced.
You look so beautiful, I say.  Smile
flickers until she turns again to
trying to sit up, though we have
to catch and lift and
her husband
to support her,
which she cannot
bear for long. But
I have to get up, she says,
I have to get out of this place.

He talks of brushing her hair first,
fingering brief curls.  This
brings a nod.  She has been naturally
beautiful her whole life,
but also a beauty who brushed hair first.
But I’ve got to get home, she insists
suddenly, arching away.
You are home, he tells her, in
your own room, your own bed,
but she pushes now so hard
that we have to turn
her legs, gather her arms, lift and walk
her to a chair, its chintz print
roses on vines, then, when she can’t sit,
walk her back.

Did you call the car? Tell him
to come right now?  You’ve got
to call it.
I called it, her husband lies
as he holds her head close to slide down drops.
But I’ve got to go home, she cries, pulling away
from body, pain, still air.
Just stay for a bit, he whispers.

 

***************************************

I originally posted this for National Poetry Day 2009 in the U.K. on a theme of heroes and heroines, but I am relinking to the Trifecta Writing Challenge on the topic of home.  Trifecta has very cool challenges that look to the third meaning of the word – here, “a familial or usual setting: congenial environment, also focus of one’s domestic attention.” 

This poem was published in my book GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). Also check out l1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, or Nose Dive, a very fun novel that is perfect for a pool or beachside escape.

 

 

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