Archive for the 'Good Writin'' Category
Good Writin’: Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
August 28th, 2008
I am, by no means, a particularly positive person. In fact, a friend of mine one time said that if you were to dip me in the Atlantic Ocean, all the fish would die because I’m so bitter and venomous. Anyone familiar with my music and/or fiction will no doubt already realize this. I generally hate “the masses” and actively anticipate a zombie apocalypse just so I can finally have an iron-clad excuse to lock myself up in my house with my cat and become a full-time hermit. So why, then, do I espouse Walt Whitman to be the Greatest American Poet of all time, and his “Song of Myself” as the Greatest American Poem Ever Written?
Whitman was almost frighteningly optimistic, at least in his earlier years, before the inevitable grind and torment of life blunted the steel of his indomitable democratic will. But though the Civil War and years of hardship dulled the cutting edge of his words, never once did his mettle suffer, and the steely resolve of his love and respect for all—the lowliest to the highest.
Whitman set out to become the “bard of America,” and goddamnit, that’s exactly what he did! Even when some cursed his first edition of Leaves of Grass as obscene because it dared to speak of sexuality in anything other than the most constipated terms, Whitman kept writing, kept publishing his works, and by sheer strength of character (and a little help from Emerson, Thoreau, and William Michael Rossetti in England) he eventually earned the laurels. When he died, thousands of people visited his home to leave flowers and tributes to the Bard before his discarded mortal frame was finally interred.
Whitman’s “Song of Myself” alone stands as the ultimate exemplar of a hymn to democracy. It’s not an ode to Whitman himself, though the poet himself is, indeed, a character within it—it is an ode to America Herself, and every one of its citizens: from the President to the lowliest Negro slave, from the fat-cat captain of industry to the Native “save,” from heads of state to heads of back-alley gangs. Whitman casts himself as a living Klein bottle, a microcosm of the American macrocosm, contained by and containing all. He excludes no one, accepting all not as they should be, but as they are. Of course, his poetic vision of America is nowhere near as pragmatic and inclusive as he imagined it to be; rather, he presents an idealized America—the Platonic Ideal of America, perfect in its democratic conception.
That the United States never has, nor ever will, live up to his beautiful vision of human diversity made whole in the magic of the word “En-Masse” doesn’t blunt the power of it. Epics do not describe the literal truth of the societies and cultural formulations they celebrate: Homer’s Iliad does not report on the actual battle for Troy, after all, and Milton’s Paradise Lost is a summation of Christian ideas, not a catalog of Christian history. “Song of Myself” is a love song dedicated to the dream of America…the dream that the guided the hands of the Founding Fathers as they drafted the Constitution, but was always just beyond the grasp of those hands—as Franklin, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, and all the others knew over two hundred years ago, but which the moralistic morons in both the Republican and Democratic Parties have today forgotten. Democracy is not something that has ever been realized in full in our nation: it is the dream that we must always pursue; it is the carrot-on-a-string that keeps our society going forward, and Ever Going Forward was the spirit upon which this Nation was founded and the aegis of Whitman’s life.
As it should be the aegis of your own. In this election year, remember that democracy does not mean standing still, tying yourself down with ropes of ridiculous tradition and frightened religiosity. There is a place in America, as in Whitman’s own heart, for both conservative and liberal principles. But if there’s anything that you take away from “Song of Myself,” a notion that accepting all and maintaining balance amongst all is the ultimate power of Lady Liberty.
Here, then, in the complete text of “Song of Myself,” divided into separate pages by canto so it doesn’t completely swallow up your entire browser window. Enjoy! And I hope you learn something. Click on….
More “City of Pillars” Evil Has Arrived!
April 9th, 2008
Wow. After so many busy weeks, I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of writing, and that means that the fifth chapter of “City of Pillars” is online! Here’s a sample:
“The world did not end with the destruction of Manhattan,” the bored old general in charge of Project Reclaim Manhattan had said to close the pre-tour briefing. “America did not end with the destruction of Manhattan. Not even New York City ended, though it was grievously wounded. Despite the incredible loss of lives and property on September 11, the Azifist mission to wake the Great Old Ones did not, after all, succeed. Great Cthulhu still sleeps. Irem, the so-called ‘Nameless City,’ today is secure under Coalition forces. With the loss of their capitol and their leadership, the Cthulhu cultists have been driven underground like rats; they will be hunted down one by one, if necessary, and made to pay for their crimes against Humanity. The Great Traitor, George W. Bush, is no more and his Xinaian cabal has been driven back to K’n-Yan to face prosecution by their own people. As President Obama recently stated, ‘Now is not the time to think of all the terrible things that have passed, but of the fruitful, bountiful days that are just now beginning. ’ The Revised Manhattan Rebirth Initiative is both a practical and symbolic example of our nation’s willful resilience. Manhattan will someday rise again; the Five Boroughs will be complete once more. So remember, all of you: what you will see today is going to be disturbing. But you must not dwell on the sundered past. Look beyond the wreckage to the future: Manhattan reborn like a phoenix from the ashes. The clean-up has, for all intents and purposes, only just begun. It will take many more years. But never forget: this is a time of beginnings. And the rebirth of not only New York City but of the United States begins here.”
It was obvious from the way that he read the speech from a typescript and never once looked up at the audience that he didn’t believe a word he was saying. Desultory applause followed him off the podium and out the back door. We were divided up into groups, given packets of information containing “all we needed to know” about the Project and plastic protective overalls to wear over our clothing, then we were hustled out to the waiting choppers. Once I was seated and strapped down, I closed my eyes and listened to the speeding beat of the rotors, trying to think of nothing but the whup-whup-whup of metal slicing air. The helicopter lifted off so smoothly I didn’t even know we were off the ground until Greg leaned over to me and muttered: “Look at that. Dave. Dave. Look.”
See what I did there? It’s horror plus witty, contemporary political commentary! Hell, y’all might as well start calling me The Bill Maher of Lovecraftian Fiction!*
*Please, don’t. My head is big enough already.
Good Writin’: Boccaccio on Love (1350 C.E.)
February 15th, 2008
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is truly a classic of late-Medieval/early-Renaissance literature—and for good reason: it was a book that broke many different forms of ground. It’s a novel and a collection of short stories at the same time. So too is it both a somewhat-historical account of The Plague in Italy and a portrait of Italian life in the 1300s. The inevitable question then posits: If not for historical or educational value, why read this book today?
Because it’s just terribly fun to read! Boccaccio’s ten stories told on ten days is a grab-bag of tales that features literally something for everything. We have love stories, war stories, mysteries, farces, folktales, adventures, tales for moral instruction and tales of delicious debauchery. Unlike many Medieval (and, for that matter, Renaissance) authors, Boccaccio’s vision of humanity—and of women in particular—is neither despairing nor damning; he is not obsessed with saints, sins, or salvation. He does not look upon material love (you know…gettin’ it on) with disgust and does not romanticize Love as a Platonic ideal. This latter regard is what makes Boccaccio’s writing so engaging: he is definitely a Romantic writer, a kindred spirit to Byron, Shelley, Keats, and even Blake, but he neither deifies Love’s triumphs nor spends undue time weeping over its castigations. He sees Love for what it is: beautiful, deadly, consoling, killing.
And what’s more, he views it with a certain wry humor that would later become characteristic of all the great Renaissance humanist writers. So, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day (a date which, honestly, I abhor), I present you this clip from Boccaccio’s “Proem” to The Decameron in which he presents a sly, winking glance at gender roles—and the Love that comes between them (oftimes physically)—in the waning days of European feudalism:
Who will deny, that it [love] should be given, for all that it may be worth, to gentle ladies much rather than to men? Within their soft bosoms, betwixt fear and shame, they harbour secret fires of love, and how much of strength concealment adds to those fires, they know who have proved it. Moreover, restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, confined most part of their time within the narrow compass of their chambers, they live, so to say, a life of vacant ease, and, yearning and renouncing in the same moment, meditate divers matters which cannot all be cheerful. If thereby a melancholy bred of amorous desire make entrance into their minds, it is like to tarry there to their sore distress, unless it be dispelled by a change of ideas. Besides which they have much less power to support such a weight than men. For, when men are enamoured, their case is very different, as we may readily perceive. They, if they are afflicted by a melancholy and heaviness of mood, have many ways of relief and diversion; they may go where they will, may hear and see many things, may hawk, hunt, fish, ride, play or traffic. By which means all are able to compose their minds, either in whole or in part, and repair the ravage wrought by the dumpish mood, at least for some space of time; and shortly after, by one way or another, either solace ensues, or the dumps become less grievous.
So, the lesson is clear: ladies, when feeling down, pick up a book and read if thou canst not…y’know, sew or be of any goddamned use. And men? Should ye feel the sting of Love’s dart, go forth and kill something!
More seriously, Boccaccio shows in but one single paragraph the troubles facing the sexes individually in his age. In a world as sharply divided, with each sex’s role in life almost written in stone, with women practically jailed and men expected to be eternally “pricking on the plain“, what the hell is Love to do?!
You want to know? Read the Decameron.
Good Writin’: Two Excerpts from H. P. Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth.”
January 25th, 2008
Very few readers of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction know that Lovecraft was a reasonably accomplished poet as well as a prose stylist. In fact, Lovecraft began reading–and writing–poetry at a very early age: he had read Homer’s Odyssey and produced his own “young readers” abridgement of the epic by age six! Lovecraft is generally not known as a poet, however, because, unlike his prose, very little of HPL’s poetry was ever published outside of letters and amateur-press ‘zines. The majority of Lovecraft’s poetry is modelled on “Georgian,” that is, 18th Century, British verse forms. Lovecraft adored Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and other topical satirists of their day, and modeled his own verse very closely on theirs; hence, much of HPL’s poetry is based on “current events” of Lovecraft’s time and experience, especially events and controversies within his amateur press circles. While these poems may very well have been extraordinarily witty to the folks who understood their allusions, to contemporary readers they read much like extended “in-jokes” that make little sense outside of their original contexts. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s poetry often comes across as very stiff and stilted, as HPL was more concerned with the “harmonious regularity of metre” than with the imagery, ideas, and symbolism which truly fuel poetry.
Nonetheless, Lovecraft has produced some poetry of extraordinary beauty and power. None of his verse works are as stunning as his sonnet sequence “Fungi from Yuggoth” (1929-30). In these thirty-six sonnets, Lovecraft has created a number of fourteen-line mini-narratives, poetic remixes of several of his prose works, and gorgeous congeries of weird words that evoke the same delerious atmosphere of his best-known stories.
For your appreciation, I present you two of my favorite sonnets:
XV: Antarktos
Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly
Of the black cone amid the polar waste;
Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,
By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.
Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,
And only pale auroras and faint suns
Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources
Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder
What tricky mound of Nature’s build they spied;
But the bird told of vaster parts, that under
The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.
God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew
Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!XXI: Nyarlathotep
And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.
The Great Compromise
January 12th, 2008
Sometime this week, my friend and D&D compatriot Josh “JJ” Hornbeck, a sergeant in the National Guard, is going to be redeployed to the bottomless pit of Iraq for a little over a year. To say that I’m worried about his safety is a bit of an understatement…but JJ is highly-trained, alert, and most likely going to be detailed to a postal outfit handling snailmail communications to and from the States like he was during his last tour of duty.
Nonetheless, in honor of his redeployment, I’m quoting here the complete lyrics of one of my alltime favorite John Prine songs, “The Great Compromise,” as, even though it was written during the Vietnam War era, it is even more relevant to the United States’ current military endeavours than it was to ‘Nam.
And in case you’re not particularly perceptive, let’s just say that this song is not about a guy jilted by a slutty date. “The Great Compromise” is one of the greatest examples of extended metaphor ever utilized in a protest song. In fact, despite the fact that Bob Dylan is considered the God of Protest Songs, he never produced anything with the poetic sublimity and sad resignation of John Prine’s “The Great Compromise.”
So, without further ado:
I knew a girl who was almost a lady
She had a way with all the men in her life
Every inch of her blossomed in beauty
And she was born on the fourth of July
Well she lived in an aluminum house trailer
And she worked in a juke box saloon
And she spent all the money I give her
Just to see the old man in the moonChorus:
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn’s early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromiseWell we’d go out on Saturday evenings
To the drive-in on Route 41
And it was there that I first suspected
That she was doin’ what she’d already done
She said “Johnny won’t you get me some popcorn”
And she knew I had to walk pretty far
And as soon as I passed through the moonlight
She hopped into a foreign sports car(Repeat chorus)
Well you know I could have beat up that fellow
But it was her that had hopped into his car
Many times I’d fought to protect her
But this time she was goin’ too far
Now some folks they call me a coward
‘Cause I left her at the drive-in that night
But I’d druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain’t right(Repeat chorus)
Now she writes all the fellows love letters
Saying “Greetings, come and see me real soon”
And they go and line up in the barroom
And spend the night in that sick woman’s room
But sometimes I get awful lonesome
And I wish she was my girl instead
But she won’t let me live with her
And she makes me live in my head
Think about it. How many of our young men and women today are spending years in that “sick woman’s room”? Ask yourself: when, precisely, did Lady Liberty become the oil-addicted whore of OPEC and the American petroleum industry?
I think it’s time for an intervention.
Good Writin’ Episode 1: ""I dont know what to make of that."
September 27th, 2006
Ladies and gentlemens, welcome to a brandnew feature here on Pegritz(.com)!: Good Writin’ - a weekly showcase of excerpts from amazing works of literature. Hopefully, these little hors d’oeuvres of wonderful prose - and, occasionally, poetry - will serve as appetizers to stir up in you the same hunger for exceptional wordplay that they’ve stirred in me. Let them serve as bite-sized samples to give you a taste of the works as a whole, or as tasty little treats for your own imagination!
But just remember…my taste in literature is as variable and chaotic as my taste in music, so be prepared to taste-test everything from Gabriel Garcia-Marques to Stephen King, Caitlin R. Kiernan to Abraham Lincoln, Robert Frost to Robert Heinlein, the Upanishads to Gregory Corso. After all, no true gourmand can ever, in good conscience, limit him- or herself to any one particular cuisine at the expense of all others.
This initial installment presents to you the opening paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s chilling, and terribly sad, tale of drug money and sunbaked lives, No Country For Old Men (2005). The speaker is Sheriff Bell, the aged Texan lawman whose weary shadow lies heavy on the land and the story itself:
I sent one boy to the gaschamber in Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He’d killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He’d been datin this girl, young as she was. he was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought I’d never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I’ve thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to. Called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I’ve thought about it a good deal. But he wasn’t nothin compared to what was comin down the pike.
Positively chilling, isn’t it? I’ve certainly read my fair share of horror novels over the year, but never in all those tales of demon possession, zombie plagues, bioengineered monstrosities, curses, hauntings, and Ancient Gods from Beyond the Stars have I ever read anything that literally sucked the body heat right out of my blood more than that passage. Not even the many terrible and expressively quotable moments in McCarthy’s acknowledged masterpiece, Blood Meridian, managed to salt my blood with the pure, gritty despair of that opening paragraph. In short, gentle, colloquial sentences (you can practically see the old sheriff shaking his head in defeated bewilderment as he speaks), Cormac McCarthy has shown us just how perverse and horrific the scarred underbelly of America can be. No demon, no alien god, no cartoonish psychokiller in a mask can ever be as chilling as an average, everyday human being who can kill a fourteen-year-old girl just for pleasure.
Incidentally, this first installment of Good Writin’ is, naturally, dedicated to the memory of my mentor Ron Forsythe - Ahab! - who first introduced me to Cormac McCarthy with the words, “None of your monster tales can prepare you for this stuff, brother.” How could I possible resist the temptation to discover just what words like that must mean?! So this Bud’s for you, Ahab! I’ll be sure to somehow get to you a copy of McCarthy’s forthcoming novel, The Road, even if it involves necromancy.
