That’s what William Faulkner said in 1950 while accepting the Nobel Prize for literature, and he should know, because “even Faulkner had a day job.”

(For those interested, you can read Faulkner’s entire Nobel speech here.)

First, I searched for “Virga,” which Kay Ryan read at the 2006 wake for Cody’s Books, Berkeley’ s great independent bookstore. It’s not in The Niagara River, which won a California Book Award in 2005, or in earlier collections. Although an atmospheric scientist is a member of my inner circle, the word “virga” was new to me. It’s a streak of water that evaporates on the way down from the sky, and so does not become rain, Ryan explained. The poem she made of that matter, that phenomenon, still strikes me as a classic example of how her keen curiosity and observations engage with the unusual and beautiful. I briefly looked heavenward after I found the piece in The Best of It, New and Selected Poems.

There are bands
in the sky where
what happens
matches prayers.
Clouds blacken
and inky rain
hatches the air
like angled writing,
the very transcription
of a pure command,
steady from a steady
hand. Drought
put to rout, visible
a mile above
for miles about.

Parsing this is a pleasure, even after repeated reveling in its sounds and shape. The “steady hand” is present, as it is in every poem in this collection, and Ryan is consistently interesting, even in her most bedrock certainties and moments that seem mundane, until she meets them with an open heart and a naturally quirky, compelling intellect.

To say “Tortoise” instead of “Turtle,” the title of the well-known poem that follows, would have changed the tone of what she successfully captures–everyday heroics in other- than- human mammals :

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing-case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things

As always, Ryan knows when to be bound and unbound by mastering rhyme without falling into the trap that has undone many “ new formalists” insistent on restrictions they don’t fully comprehend . It helps that her imagery stays fresh, as in the poem that precedes “Turtle.” It’s called “Osprey,” and the last few lines describe the bird returning to hatchlings in a nest, salmon in its mouth:

He fishes, riding four-pound salmon
home like rockets. They get
all the way there before they die,
so muscular and brilliant
swimming through the sky.

Kay Ryan is now the sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States. She has won the Ruth Lilly Prize, awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. A Pulitzer is overdue. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the author of six previous books. Not surprisingly, her work appears in dozens of literary journals, from the established, like Poetry, The New Yorker and The American Schola, to younger publications, includingThe Electronic Poetry Review and McSweeney’s.

She has been compared to Emily Dickinson, and I like to imagine Dickinson and Marianne Moore reading her with sly commiseration. Unlike some poets with recognizable styles, Ryan does not write the same poem again and again, and her sharp eye is both benevolent and unflinching, as in “Outsider Art” :

Most of it’s too dreary
or too cherry red.
If it’s a chair,
it’s covered with things
the savior said
or should have said—
dense admonishments
in nail polish
too small to be read.
If it’s a picture,
the frame is either
burnt matches glued together
or a regular frame painted over
to extend the picture. There never
seems to be a surface equal
to the needs of these people.
Their purpose wraps
around the backs of things
and under arms;
they gouge and hatch
and glue on charms
till likable materials —
apple crates and canning funnels—
lose their rural ease. We are not
pleased the way we thought
we would be pleased.

She is not afraid of discomfort, as in “under arms” suggesting underarms and the unpleasant aromas of people who live beyond norms. Outsiders speak to insiders more deeply than insiders might wish, as Ryan states so simply at the end, never losing control of smooth, then jumpy music, or the ability to stretch and compress with well-placed vowel and consonant, as in “ease” and “please” and the stops of “backs” and “hatch. ”

She’s equally fine on the subject of the ultimate insiders, Dutch Masters, in a piece called “Finish,”: “ seeing- in you notice/ when a bruise mars/ a fruit’s surface.’’ Her response to Chagall is as magical as the paintings, making me wish that art critic Michael Kimmelman would revive his practice of being accompanied on museum visits. It’s time he did this with poets, beginning with Ryan.

After encountering her poems, one feels as if one has dined at the table of the host whose guests always say “yes,” to the invitation. The setting will never be artificial, and questions will be important, without pretense, as in “Why We Must Struggle:”

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed as upon nectar
upon need.

It would be wrong to present this poem without noting Ryan’s loss of Carol Adair, her long-time partner who died last year. Adair taught full-time at the College of Marin, where Ryan also taught, part-time. Creative people cannot do their best without the rigorous, unconditional sustenance Ryan credits Adair with supplying.

Every United States Poet Laureate has the opportunity to take on a large project that will promote literature. As tribute to Carol Adair’s dedication, and to community college faculty members across the country who labor anonymously, Ryan is launching “Poetry for the Mind’s Joy” with the Community College Humanities Association. She has declared April 1—the beginning of National Poetry Month—National Poetry Day for Community Colleges. This project embodies a spacious democratic urge while also providing an excellent example of how to transform loss.

As ambassador for the joy of fine poetry, Kay Ryan deserves the kind of attention beyond the academy that her position and her choice of what to do with it provide. The Best of It is dedicated “To Carol, who knew it.” Now it’s time for the rest of us to know it or to get to know it more fully. In the words of the late Studs Terkel, another great democratizer : “Let there BE delight! ‘’

Behan was, at one time or another, a Borstal boy ( = reform school inmate), an I.R.A. “messenger” (he was an explosives expert with a special preference for gelignite), an inveterate jailbird, a busker, a pornographer, and a house painter. He was, at all times, a rebel and all-around hellbender. In the end, it was a bottle and not a British bullet which did him in. His death certificate cited a terminal condition of “hepatic coma, fatty degeneration of liver.”

Bawdy, brawling, send-em-sprawling, pub-after-pub-crawling Behan referred to the stout which was his beverage of preference as “a pint of gargle,” and thought nothing of putting away several thimbles of whiskey washed down with a gallon of ale chasers. The champion toper, when three sheets to the wind, and flush with a fresh royalty payment for one of his books, would routinely pass out money to anyone who approached him with a hard luck story, then trundle out of the tap room, a besotted grizzly bear of a man, singing in the streets, stumbling in the gutters, bumping into lampposts, and carrying on loud conversations, at all hours, with nonexistent respondents.

He was raised first by nuns, the French Sisters of Charity, whom he loved, and of whom he said. “I was their little pet”; then by priests, the Christian Brothers, of whom he said, “I hated them and they hated me.” His real education came in a succession of lock-ups, where he had time to improve his mind and to plunder the libraries while molding himself into a surprisingly fine French and Irish scholar.

He was born with revolution in his blood. As Sean McCann tells it, “He came from a long line of rebels who were nurtured over a tenement fire. A grandmother of his was jailed for illegal possession of explosives at the age of seventy. A grandfather was one of the Invincibles (they murdered Lord Cavendish on a Sunday morning in Phoenix Park in 1882); both his parents fought in the War of Independence and in The Troubles; his father was interned with Sean T. O’Kelly, later president of Ireland; his uncle Peadar Kearney wrote the Irish National Anthem, ‘The Soldier’s Song.’ Brendan was nine when he joined the junior movement of the I. R. A.” Also by the age of nine, Behan was imbibing to the point of flagrant inebriation.

When he wasn’t holding forth in a grog shop, he could be heard uttering unintelligibilities on radio or television. Edward R. Murrow cut out Behan from a broadcast citing “difficulties beyond our control”; on a television program where he appeared bombed with Jackie Gleason, the comedian said of him “Behan came across 100 proof—this wasn’t an act of God, it was an act of Guinness.” The Daily News quipped, “If the celebrated playwright wasn’t pickled, he gave the best imitation of rambling alcoholism you ever saw.” With tousled hair and rumpled clothes, Behan would attend performances of his own plays roaring drunk, taunting the actors, shouting epithets at them, and insulting the audience by screaming “Eejits!” ( = Idiots!”)

Behan’s Herculean binges got him into plenty of hot water. He was jailed in London, fined in Toronto, banned in New York. Rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, the rowdy provocateur was a brash, loutish cross between Victor McLaglin and Lenny Bruce. He swore like the proverbial stable boy, soused or sober. He was constantly censored. When he achieved fame as a writer, the liquor dispensaries and moist social establishments which once summarily gave him the boot now threw open their doors in boundless charity and warmest welcome. And all Ireland loved him.

Concerning the business of drinking, Behan opined:

–For me, one drink is too many and a thousand not enough.

–I only drink on two occasions: when I’m thirsty and when I’m not.

–In a caricature of Behan, Rowan Atkinson includes a wall poster with the slogan “Too young to die, too drunk to live.”

“Why Don Pedro Drinks”
by José Marín Cañas
Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

“Why Don Pedro Drinks” is from José Marín Cañas’ 1929 collection of crepuscular tales about alcoholics, The Rum Bums (Los bigardos del ron).

Nobody had any idea, until that night, what made Don Pedro drink. Don Pedro was a very picturesque gentleman who affected extravagant airs. He sported oversized collars and cravats in the absurdest of colors. But the truth about this grandiose fop was that he drank and, at times, in a manner immoderate and obstreperous.

Don Pedro’s flaw was an infantile and harmless conceit. The poor old sot had an atrociously fecund musical bent, and he composed waltzes, minuets, rigadoons, fox trots, marches, one steps, and other various popular pieces and, what is more, penned poetry in a calligraphic style reminiscent of Crispulo Elizondo: he delighted in exorbitantly cursive script, and he dashed off lyrical petitionary missives as accompaniments to his waltzes, polkas and other trifles – all dedicated to Senora de Fernandez, de Benitez, or de Oconitrillo, and delivered right under the noses of their husbands who stood there alongside them in their yellow shoes and ugly cashmere sweaters like big, dumb schoolboys dressed by their mothers.

That was how Don Pedro lived.

“I enrich the art of music,” was all he would say in a fierce tone, when he overheard the wisecracks of some loudmouthed know-it-all, in an attempt to deflect further gibes and snipes. “There will come a day,” said Don Pedro, “when my name will resound throughout the four corners of the globe along with those of Verdi, Wagner, Donizetti, and Cavallini.” (Don Pedro had a queer mania for believing that Cavallini was the name of a composer, and no one pointed out to the poor man that this name belonged to a watchmaker.)

Then someone asked, “Why do you drink?”

“I am not a weakling like you,” he retorted. “I drink because I want to. Yes, gentlemen. Are you listening? Because I want to. I hope my answer doesn’t disappoint you, but there are no sad stories to tell. I’m not shameless like you, you sorry riffraff! Any of you who thinks otherwise is scum! You hear me? That’s why I drink. Yes, Perez! Because it cleans my kidneys. Have you got that, you assholes? Would you like me to tell why your girlfriend left you, or why your wife went with somebody else, or what kind of books they pollute themselves with? Assholes! I drink because I want to!”

In the face of such flaming oratory, no one dared interrupt.

“Alright, alright, Don Pedro, don’t get worked up.”

The poor old man sat down and cooled off, thanks to the ministrations of one of the more compassionate regulars. Then, after awhile, he thrust his hand into his satchel and removed some sheets of music. Amongst all the other muck he dredged up from the unfathomable depths of his pockets, was a little photograph smudged and blotted by filth and age.

“Eh, Don Pedro, who is that?”

“My little boy, my son,” he said quickly and guardedly.

“Eh, Don Pedro,” Perez spouted, “This son of yours, where is he, anyway? How come we never heard about him before? Do we look like we just rode in on camels? This is a gag, right?”

“Where is he? Where is he, you imbecile? He’s over there.” And he pointed, ferociously, forbiddingly, his arm stiff, his eyes fixed.

* * *

Don Pedro’s inexorable finger was outstretched towards the gloomy silhouette of the distant graveyard.

* * *

About José Marín Cañas (1904 – 1980)

Costa Rican novelist, newspaperman, educator and essayist who, during his youth, held a variety of jobs including those of breadseller, stockboy at a market, and pitchman. As an adolescent, he learned to play the violin and gave serenades, performed at dances and theaters and provided musical accompaniment to silent films. He remained interested in the cinema throughout his life. A sensationalistic journalist and something of a literary experimentalist, Cañas was considered an avant-gardist in his day. His punctilious approach to composition has been likened to that of a watchmaker. He abandoned writing for thirty years, then resumed his profession during the late 1960s by contributing a regular column to a daily paper in the capitol. He served as director of the Institute of Hispanic Culture but was forced to step down from his chair in the School of Journalism at the University of Costa Rica because he lacked a diploma. He swore never again to set foot on its campus. He died at daybreak December 14, 1980, of emphysema. He never quit smoking. Among his noted books are Steel Tears and Green Hell. “Why Don Pedro Drinks” is from his 1929 collection of crepuscular tales about alcoholics, The Rum Bums (Los bigardos del ron).

***

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the folks at A Journey Round My Skull.

The top image is by John Collier, c. 1772, found at the LOC.

Brandon Scott Gorrell, author of During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present, has posted a review concerning negative reviews of Tao Lin’s Shoplifting From American Apparel.

Update: An interesting argument has broken out in the piece’s comments section about book reviews and reviews in general (it somewhat mirrors a similar debate we had here).

GalleyCat talks with literary agent Jim Donovan, who has been in the business for 17 years and has “seen the world of books from every angle, editor, book seller, and author.”

Frank Meeink is the most famous ex-skinhead in America, his life the basis for the character of Derek Vinyard, the neo-Nazi portrayed by Edward Norton in American History X. But Frank is not quite Derek; as he states in Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, “American History X isn’t my story. It’s every skinhead’s story to some extent… it was every other kid who ever got sucked up into the white supremacy movement.”

Frank’s tale, as told to Jody M. Roy, Ph.D., is a harrowing look at the white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and skinhead movements in the U.S., a graphic depiction of a broken home, drug abuse, addiction, and self-destruction. In South Philly, where “talking shit to somebody’s grandma can get you killed,” Frank is raised in and out of dysfunctional homes and streets infested by ethnic gangs. His only love and release is hockey, and he feels an atavistic pull toward violence, alcohol, and the notoriety offered by white supremacist gangs. Soon he starts beating the hell out of gays and blacks and homeless people. But the objects of his most intense hatred are Jews: “I felt alive when they bled. I craved the power I felt surging through my veins every time I slammed my boot into some dude’s face.”

Frank’s tattoo repertoire includes a swastika on his neck, a ten-inch portrait of Joseph Goebbels on his chest, S-K-I-N-H-E-A-D across his knuckles. When he gets busted after assaulting a gay man one of Frank’s comrades taunts the arresting officer, “I’m Charles Manson, and I’ve got the swastikas to prove it… on my dick. Come on, copper, suck my swastika!”

Frank Meeink

The narrative borders on sensationalism: Meeink is beaten regularly by his stepfather, his mother lives on pills and alcohol, Frank roams the streets and whomps everyone’s ass, until he himself is raped at gunpoint. The author and editors of Autobiography were clearly concerned about the factual accuracy of these stories; they ran background checks and consulted Meeink’s friends, family, counselors, jailers, and social workers, until they were satisfied with the accuracy of Meeink’s memories.

Amazingly brutal and difficult to digest, Autobiography follows Frank from childhood through his involvement with the white supremacist movement, a felony conviction, and incarceration, introducing readers to the Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, the KKK, and other groups. They celebrate Hitler’s birthday, swap theories about the Zionist Occupational Government, debate the Turner Diaries (a book that influenced Timothy McVeigh), and revere the thugs in A Clockwork Orange. Frank claims to believe in God but accepts the white supremacist version of Christianity. He gushes when introduced to a neo-Nazi hero, describing him as an “Aryan warrior” and “the most hardcore white supremacist I’d met… The red laces in his Doc Martens dripped blood” before the two of them assault a homosexual outside a gay bar. “I felt proud, truly proud, for the first time,” Meeink recalls.

When he’s caught on film committing assault, Frank is arrested and pleads guilty, receiving a sentence of three to five years in prison. His girlfriend is pregnant, he’s an alcoholic, he’s suicidal. “You’re not a ‘race warrior,’” his girlfriend tells him. “You’re a thug.” In Illinois’ Stateville Correctional Center, he becomes a “skinhead celebrity.” But prison opens his eyes. Black inmates offer more support and solidarity than the other skinheads. He plays football on an all-black team. His best friends in prison are black and rather than descend to a deeper white supremacy he sees everyone as of one race.

The transformation continues after his release. He forms a friendship with a Jewish employer and starts speaking out against racism, though without breaking bonds of friendship with his skinhead brothers who eventually brand him a traitor to the race and subject him to the “Axis Stomp.” Addictions with alcohol, cocaine, pills, and heroin while fathering three children with three women add to his drama. However, he starts speaking publicly about the follies of white supremacy, achieves celebrity, and commands lecture fees of $2,000 or more. A life of relative stability begins as he founds Harmony through Hockey, marries, and reconnects with his family.

For all the focus on Meeink’s addictions and travails, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead doesn’t provide much introspection by its subject. As if to compensate, the book ends with an interview of both Meeink and Roy, in which he discusses religion, spirituality, and his newfound tolerance. “No matter the race or any other differences, we learn to walk at the same time, at about one year, we start to learn to talk at the same time… we’re all human, we all care about the growth of our children.” It would seem to be a tale of redemption, relevant to any reader who wants to understand hatred and take part in the process of forgiveness. But the book’s lasting impression is of the brutality of Meeink’s earlier incarnation, and one wonders if those drawn to white supremacy and hatred could take any lessons from it before their beliefs come to harm others.

Alex Beam is worried about the future of bookplates (the marker inside a book’s cover that allows the owner of a book to leave their mark… think “This Book Belongs to…”) in the coming digital age.

Also, be sure not to miss the slideshow of Yale’s bookplate collection. (via PW)