Margotlog: The Essence of Hawaii: Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek
"Surely,
Hawaii isn't really in the US?" I quip to my husband as our plane
descends into the dark of Kauai. Even more so in the daylight, the
island seems too remote from cold snowy Minnesota to be in the same
family: no icy roads, no bedclothes like Nanook of the North, no winds
that piece down coats. No snow crunches under my boots. In fact I'm not
wearing boots, I suddenly realize. I'm walking around in sandals.
This
should be familiar. I grew up in South Carolina where we learned how to
sweat. Even Minnesotans know how to sweat. In fact the hottest I've
ever been was 98 degrees in a Minnesota July. I left two inches of water
in the bath tub and stepped in every few hours to splash cool. But in
Hawaii, the temp rarely rises above 85, and the nights, well most need a
blanket or two. Hawaii's stately, long-necked palms put Carolina's
palmettos to shame: they never clatter, never look cold, only remote,
closer to the sun. Yes it rains and squawls a bit (even two hurricanes
since the mid-1980s) but mostly the place is more pacific than not, like
its ocean, like the native people. Except for the volcanoes.
We've made maybe six visits to
the Hawaiian Islands, trying out big hotels in Honolulu, and the Big
Island's volcanoland of lava and huge mountains. We've returned again
and again to Kauai because we like the small towns of Koloa and Hanalei,
the remnants of ancient refuges, the many many gardens. In fact, I've
come to believe that what Tom Peek portrays in his new novel about the
Big Island is not just a state of mind, it is a culture bred out
Hawaii's unique mix of peoples, tempered and shaped by a landscape
isolated from most of the rest of the world.
Tom's Daughters of Fire
is about several major elements of Hawaiian experience: the attempt to
plant mega-pleasurelands in a delicate unstable environment and the
people who fight against this, led by native Hawaiians, abetted by a
crusty old WWII vet and a younger Aussie astronomer. Building a
pleasureland rivaling Kubla Khan's ultimately arouses the fiery goddess
Pele. We know by the middle of the book that the danger is extreme, but
Peek does a wonderful job of nudging the eruption just this much further
along the plot, drawing in the native underground (not exactly freedom
fighters, but definitely undercover), along with a finely drawn
native/Asian archaeologist who's been perhaps a bit too lax in
giving developers permission.
She is a magnificent character,
statuesque with a glorious mass of wild hair and charisma to match her
intelligence. When she and the Aussie astronomer try to make sense of
each other, we get a strong introduction to how fierce loyalty to native
culture can perplex even a sympathetic outsider. Given the gentle
"aloha" element of Hawaiian life, this determined refusal to submit
comes as a shock, but also as a relief--there are many Hawaiians
fighting against what could destroy the Islands' unique natural beauty
and way of life. Not only have the Islands already lost many native
birds and plants due to invasive species (read mosquitoes) but the
unique quality of Island life is also constantly threatened by
outsiders (and some insiders) who have no sense of limits.
Tom
Peek's book is huge--nearly 500 pages. It contains a large cast of
characters. It touches the mystical and the sleazy. Most of the time the
extremes are tempered with humor,insight, sympathy. I like
particularly the old codgers--one Hawaiian and the other the aged WWII
vet. Their sage and ironic friendship nicely contrasts with the
larger-than-life movers and shakers, the politicians and developers, the
pussy women and aged seers. It's nice to have two characters who don't
"stand" for something other than themselves. I will remember them, as
well as the native archaeologist and Aussie astronomer's astonishing
underground trek to outrun the volcanic eruption itself. We very much
want them to make it. It's not at all clear that they will.
Footnotes:
Tom Peek was born in Minnesota and grew up "on an island in the
Mississippi opposite Fort Snelling." I heard him say this when he gave a
reading in Minneapolis this autumn. Since then, I've been puzzled by
this. Has anyone lived on an island in the Mississippi opposite Ft.
Snelling since the Dakota warriors were hung in 1862?
Tom has also
worked for a long time as a volcano ranger on the Big Island. His
expertise and face-to-face experience with volcanic outbursts fill the
pages of Daughters of Fire. After reading the book, I have no trouble believing this one.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty
Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty
So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches' titties: saggy and withered, can put a ruinous spell on you if they win the duel with winter sun.
Sitting in my second-floor study, feet in double socks stuck between the tines of an old-fashioned radiator, I'm spooning soup into my houth. Sun is pouring in, tirmomg the flat Christmas cactus translucent. Julia the cat enters. Orca black and white and sleek as a whale, this most pliant of cats is willing to stare with me across the backyard frozen waste, where bird feeders stand guard against the cold. Have all the birds frozen? Then we spy them, high in the white pine, chickadees and finches basking in sun, before darting down for a seed.
The last time it was this cold was 2007. My first winter in Minnesota, I wore my New York style, knee-high leather boots with silk linings. Smart enough for 5th Avenue, but dumb for standing an hour watching dog races in St. Paul. My feet turned cold, then numb, then brickish. Warmed in tepid water at home, they emerged glistening red, puffy, throbbing and painful. I was horrified. Frostbite, said the doctor. Buy mukluks with thick soles and padding and wear double socks. Hello Minnesota, goodbye wimpy New York.
Now I know how to dress for our fancy dress winter ball. I can cavort with wind-chill and glide gracefully across icy intersections. "I wouldn't recognize you two," say I to yoga pals as they gear up to hit the street, caps down to their eyes, scarves up to their noses. I, on the othr hand, wear a full-length red down coat, making me look like a cross between a extremely large hot dog and a bowling ball.
So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches' titties: saggy and withered, can put a ruinous spell on you if they win the duel with winter sun.
Sitting in my second-floor study, feet in double socks stuck between the tines of an old-fashioned radiator, I'm spooning soup into my houth. Sun is pouring in, tirmomg the flat Christmas cactus translucent. Julia the cat enters. Orca black and white and sleek as a whale, this most pliant of cats is willing to stare with me across the backyard frozen waste, where bird feeders stand guard against the cold. Have all the birds frozen? Then we spy them, high in the white pine, chickadees and finches basking in sun, before darting down for a seed.
The last time it was this cold was 2007. My first winter in Minnesota, I wore my New York style, knee-high leather boots with silk linings. Smart enough for 5th Avenue, but dumb for standing an hour watching dog races in St. Paul. My feet turned cold, then numb, then brickish. Warmed in tepid water at home, they emerged glistening red, puffy, throbbing and painful. I was horrified. Frostbite, said the doctor. Buy mukluks with thick soles and padding and wear double socks. Hello Minnesota, goodbye wimpy New York.
Now I know how to dress for our fancy dress winter ball. I can cavort with wind-chill and glide gracefully across icy intersections. "I wouldn't recognize you two," say I to yoga pals as they gear up to hit the street, caps down to their eyes, scarves up to their noses. I, on the othr hand, wear a full-length red down coat, making me look like a cross between a extremely large hot dog and a bowling ball.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker
Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker
In case you haven't heard, Jeremy Denk recenly won a MacArthur genius grant. As did our very own Patricia Hampl, not recently, but well remembered. Ah, genius in relative youth! And I am thinking of Mozart, and his divine sonorities, bred by revolt and acquiescence toward dictator Papa, aka Leopold.
Not Bloom.
Jeremy Denk is a fine pianisto, and just maybe an even finer writer. So I am led to believe by hearing him speak, then play piano at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Saturday. (He has been published in The New Yorker and his blog, "think Denk" has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its digital archive. When he speaks as he did Saturday night with SPCO chairman Bruce Coppick, he is witty, just enough humble, and insightful about the two works he would be playing: a Brahms piano quintet, and a Mozart concerto from the most productive ten years before the five opera years, before early death.
Brahms destroyed so many of his drafts we will never know his full oeuvre. He also rearranged the quintet from a work for two pianos (probably intending his dear friend Clara Schumann as one of the duo) and at her suggestion replaced one piano with a quartet of strings. Brahms has never been among my favorite composers--too dense, not sufficiently melodic--but Denk and the SPCO strings (including a wonderfully sonorous cello played by Peter Wiley) held my complete attention. Denk subdued the piano (which is after all a percussion instrument) to blend well, and the strings took excellent turns helping to stir up the depths.
Then came the Mozart with a much fuller orchestra, and the huge piano with its guts exposed, at which Denk sat with his back to the audience--"No slight intended," he told us. I assumed he would be signaling the orchestra at key moments.
When I took music lessons in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before general air-conditioning, Mozart and Haydn were the best I could do. Meaning, I had the physical dexterity to run the notes fast and clear, and the guidance from my rather broken-down music teacher to make small, telling deviations from strict time, for emotional effect. But only over the years as a listener have I attained a sense of what constitutes a truly bravura performance. For my money Christian Zacharias, who often performs with the SPCO as both conductor and pianisto, offers just such performances.
One of our finest poets (and occasional prose writers), Donald Justice also took up the topic of music lessons. In his slim volume The Sunset Maker (1987) I find echoes of my own musical years in South Carolina. We both had teachers and ambitions that soared beyond the dry clack of palm fronds, beyond the department store magic of canisters carrying money into upper registers.
"Busts if the great composers glimmered in niches,
Pale stars. Poor Mrs. Snow, who could forget her,
Calling the time out in that hushed falsetto?" (Mrs. Snow)
---
"on the piano top,
a nest of souvenirs:
paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan" (Busted Dreams)
---
"--And sometimes she succumbed
To the passion of a nocturne,
The fury of the climax
Ascending through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends" (Those Tropic Afternoons)
Since then, I've developed a theory that the education of American musicians currently emphasizes precision at the expense of inclusive expressiveness (even if secret and decayed) . Jeremy Denk's Mozart did nicely when part of the orchestra, but when his piano was on its own, it became huge and out of sync. Remember, a piano is a percussion instrument. When played with percussive speed, all I could do was hold my breath to see if Denk would hit all the notes. His passages did not blend, They shouted: "I'm bigger, I'm best." When he tried connoting heart-stopping emotion, he lingered with such determined emphasis that emotion dissolved into flamboyance.
European-trained musicians like Christian Zacharias do not aim for such WOW, such rigorous, cliff-hanging, performances. Especially with a composer like Mozart whose own instrument, a pianoforte, had not the excessive force of steel. Instead, they tend to draw out musical lines in lyrical and nuanced ways until an entire ensemble, orchestra and soloist, become joined in a dream of musical possibility, which reaches out and wraps the audience in its embrace. Then, I sigh with completion, and thank the stars for a glimpse of beauty and generosity that includes us all.
In case you haven't heard, Jeremy Denk recenly won a MacArthur genius grant. As did our very own Patricia Hampl, not recently, but well remembered. Ah, genius in relative youth! And I am thinking of Mozart, and his divine sonorities, bred by revolt and acquiescence toward dictator Papa, aka Leopold.
Not Bloom.
Jeremy Denk is a fine pianisto, and just maybe an even finer writer. So I am led to believe by hearing him speak, then play piano at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Saturday. (He has been published in The New Yorker and his blog, "think Denk" has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its digital archive. When he speaks as he did Saturday night with SPCO chairman Bruce Coppick, he is witty, just enough humble, and insightful about the two works he would be playing: a Brahms piano quintet, and a Mozart concerto from the most productive ten years before the five opera years, before early death.
Brahms destroyed so many of his drafts we will never know his full oeuvre. He also rearranged the quintet from a work for two pianos (probably intending his dear friend Clara Schumann as one of the duo) and at her suggestion replaced one piano with a quartet of strings. Brahms has never been among my favorite composers--too dense, not sufficiently melodic--but Denk and the SPCO strings (including a wonderfully sonorous cello played by Peter Wiley) held my complete attention. Denk subdued the piano (which is after all a percussion instrument) to blend well, and the strings took excellent turns helping to stir up the depths.
Then came the Mozart with a much fuller orchestra, and the huge piano with its guts exposed, at which Denk sat with his back to the audience--"No slight intended," he told us. I assumed he would be signaling the orchestra at key moments.
When I took music lessons in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before general air-conditioning, Mozart and Haydn were the best I could do. Meaning, I had the physical dexterity to run the notes fast and clear, and the guidance from my rather broken-down music teacher to make small, telling deviations from strict time, for emotional effect. But only over the years as a listener have I attained a sense of what constitutes a truly bravura performance. For my money Christian Zacharias, who often performs with the SPCO as both conductor and pianisto, offers just such performances.
One of our finest poets (and occasional prose writers), Donald Justice also took up the topic of music lessons. In his slim volume The Sunset Maker (1987) I find echoes of my own musical years in South Carolina. We both had teachers and ambitions that soared beyond the dry clack of palm fronds, beyond the department store magic of canisters carrying money into upper registers.
"Busts if the great composers glimmered in niches,
Pale stars. Poor Mrs. Snow, who could forget her,
Calling the time out in that hushed falsetto?" (Mrs. Snow)
---
"on the piano top,
a nest of souvenirs:
paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan" (Busted Dreams)
---
"--And sometimes she succumbed
To the passion of a nocturne,
The fury of the climax
Ascending through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends" (Those Tropic Afternoons)
Since then, I've developed a theory that the education of American musicians currently emphasizes precision at the expense of inclusive expressiveness (even if secret and decayed) . Jeremy Denk's Mozart did nicely when part of the orchestra, but when his piano was on its own, it became huge and out of sync. Remember, a piano is a percussion instrument. When played with percussive speed, all I could do was hold my breath to see if Denk would hit all the notes. His passages did not blend, They shouted: "I'm bigger, I'm best." When he tried connoting heart-stopping emotion, he lingered with such determined emphasis that emotion dissolved into flamboyance.
European-trained musicians like Christian Zacharias do not aim for such WOW, such rigorous, cliff-hanging, performances. Especially with a composer like Mozart whose own instrument, a pianoforte, had not the excessive force of steel. Instead, they tend to draw out musical lines in lyrical and nuanced ways until an entire ensemble, orchestra and soloist, become joined in a dream of musical possibility, which reaches out and wraps the audience in its embrace. Then, I sigh with completion, and thank the stars for a glimpse of beauty and generosity that includes us all.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Margotlog: Giving Thanks Today
Margotlog: Giving Thanks Today
For sadness because my oldest lovely is gone, yet looking through the trees out back, I see her face hovering in the pine branches...
Thankful that she, Eleonora, had such loving care in Delaware, even through a topsy-turvy break, six months before she died when she stopped taking her anti-depressants and because rough, loud, nuts, kookie!
Grateful that her dear friend Jo was with her at the very end, when she stopped eating for a week, and finally expired. That's the word--wind and life left her body.
Sad that so many I love are far away on coasts and across oceans. For instance, Diane and Clare who from their front step, glimpse a creek leading to a harbor and finally to an ocean. I worry sometimes that their coast may soon be under water. And I wonder, should we wish not to live to see it, or admit that ocean rise is happening faster and faster and we must adjust and change?
Across the miles, I salute Diane in her red coat, that's winter red, to match the berries on Carolina trees when all the leaves (except the live oaks and evergreens) are gone. And Clare with her jaunty smile.
Grateful for their friendship over the years, as they introduced me to Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, where I've spent several peaceful and demanding periods, writing, walking a garden labyrinth and trying to get used to being a lone woman among monks of all ages.
Grateful for Pope Francis, whose humble face and demeanor (I see him driving a little car through Roman traffic) bespeaks his care for multitudes of less fortunates who mean more to me because he is their champion. Strange twist. When we are led by selfish tyrants, we become self-centered, frightened and tyrannical!
Grateful for winter sun in the Christmas cactus lining my south window whose blossoms blare brighter than Christmas trees and provide hope for safe passage through another winter.
Grateful for the twelve "white-footed three, aka Julia, Tilly and Maggie," even when they wake me up at 4:30 a.m., especially Tilly of the soulful green eyes who walks on my body but will never sit in my lap.
Grateful, immensely, practically grateful that pulling up the new bathroom carpet (corn-based!) on which Tilly peed more times than I could count, and replacing it with linoleum (yes it looks like tile but it ain't), helped stop this outrage. Along with Felliway spray and diffusor. That was a siege I hope never to repeat.
Grateful for good neighbors and friends here and abroad, for work I care about and that ends each semester, and writing that continues when all else fails...
Grateful for relative good health and only occasional excesses (read chocolate, vino), for enough to keep and enough to give away, for signs that humans the world over are working to change behaviors that ruin soil, water, air, forests, that kills bees and ravages bird and mammal populations. For human action that says we are not alone here. And the longer we act as if we are, the more we ultimately damage ourselves.
Thank you friends and fellow sufferers. Happy Thanksgiving.
For sadness because my oldest lovely is gone, yet looking through the trees out back, I see her face hovering in the pine branches...
Thankful that she, Eleonora, had such loving care in Delaware, even through a topsy-turvy break, six months before she died when she stopped taking her anti-depressants and because rough, loud, nuts, kookie!
Grateful that her dear friend Jo was with her at the very end, when she stopped eating for a week, and finally expired. That's the word--wind and life left her body.
Sad that so many I love are far away on coasts and across oceans. For instance, Diane and Clare who from their front step, glimpse a creek leading to a harbor and finally to an ocean. I worry sometimes that their coast may soon be under water. And I wonder, should we wish not to live to see it, or admit that ocean rise is happening faster and faster and we must adjust and change?
Across the miles, I salute Diane in her red coat, that's winter red, to match the berries on Carolina trees when all the leaves (except the live oaks and evergreens) are gone. And Clare with her jaunty smile.
Grateful for their friendship over the years, as they introduced me to Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, where I've spent several peaceful and demanding periods, writing, walking a garden labyrinth and trying to get used to being a lone woman among monks of all ages.
Grateful for Pope Francis, whose humble face and demeanor (I see him driving a little car through Roman traffic) bespeaks his care for multitudes of less fortunates who mean more to me because he is their champion. Strange twist. When we are led by selfish tyrants, we become self-centered, frightened and tyrannical!
Grateful for winter sun in the Christmas cactus lining my south window whose blossoms blare brighter than Christmas trees and provide hope for safe passage through another winter.
Grateful for the twelve "white-footed three, aka Julia, Tilly and Maggie," even when they wake me up at 4:30 a.m., especially Tilly of the soulful green eyes who walks on my body but will never sit in my lap.
Grateful, immensely, practically grateful that pulling up the new bathroom carpet (corn-based!) on which Tilly peed more times than I could count, and replacing it with linoleum (yes it looks like tile but it ain't), helped stop this outrage. Along with Felliway spray and diffusor. That was a siege I hope never to repeat.
Grateful for good neighbors and friends here and abroad, for work I care about and that ends each semester, and writing that continues when all else fails...
Grateful for relative good health and only occasional excesses (read chocolate, vino), for enough to keep and enough to give away, for signs that humans the world over are working to change behaviors that ruin soil, water, air, forests, that kills bees and ravages bird and mammal populations. For human action that says we are not alone here. And the longer we act as if we are, the more we ultimately damage ourselves.
Thank you friends and fellow sufferers. Happy Thanksgiving.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Margotlog: Documentary Excellence
Margotlog: Documentary Excellence
I've been struck by what I call The Documentary Impulse and now, I'm trying to inspire masters students to allow themselves to do the same. This is creating something of a quandary. What worked for Daniel Defoe in the early 1700s documenting a London plague, and for the writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans in the 1930s (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), seems fraught with new-fangled difficulty today. Can you imagine today, for instance, being welcomed into the makeshift homes of three share-cropper families in the deep South, especially if you're from the Northeast elite? I suspect before you got to the door, you'd be peppered with buckshot. Or try replicating the "eye on the street" of many early 20th-century photographers.
One of my white, middle-aged male students did exactly that on the Lake Street bus. He pointed a new digital camera ar a crown on the bus and began clicking. Americans and work was his subject, and here he was surrounded by them. Suddenly behind him an African-American women began to scream that he had no right to take photos, Suddenly a Somali woman was trying to wrest the camera from him. The photographer stretched out his arm and edged her back. He threatened to call the police if she didn't stop. Finally the woman's husband came between them.
"You must ask permission," I said softly, remembering what our class visitor Wing Young Huie said about his Lake Street, USA project. Get friendly with people, go with them to their hang-outs. Have tea, a beer. Then ask for permission.
There's been a lot of damage done to privacy in the last twenty years. We are full of newcomers, many of whom have suffered through profound terror. Their culture or religion may frown on photographs as a theft of sacred space.
My photographer friend Linda Gammell reminds me of a case that went to the Supreme Court--a street photographer charged with invasion of privacy by an orthodox Jew who insisted, "It's against my religion to have my photograph taken." Ultimately the highest court decided that a street is public space, and given this photographer's body of excellent work, he did not constitute a threat to peace and security. Some may disagree.
How often photographs are used to demean and embarrass--think Facebook and postings of semi-nude photos of teens by their so-called friends. How often photographs diminish the vibrant flux that is a constant. We see glossy photos of penguins and think all is well with them. Ditto marine animals like manatees, severely endangered by run-off chemicals from Florida lawns. If we see a photograph, and the bird or mammal looks healthy, we do not question. We assume this is an accurate and enduring representation.
Photographs smooth and arrange what is rough, wild and uncouth. Holly Newton Swift's painting show currently at the Macalester College Janet Wallace Fine Arts building is full of works that began as photographs. Holly tells us how she struggles to avoid replicating the photos, how she wants memory and mystery to take over from a simple rendition of what a camera has captured. What is truer, after all? A rendition of flux and rough ugliness or a deep woods photo where shots of sun fall through tall trees.
I love old photographs. They capture what was evanescent, and we know it's gone. Bathed in the glow of nostalgia, the figures in these old photographs stare out at us like full-bodied ghosts, begging to be let back in on life. I miss them as if they belonged to my family. I itch to tell their stories.
But photographs of scenes I know intimately from daily walks strike me as reductions. They don't carry my experience of layered memory and perspective--how I saw the snow yesterday, how a huge cottonwood shaded a back yard five years ago, how furious I was when it was cut down. How other years, trees retain their winter skeletons far too long. How already I'm longing for leaves, but accepting that "certain slant of light" which Emily Dickinson named as the oppression of fall. It's oppression and strange antic joy.
I've been struck by what I call The Documentary Impulse and now, I'm trying to inspire masters students to allow themselves to do the same. This is creating something of a quandary. What worked for Daniel Defoe in the early 1700s documenting a London plague, and for the writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans in the 1930s (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), seems fraught with new-fangled difficulty today. Can you imagine today, for instance, being welcomed into the makeshift homes of three share-cropper families in the deep South, especially if you're from the Northeast elite? I suspect before you got to the door, you'd be peppered with buckshot. Or try replicating the "eye on the street" of many early 20th-century photographers.
One of my white, middle-aged male students did exactly that on the Lake Street bus. He pointed a new digital camera ar a crown on the bus and began clicking. Americans and work was his subject, and here he was surrounded by them. Suddenly behind him an African-American women began to scream that he had no right to take photos, Suddenly a Somali woman was trying to wrest the camera from him. The photographer stretched out his arm and edged her back. He threatened to call the police if she didn't stop. Finally the woman's husband came between them.
"You must ask permission," I said softly, remembering what our class visitor Wing Young Huie said about his Lake Street, USA project. Get friendly with people, go with them to their hang-outs. Have tea, a beer. Then ask for permission.
There's been a lot of damage done to privacy in the last twenty years. We are full of newcomers, many of whom have suffered through profound terror. Their culture or religion may frown on photographs as a theft of sacred space.
My photographer friend Linda Gammell reminds me of a case that went to the Supreme Court--a street photographer charged with invasion of privacy by an orthodox Jew who insisted, "It's against my religion to have my photograph taken." Ultimately the highest court decided that a street is public space, and given this photographer's body of excellent work, he did not constitute a threat to peace and security. Some may disagree.
How often photographs are used to demean and embarrass--think Facebook and postings of semi-nude photos of teens by their so-called friends. How often photographs diminish the vibrant flux that is a constant. We see glossy photos of penguins and think all is well with them. Ditto marine animals like manatees, severely endangered by run-off chemicals from Florida lawns. If we see a photograph, and the bird or mammal looks healthy, we do not question. We assume this is an accurate and enduring representation.
Photographs smooth and arrange what is rough, wild and uncouth. Holly Newton Swift's painting show currently at the Macalester College Janet Wallace Fine Arts building is full of works that began as photographs. Holly tells us how she struggles to avoid replicating the photos, how she wants memory and mystery to take over from a simple rendition of what a camera has captured. What is truer, after all? A rendition of flux and rough ugliness or a deep woods photo where shots of sun fall through tall trees.
I love old photographs. They capture what was evanescent, and we know it's gone. Bathed in the glow of nostalgia, the figures in these old photographs stare out at us like full-bodied ghosts, begging to be let back in on life. I miss them as if they belonged to my family. I itch to tell their stories.
But photographs of scenes I know intimately from daily walks strike me as reductions. They don't carry my experience of layered memory and perspective--how I saw the snow yesterday, how a huge cottonwood shaded a back yard five years ago, how furious I was when it was cut down. How other years, trees retain their winter skeletons far too long. How already I'm longing for leaves, but accepting that "certain slant of light" which Emily Dickinson named as the oppression of fall. It's oppression and strange antic joy.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Margotlog: Margaret Hasse's Poetic Exuberance
Margotlog: Margaret Hasse's Poetic Exuberance
Sometimes in a schematic mood, I divide poets into Emilys and Tennysons--Emilys belong to the pare-it-down, nail-it-tight school of poetry. Tennysons to the broader sweeping, celebratory school. Their music is different. They look different on the page--Emily's tiny explosions, Tennyson's ranging and gathering, examining and weeping.
The title of Minnesota poet Margaret Hasse's newest collection--Earth's Appetites (Nodin Press)--suggests the enjoyment and range of her verse. I like her best when she focuses closer, as in "Consideration for the Feet," when an inspection of feet above the bath water, "rosy as babies" becomes "They have been wild to waltz./ They march when I'm mad." Or in a tea garden, after naming and sampling teas, she and a friend remember "threshold events" and she gives a haunting rendition of a dying brother's request that bits of his ash be put in things he liked: "his banjo, top drawer of his desk, the garden." Such poignant specificity is hard to forget.
Those of us around her age flinch as she does, climbing down the ladder to a swimming pool, worried people will notice "her thighs wrinkle like crepe." Or appreciate the methodical, tender way she folds away things her visiting son has left, ending with "I wander around the house, visit his empty room,/ nothing to fold except my hands." This is giving raw power to a time-honored religious phrase.
Speaking of endings, a poem titled "Grave" goes entirely against the notion of death, as she describes love-making on the grave of her family. This poem ends wonderfully: A light joy talcs my body as if
I were abandoned as a child, then
fell into good hands. (27)
It's odd that her poems about childhood and youth resonate less with me than the more up-to-date renditions of experience. That is, all except the first poem in the book:Truant. I never left school in the middle of the day, as she describes doing, tooling around with a guy, but the joy of remembering "a meadowlark's liquid song" sets us up for a sassy, prophetic ending that sounds just the way a principal should:
"This will be part of
your permanent record."
That record reverberates through what we are now reading with so much pleasure, honoring Margaret Hasse's powers of description, insight, shaping, and surprise.
.
Sometimes in a schematic mood, I divide poets into Emilys and Tennysons--Emilys belong to the pare-it-down, nail-it-tight school of poetry. Tennysons to the broader sweeping, celebratory school. Their music is different. They look different on the page--Emily's tiny explosions, Tennyson's ranging and gathering, examining and weeping.
The title of Minnesota poet Margaret Hasse's newest collection--Earth's Appetites (Nodin Press)--suggests the enjoyment and range of her verse. I like her best when she focuses closer, as in "Consideration for the Feet," when an inspection of feet above the bath water, "rosy as babies" becomes "They have been wild to waltz./ They march when I'm mad." Or in a tea garden, after naming and sampling teas, she and a friend remember "threshold events" and she gives a haunting rendition of a dying brother's request that bits of his ash be put in things he liked: "his banjo, top drawer of his desk, the garden." Such poignant specificity is hard to forget.
Those of us around her age flinch as she does, climbing down the ladder to a swimming pool, worried people will notice "her thighs wrinkle like crepe." Or appreciate the methodical, tender way she folds away things her visiting son has left, ending with "I wander around the house, visit his empty room,/ nothing to fold except my hands." This is giving raw power to a time-honored religious phrase.
Speaking of endings, a poem titled "Grave" goes entirely against the notion of death, as she describes love-making on the grave of her family. This poem ends wonderfully: A light joy talcs my body as if
I were abandoned as a child, then
fell into good hands. (27)
It's odd that her poems about childhood and youth resonate less with me than the more up-to-date renditions of experience. That is, all except the first poem in the book:Truant. I never left school in the middle of the day, as she describes doing, tooling around with a guy, but the joy of remembering "a meadowlark's liquid song" sets us up for a sassy, prophetic ending that sounds just the way a principal should:
"This will be part of
your permanent record."
That record reverberates through what we are now reading with so much pleasure, honoring Margaret Hasse's powers of description, insight, shaping, and surprise.
.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Margotlog:The Unbelievers - from Orchestras to Global Warming
Margotlog: The Unbelievers - from Orchestras to Global Warming
Every time I try to remember my breakup from my first husband, there are loud voices, the two of us standing in the kitchen shouting, then phone calls when he pled with me not to leave. At least we were communicating!
Lately the Minnesota Orchestra musicians and management have come under more scrutiny than perhaps ever before in their 14-month (?) lockout. Are their patrons becoming restive? Does it look like the organization may disintegrate before our very eyes? I think the chances are good. And I blame both sides.
It's a stretch but I imagine that the musicians, priding themselves on their excellence, can't, still can't believe that their former management could do such a dastardly thing to them. Their audiences have something of the same problem--witness the ploy in the only public meeting I've attended: "Answer the following question in your small-group discussions: "Do we want to have a worldclass orchestra?"
Hmmm! Is that really the question to ask at this juncture, when there's been virtually no negotiation face-to-face except through the mediation of George Mitchell? And even that has fallen flat. As someone said to me recently, "Of course, Mitchell will succeed. He negotiated with the two Irelands." Well, he's just met very stubborn worldclass musicians.
Aren't they hurting financially? Some must be because they've left. But I'm guessing the bulk of the orchestra is still sitting somewhere with their arms folded across their worldclass bodies, a very aggrieved look on their faces.
As to the management--well I can't speculate, though I suspect the management NEVER expected their worldclass musicians to hold out so long. From what I've read in the paper, the offers from management do cut salaries, but as several friends have commented, these are still living wages we're talking about--hovering around $90-100,000 a year. Worldclass by my standards.
Now let's stop to contemplate recent news about global warming. A beautiful and extremely sad article in the Star Tribune Sunday about a search for living coral reefs. The swimmers found many bleached beyond redemption. Gone for good. Another article, also in the Sunday Star Tribune, about forests in N. Minnesota showing evidence of extremely rapid change, either through die-offs of boreal trees who can't tolerate increased warmth, or the appearance in northern range of more southern trees. Some extrapolate a loss of forests entirely along the northern tier of Minnesota within 50 years--only a rough-hewn form of prairie.
I've been convinced of global warming for almost ten years. And I've done things that a single-family can do--put in UV-protective glass and very tight windows, changed almost entirely to compact flourescent or LED lights, led a plan on the homefront to reduce energy use--everything from turning down the furnace AFTER we turn it up in the morning to simply doing without as many lights. Plus both my husband and I drive a Prius, not the only low-energy choice, but a good one.
Still I know it's not enough for one family. The entire neighborhood, city, county, nation needs to make changes in energy production--to wind and solar. In transportation energy use--to mass transit and cars that run far less thirsty for fuel. If we did these two things, and did them very very fast, say within three years, or four, we just might be able to keep from the tipping point, after which there is no return in anyone's lifetime. We are headed for sunstroke disaster.
Yet, bigger and bigger cars (really they're small fat trucks) idle daily in my neighborhood for no apparent reason, spewing CO2 from their tailpipes, Here are houses lit up like carnivals. Here are traffic jams that boggle the mind. Isn't being stuck in a jam every day of the week evidence enough that something is truly wrong with the way we've orchestrated our cities?
I've very very pessimistic that we can change our tunes, step up to the plate and actually play the game we are supposedly interested in playing - let's go all the way and saying, interesting in staying alive in relative comfort and handing over a decent world to our children and grandchildren.
Every time I try to remember my breakup from my first husband, there are loud voices, the two of us standing in the kitchen shouting, then phone calls when he pled with me not to leave. At least we were communicating!
Lately the Minnesota Orchestra musicians and management have come under more scrutiny than perhaps ever before in their 14-month (?) lockout. Are their patrons becoming restive? Does it look like the organization may disintegrate before our very eyes? I think the chances are good. And I blame both sides.
It's a stretch but I imagine that the musicians, priding themselves on their excellence, can't, still can't believe that their former management could do such a dastardly thing to them. Their audiences have something of the same problem--witness the ploy in the only public meeting I've attended: "Answer the following question in your small-group discussions: "Do we want to have a worldclass orchestra?"
Hmmm! Is that really the question to ask at this juncture, when there's been virtually no negotiation face-to-face except through the mediation of George Mitchell? And even that has fallen flat. As someone said to me recently, "Of course, Mitchell will succeed. He negotiated with the two Irelands." Well, he's just met very stubborn worldclass musicians.
Aren't they hurting financially? Some must be because they've left. But I'm guessing the bulk of the orchestra is still sitting somewhere with their arms folded across their worldclass bodies, a very aggrieved look on their faces.
As to the management--well I can't speculate, though I suspect the management NEVER expected their worldclass musicians to hold out so long. From what I've read in the paper, the offers from management do cut salaries, but as several friends have commented, these are still living wages we're talking about--hovering around $90-100,000 a year. Worldclass by my standards.
Now let's stop to contemplate recent news about global warming. A beautiful and extremely sad article in the Star Tribune Sunday about a search for living coral reefs. The swimmers found many bleached beyond redemption. Gone for good. Another article, also in the Sunday Star Tribune, about forests in N. Minnesota showing evidence of extremely rapid change, either through die-offs of boreal trees who can't tolerate increased warmth, or the appearance in northern range of more southern trees. Some extrapolate a loss of forests entirely along the northern tier of Minnesota within 50 years--only a rough-hewn form of prairie.
I've been convinced of global warming for almost ten years. And I've done things that a single-family can do--put in UV-protective glass and very tight windows, changed almost entirely to compact flourescent or LED lights, led a plan on the homefront to reduce energy use--everything from turning down the furnace AFTER we turn it up in the morning to simply doing without as many lights. Plus both my husband and I drive a Prius, not the only low-energy choice, but a good one.
Still I know it's not enough for one family. The entire neighborhood, city, county, nation needs to make changes in energy production--to wind and solar. In transportation energy use--to mass transit and cars that run far less thirsty for fuel. If we did these two things, and did them very very fast, say within three years, or four, we just might be able to keep from the tipping point, after which there is no return in anyone's lifetime. We are headed for sunstroke disaster.
Yet, bigger and bigger cars (really they're small fat trucks) idle daily in my neighborhood for no apparent reason, spewing CO2 from their tailpipes, Here are houses lit up like carnivals. Here are traffic jams that boggle the mind. Isn't being stuck in a jam every day of the week evidence enough that something is truly wrong with the way we've orchestrated our cities?
I've very very pessimistic that we can change our tunes, step up to the plate and actually play the game we are supposedly interested in playing - let's go all the way and saying, interesting in staying alive in relative comfort and handing over a decent world to our children and grandchildren.
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