The Annotated Emerson

The Annotated Emerson, David Mikics

I am studying Emerson, who represents the most original American philosopher. He is the American transcendentalist, the mentor to Thoreau and Whitman and Jane Addams and many others. He is a new Englander who lived from 1803 – 1882 and suffered personal tragedies in his life, but always remained a stoic. He wrote more essays than any other published American, always trying to ferret out the truth and maintained a personal journal that fills 16 volumes at Harvard.

We know him by name, but much of the person and his writing is lost today and we seldom go back to read from the source the way we continually publish and reflect on Walden by Thoreau.

 Phillip Lopate, in the forward writes: “Privately he recorded in his journals his liberal views on every issue of the day: he was for abolition of slavery, woman’s suffrage, and property rights, against the removal of the American Indians from their land, for the new immigrants, unequivocally against U. S. imperialism. Stating that “nationality is babyishness for the most part,” he opposed the Mexican War, Texas’s annexation, and the expropriation of Hawaii: “Let us wait a thousand years before we seize them by violence.” He thought capitalism was a form of cannibalism, and that the wealthy always voted for the “worst and meanest things”: for tyranny, for slavery, against the ballot, “against schools, colleges, or any high direction of public money.” He was defining what we would call progressivism today.

There is not much to critique in a collection that publishes the important essays and poems of America’s first great philosopher – a founder of the Unitarian Church, an advocate of abolition of slavery, a proponent of women’s rights, a lover of nature and the Earth and a companion to Thoreau, Whitman, Alcott and other prominent people in the world of his time. 

The words he wrote still have power, even though the style may grate on our modern ears.  So rather than a critique – here is a sample of his thoughts through his own words.

5/25

It's the birthday of the man who said, "Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air." That's Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston (1803). His father, who died when he was eight, was a Unitarian minister, as were many of Emerson's family members before him. He was a quiet and well-behaved young man, not an exceptional student. He graduated in the middle of his class, studied at Harvard Divinity School, and got a job as a ministerial assistant at Boston's Second Church. Not long after his ordination, he was married. He was happy at home and in his work, and soon he was promoted to senior pastor.

Two years after Emerson was married, his wife, Ellen, died of tuberculosis, at the age of 19. He was devastated. He began to have doubts about the Church. A year after Ellen's death, he wrote in his journal: "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." He took a leave of absence and went on vacation in the mountains of New Hampshire. By the time he returned, he had decided to resign from his position as minister.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

 From Garrison Keillor

From Nature:

In Nature, chapter 1 - Emerson wrote: "To go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.  I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me.  But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars." 

The closing lines of this paragraph remind me of Rachel Carson in A Sense Of Wonder, " If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which has been shown!  But every night come out of these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

Nature chapter one has a passage that makes me think of the wonderful musings of Winston Borden  "...none of them owns the landscape.  There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.  This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title."

  "The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.  His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food."

“The succession of native plants in the pastures and roadsides, which make the silent clock by which time tells the summer hours, will make even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer.  The tribes of the birds and insects, like the plants punctual to their time, follow each other, and the year has room for tall.  By water-courses, the variety is greater.  In July, the blue pontederia or pickerel weed blooms in large beds in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual motion.  Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold.  Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new garment.” 

“We know more from nature than we can at will communicate.  Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence."

“Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.”

"What is a farm but a mute gospel?  The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, - it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.”

"The true philosopher and poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth which is beauty is the aim of both"

"I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it."

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

From The American Scholar:

“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature.”

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.”  “They are for nothing, but to inspire.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

From “History”

“Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.”

“Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws.  She hums the old well known air through innumerable variations.”

The Divinity School Address:

“A snowstorm was falling around us.  The snowstorm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window and behind him, into the beautiful meteor of snow.  He had lived in vain…If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it.”

Literary Ethics:

Emerson in Literary Ethics sets the stage for Thoreaus' dictum - Simplify, Simplify, Simplify when he wrote,  " Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed to be simple is to be great."

“By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven.”

History:

“Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.”

“Nature is an endless combination of repetition and of very few laws.  She hums the old well known air through innumerable variations.”

FROM EMERSON’S JOURNAL:

“the knowledge of nature is most permanent, clouds and grass are older antiquities than pyramids or Athens.”

“Every man that goes into the  wood seems to be the first man that ever went into a wood. His sensations and his world are new.  You really think that nothing new can be said about morning and evening.  And the fact is morning and evening have not jet begun to be described.”  J5:469

“Life is a train of moods like string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.” An epigraphs from Emerson in the novel moods by Louisa May Alcott.

Self Reliance:

“Your own reason is the voice of God himself which speaks to you and to all mankind without an interpreter.”

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that eny is ignorance; that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our won; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’  ‘I am’, but quotes some saint or sage.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

Circles:

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”

“There are no fixtures in nature.  The universe is fluid and volatile.”

“The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.”

“No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.”

“No truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thoughts.”

“Life is a series of surprises.  We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being.”

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

The Poet

This essay was really enlightening for me.  We know Emerson more as a philosopher, than a poet or a critic, but he was the voice for poetry during his lifetime - the inspiration, mentor and friend of Walt Whitman and this long treatise on poetry delves deeply in to the perspective he has for this form of writing.  He writes, “With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I confide in as an inspiration.”

Then he goes on to look at poetry in his own analytic way and suggests that “Every word was once a poem.”  This is fascinating because he sees the power in each word and how that power can shape a picture or image for the reader, “The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it."

I have been working to review poetry for Lake Superior magazine's next issue and this has caused me to not just read poetry, but to think about it.  I found myself thinking about the concept of "to turn a phrase" and thinking instead that poetry phrases the turns in our perception.

In the following paragraph Emerson goes further in this analysis and I am going to take the liberty to underline phrases that really spoke to me.  “The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses.  For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer.  The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.  Language is fossil poetry.”

In this reflection the poet is put in the unenviable position of needing to let their own lives move to the background and let life as it surrounds them take over the pen. “So the poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low, that the common influences should delight him.  His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water.  That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half-embedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste.”

Finally we begin to see that poetry in its purest form and within the essay Emerson bemoans how few poets are really writing the highest level of poem.  “Art is the path of the creator to his work.”  The creator is not a god, but the poet. “He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him.  The poet pours out verses in every solitude.  Most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which is original and beautiful.  That charms him.  He would say nothing else, but such things.  In our way of talking, we say, ‘That is yours, this is mine..."

and then we come to the crux of this dialogue.  The product of the poet, the essence of the poem is moving and inspiring, but in fact comes from beyond the writer - "but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it is a strange and beautiful thing to him as to you…”

POLITICS

"That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws, to property, and such a structure given to our uses, as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor and to keep them poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet in articulate, that the whole constitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only interest for consideration of the State, is persons: that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement, and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land."

"Good men must not obey the laws too well." "Parties are founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders."

"Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defense of points, nowise belonging to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality."

"The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be cited as fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth."

FATE

"Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought;- for causes which are unpenetrated." 

" In astronomy, is vast space, but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as today.  Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than 'philosophy and theology embodied?'"

ILLUSION

"Science is a search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners."

 "And I have known gentlemen of great stake in the community, but whose sympathies were cold, - presidents of colleges and governors and senators, - who held themselves bound to sign every temperance pledge, and act with Bible societies, and missions, and peacemakers, and cry Sic to every good dog."

"The permanent interest of every man is, nver to be in a false position, but to have the weight of nature to back him in all that he does."

THE NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS:

“The popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things was not given.  We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.  We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms.  We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, not the hour of the day by the sun.  It is well if we can swim and skate.  We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider.”

“The lessons of science should be experimental also.  The sight of the planet through a telescope, is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”

“All our things are right and wrong together.  The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.  Do you complain of our Marriage?  Our marriage is no worse than our education, our diet, our trade, our social customs.  Do you complain of the laws of Propery?  It is a pedantry to give such importance to them.  Can we not play the game of life with these counters, as well ast those; in the institution of property, as well as out of it.  Let into it the renewing principle of love, and property will be universality.”

“If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.”

MONTAIGNE; OR THE SKEPTIC:

“We hearken to the man of science, because we anticipate the sequence in natural phenomena which he uncovers.”

“Society does not like to have any breath of question blown on the existing order.”

“Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.  The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers.  How respectable is earnestness on every platform.”

“Fate is for imbeciles.  All is possible to the resolved mind.”

Shakespeare; or the Poet:

“Great genial [inborn] power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.”

“Thus all originality is relative.  Every thinker is retrospective.”

“Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are Shakespearized.  His mind is on the horizon beyond which at present we do not see.  Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm.”

FATE:

“Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind are exceptional, and one need not lay his account for cataclysms every day?  Aye, but what happens once, may happen again, and so long as these stokes are not to be parried by us, they must be feared.”

“In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker.”

“All conservatives are such from personal defects.  They have been effeminate by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.”

“Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought;-for causes which are unpenetrated.”

“In astronomy, is vast space, but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as today.  Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than philosophy and theology embodied?”

ILLUSIONS

“Science is a search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners.”

“We see God face to face every hour, and know the savour of Nature.”

Thoreau:

“If he slighted and defied the opinions of others it was only that he was more intent to reconcile his practice with his own belief.”

“When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, The nearest.”

“He chose , wisely, no doubt, for himself to be a bachelor of thought and Nature.  He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelebance.”

“He chose to be rich by making his wants frew, and supplying them himself.”

“He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory.”

“I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which  showed him the material world as a means and symbol.”

“The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was patience.  He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rork he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him, should come back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him and watch him.”

“And yet none knew better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind.  Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.  His determination on Natural History was organic.”

“His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament to him, and inspired his friends with curiosity to see the world through his eyes, and to hear his adventures.”

“The axe was always destroying his forest. ‘Thank god,’ he said, ‘they cannot cut down the clouds!’”

“The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance.”

Thoreau from Emerson’s Journals

“August 6, 1947 letter – Henry D Thoreau is a great man in Concord, a man of original genius and character who knows Greek and knows Indian also,-not the language quite as well as John Eliot – but the history monuments and genius of the Sachems, being a pretty good Sachem himself, master of all woodcraft, and an intimate associate of the birds, beasts, and fishes of the region.”

J5:480 – a report of time spent on a cliff with HDT “A crow’s voice filled all the miles of air with sound…At night I went out into the dark and saw a glimmering star and heard a frog and Nature seemed to say Well do not these suffice?  Here is a new scene, a new experience.  Ponder it, Emerson, and not like the foolish world hanker after thunders and multitudes and vast landscapes the sea or Niagara.”

J14:91  “Having found his flowers, he drew out of his breast pocket his diary and read the names of all the plants that should bloom o this day, 20 May;  whereof he keeps account as a banker when his notes fall due.”

Destiny of the Republic Candice Millard

This book was fascinating and far exceeded my expectations.  The subtitle gives as good a summary as you can get:  A tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President.

Yes all that, good writing, and fascinating characters.  James Garfield was a president for whom I knew very little and now he becomes a man I admire and for the sake of our nation, I wish he had lived to implement his desire to equate people of all color, to educate and improve the economy of the south so the divisions could end and to get rid of the spoils system.

But he was not destined to accomplish these deeds.  He was the fourth president to die in office, two by illness and two by assassination.  Just 16 years after Lincoln  he became the second to die from a gunshot from a delusional assassin.  Beside him during the agonizing death bed travails as well as at the train station where the shot was fired was Robert Lincoln - Abrahams son and a member of the cabinet.  In a cruel sequence - fate would also put Lincoln with McKinley when he was assassinated.

Garfield came from a very poor background in Ohio.  He, like Lincoln, rose from the backwoods cabin to self educate and become a man of intellect and compassion.  His life path was never directed towards the presidency.  He was a college man, thrust in to politics on the basis of his speaking ability and the fact that he always told the truth and was a very pleasant man in all ways.

At the convention where he was nominated his nomination speech for another man drew everyone's attention to the speaker, just as Barrack Obama would do in another century.  It is a lesson for those who do not see value in the conventions.

The GOP convention was divided by the Stalwarts, lead by Senator Conkling of New York who favored the spoils system and wanted to nominate U. S. Grant for a third time and those who were in favor of change.  It was bitter and after two days of vicious contention the party turned with hope to a man who did not want to be nominated - James Garfield.

This caused a series of things to happen - the nomination of Chester Arthur as vice president to mollify Conkling, even though Arthur had never been elected to anything and the delusional idea that Guiteau - the assassin would expect to be appointed an ambassador under the spoils system.  There was no basis for Guiteau to get any appointment, but then there is no real basis for his message from god that had him commit the assassination.

The entire episode plays out in an informative slow motion and culminates in Garfield's death, not from the bullet, but from the ill-advised treatment  of Dr. Bliss who rejected all recent discoveries in the field of medicine and caused the infection that would be the actual killer.  Alexander Graham Bell also plays an interesting roll in this.  He was driven to find a way for the bullet to be located instead of the Bliss method of sticking probes and fingers in to the president.  He created a machine that would aid many, but it did not work on Garfield because Bliss insisted that Bell only look where he, Bliss, thought it would be.  Bliss wanted the glory of treating the President and kept everyone else away or controlled.  As a result we have the idiom - "ignorance is bliss."

Guiteau expected Arthur to free him and reward him for giving Arthur the presidency and eventually went to the gallows content that he had done the lord's work.

Millard also wrote the River of Doubt about T. R.'s near fatal expedition.  She is a marvelous story teller and historian.

An Unspoken Hunger - Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams has created a collection of essays that captures both her spirit and her commitment.  It is a set of essays that is particular strong for women, but should be read by men as well.

In the opening essay - In the Country of Grasses she explores her naturalist driven visit to the Serengeti.  This trip to Africa gives her many experiences and insights, but ultimately it does for her what it is intended in this collection - it makes her think about home and the planet. "The Mara is wild, uninterrupted country capable of capturing one's spirit like cool water in a calabash.  And it appears endless, as its southern boundary is contiguous with Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.
"The Mara belongs to the Maasai or the Maasai to the Mara.  The umbilical cord between man and earth has not been severed here.  The Maasai pasture their cattle next to leopard and lion.  They know he songs of grasses and the script of snakes."

Soon that reflection is saddened as she encounters the severed relationship between man and nature that is everywhere on Earth.  "No one speaks for some time.  The isolation of endangered species is disquieting.  Two rhinos.  And in ten years, what will the count be?"

Good advice for a traveler - "As a naturalist, I yearn to extend my range like the nomadic lion, rhino, or Masai.  But in remote and unfamiliar territory I must learn to read the landscape inch by inch.  The grasses become braille as I ruin my fingers through them."

This sensitivity runs through out the book, providing the context for her ruminations and frustrations.  She portrays herself as a naturalist, a woman and a Mormon through the essays that follow.  She defines herself by family and home as well as friends and places.   The friends are Georgia O'Keefe and Edward Abbey as well as those who have shared personal moments.  She is moved by Rachal Carson and she respects those who see the need for protecting the Earth.

She talked about the Coyote that continues to befuddle and challenge the gun, poison and traps - we route for these rogues in many of their battles.  They survive by deception and she says of O'Keefe - "... by tricking them once again, into seeing the world her way, hrough bold color and integrity of form.  O'Keefe's clarity would become the American art scenes confusion."

The death of her brother Alan is a sad retrospective called the Village Watchman.  Alan was institutionalized and had created his own world through the unique talents that he alone possessed.  "Alan was not normal.  He was unique; one and only; single; unusual; extraordinary; rare.  His emotions were not measured, his curiosity not bridled.  In a sense, he was wild like a mustang in the desert and, like most wild horses, he was eventually rounded up."

The list of people whose story are part of her story continues throughout and the names are a mix of famous and unknown, but important.    In Eulogy for Edward Abbey she celebrates an outspoken poetic leader of environmental outrage and finds the need to take action "Love always, the Earth."

For women readers there are some explorations of the special female role in the world.  Mardy Murie and Rachal Carson show courage that cannot be measured by gender.  They found what they believed in and they acted upon it.

"We must call for the abandonment of hierarchies that contribute to the vertical power that has compromised the earth."  is a call to all people.  To women she shares this quote from Chantal Chawaf "We, as women, today, in our logos and discourse, have to articulate he excess desire, the uncensored body, and life - not an idealized life, but life just as it is, with its problems, anxieties, and frighting aspects.  we must do so because it is precisely this fear of life that has kept life outside culture."

Doc by Mary Doria Russell

I have written about the many incarnations of Wyatt Earp through dime novels, novels, pulps, TV and a myriad of movies.   In almost all of them we find the Earp brothers, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday.   It would seem that the story had been written, but then I realize that the only book I have read about Doc was by University of Nebraska Press [if memory serves], a weighty little volume that did not do much for me.  The character of Doc was a caricature – the evil soulless dentist dying of tuberculosis and finding solace in his whore companion – Big Nosed Kate and the bottle.  A gambler, fast with the gun, and faster to become violently enraged.

That is the story or it was until Ms Russell did some digging, found good sources, and re-imagined Doc in Dodge City before the incident in Tombstone made him a legend.  We meet a skilled dentist haunted by his disease in companionship with a whore – Kate (no big nose mentioned here) from Austria who is educated, has an European pedigree that extended to semi-royalty and a driving, amoral personality that fits with Doc. 

This is a story of two Earps with whores for wife and companion as well as Doc and Kate.  It is a time when judgment should be suspended since the laws of the land gave women no equal rights and they had few choices in surviving and making their way in the lawless west.

Wyatt Earp is seen in a less romantic light than usually gets cast: illiterate, humorless, blinded by his sense of right.  But we also see the secretive Wyatt doing things for people like the Indian/black man John Sanders that no one would ever suspect.  Add to that the Georgian aristocrat – Doc Holliday who also befriends and cares for Johnny and you can see how the author plays against stereotype.

Not a western author, but rather one who likes to jump genres, Mary Russell gives this story a flair that separates it from western literature and she deserves a bigger audience than just the wild west fans.

In fact this is partially a mystery with the death of Johnny Sanders as the thread that holds the stories and mini-bios together.  And it is justice for his murder that becomes the motivation for some of the storyline events.

You will meet Morgan Earp, the most likeable of the Earp’s and one who will be killed in Arizona and James Earp, married to a whore, and part owner in his wife’s whorehouse.  James is likeable, but quieter.  He can relate to Kate when she is in one of her bouts of depression and tries his hand at helping everyone behind the scenes.  Ultimately he will have to brood over his actions and whether they eventually led to the group going to Tombstone where the family fortunes were changed so drastically.

It is that kind of morality play.  What if.  What puts these characters in these situations?  What fates play with this little band?  Would Wyatt, Doc and the others have become such household names if they had not gone to Tombstone?  That 3 minute segment of their lives has created the legends that we grew up believing.

But was Doc really violent?  Or was he a good dentist and a skilled gambler as Mary Russell portrays versus the killer gunman that Bat Masterson, the dandified lawman and gambler, told stories about?  It is about loneliness in a crowd, lost people trying to celebrate life with guns, cards, booze, whores, and horses.   Fortune won and loss at the card table mirrored their lives of ‘easy come – easy go’.  As one reviewer wrote, “As though it’s a corrective to 150 years of shoot-’em-up westerns, “Doc” remains daringly free of quick draws or showdowns.”

But he is not free of the tensions and drama that make good reading.

The Poet by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Poet

This essay was really enlightening for me.  We know Emerson more as a philosopher, than a poet or a critic, but he was the voice for poetry during his lifetime - the inspiration, mentor and friend of Walt Whitman and this long treatise on poetry delves deeply in to the perspective he has for this form of writing.  He writes, “With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I confide in as an inspiration.”

Then he goes on to look at poetry in his own analytic way and suggests that “Every word was once a poem.”  This is fascinating because he sees the power in each word and how that power can shape a picture or image for the reader, “The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it."

I have been working to review poetry for Lake Superior magazine's next issue and this has caused me to not just read poetry, but to think about it.  I found myself thinking about the concept of "to turn a phrase" and thinking instead that poetry phrases the turns in our perception.

In the following paragraph Emerson goes further in this analysis and I am going to take the liberty to underline phrases that really spoke to me.  “The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses.  For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer.  The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.  Language is fossil poetry.”

In this reflection the poet is put in the unenviable position of needing to let their own lives move to the background and let life as it surrounds them take over the pen. “So the poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low, that the common influences should delight him.  His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water.  That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half-embedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and such as are of simple taste.”

Finally we begin to see that poetry in its purest form and within the essay Emerson bemoans how few poets are really writing the highest level of poem.  “Art is the path of the creator to his work.”  The creator is not a god, but the poet. “He pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him.  The poet pours out verses in every solitude.  Most of the things he says are conventional, no doubt; but by and by he says something which is original and beautiful.  That charms him.  He would say nothing else, but such things.  In our way of talking, we say, ‘That is yours, this is mine..."

and then we come to the crux of this dialogue.  The product of the poet, the essence of the poem is moving and inspiring, but in fact comes from beyond the writer - "but the poet knows well that it is not his; that it is a strange and beautiful thing to him as to you…”

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

I have always been fascinated by Hemingway, as have many people.  He is an Icon of American literature and an enemy of adjectives every where.  His sparse writing form is as unique as Shakespeare's rhyme and meter.  He carved out a form that reflected the man and in many ways The Sun Also Rises is also a strong reflection of the man (as is the Old Man and the Sea and many others)

. The following was posted by Garrison Keillor today, so it seems appropriate to post my review of  The Sun Also Rises, which was one of my summer reads. Today, July 21,  is the birthday of Ernest Hemingway , born in Oak Park, Illinois (1899). He started his writing life as a journalist, but when he was in Paris after World War I, working as a foreign correspondent for theToronto Star, he was encouraged to take a more literary turn by other American writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. His first collection of short stories, In Our Time, was published in 1925. Both U.S. presidential candidates of 2008 cited Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) as one of their favorite books. It's about an American teacher, Robert Jordan, who volunteers to go fight in the Spanish Civil War and, after being wounded in battle, contemplates shooting himself to end the pain. But when the enemy comes into sight, Jordan delays their approach so that his own comrades can escape to safety. And then he dies. Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls: "The young man, whose name was Robert Jordan, was extremely hungry and he was worried. He was often hungry but he was not usually worried because he did not give any importance to what happened to himself and he knew from experience how simple it was to move behind the enemy lines in all this country. It was as simple to move behind them as it was to cross through them, if you had a good guide. It was only giving importance to what happened to you if you were caught that made it difficult; that and deciding whom to trust. You had to trust the people you worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make decisions about the trusting. He was not worried about any of that. But there were other things."

In this book we are brought to the same decadent Paris that we find in F Scott Fitzgerald's writing, but it is different for many reasons .  First Hemingway does not involve his wives in this writing.  His character - Jake - is a loner and lonely.  An amateur psychologist might read in to the life of this character the loneliness that ultimate brought Hemingway to commit suicide.

This is a group of people bonded by their lifestyles and location, but in fact as we go through the story we find that the friendships are not based on liking one another.  In fact, they can be quite cruel about the other associates and they seem to find more to like in the bottles of liquor, the quest for a meaningful relationship - which means going after each new possibility, and the blood and chaos of Pamplona and the bulls.

Spain and France are the locals and we are often treated to insights about their countryside, but the strength of the story is about the people.  Each expresses anger and want in different ways depending upon their inebriation.  And the glue to the group is actually a woman - Brett, who we are led to believe is extremely desirable.  Her problem is that men are easy [ain't that the truth] and so they mate, the part, they follow her and she finds new conquests like the Spanish bullfighter even while planning to marry or spend time with one of the others.  She is on a constant quest and her inability to define the goals of her quest mean that she will continue to be unfulfilled, even though she and Jake actually are the truest if unfulfilled love relationship.

The is about Gertrude Stein's "lost generation".  A group too affluent for their own good and without a purpose.  In one telling paragraph Jake, the narrator, tells us about the Jewish Cohn.  "He had been reading W. H. Hudson.  That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread "The Purple Land."  "The Purple Land" is a very sinister book if read too late in life.  It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfectly English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described.  For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books."

Brett was Jake's "The Purple Land".
"Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England.  I suppose she only wanted what she could not have.  Well, people were that way. To hell with people.  The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that.  Good advice anyway.  Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice.  Try and take it sometime.  Try and take it."

We are given the hint that something happened to Jake in the war that made it so he could not have sex and this meant he could not or would not take in Brett.  Yet they constantly found that they needed the touch-stone of the other's presence.

Each flawed character was searching and forgetting:
"It was amazing champagne.
"'I say that is wine,' Brett held up her glass.  'We ought to toast something. - Here's to royalty."
"'This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear.  You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that.  You lose the taste.'
"Brett's glass was empty."

In another passage the following lament seems to be an honest assessment of the people who fill the narrative:  "You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil.  You get precious.  Fake European standards have ruined you.  You drink yourself to death.  You become obsessed by sex.  You spend all your time talking, not working.  You are an expatriate, see?  You hang around cafes."

And they do.  It is a story in which the bars and cafes are equally anonymous, but are the true points of connection - the dots that outline the picture.  It is a story that does not satisfy.  It is not leading to some moral understanding or grand climax, but it is a slice of a life we can be fascinated by, but probably never be able to replicate.

enotes - introduces the book:
Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, remains, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “a romance and a guidebook.” It also became, in the words of critic Sibbie O’Sullivan, “a modern-day courtesy book on how to behave in the waste land Europe had become after the Great War.” The Sun Also Rises successfully portrays its characters as survivors of a “lost generation.” In addition, the novel was the most modern an American author had yet produced, and the ease with which it could be read endeared it to many. But for all its apparent simplicity, the novel’s innovation lay in its ironic style that interjected complex themes without being didactic. Generally, the novel is considered to be Hemingway’s most satisfying work.

Three Summer books

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was a second reading occasioned by our grandsons who road out west with us.  We did it on cd and that is my favorite version - the reader is superb and creates the voices and personalities that I want to hear when I read.  We then came home and watched the movie with the Twins - their first Harry Potter experience and that was wonderful fun.

The reread was a real treat for many reasons.  Now that I know the story it was not the constant page turner, instead I could enjoy Rowling's skill.  I think the plot might overshadow the fact that she is really excellent at developing the story through characters that become very real - not just good fictional people, but people in an outrageously creative alternate world that become real.

The descriptions and details of the setting for all the books are laid out in this opening novel. The plot is fun, but thinner than the progression of dark secrets and magical battles that will follow.  This is a book that is more setting and tease.

Of course Valdemort is evil, but he will become more frightening as the series develops.  Here he is merely scary.  Snape is given his shadowy personality and Dumbledor becomes the lovable wizard.  But it is the kids who carry the story and their exploits are something all kids can relate too.

Marshes (2007) by William Burt is a gorgeous book that rides on its photographs.  There are many books that gather photos of coastal seascapes, lakes and waves, and even the dark and seemingly forbidding swamp - but marshes have not gathered the aesthetic appeal.  They are wetlands of grasses, sedge's, rushes - plants with rather dull looking flowers and the water is shaded by the denseness of the vegetation.

But Burt talks about the importance of marshes and the terrible abuse that has been visited upon them.  It is almost impossible to find a pristine marsh - they have either been ruined by construction and draining or invaded by voracious plant species that have been allowed to cross over the seas.  He describes the monster phragmites: "which grow up to 250 lateral feet per year, sending up shoots every four or five inches."

However, if you cannot be persuaded of the beauty of the marsh by words, it is his photo essays that close the deal.  The alluring and seldom seen birds of this community are shown off with clarity and focus - something that had to take tremendous patience.  The least bitterns and the rails are seldom on a birder's list, but they are on these pages.

 This is an intense book about a camp for delinquent boys that is run by a tyrannical female warden who has the boys digging holes in a dry lake bed.  Supposedly this is causing them to reform and think about their crimes.  In reality, she is using them to seek a treasure.  In this situation, our hero - Stanley Yelnats - is a victim of a wrongful conviction and a sentence to Camp Green Lake.Now Green Lake may have been the largest lake in Texas at one time, but now it is home to poisonous yellow spotted lizards and rattlesnakes and these are nicer than the guards.  It is an intense story of escape, the threads of a personal curse that cannot be shaken, and some really good story telling.  Ultimately it is about justice and redemption and the kids will be pleased with the ultimate reward that goes to the two troubled youth who come out on top.  However, I am not sure the right age for this intense book, perhaps 10?   






 

Under the Influence of Lilacs

Under the Influence of Lilacs

Deborah Gordon Cooper

This collection of poems is an interesting combination of remembering, observing the process of aging, counseling the grieving, and finding solace in nature. In her opening poem – Prelude to Daybreak – we glimpse the world that Ms. Cooper lives in  – “of waiting rooms/and penitentiaries.”  And it ends with the solace she seeks in nature “step out the door/breathe deeply in.”    The world of plants is her world, the gardener, the naturalist – “I am that half-remembered/tender-green/color of longing.”

It is poetry that releases her emotions and comforts those around her, “I read poetry/ the way someone/ somewhere else/ reads scripture.”  And she moves in a sensory world, “Leave your cell phone, your watch/ your thoughts/ on the kitchen table. “  “Walk slowly.  Leave the trail.”   And if this is autobiographical as well as philosophical we know “though I am easily/ distracted by/ a kite, caught/ in a tree” she is not without compassion and commitment to the people around her.  Nor does she lack humor, “And still, I keep catching myself/  addressing myself out loud/ as if I am my constant friend…” and I cannot give away the punch line.

Her gift to the world is her ability to capture the frustrations and fears that surround the human experience – “Let us pray that we might cease/ to plant the seeds of fear/ and hatred in their minds/ that we might never lay/ another weapon of destruction/ in their arms.”

There were poems I read to Kate because they captured her love of grandchildren Imagine and others that captured the love we share as we grow old together The Dancers.  Moving forward we also look backward and “the faces in these photographs/ become the faces of the dead/ my secret saints.”   And there are lines that are perfect in capturing a moment – “The sky is packed with/ sack-of-flour clouds.” 

She takes us to the complex places through the common place – “In a soft fold of time/ between the ironing/ and the income tax,” and reminds us that in life “We are just passing through/ these bones.”

The Reindeer Camps, Poems by Barton Sutter

This is the first of three books that Lake Superior Magazine asked me to review – three books of poetry.  So the question is – how do you review poetry?  I do not write it, I tried, when I was in college.  I made rhyming verses because my English professor said it would give me writing discipline to conform to meter and rhyme. Then Whitman set me free to ramble and I did, but prose was my medium and not just prose, but non-fiction.  So I review these tentatively as a person, who loves books and loves what great writers do with words; I explore poetry annually, digging in to great poets, which the Northland seems to produce in such wonderful abundance and quality.  I love the works of Louis Jenkins and Konnie Wanek, but judging poetry is difficult.

A poem is a picture and a rhythm – a song without music and images in abstract with words.  I have to read the first few lines over and over to discover their sound and listen to the words to get the image.  Which brings me to Barton Sutter who lives in Duluth and has become an important name in poetry with numerous awards and recognition: others have judged his merit so I can only report how I react personally to the poetry in this collection.

The poetry is compiled in sections – chapters if it was prose - and the poems are linked in a loose set of themes.  The first section examines some of darker sides of people Barton has encountered and the conditions that challenge our perspectives.  He captures the lonely frustration of dying among the candy stripers and piped in rock music: “Like earmuffs to my head, And stumbled from the house To runrun, runaway.”    He remembers the lumberman, Nils, who is moved by the discovery of a nest in a tree he has cut.  It is not the birds, but the human emotion that causes Nils to tie the tree upright to a still uncut tree in hopes the parents will return – “The frightened parents must have fled, But I like thinking how Nils tried.”

His lines are clever, often humorous and always thought provoking – “Father, Holy Ghost, and Son Were peanuts in a single shell” and we glimpse perception in lines like: “A five-year-old doesn’t judge but sees.”  We can picture the farmer, a roughhewn man who extends sympathy to a child stung by a hornet. “I see his trembling, farm-thick fingers Plastering his young son’s brow With a dripping lump of cool blue clay To take the hornet’s sting away.”

Part 2 is a reflection on a sense of place – “But nothing says north like a white pine Unless it’s a maple gone red to maroon.”  He captures the frustration I felt just the day before reading his ode on the construction on Highway 1.  We hate the fact that we can no longer see the river we crossed: “Our looks now boomerang off a blank wall, The highway turned hallway, one more Aesthetic atrocity committed, one more Beauty spot blotted out.”  Amen.  Instead he celebrates nature and the wonderful way it celebrates and supports diversity, “To work together for the great good of green.”

And we laughed as I read aloud Those Finnish Folk: “Pioneered by people awful fond of failure.”  “They believe in Sauna, Nudity, and Coffee.”  The tear jerker is an ode to his dog – those animals evolved to be our best friends and our worst hurt. 

Section three is about the Bush administration and did my liberal heart good!  Section four was filled with a collection of images and topics, but if there was a central theme I was not able to catch it.   Section five is about books and writing – an assortment of whims, loves, and relationships between reader, writer, and the printed word.  “So the years passed.  It might take him all day to write one sentence.  If he published it, by God, he meant it.”

In section six Barton explores his love of his wife, her bravery, her loveliness and her absence.  In the final poem With You in Spain you can feel the writer walking the garden daily taking in the flowers and trees that they have planted and rejoicing in their beauty while noticing that it is not the same when she is in Spain.  The introspection of this journey through time and garden ends with a soliloquy on the place that is their place and what it will be like when both are dead and someone else owns this precious place.  “I tried to tell myself When we are dead and buried It will only be As if we’ve gone to Spain.”  But it will not be that simple “Let me try to make this plain.  Imagine you had seen Apple petals drifting down Like manna on the lawn, But we were gone.”

The final section is one epic poem – Reindeer Camps – that takes us far north and puts us where we have never been and probably will never be.  It is a journey in to timelessness – it brings forth the metaphos of age and place in the barren lands of Siberia.  – “And seldom settle anywhere For longer than a month or so.  To overgraze the grass and moss Would be a grave mistake.”  There is a lesson there for all mankind and our voracious consumption. And this plain landscape is a place to reflect on human space and place – “Taiga, taiga, world of white, Home to sable, black as night, What mere human mind or eye Can take in your immensity.” 

It is an excellent collection and a philosophic poetry tinged with humor and insight.