On Fascism, of course

I tend to disagree with everything Adam Kirsch says; even if he’s telling a story about his own life, I have a hunch that he’s lying. It all just sounds false to me, especially his poetry. This article, sent on my @prufrocknews is no exception; especially this bit:

It was at a party in early 2002, a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, that I first heard someone declare, as if it was self-evident, that the George W. Bush Administration was fascist. The accusation refuted itself, of course—people living under a fascist regime don’t go around loudly attacking the regime at parties—but it was symptomatic of the times. Post-Sept. 11 paranoia took many forms, and one of them was paranoia about the American government (and not just in “truther” circles).

I hate the “of course” because it’s a verbal arrogance to which I’m prone as well. It presumes that what one is saying is evident to any thinking person, which Kirsch’s claim here is not. “People living under a fascist regime don’t go around loudly attacking the regime at parties” he pronounces, settling the argument in a way somehow both definitive and obvious. I don’t know what kind of parties Kirsch attends, but, actually yes, they do. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a fascist/totalitarian regime so powerful that no person at no party would dare criticize it. Not Stalin, not Mao, not Ayatolah Komeni, not Bush. And there has especially never been a regime structured such that the presence of criticism ceased to make it fascist. Insufficiently in control, perhaps. A government can control many things, can limit press and squash dissent but only when that dissent is sufficiently public. 

Fascist governments are those which seek to enforce conservative values and behavior norms and engage in–to greater or lesser degrees, depending on the totality of their power–governmental suppression of individual freedom. You can read the Bush administration as having done such things or not, but it is not obvious that they did not. Pretty fair cases have been made that, on dozens of occasions, they sought to enforce certain behavior norms, and to limit personal freedom in the name of conservative values. Critics of the administration were fired from their jobs, scientists who suggested alternative theories about climate change were denied grants and subject to derision, an undercover agent was apparently outed (and could have been killed) for disagreeing with the march to war, and a group of pop singers who criticized the president was publicly tarred and feathered, threatened with death, and radio stations that played their music with boycotts, to cite some of the memorable, if not the most egregious, examples.

Unfavorable estimates of Bush’s tenure abound; the people who hold them may be, but are not necessarily,as Kirsch claims they are, “paranoid,” or “symptomatic,” or sick. They just disagree with you. Mmm…kay?

Jurado Juvenalia

Here's a song from Damien Jurado that I'm guessing even longtime fans haven't heard. It's from a sampler for a nascent record label that, in the pre-Kickstarter era, never got funded. I'm not sure who was behind it, but from the line-up, I'm guessing this was an early side-project of Aaron Sprinkle's. It's one of my favorite collections, featuring bands that, I think sadly, never put out a full-length record, (esp. Moonboy and Paul Mumaw) but whose work on this suggests they should have. It features an acoustic track from Soulfood 76--another early favorite of mine--and a remix from Poor Old Lu. Get "Persuading You Near" (1996) from Working Man Records, if you can find it in a bin. Enjoy. 

And because my friends in a Facebook group asked, here is another song from the record from an early Jurado band called ”Moonboy.” It’s my favorite track on the sampler and I wish they had made a full-length album.

Poetry of the Crimean War

With world attention fixed once again on the Crimean Peninsula, again due to provocation from Russia, let’s remember, as U.S. Congressional Republicans use the occasion to heckle from the sidelines—if only we’d been more belligerent, aggressive, if only more foot-stamping from across the ocean, then maybe 4-500 years of Russian foreign policy would’ve been reversed, and they’d act against type—that a similar affair happened some years ago. What started as a territorial dispute eventuated in a World War in which America was very nearly embroiled. 

Televised busts will probably be walking the public through much of that history in the coming weeks. Perhaps they already are. I wouldn’t know, having killed my television 15 years ago on the advice of some bumper stickers. It will be flash-summary, of course, full of posturing and bravado, and little in the way of scholarship. I want here only to point out that whatever else the Crimean War gave us (and it gave us a few things including the first tactical use of both railroads and telegraphs) it also gave us much of our finest war poetry. 

Not that I don’t appreciate Melville’s and Whitman’s civl war verse. I do. I think that conflict’s literary contribution, however,  (still largely unsung) took the form of hymnody, private correspondence, and political speech.  And I appreciate Winifred Owen’s work on WWI, especially Dolce et Decorum Est, which I regularly teach in my History of Poetry classes at UW. And Yeats on Ireland and Auden of WWII, and even, weirdly, much of the Taliban poetry on the War of American Aggression or Operation Iraqi Freedom, depending on whose branding you prefer. One needn’t agree with their politics or methods, but their rebellious, anti-Western verse is stirring stuff.
None of it has anything on the Crimean War. I don’t mean to march through it all here. Most readers know Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, an account of a military disaster (due apparently to a misheard order) rendered as a heroic act of pure bravery and self-sacrifice.  For nearly 100 years, it was the most memorized poem in the language. 

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.

Much of the Crimean War poetry has been analyzed and collected by Stefanie Markovits and Orlando Figes. Both mention, though neither of them dwell on, my favorite Crimean War poems: Sonnets on the War, by Alexander Smith and Sydney Dobell. Smith and Dobell are two of my favorite poets anyway, members of the Spasmodic School, writing in Britain in the 1850’s. After each writing astonishingly successful first books, they turned to this little collaborative book of sonnets, neither taking credit for whose sonnet is whose, or whether they were all written together somehow. 

Sonnets on the War covers British positions on Sebastopol, Hungary, the infamous cavalry charge, on whether America should enter the war, on Florence Nightengale, and much else besides. Here’s one called “Self.”

The War rolls on. Dark failure, brave success
Deafen our ears. But little power to touch
Our deeper human nature lies in such.
Doth victory make an infant’s smile the less?
Each man hath his own personal happiness,
In which--as creep the cold-enfeebled flies
In the late beam--he warm and basking lies.
Each hath his separate rack of sore distress.
No hand can give an alms, no power consoles;
We only have our true hearts and our souls.
In leaguered forts, water with patient arts,
They draw from their own court or garden-plot;
So from the deep-sunk wells within our hearts
We draw refreshment when the fight is hot.

I think that’s just great. The poems are patriotic, but not boosters, inspiring, but not hawkish. More importantly, they’re honest. Tennyson’s poem asks “When can their glory fade?” The answer is: it fades as soon as one finds out that 600 wasted their lives because a general was ineffectively in command of them, and/or their testosterone charge short-circuited their hearing and broke the chain of command. “Honour the Light Brigade,” we are therein commanded. It’s all one-sided.

Smith and Dobell’s poem acknowledges both “brave success” and “dark failure,” which is necessarily the sum of any military engagement. It acknowledges too the uselessness of language as a cure for pain (brave for poets, but again: honest). “Each hath his separate rack of sore distress./ No hand can give an alms, no power consoles,” the poem admits. How much better if we responded to the pain of other’s more often with that kind of realism? 

Here’s the opening of one called “Meditative.”

We could not turn from that colossal foe,
The morning shadow of whose hideous head
Darkened the furthest West, and who did throw
His evening shade on Ind. The polar bow
Behind him flamed and paled, and through the red
Uncertain dark his vasty shape did grow
Upon the sleepless nations…

I write here and there about the Spasmodic poets, and how, though sometimes studied for their jarring popularity in the mid-Victorian era, they deserve a broader audience for the sheer quality of their writing. Sonnets is a good place to start. Read the whole collection here. 

How to Hear Me

Inspired by a blog post I recently read that reminded me I should be listening to jazz music (an activity I practice, but of whose import I need sometimes to be reminded), and sitting at the Civic Center Library anyway, I wandered over to the CD section (nowhere near as well-stocked or organized as the Highlands Ranch Library in CO) and began to peruse, looking for Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins: my usuals. Finding none, (although I did get the excellent Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden record "Jasmine,") I indulged in my usual, and usually-reliable assessor-ship of books by their covers. And was led therefrom to a record by Gil Scott-Heron called "I'm New Here" (XL Recordings, 2010). I liked its font, mainly, and the photographic composition, and how the colors mimic those of the epic Clash record "London Calling." 

"I'm New Here" is not much of a production. It experiments with samples, spoken word, and light instrumentation, but is not really experimental, or moving or smart. Nothing that happens on this record isn't better done by Sam Prekop on the Sea and Cake records, or Dan Deacon, or Bill Callahan, all of whom I recommend broadly. 

The reason I'm bothering to say any of this, though, is because I admire Scott-Heron's artist statement, printed in the liner notes. Here is what he writes:

There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment. Music, for example. Buying a CD is an investment. LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS. Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset. Take it home. Get rid of all distractions, (even her or him). Turn off your cell phone. Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattle or whistles. Make yourself comfortable. Play your CD. Listen all the way through. Think about what you got. Think about who would appreciate this investment. Decide if there is someone else to share this with. Turn it on again. Enjoy yourself. 

I appreciate everything the artist has to say here. That his work deserves some respect. That respect involves giving it space (as well as not stealing it). I like how concerned he is with my comfort. How he insists I listen all the way through. When was the last time I did that? He suggests that appreciating music is a communal endeavor (it used to be for me, and isn't any longer) without sounding like he's marketing.

Mind you, I didn't do any of these things. I listened to it in my car, amid traffic, actually, but in my current domestic arrangement, that's the most peaceful time I have. I also fail to see what is lost by using headphones. Most people don't possess hi-fi equipment sophisticated enough to outplay their iDevices anyway. And wouldn't using headphones add to the distraction-free listening experience he wants us to cultivate at first anyway? 

Still, though he created all that space and attention only to fill it with mediocre work, Gil is my new hero (having just supplanted John Roderick, who has done nothing to fall from my graces, and who is consistently smart about art-making) for demanding it in the first place. 

Notes to Conference Presenters, or, What I Learned not to do by Attending MLA

Offered here for the edification and instruction of the people, and for the benefit of the world, some negative lessons in conference presentation, courtesy of my time at MLA Chicago. Many young academics will be in this thing for a long while; keep these commandments, that it may go well with you.

• Read more slowly

Almost no matter how slowly you're reading now, go slower.

• You don't actually have to read the whole time

Take a minute and speak, elaborate, share an anecdote. Remember, your audience has been in sessions all day, and is in no position to welcome an indiscreet wash of verbiage. 

• Remember: a conference paper is not quite the same as a journal article.

It's shorter, and needs less evidence/support. They can be livelier, and take more chances, since you won't be on record for the ideas therein. We might have an actual conversation following, and part of your job is to help make that happen.

• To that end, Dear Conference Organizers: demand copies of the essays before the conference, and distribute to the panel.

I've been on a dozen panels and never had this happen. The first time I hear my co-panelist's paper is the moment s/he shares it with the audience as well. This means my "response" to the other papers is knee-jerk, scattered. It's no trouble to request the papers two weeks out and give us a chance at real intellectual engagement: argument, even. 

• You do not have to say "unquote."

We know the quote is over because you stopped speaking in iambic pentameter. Also, we know the work and the can tell your prose from, say, Wordsworth's. If these fail, you can signal with your tone, or a pause, that the quoted material is over. 

• Men, if at all possible, try wearing suits that fit.

We do have to stare at your body for an hour, after all. Ladies, you're doing great. 

• Oh, and OMG, while you may use an iPad to take notes, you may not type notes on an old laptop during a presentation.

Especially if you have clickey, manicured nails.